Swift Academy Millington

Hello. I went through the millington school in 2011. It was not at the terminal yet. Good thorough school. Zoloft should not be a problem, but they have to get your doctor to sign off that its safe for you to drive.
You will start out with very low pay, but hold out. It picks up every 2-3 months. At one year mark it was .35 cpm, i was making .38 with the bonus at one year. Columbus is one of the better terminals.
Your experience and time there will greatly depend on what kind of driver manager you get. If you get one that usedto be a driver themselves, that is a big plus. If they care a little bit about you, then it can be good, or the opposite and then might be some headaches. Do not hesitate to lean on either the safety department and your fleet/terminal manager if you have a problem. Good place to get your foot in the door, but you can do better later on. Unless you just arehappy there. Some are, some are not. You will get crap at truck stops and on the cb, but hey, they dont pay ur bills.
Heads up, if ur married or have kids do not do the lease purchase as with obamacare it is outrageous for private health care. If its just you, have at it, its fun and you can make good money if you work hard and are smart. Good luck driver.

 

One more thing. I see you want a local job. Dedicated, regional. You should be able to get plenty of local gigs in columbus. The less great jobs tend to go with 1 year otr. The better ones generally 3 or more. Get at least one full year otr solo. 3 otr and clean record, you can pretty much pick where you want to go. Try to have a plan and not switch companies a lot. And get ur endorsements as it will open up many more opportunities.

 

Swift is .36 cents a mile for noobs now. And if you get platinum status which isnt hard, just accept loads and be on time. You get $1000 every 3months as a bonus. But depending where you live its taxed pretty heavily.

 

Capital gains..

Any compensation labeled bonus, gets the highest deduction... Capital gains.

Your end of year bracket is ultimately what you pay, so some may come back to you at tax time.

 

I think after 8 qtrs of the above status you get a big blue super trucker S painted on your truck.

 

Back in my day, Platinum was the highest driver ranking attainable. It meant that you would receive 3 load offerings on Macro 30. Gold would get you 2 load offerings and Silver got you 1. They have since added Diamond, which means you have maintained Platinum status for a set number of months or quarters. The driver rankings also include mileage bonus for the quarter now.

I can't say for sure, but I strongly suspect that the higher driver rankings allow the planners to identify the "more reliable" drivers to assign the more time sensitive loads to. I was Platinum 3 weeks off my trainers truck and routinely did JIT and high value loads. I planned myself off Macro 30 5 out of 6 loads while OTR. The odd 6th load would be a request from a planner to cover a load.

As they say, Status has it privileges...

 

Not sure if there is or not, but consider this, the reefer drivers can always pull a dry van when reefer is slow. The dry van drivers can not necessarily pull refrigerated without cross training.

 

They have had my fiance pull reefer before he was trained. Quite a few times, actually. Intermodal too.