Swifts Reputation

I started with Swift as a CO Driver, Trainer, than a L/O. Went on to Prime as I was under the inpresion that I would make more money "wrong" so then to Schneider as an O/O, my truck not theirs. Was with them for 6 years and got orders over to Iraq. That all said, I will be returning back to Swift when I get back to the US. I seem to have been the happest there at Swift. By the way, I have over 10 years of OTR Driving.

 

The bad mouthing of swift came from the bad mouthing that JB use to get. These are the largest OTR company's on the road. Not among the largest, they are the largest.
Swift has over 18,000 trucks on the road.
They are also a training company.
They went thru some bad years there, while they were publicly held and Jerry was out of the picture.
Since he bought the company back they have recovered a good bit, but still with the recession they were hit hard. Though the numbers are not public since it is not a publicly held company.

But again. It is a numbers game.
No other OTR company has anywhere near the number of trucks Swift has. Werner and Schneider are only around half the size of Swift.
So you will have more of a chance to see the Swift trucks in accidents, and other negative situations than you will any other OTR company on the road.

Is Swift a good company? I would not really go that far. They are not any more driver friendly than many other OTR company's. I would not say that they are the worse either. At one point when they hit there low just before Jerry bought the company back they were close. Not enough office staff to keep the trucks running, and loosing contracts right and left due to late delivery's. (not the drivers fault)

In case you are wondering, no I do not work for Swift and I probably never will. But I have been around there drivers for many years and have talked to many of them. The biggest negative I see with them is that they have allot of debt. They do not own much of the equipment, accept trailers. And this hurt during the downturn.
Jerry is holding on, but he has sold off allot of his holdings outside of trucking.
He is a smart man and knows trucking better than most.
It would just be nice to see him put some more back to the drivers to make the company a little more driver friendly. This is the case of many company's though.
I would rank them better than quite a few of the starter company's though.

 

SWIFT earns and keeps it 's reputation on a daily basis. Talk to the people at Lowe's DC in Cheyenne, Wyo. SWIFT trucks have taken out their gates at least twice a year, one guard was seriously injured (had to airlifted to a Denver hospital with severe internal injuries) when he was pinned between two trucks by a SWIFT driver that wasn't paying attention. I've got 3 or 4 customers where SWIFT is either the primary or dedicated carrier and the problems abound.

 

Until they get their drivers to lose the laptops mounted to the passenger seats and stop texting while driving and learn to park in the parking spaces at truckstops rather than somewhere easy (in everyones way) they'll continue to be a laughing stock in the industry.

Student drivers taught by filthy, lazy slobs that haven't been driving long enough to teach anyone anything is another reason the company enjoys it's stellar reputation....LOL!
The best place to work in this industry....?
Not by a long shot!

 

Have either of you seen improvement (with Swift drivers) over the last 2-3 years? Swift's safety scores have been improving, modestly, for that period of time, possibly for longer.

Swift safety scores seem pretty remarkable considering the fact that they turn out so many new drivers and train the new drivers with mentors who, from what I've read, are still pretty wet behind the ears themselves.

I'm not trying to start a debate here. I'm a wannabe, so debating with veteran drivers is akin to the "one-legged man" deal. Wannabes, in reality, have some pretty serious limitations when it comes to which carrier to break into this industry with.

 

Gross generalization. Both of my mentors had over seven years experience individually, and they sure weren't "filthy, lazy slobs". You seem to have a chip on your shoulder with just Swift because I've seen the same behavior with laptops, holding a cell phone to the ear rather than investing in a headset (I love my blueparrot), etc. with other companies' drivers.

Swift cannot be the most terrible freight carrier. Every time I'm in my home terminal, I encounter someone with a few years experience that comes back to work for Swift. I know I wouldn't return to a company if I was miserable there and could only look forward to more misery.

 

You'll probably do OK wherever you wind up...Bacause I get the impression that you're a pain in the ### in a positive way in that you'll not settle for poor training and you seem to have some common sense.

Swift might be improving but they're still very bad as far as the overall conduct you see from their drivers out on the highway.
The things that I previously mentioned are a major problem as well as the tendency for their drivers to pull out in front of a truck approaching at much greater speed from behind when there is more than enough time to let the truck pass before they catch up with the truck that they seem to think they'll ever be able to pass.

They're drivers seem to not really be focussed on their driving most of the time either because they are so busy trying to entertain themselves while driving....But that seems to be a problem with many of the bottom feeder outfits because they don't care if the guy is a trucker or not as long as he can squeak through the training and hold a steering wheel for a little while until they go back to being homless or flipping burgers or living at moms house till they're fifty!

These types of companies don't seem to even want real truckers because a "real trucker" won't knuckle under to the crap that these companies pull on their drivers so they just hire students and other gullible fools thaty'll lay down for their bullsheeyat.

 

You're right....Sort of.

All of these bottom feeders are horrible in their treatment of drivers and their drivers behavior on the road...But the drivers for the most part don't know any better so they think it's all good.
Swift is the one that was asked about here but if you'll go back and read the posts that I wrote previously you'll find that I mentioned that sad fact already.

 

There aren't many areas where I won't allow some gray area. I think most folks are like that. When it comes to being trained to drive a heavy truck, the gray area doesn't exist for me. I'm not patting myself on the back....them sumbucks are huge and win the battle the vast majority of the time with those itsy, bitsy 4 wheelers. I'd like to be trained to avoid the battles, seems a lot easier that way!