Swift - Starting the New Year training with Swift 1/7/13 - A long read...

fr8....you hit it right on the button. Seriously. We were so very similar and when we both got hot, it was like arguing with ourselves. I really wish we could have made our exact chemistry work to our advantage. Ya know, when we first started to get to know each other we would always comment on how it was like talking to ourselves. The chemistry was so similar and worked so well. I'm not sure where it started to veer off course but it did. You really did hit the nail right on the head. It's almost like we needed someone a little bit different to offset ourselves.

 

Thanks. It's been going well so far. Still no contact with Brandi. More on this below.

Orientation with Epes Transportation begins...

Road trip.

Epes had rented me a Dodge Avenger from Williamsburg. Not a bad car at all. A little red, 4 door with the automatic transmission with the option to manually shift. Kept me entertained as I pretended to shift on the 250 mile trip down to the Epes corporate headquarters in Greensboro, NC.

I wanted to stop and take a few photos along the way of some country settings but the only picture I ended up getting was of an abandoned trailer with the words "Fang Dong" on it. I took a picture because the trailer had the word "dong". Yes I am 5 years old and I'm easily amused.

I drove to my hotel at the Sleep Inn (pool, continental breakfast, exercise room, in-room fridge/microwave/wifi) and checked in. Dropped my bags and took advantage of the rental car to drive to Walmart and get some groceries for the next few days. No real restaurants were near the hotel. I came back to my room, dropped the food and headed over to the airport to drop off my Hertz rental. When I received the car rental receipt I was surprised to see that it cost the company almost $250 to rent me this car to get me to orientation. I was impressed. They are reimbursing me for all the gas I used too. I need to catch a ride back to the hotel and they sent over a Lincoln car service to take me back to the hotel. Very nice. Driver had an island accent and we talked about the legalization of weed on the way over.

Spent the night ironing my shirts and getting ready for the morning. Hit the small gym for a bit.
Once in my room I was actually pleased to hear the kids running down the hallway laughing and having fun. Beats the negative cb chatter at the truck stops.

Fell asleep peacefully.


Day 1 of orientation...

In the morning we met down in the lobby for the 0730 shuttle over to the orientation building. The orientation building is actually separate from the actual terminal/corporate headquarters, which is just down the street. The company's "wellness center" is in the same building right next door to our orientation.
There were about 5 guys total heading to orientation. Apparently I'm the only Jersey guy here and the rest are pretty much from North Carolina. All cool guys.

Van promptly left at 0730 and we were on our way. Day 1 was pretty short and standard orientation fare.

They told us that while some of us would be taking our road test others would be getting their DOT physical/drug test and others would be finishing up paperwork. They had two trucks and two trainers for the road test and I was called up first to go out.

I was most nervous about passing this part of the orientation. My recruiter had told me a couple of days before that someone in the previous orientation was sent home for failing the road test. He was a seasoned driver. So I had reason to take this very seriously.

My tester Chris was a cool guy. He was actually another driver with his truck in the shop. They had parked 2 Cascadias out back bobtailed so we got right into it. We drove down the block to the terminal and he instructed me to hook up to a trailer. Upon walking around it and hooking up I noticed the tandems were nearly all the way back and it was sealed. I checked the bills and the load was 46,000 lbs and some change.

I was a little uneasy about taking my road test with a trailer with the tandems all the way back. Not the way I prefer to drive. We left the terminal and went for a 1 hour drive around town and down the interstate. All went well. I could see what he was doing taking me on a route that crossed railroad tracks (remember? windows open, listen, don't change gears going over the tracks...). Road test went well. Just standard fare. I made sure to do everything the way I would normally do it when I drove for Swift. It was pretty uneventful and honestly felt that over the past 2.5 years with Swift that I was pretty well prepared. It felt good. We returned to the terminal and he hopped out telling me that I need to do a back between two trailers without going past these orange cones. It required a 90 degree normal back and wasn't incredibly difficult. I GOAL'd three times checking behind the trailer. I'm pretty sure they were looking for at least one GOAL. I wanted to be extra safe so I checked a few times before backing it down, lowering the landing gear, disconnecting and bobtailing back to the orientation building. I was relieved. He had told me before the backing that if we touch anything we fail. I was happy to pass as one of the drivers that day would be sent home later. As the defeated candidate told me, "he wasn't shifting good, he took a corner 'weird' and it took forever for him to get the trailer backed in". It was a shame he was sent home that day but he was the only one.

A couple of things I thought were pretty cool up until this point were the fact that they spent something like $250 on renting me a car (not sure why so much $ but I got the receipt when I returned the car), they reimburse me for the gas and we use Samsung tablets everyday to fill out forms electronically. Everything this day went well although I found out officially from the nurse that I have a hernia above my belly button. She said not to be concerned about it but I could get it taken care of later if I chose. Or not. I probably will as this baseball protrusion is just plain weird feeling.

There were the standard jokes whereby Swift came up. No one at this point knew that all my driving experience had been with Swift. I let them know. I can take a joke but I really do feel that a lot of the Swift jokes kind of get old. But I can handle it and take a joke, even if I think they are a little misplaced. I've said it before, in my 2.5 years and 200,000+ miles of driving the lower 48, I've rarely seen a Swift truck wrecked or doing crazy things. And honestly, not any more than I've seen little mom and pop trucks flipped or wrecked. I feel that Swift was a great experience for me. To each his own.


