My Swiftie Life...

Orientation

Well hello everyone in trucking land!

It's been a while since I updated this thread, very sorry. I have quite a bit to talk about so let's begin shall we?

I left off with the training process and Swift's Academy. I jumped back on that horrific Grey Hound and headed back home after graduating. I graduated on a Friday and was scheduled to attend their orientation in Albuquerque, NM the following Monday. I would have taken some time off to spend with my family, but lets be honest my wallet was starving for some affection, if you know what I mean.

Orientation started at 7am on Monday and I was eager to get rolling. I arrived 20 minutes early and walked up to the front door. There was a hand written sign on the door telling me to use the side door (Drivers Entrance) if I was here for orientation. From the outside the building looked halfway decent, but no where near as nice as the Pheonix main terminal, but again decent. I walked into the side entrance and was a bit disappointed to be honest. The driver lounge was.... how should I say.... pretty weak?? The TV mounted in the corner was tiny, old school box style. I thought no big deal, i'm not here to watch TV anyway. I walked over to grab myself a cup of coffee, but there was none made and no packets of coffee so I could make a new pot. No coffee!!! Seriously!, OK now I am mad.. Ha-Ha. I started walking around and looking at the other ammenities the lounge had. It had your typical rip-off vending machines. Washer and Dryer that required quarters to use (not free). They had 3 Kiosks where you could scan your paperwork and check/change driver info, but one was out of order. I walked into the bathroom and was even more surprised when I saw the condition. Toilet paper and paper towels all over the floor, Mirrors so dirty you could barely see your reflection. Backed up toilets. Graffiti all over the Toilet stalls. Then you have the showers, omg the showers.... Let me put it this way... I wouldn't wash my ####ing dog in those showers, they were so gross. At this point I was really questioning what the hell I have got myself into.

Around 7am the orientation lady called us in and took us in the back. The room had cheap plastic tables, like the ones you would see at a flee market. Seats weren't to bad though. The lady was very nice I have to say though. Her name was Fran and did her job well. You could tell she had been down this road so many times, she could have done the whole orientation with her eyes closed. We watched a few videos and then was off to the 3rd party clinic across town to have our drug tests done. It surprised me when she asked who drove here and wanted to know if that person could take the rest with them. I had a small car so I couldn't take everyone so she took them in the van, I drove though. She let us know that after we were done there we could go home.

The next 3 days (Tues-Thurs) were spent on the basic hoopla of swifts policy's procedures. We lost 4/6 people during this time. One quit saying this wasn't for him. Another failed the physical eye part. Another for a background issue. I forgot what the 4th was for. Only 2 of us left. They did feed us lunch for 2 days (Tue & Wed) First was pizza, second was sub sandwiches. They didn't provide drinks though which I though was ridiculous. You really couldn't hand us a bottle of water? Ugh.. Anyway.. We had a quick log class refresher, and had a quick chat with the Manager from the Repair Shop. He was basically there to tell us where we need to go to get what we needed for the truck. Inverters cannot be installed in the trucks without their permission, and to get that you had to have a medical reason. The guy was nice though. The terminal manager also had a chat with us and went over some log examples of people breaking hours of service and such. Again he was also very nice guy, name was Chris. He informed us that almost all the driver managers at this terminal have been drivers and know what they are doing. On Thursday we had our driver codes and they were pairing us up with mentors. They got me a mentor that afternoon and was told I would be leaving that afternoon.

To some it up. The environment was really friendly. Everyone there was nice and easy to talk with. The amenities and condition of the place was very disappointing. We did get paid $150 for the 3 days (Tues-Thurs) of orientation. I would rate the experience a 5/10. I was excited and so nervous to meet my mentor and start this journey. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I was going to make the best of it and get through it.

Stay tuned for the Mentor-Phase of this thread. This is where the "Fun" begins.

Thank you everyone that has replied and read my thread. Means a lot to me.

Be safe! One Love

 

Mentor Training/Pay Numbers/Rant

Where to begin with this one. Ha-Ha
I wish I could say my experience was a breeze and everything went along as planned, but it was the opposite. I went threw 3 mentors during my mentor phase and it wasn't easy.
I wrote another thread about one of my mentor's here. Basically I had an old grumpy mentor who was looking to leave Swift, had no patience whats so ever, and very nasty habits.

