Plus One

I also thought that Scottie might want to sell him the truck after a month or so. Ya never know!

 

You know, after thinking some on this post I decided you're right, I'm just not a nice guy...I am so much more!

 

Yes, you are.

 

The plus one deal really does need much more work to be seamless with the rest of the Swift system. My last trip had me delivering to the customer at midnight tonight. That wasn't going to be a problem as far as I was concerned until I called the customer to verify. The girl laughed and said I might be waiting a while since they close at 1900 and open up at 0700. Really saves me time huh? No problem delivering early though so I got it there at 1630, with a preplan for tomorrow live loading at 1100 20 miles away. Gotta love it!

 

I'd say, it is a good thing you called.

Was that a load assignment that had changed between the initial 'new load assignment' and the actual dispatch?

 

No, the next load assignment did not have a window, it had the same time for delivery as the actual trip assignment.

EDIT I became concerned when I was looking at the BOL which did have a window for delivery, hence my call to verify times of operations.

 

Calling the shipper/receiver can save a bunch of BS.
Last week, called to see if load was ready to pu early.
Turns out, was dispatched to the WRONG LOCATION.
They gave me the right number.
Instead of driving 1.5 hrs out into the middle of nowhere on tiny 2 lane roads and then
1.5 hrs back....
The shipper was 15 min. From my location!!
Man would I have been ticked off if I hadn't called first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

It sounds like, for all the flaws it seems to have right now, Plus One seems to be keeping people moving. It may not be a quick fix for said flaws, but if sending a mac 22 saves your hide from a SF then I guess I'd live with getting in the habit of doing it on any load that was questionable time wise.

Getting ready to reapply with Swift for rehire in a couple of weeks. Will keep you posted. Thanks for all the valuable info. It really has helped me in my decision to reapply with Swift rather than go with another starter company that would take me with my lapse in time OTR.

 

Okay, I got the skinny on this finally. You guys all know I'm not going to make definitive comments on something before I understand it. I've had time to look at this and get opinions from both drivers and office staff.

I will address the appointment time changes first. You get a preplanned load assignment that has windows for pickup and delivery, accept the load and then get assigned pinpoint appointment times. This is not the CSRs or DMs messing with you. The computer looks at hours you have available, driving times and distances and plugs a target time to be at the customer. This is a Swift appointment time, not a customer appointment time. You can still get a service failure for missing it if you don't send in a mac22 with a legitimate reason for not being able to meet that target. Make liberal use of that mac22 and you should be fine...as long as your reason is not that you had to get a foot massage or something dumb like that.

If you have not noticed, mac9 load acceptance/rejection has changed as well. If you are refusing a load because of HOS, it now asks when you can be there within your hours. This is part of Plus One. The computer will determine whether your ETA fits within the customer's requirements and may offer the same load with different times on it.

The purpose of Plus One is to encourage productivity from drivers who think that company truck is their personal RV and want to stop for three hours twice each driving shift. There are solo drivers who "can't" make more than 7,000 miles in a month and teams who "can't" make more than 12K. They dilly-dally around and wait until the last possible minute at the end of an appointment window to arrive at a customer. Swift is not a travel agency and this is not a vacation. Plus One addresses this.

I have more to say about it, but no time right now to say it.

Bottom line, if you are already productive, this will not affect you much. If you are a professional tourist who is happy earning just enough to eat on each week, you might not be so happy with it.

More later.