Swift training school any one out here been there.

This is concerning to me since I'm scheduled to go to the San Antonio school. I called the motel and they didn't know anything about students paying for themselves. They did tell me the nightly average which was 59$ and change per night. X that for 24-25 days heck I won't be able to afford to go. Left a message for my recruiter so we'll see what he says.

 

I sent an email to my recruiter to see what the scoop is on this as well... I know I'll really be up the creek if this is the new policy since won't be able to afford it either AND I have already given my current boss a 2 week notice and my replacement starts next week ...

 

Yeah Roger that! I suppose I'll just have to suck it up if they lump it in with the cost of tuition. But paying it up front before I get an income is out of the question.
Let me know what you find out Nighthawk and I'll do the same on my end. Good luck.

 

As far as I know initially the $3900 tuition included the lodging already.. that is why Ford's comment about it being the students responsibility caught me so off guard...

 

I took it that Swift has no reimbursement for school tuition anymore...they were involved in a big lawsuit with the Millington issue about the drivers getting their licenses suspended without offering any help to those who had no access to truck/trailer for retesting...maybe the two are tied together somehow?

 

Yeah I got the part about not reimbursing the tuition anymore I have no problem with that nore do I have an issue with if the tuition covers the lodging as well.. The only concern I have is if we have to pay for the lodging ahead of time and seperate from the tuition..

With the economy the way it is I actually don't blame them for deciding not to worry about reimbursing the tuition.. when you peice all of the opinions together it kinda explains the logic.. originally having tuition paid back after 2 years working for them would be incintive to keep drivers around for 2+ years.. and the money they recieve for the tuition would be a lost cause if everyone stuck around plus their plan of every few months the cpm goes up a little.. If people know that they aren't gonna get their tuition back then they'll stick around for the 1st year to pay their tuition and then be on their way to make room for the new students to come in... (Not saying it is the actual case just from all the postings that I have seen about them it is the Percieved logic they may be using !!) Personally I think if the economy keeps goin downhill they'll probably eventually either get rid of the schooling altogether or make the students aquire the funding to pay for it themselves just like attending a normal CDL school... but that is just my .02 and humble opinion...

I still can't wait to find out for certain if gonna have to pay for the lodging upfront or not though....

 

How would it be related? *sighs* There are times I'm just so mentally blonde.

 

Right now the tuition does include lodging. The story is that the tuition will still be $3900, but it is not going to be reimbursed. In addition the student will be responsible for the lodging in addition to the tuition. They do not know if the lodging will be added to the tuition so it is not due up front.

As I said, when I know more I will pass it along. For you guys talking to recruiters, are they confirming the information about the tuition not being reimbursed?

 

Today was Academy test day!

Things went very well for Dave and I. The day started with me taking my Pre-trip test, where I missed only 7 points. That is a passing score, for WA we can miss up to 12 points. Almost all of my points came from simply missing a word or two in my script. I hit every area with the exception of the #### airbags! Best part is I won't forget thise when I go to Pasco on Friday.

After the Pre-trip, I took the WA State skills test, for the academy. This was the exact same test that I will take on Friday in Pasco. Did a 100' straight back where I needed to stop when the trailer was in the "box". The box is a 2' area marked out by 4 cones, which blend right in with the rest of the cones. Anyways, if you use GOAL, you fail the test. If you pull up, you miss one point. So, I did the straight back and placed the trailer where I thought it was in the box. I missed the box by about 4 inches, short. In the end I missed 1 point for being short of the dock, and 1 point for failing to beep when I backed up.

Moved on to the 45 degree dock. This is a 20' deep dock, with the same 2' box. On this dock I used one pull up, again did not honk the horn and I overshot the box by about 8". So I missed 1 point for the horn, 1 point for the pull up and 2 points for going beyond the box. In total you can miss 8 points for both of the docking manuevers. I missed a total of 6 points on both manuevers, so I passed!

The final test was a 1 hour road test. We can miss 24 points on the road test. I missed 9 points for not using my miriors enough, 2 points for canceling my turn signal too early on 2 seperate turns. Missed 1 point for taking a left turn too wide, and finally 2 points when I grinded the gears trying to go from 5th to 3rd on a when yielding. Stupid me I forgot the #### range selector! So in the end I missed 14 points total. I was really surprised because Bob warned that we would miss between 15 and 22 points on this test, with at least 14 points for miriors.

Dave did great also. I don't have all the details, but he got 4 points on the Pre-trip, 4 points on the backing manuevers, and 22 points on the road test.

We spent the rest of the day driving around town.

We did see another student fail his road test on turn #1 when he went WAY too wide and hit a curb with the front left tire. He will need to retest on Thursday. We did not talk to most of the other students, because they were already gone when we got back to the yard.

We did play around with a little bit of docking too. I was able to bump the dock at the Lewiston Shopko. Not too tricky, there was a Swift trailer in dock 1 and a cardboard dumpster in dock 3. I was able to bump the dock with just one pull up, and I was in position to line up with the bay doors.

Dave got to bump the dock at a Fedex transfer facility. His biggest mistake was to turn the truck around and try to blindside back. There was a 53' Swift trailer on the drivers side and a 20' Fedex trailer on the passengers side. No room in from to try a straight back, so he did a 45 degree blindside back. In the end he bumped the dock with a few pull ups, we lost count, about 5 GOALS, and about 15 minutes of manuevering. Again, his biggest mistake was trying to blindside back, he would have been much better off to try and back it around the 53' trailer.

We will hear more stories about the other students tests in the morning. Thursday, day 16 will be all city driving. We will also have another student on out truck because he will be going with us to Pasco on Friday.

I did not do a GPS tracker today because we basically drove the same roads as the last few day.

 

Good job Ford. Don't you have to parallel park for your test. I live in Mass and we had to do a blind side and a sight side parallel park. We also had to back 265 feet. Then we did a 90 degree alley dock. Road test was about 25 minutes. We could also use 3 GOALs and three pull ups for each manuever. They inspectors like to see you use all 3 GOALs. Our box to put the back of trailer in was only 18 inches, but not to bad with 3 GOALs. Are you going to keep posting during orientation and training? I hope so, you are very helpful and informative. Dieing to see what your GPS looks like when you get in training. Good Luck.