They got me another mentor and that guy was actually pretty cool. He was a Lease Purchase driver and was easy to get along with. I started driving with him from day 1 and right away he told me this was going to be easy for him. He said I handled the truck actually really well, my shifting wasn't perfect, but was very good. He had such confidence in me we started the team phase 10 hours before I was supposed to. What is team phase? Well technically the mentor is supposed to stay with you in the passenger seat for your first 50 hours of driving to ensure that you are going to be able to drive this thing while he/she is sleeping. After the 50 hours, the truck goes into "Team" status where one drives and the other sleeps. Everything was going great for the first 2 weeks we were out. I was driving as hard as I could pulling 10-11 hours a day as much as possible to get through this process as fast as possible. I was driving between 550-650 miles a day. Then it was time for him to take home time. He put me up in a Red Roof Inn, which was decent. He was scheduled to take 3 days off. I checked in on Thursday, checked out on Sunday. He was supposed to come back to the truck on Sunday night. Sunday was a no-show. Monday he arrived at like 9pm. So basically for two days I sat in his truck because hotel was only paid for 3 days, waiting on him. He left the truck with barely any gas so I had to be careful on how much I idled the truck to stay cool. It was horrible, and I was beyond pissed off. I was going to call Swift and get another mentor but didn't want to roll the dice and get another grumpy old man or something, as I got along with this guy pretty well. He showed up Monday night and we were rolling again. Then Saturday he took a load back to Phoenix and left me in a truck stop for another day and a half, while he went home. He came back to the truck and we delivered the load in Phoenix 1.5 days later. I told him when he got back. I'm done sitting in the truck. You either finish my training now or im off the truck. No more local runs that run past your house. We headed to the east coast where I knocked out a good chunk of the required 200 hours. We got a load heading to Texas from New Jersey. We get to Oklahoma, and the guy realizes he forgot his Drivers License and Gas Card at a mom and pop gas station back in Missouri.
Now we had to go back to Phoenix so he could get a new license and gas card, but he promised me he wouldn't take any home time. We pulled into the Phoenix terminal and he left me in the truck for the night. We had a load on us that was scheduled to deliver the next day at 12pm. Well at 8am the next day he calls my phone telling me his car got broken into and can't make it to the terminal to deliver the load. He asked me to T-Call the load for another driver to take and he needed another day or so to get his car fixed. I headed straight to the Driver Development window and requested a new mentor.

They didn't have any mentors available but there was a mentor class ending tomorrow and they would grab me one from there. So they put me up in the motel, and I was back the next day. I met my new mentor and he was really cool. He was another Lease Driver. (See a pattern here?) I only needed 30 hours to finish and we knocked it out pretty fast. He brought me back to the Phoenix terminal where I would be tested out and move into "Solo" status. I'll go over that process in my next post, but let me rant for a minute and let's have some real talk for a minute shall we?

At this point I was starting to see the issue's with this company and maybe many other's. I started to see a pattern of who these mentor's were. Just about 80% of the mentors I met and talked to around the terminal were all Lease Drivers. Luckily for me my second mentor was really cool about sharing his financial info with me to show me there is money that can be made here. He was making money no doubt, but at a great risk in my opinion. There is a reason the majority of the mentor's here are Lease Drivers. Why you ask? Because they have to in order to make money. They get paid for every mile that truck runs, whether it be student or owner driving it. for example my second mentor got paid roughly $1.20 per mile that truck ran. The truck was basically running Team Status. Typically that money is split between the two drivers, but that not the case in this situation. The student gets paid by the hour (which is your states minimum wage) and the mentor gets paid his usual rate for every mile that truck runs. If he is a company driver he gets paid 36 cpm for all miles. Lease Driver gets paid $1.20 cpm for all miles.

So lets break this down. Keep in mind these miles wont be every week. Also no Insurance for either examples.
Last week with my mentor we pulled 6000 miles together.

LEASE DRIVER/MENTOR
6000 miles X $1.20 cpm = +$7,200
1 Week Truck Payment = -$1100
1 Week Fuel (7 MPG Average / $2.80 per gallon Average) = 858 Gallons = -$2,402
1 Week Gross = +$3,698
1 Week Taxes (-30%) = -$1,109
1 Week Net (Roughly) = +$2,589

COMPANY DRIVER/MENTOR
6000 miles X $.36 cpm = +$2,160
1 Week Truck Payment = -$0
1 Week Fuel (7 MPG Average / $2.80 per gallon Average) = 858 Gallons = -$0
1 Week Gross = +$2,160
1 Week Taxes (-20%) = -$432
1 Week Net (Roughly) = +$1,728

