Swift Transportation and their Lease Purchase Plan

Et, qui s'en fout ?

That's...how you say...in French...who gives a ####?

I mean, really? Qui s'en fout?

OK...can you sing Born to Be Wild, and put it MP3 online? I'll applaud, no matter how bad it is.

Wow, that's totally ####ing fascinating.

Yes, I see. Knowing this makes your original point much stronger. It's not like we're slowly watching you tear your own argument apart.

That's your decision. We all have to make the best ones we can.

I'm not loyal to Swift. I don't care anything about Swift, but I know BS when I hear it, and, yes, like everyone else, I usually respond negatively to what I think is BS. Sometimes I'm wrong, but read your own post again and tell me...did you really expect anyone to believe it? And if not, what sort of reaction did you think you would get when you posted it?

Well, let's see...we made it through our lease, and we have enough cash to pay the balloon payment, but we're financing it instead, because, at the rate Obama is printing money and devaluing the US dollar, the interest rate that we were able to get is cheaper than NOT investing the currency elsewhere?

Let's compare that to your business plan, which, as I recall was, sell the tractor and trailer that you own free and clear, and sign on to a lease agreement without reading it first?

Yes, when I compare the two models, I have to agree. You certainly sound like you have more business sense than I do.

Oh, yeah. ////////

Don't let the gate smack your rear bumper on your way out...

...which is your way of saying what I just said, only you're more polite than I am...

...and oh, yeah, you have better business sense.

/////

 

i would rather save the $30 a pop 3 extra times a year, and just do my job and do a complete pre-trip inspection. Now i'm not going to tell you i do one everyday, and not many other drivers can claim they do, when they dont. but i DO do a complete pre-trip on my truck 2-3x a week.

companies that require an ANNUAL inspection done 4 x a year just want to be sure that if they go to repo the truck, that its going to be in road-ready shape....

 

Well, my employer can't repo our truck. Only the bank could do that, and yet we still get it inspected every 32,000 miles. I don't recall what we pay. Since they do an oil change and routine servicing, I think it's probably more than $30. That would be quite a deal.

Anyway, it's worth it to me. We do our pre-trip inspections, but we don't crawl around under the truck and look for stuff the way that mechanics do, and they, hopefully, have a better idea of what to look for than we do.

 

You may want to be careful on what you post here. Someone somewhere is going to assume that all drivers willingly break a federal law by not conducting and documenting required daily visual inspections. Not good for the trucker's image on a grand collective scale.

 

i DO do a visual inspection everyday. And there are a good number of drivers who DO break federal law everyday. You've probably passed by 20-30 trucks today who have broken at least 5 federal laws in the previous 24 hours. But those drivers do so at their own peril.

next time you're at your company terminal, or truck stop, just watch how many pull on out with a load, and you've never once seen them lift the hood? Asking for a radio check isnt a pre-trip inspection....

as far as Morella's....if your truck is going in every 32k miles, its not a DOT inpection they're doing, its prevent. maintence. and THAT i'm not going to want to only do once a year. LOL

 

There are so many federal laws, it is impossible to get in and out of your truck at your own house without breaking at least a few of them. I try to obey the ones that are important for safety.

Are all federal laws important to safety? Well, I haven't quite figured out how misspelling your co-driver's name in your logbook can cause a pileup, but maybe one of the geniuses who wrote the regulations can explain it for us.

At the very least, you need to check your tires, brakes and lights and look for fluid leaks every day. If someone isn't at least doing that much, that's a problem.

My understanding is that they combine the preventive maintenance with an inspection, which seems like a good idea to me. An annual inspection is not often enough to satisfy me that the truck is safe for commercial use. If you do your own inspections, you know what you're looking for and you're willing to crawl underneath your truck, go for it. I would just as soon let someone else do all of that.

 

lol, I think I saw this right. This thread's first page includes a SWIFT driver telling another driver to just go to JB Hunt in an insulting fashion. ROFLMAO. Not being a jerk or anything, so don't take this wrong... but Swift is among JB Hunt, Schneider, and the rest of them as companies we all make fun of... how ironic....

 

*****according to etrucker.com swift just won the lawsuit brought by the lease & owner ops. The ninth circuit court of appeals announced that swift DOES NOT have to disclose charge backs nor do they have to tell you how much they are marking up everything in the lease program either. I guess this sets a precedent in the industry where companies won't have to disclose how much they are charging back.

 

Why should they have to tell you all of that? When you walk into a K-mart to buy your clothes, do you see K-mart's cost on all of the price tags?

It's a free market. If you don't want to lease a truck, you don't have to, nor is the government obligated to protect you from signing an agreement that might not be a good deal for you, without reading it, or whatever. It's up to you to make that choice. Be glad that you still have the right to, because if enough people keep complaining and insisting that the government do something, they will. You might not like it.

 

I must agree with Morella here...the L/O (and O/O) are offered a "fleet price" (or discount) on service rates, tires, and the FSC is figured on a "national average"...the driver can always choose to take any service work, tire purchase, and fuel at the street price....or use the Swift discount and save a few dollars! Drivers choice on how to get the work done.

If the issue is a warranty issue...Swift sends the rig to the dealer for warranty work!