3rd swift review. My opinions

This post will hopefully reach new drivers or drivers thinking about swift, as well as current swift people. This is my third time if you want to read my previous.

My first review:
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/swift-review-new-driver.301683/

My 2nd review:
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...d-swift-review-rational-point-of-view.302587/

I want to mention a few positive things about swift.

Most employees who work at swift are kind and respectful people (dispatchers, driver managers). Most of the time when I call in or talk to a dispatcher I they are understanding and helpful. The drivers are a different story, but you don't really need to interact with other drivers much.

A good example would be an instance where a planner gave me a load that ended up getting cancelled right before I left, so the planner sent me a message to let me know it was their mistake and he would get me another asap. And I did get another within 30 minutes.

Another example of that would be sometimes I have to call a driver manager back multiple times because I don't know what I'm doing because I'm new, and they will explain without any grief.

Another positive is the paycheck is always on time, and you can view it 4 or 5 days ahead of time online. I haven't had any problems with that.

Another thing that could be positive or negative, I don't experience any type of supervision at all when I am driving. I have never received any type of message asking me what I'm doing or where I'm going or why I am where I am. I do my 34 hr breaks pretty much as I please, I just call in and say I'm doing a 34. I park wherever. No one seems to need to know anything from me. They just want to know if I can accept a load, or when i can accept the next one.

A negative thing I've been noticing is getting ahold of someone after 5pm. I'm guessing everyone goes home at 5 and only a few answer the phones. I can easily wait 10-15 minutes for someone to answer. One time I after 15 minutes someone picked up and hung up the phone.

I don't blame them to be honest. I have listened to some of these drivers complain at the dispatch window for a long time, making others wait behind them. I assume all the dispatchers and DMs are so sick of the annoying drivers complaining that they don't want to answer.

That leads me to another negative thing I've noticed (This may be more about trucking in general). In my experience swift tends to treat it's drivers as a separate entity. They swift, comprised of mechanics, dispatchers, managers, and planners. And you are the drivers. They put a big wall in between you and them. They have the actual office for swift, and they have this smelly cafeteria room for the drivers. Then they have this glass window where you can talk to swift through the wall.

I don't feel like I'm a part of swift at all to be honest. I just move their freight.

I have had mixed experiences with getting loads from swift. Up until recently, they have done a good job at providing me with decent length loads within a short amount of time. (January has been a different story, I will get to that)

HOWEVER, it seems 9/10 times the load swift sends me has a screwed up pickup/deliver time. They will send me a load where the pickup is in 15 minutes and I'm 1 hour away. Or the pickup will already past. Or both pickup and dropoff have past. Or there is not enough time to make the delivery time.

I almost always end up calling a manager to ask about the load because the times don't make any sense. But it also doesn't make sense that they sent it if I'm not able to pick it up or deliver it on time.

It's been a source of major confusion. I have come to the point where I just call and ask what the deal is with the load, and disregard the Qualcomm times. It's a bad system of the written pickup time is not the actual fkn pickup time. Wtf is the point of sending me the wrong time. So then they say accept the load and send in a running late macro. And I'm thinking why would I send in a running late macro? I'm not late. You are late.

As for lately (January), they suddenly have no loads. I don't blame them. It's after the holidays. Here is the problem though, drivers only get paid by the mile, so they don't need to get rid of any drivers (we started talking about this in another thread).
So even though there are only 50 drivers worth of freight, the freight is being split amongst 100 drivers. They don't lay off the 50 extra drivers. You just have to share the available freight.

So what this has done is created long down time between loads, and load quality has gone way down. I am writing this while I wait 24 hours to pickup my 250 mile load going into a high traffic city to do a live unload, and it's all they had. But what can I do? I don't want to quit. I'm pretty sure I can't drive home. I just have to accept a much smaller paycheck by no choice of my own.

It's become a running theme, and I'm sure this is not specific to swift. The driver has to carry almost all of the burdens and variable costs of the job. Driver is responsible for traffic tickets. Driver has to sit around for free if shipper takes 2 hours to let you pickup their trailer. Driver has to sit around for free when there are no loads available (you get layover pay eventually). All of the variable costs fall on you essentially. I'm pretty sure everyone besides drivers at swift is hourly pay.

I know that you want to reply to this saying 'welcome to trucking, etc etc', but it's worth talking about and bringing up, because it's not as apparent until you actually do the job.

Btw, all the swift terminals I have been to are complete garbage dumps. The last one's drinking fountains didn't even work.

This is getting too long.
Conclusion:
My old rating for swift was 5/10. I would currently give them 6/10, assuming this January thing is temporary. The people are good people for the most part, but most everything else seems to be bad.

I'm writing this with a bit of anger, because I know my paycheck is going to be low. They say they don't have loads so that's my problem, but I hope I kept things as unbiased as possible.

 

Point taken. But they are the people who will take no experience drivers

 

My outlook is positive, although I have to reach deep down in order to maintain that positivity. I always think 'this is better than being homeless', or maybe 'this is better than being one of those guys wearing a chicken suit holding a sign on the street'.

It's honestly a really shtty job, with tons of negatives. But it could be worse(probably).