LEASE DRIVER/SOLO
3000 miles X $1.20 cpm = +$3,600
1 Week Truck Payment = -$1,100
1 Week Fuel (7 MPG Average / $2.80 per gallon Average) = 429 Gallons = -$1,201
1 Week Gross = +$1,299
1 Week Taxes (-30%) = -$390
1 Week Net (Roughly) = +$909

Company Driver
3000 miles X $.36 cpm = +$1,080
1 Week Truck Payment = -$0
1 Week Fuel (7 MPG Average / $2.80 per gallon Average) = 429 Gallons = -$0
1 Week Gross = +$1,080
1 Week Taxes (-20%) = -$216
1 Week Net (Roughly) = +$864

So from these rough numbers there is no point in being a Lease Driver/Solo. They are almost identical to a company driver/solo, but if you are Lease Driver/Mentor. There is a big difference in your income per week. So what is this telling you? The majority of mentors in this company are Lease Drivers, because they use the program to be profitable. Otherwise they barely make it. So what does this mean for the student? Well the student is being used by the Lease Driver to make them more money, and they are also being used by the company to make more per mile as they are being paid minimum wage per hour they drive. If a student makes $10.25 an hour and drives 50 miles in that hour they are making roughly .20 cpm.
The company is paying roughly $1.40 cpm to move that freight. Also keep in mind the mentor is taking a great risk with his truck and life. He is putting his life in a complete strangers hands ever 4-6 weeks. To me, that is a hard pill to swallow. Is the financial reward worth putting my life on the line.
The majority of the Mentor's in the company are simply using the program for purely financial reasons, which is understandable, I get that. But if you have the incentive to be a mentor just so that you can make a living rather than actually training that person, is a recipe for disaster. This is the reason the majority of students don't make it past the mentor phase. Not all... but majority of mentor's don't train their students. They use them for financial gain, and could care less if you are a good asset for the company. After the 6 weeks of making them money they could care less if you pass the test out and become solo. They already have another student (money maker) in their truck the day that student gets off. The Academy is pumping so many students from their program, it's a win / win for the company and mentor. The company doesn't give a #### if you don't make it with your mentor. They already profited from you driving that truck with your mentor and profited from going to their Academy. If you fail your test out and don't become a driver, guess what? You now owe them $4k for your CDL.
This pattern will never change until people stop going to their Academy and start paying their Lease Drivers more money. And that is not likely going to happen anytime soon. I admit I am one of those people. I didn't have the resources available to me to get my CDL without help. Am i grateful for swift for fronting the bill? Sure I am, but at the same time I feel that I have sold my soul to the devil so to speak.

This is the reason why Swift has such a bad rap, and laughed at so often. A lot of it has to do with the mentorship program. They keep pumping out half way trained drivers that make horrible mistakes once they become solo, because they weren't trained properly by the mentor. Now they are installing Drive Cams in all Company Driver/Mentor trucks. But not for the Lease Driver/Mentor. So this tells me is.. "Hey if you don't want a camera in your face 24 hours a day" (which majority do not) "Lease this truck from us and you don't have to worry about it. Almost cornering the driver to either give up his privacy or make the financial commitment to pay the truck for them.

Another thing I am realizing is the environment you are forced to live in as a company driver. As I mentioned you cannot install any Inverter to the batteries of the truck. So no Microwave, Refrigerator, Coffee Maker, Toaster, Ect... No pet's whats so ever. But.... if you lease the truck you can have all these things to make life on the road easier for you. Again almost forcing the driver to make the financial commitment just to live a half-way decent lifestyle on the road. This is why their turn over rate is so high. To be honest I don't think they even care, because they have a student in their Academy graduating that Friday to take that seat you just left.

Here is perfect example that made me really open my eyes for the company I work for.
I was sitting in the Phoenix Terminal Driver Lounge (Keep in mind this is their main HQ) i saw a couple guys playing pool. The game ended and I saw one of them stick 3/4 quarters in to start a new game. Seriously Swift?? Your going to make money off the drivers for wanting to play a game of Pool? it takes no electricity no water, no cost to run, but you feel the need to profit from the driver who is trying to relax and have some down time with another fellow driver. Wow!!!

Rant Over! Phew that felt good.
Look I know I am new and have a a lot to learn. Take what you read here with a grain of salt. I am just expressing my opinions as I see them. I know I am new to the business and can't expect the world, but I feel it's important to share your thoughts of your experience as this is a major step for a lot of people. The more info they can get either good/bad the better. My experience might not be the same as others, you have to see for yourself to truly answer your own question "Was or Is this the right thing for me"

Be safe everyone! Solo status update will be my next posting.

One Love.