Terminals, and Truck

the fontana teerminal is nice so far its the only one ive been in the phoenix terminal looks realy nice from the out side and as for trucks you dont get to choose as a company driver an you pick them up from your home terminal

 

Trucks are assigned to company drivers. Sometimes if there are a few on the ready line you might get to pick one but that isn't normal. I had to hitch a ride to Phoenix for my first tractor but my second one I picked up in Mira Loma which is the other half of my home Fontana.

As far as which are best its a personal preference with a few exceptions. I have been to El Paso twice and had my truck worked on once there. The shop seems good and the office seems decent. Smallish lounge and Summers are hot.
My favorite terminals are Salt Lake City, OKC and Sparks, which is a satellite of Lathrop. That's mostly for the areas though, not necessarily the best terminals.

 

As Henry Ford would say, you can pick any transmission you want as long as its a 9 speed. That's all I've seen really. There are a few 10 speeds and fewer automatics.
And no, you will have to being your gear to the terminal and load up there. Unless you get a load that takes you near your house. That's a crap shoot though.

 

Laredo people are good to me, my dm from Laredo has been one of the best in my entire driving career.

 

Something tells me most of the DM's do have somewhat of a clue of what they are doing. Keep in mind the problems you see on here are only the ones that come online looking for help (or place to complain).

I've been solo now for 2 months and have had really zero problems with my DM, planners, onroad and whoever else I have dealt with. Been paid for all my detention time without having to hound anyone and running as many miles as my hours have allowed. Probably helps that my DM and FM used to drive. Seriously I think the longest it took so far to get a preplan after an empty call was about 15 minutes and thats if I don't get one the night before delivery anyways. I've also been running out east a lot so from what I here there is more freight out this way.

For what its worth I'm out of the Gary terminal, one of the crappiest looking ones around and probably in one of the worst areas imaginable (got message from TM today wanting to know who drove a certain car that got broke into, city of Gary is just not a very nice place at all) I do have to give it to the staff there though they seem to know what they are doing. Even the shop seems to have it together, yes sometimes they are slow but they had my truck in there for over a week before I got it and I swear they must have gone over everything. 2008 Volvo, 433,000 miles, pulls like a champ, have not had to add any fluid besides wiper fluid, new 5th wheel, new tires all around, spotless when I got it.

Anyways from my experience so far Swift is what you make of it. Don't get me wrong, there have been days that just sucked and made me think why did I want to do this again but thats just trucking.

Oh yeah and fav terminal so far is probably Lathrop,CA. Nice and clean, office people were friendly, chow wagon came a few times a day and wasn't too bad and decent vending machines. Almost made up for the fact I was in California but not quite.

 

I'm out of Lathrop. I like the open door policy there. In fact if you need to scan your paperwork you'd have to enter the office area to do it. Most of the other terminals, you'd scan out in the lounge, to get access to the office you'd have to be buzzed in, pass a metal detector and TSA see-through-your-clothes xray machine.