Day 2 orientation...Tuesday.

Today was presentation day. Safety had the first 4 hours. Cool guy and he kept things interesting. A shop rep came in and talked. He said that they will hook up all of our electronics for us including large inverters. Pretty cool! Someone from human resources and a woman from the benefits department came in and spoke. Benefits are pretty decent. For me being a single guy, benefits will cost me a little over $17 a paycheck. Dental is cheap. Company gives us an automatic $35,000 life insurance policy and we can elect to pay for more. My beneficiary won't be getting rich off of knocking me off and the free life insurance policy is welcomed.

Here is something different. We have an option to get paid our Per Diem rate of $46/day and $150 hotel on every paycheck. It is worked through a third party company and as long as we approve our logs EVERY DAY, we get paid for it now. Tax time I can still itemize a few things like safety, uniform, etc. This is very cool but I'm trying to get more details on it. If I work a 6 day work week I can make an extra $426/week, every week. And if I worked for 50 weeks a year that is a little over $21,000 a year untaxed, in addition to my salary! I can provide more details when the rep gets back to me. For now I elected it. Crazy!

I spent lunch time with a driver manager from this terminal that was representing my driver manager whom is based out in Virginia. I asked her questions and she went we reviewed my pay again and mileage expectations. My route will have 3 stops at $30 a stop. Detention is standard after 2 hours wait time, a little bit less than Swift's detention pay. I think it is something like $14 an hour. Not sure if they pay it in 1/4 hour increments like Swift but I'm hoping since I will be bound with appointments and that my route is strictly Lowes, that my stops will be less than 2 hours. I get a northeast regional pay differential so my rate is .55 cpm. I'm aiming to get 2500-2700 miles a week in a 6 day workweek. My day off will be a 34 hour reset in Virginia.

They let you take your truck home if your home address is more than 30 miles away from the closest terminal. However, you must have a trailer attached when you bring your truck home and you must register where it will be parked with them. Since I really don't have a "home", only have my parent's address as my home address, I can't park it there. So instead I'm going to park at my terminal in Chester. They have showers, laundry and a pool table so I'm happy with parking there. I'll park one of my motorcycles at the terminal for transportation and I already found a 24 hour fitness gym in Chester that I'm going to join as soon as I get my first 34. I'm going to start hitting the gym hard every week. From the terminal my parent's house is 60 miles away and my sis's house is about 1.5 hours away. I can live with that. And to go to both of those places I can take country back roads instead of the interstates if I want. Nice.

Tomorrow is the last day of orientation. I think we have some more HR people coming in to talk to us, we get our driver ID's and a tour of the terminal/corporate headquarters. They have really been stressing that despite the fact that they have 1,100+ drivers here that you are definitely not just a number here. Although I've never felt like just a number at Swift. In all fairness my DM and everyone at my Swift terminal made me feel important.

I get my new truck tomorrow. I have a choice of a Cascadia, a Cascadia or a Cascadia. They used to have some Volvos but they don't really use them anymore. Supposedly they have some of the new 2016 Cascadia's with the automatic and collision avoidance features. Not sure if I should elect one of these or not but I'm kind of leaning towards a brand new truck if it is an option. I'll get my truck tomorrow regardless. I'll admit, after driving the Freightliner for the road test, I really do miss the way my Prostar turns. These Cascadia's don't turn nearly as tight as a Prostar.

I'm checking out of this hotel tomorrow. It's been pretty nice here. They have a gym that I"ve been using, a pool that I've stared at but not dared to enter, continental breakfast, in-room fridge/microwave and wifi. It's been comfortable.

I'll update again soon.

No word from Brandi other than a few texts she sent me. I didn't respond. I know she just wants to yell at me and get the last word in. After the names she called me that last day, she said what she had to say and doesn't need a response from me. I still wish things turned out differently with her. I don't know how we got so far off track but I guess it's better to have things end like this now then months down the road.

I'm pretty nervous and excited to maybe be on the road tomorrow heading towards Virginia with a load to get me to my new home terminal to start my new route. Not sure how this new route is going to work with my loads going from VA up to PA. I wonder if there is a way to bypass the DC area on this route? When I was speaking to this driver manager today at lunch she said that we are not babysat and that if we have a better way to run the routes we are welcome to.

Getting some sleep so I can hit that gym before I check out tomorrow. Here we go! Last day of orientation!

 

So I'm a few days in now. It's Sunday and Wednesday I got on the road for the first time.

I'll post some more about first impressions later. I'll say the main differences between Swift and this place so far is that you are basically left on your own (even more) to either succeed or fail. Swift gives you all the tools you need to succeed whereby here you really make your own bed. Take it for what it's worth. I'll elaborate more soon.

 

I'm so confused by this new per diem at this point. I know that it is necessary to approve your logs every day before 12 noon to exercise the per diem option. It's easy to forget to do this.

I'm going to review my first weeks paycheck and see how the per diem played a part.

These past couple of years when I filed my taxes I basically claimed the per diem for every day worked although I didn't know about the $150 extra I could have filed for 2 days hotel. Then I itemized those other items such as safety items, tools, etc.

I think I need to get with an accountant on this because I'm more confused than ever on the different options.