Reality of Swift: How to get screwed

No way. None of that is true.

 

I was a driver instructor in 07, owned my own training school in 09. Yes, training schools (private or mega carrier either or) only teaches you enough to get a CDL. Thats all you CAN do in 4 weeks. When I went to driver training in 84, I was in school for 9 months. I had my CDL after 3 weeks, but since the VA was paying me to go to school, I stayed for the whole 9 month course (was at a local Vo Tech). And frankly I am glad I did. But realistically, most people wouldnt do that even if they could. They want to get out on the road. Also back in those days you had to have 2 years driving experience before any kind of decent company would hire you. Because of the huge driver shortage now, companies will hire people with 4 months experience for what they would have required a year or 2 from before.

I find it interesting that Swift works their drivers that hard. The biggest complaint I heard from my ex-students was they didnt get enough miles at Swift. They were lucky to get 1500 a week. But that was back in 07. Maybe ut was because they already had their CDLs and didnt owe Swift 4 grand for training and thus werent their slaves maybe?

 

I couldn't have said it any better; you really nailed this dead on.
Sad to say, the above applies to all... I do mean all.. the big mega companies:
Swift, CFI, Conway Truckload, Knight, Schneider, CRST, Heartland...etc.

 

No, the OP is pissed because he was exploited by an immoral company and he had the guts to report it here.
What's with so many of you people that feel the need to attack a fellow worker when he is simply enlightening the rest of us as to shady company practices that seriously affect us all?

 

OP is right. I'm tired of the "norm" with some of these megas. This industry needs a complete overhaul.

 

Won't argue with you there,but it aint ever gonna happen.......I would ask before ever leaving the house if I had to share a room and if so,pay the extra $ to have a private room.

 

There have been literately 10 years of reviews on how horrible any mega, Swift included, is about their lease. There is no enlightenment. It's already a fairly strong bright light shining on these practices.

No, we do need to hold the person signing these crappy contracts as much to blame as the horrible company that offers them. If people would stop and do a very quick search before hand, they would not need to come here afterwards to post. And then places like Swift would stop offering crappy deals and have to actually offer decent ones (or more likely not offer leasing at all)

 

The best part about their Qualcomm BS was that DM's and fleet managers required that, whenever you received an "important message" on the Qualcomm, you pull over and read/respond to the highly important message. Nine times out of ten I would find a safe place to stop and park and the "important message" would be some crap from the lease recruiting department talking about how much money you can make and how you can drive faster and bring a dog along as a lease operator at Swift and what recruiters to contact if you want to make the change. Sometimes this happened multiple times a day.

 

Sounds annoying as ####

 

The mere fact that workers are able to be treated so badly by Swift indicates that we need tougher worker protection laws in the United States.