Swift chooses 90 day exp over 7 yrs

lookin up ... the guy only drove jan to march 9th i believe when he rolled that truck when he fell asleep at the wheel. so he only drove a little over 10 weeks and mind you, he got a cdl out of school and a o/o desperate hired him without training.

this is another thing and i am sure most of the experienced guys on here will agree with me, but this next part of what i am going to say literally keeps me up at night and i am sure they will agree.


ok here is joe schmo , fresh out of training, has his CDL, it is october, he goes with a trainer for his 42 days, runs south and etc. The trainer gives him a green light. he is off on his own truck and the sun is shinning , the birds are singing and life is just peeches and creme.... THEN IT HAPPENS,
he is going down the road, it starts to snow, he figures he can keep going he is a trucker now, so he pushes on, the road gets iceier as he goes, he don't relaize it until a mini van carring a family slides in front of him, and before he knows it, the truck is in their back seat. they are all killed and here he sits , 42 days with a trainer, gets his own truck , wants to impress his fam , friends and his company and what did it get him. it got a family to end their lives because he thought he was a super trucker.


OR, he is driving along, he never sees snow yet, it is now summer, it is 110 degees out and he is cruising through the mountains out of Cheyenne, he is traveling down the mountain and since he don't know any better he goes faster and before he knows it, smoke is coming from the brakes, he applies to stop and can't and BANG he nails a mini van. same situation, lack of experience. he should have knew better and didn't .


OR, and this one has happened, and the experienced guys WILL agree with me on this one, he wants to impress everyone, he is out of hours and is 2 hours away from his drop off and the dispatcher tells him to keep going, so he does, he drops with no problem and then heads to the nearest place he can find to sleep, its a off exit. He stops for the night. He feels great that he got to them, he is happy, his dispatcher is happy, he calls his wife or g/f and tells her how he went over 2 hours but got the job done and while he is on the phone WHAM !!!!

a drunk driver slams into his parked truck, the drunk is dead. The cops come, they ask for his logs, and YES, even though he is parked, he still gives it up, ITS THE LAW !!, cop asks him according to his log he should have been 2 hours away, he tries every excuse in the book to explain why he is there but guess what, he has a drunk driver dead under his truck, he went over 2 hours and there is NO excuse for it, next thing he knows is CLICK !! the handcuffs went on him and he is on his way to a great 6X9 room with no view, 3 squares a day, truck career is over and so is his freedom. and YES, for those of you who read this and are not experienced, YOU WILL GO TO JAIL FOR A DRUNK HITTING YOUR TRUCK AND DYING IF YOUR LOGS SHOW YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSE TO BE THERE. this has happened and its not an over night ordeal, you will get up to and possibly more than 10 years.

where did that extra 2 hours get that unexperienced driver or that mega trucker who thinks he is GOD and isn't. and YES, there are experienced drivers out there who have done this too and it is not just the UNexperienced doing it.


maybe you have kids at home, their birthday is coming up, you want to get home... You are at a rest area, it snows and you were smart enough to get off the road. you have a heavy load and you are 10 miles from your drop and 20 from home, you wake up, its cold out, and you done your pre-trip, you get in and start to go, you get about 2 miles down the road, and you hear on your CB radio, HEY DRIVER, DO YOU REALIZE YOUR TANDOMS are locked. UTTTT_OOOOO ..... you pull over and guess what, every tire is flat, you didnt make sure the brakes were broke before you left.. now you have to wait for a wrecker, dispatcher, etc to get over there, change tires and etc and you just may not make it to the birthday for your kids and why .... no winter experience ...
Bottom line, the fresh out of school drivers, not just kids, adults who are UNexperienced as well, need to have a trainer for the summer and winter experience and it dont happen.

Alot of the truck accidents you see seriously are from either UNexperienced drivers or the experienced ones who graduated from trucking school and didn't graduate or get a degree in common sense. And the ones fresh out of school learn from the idiots who dont have common sense. There are millions of drivers out there who are experienced, who never ever take any risks, and i am proud to be one of them....
I didn't have a trainer 11 yrs ago when I got my CDL, I learned from talking with experienced drivers , watching what they do, over hearing what they say at truck stops,...

i will make this next part quick for this is long already but here is how it went from personal experience.....
I was fresh out of school thought i knew it all as much as the other guy from class who was hired by a cheap o/o. we were going through cheyenne, it was snowing, we stopped at a truck stop for fuel and food .. eric wanted to keep going but while i was there, i overheard a few experienced drivers say they are parked for the night and arent going anywhere ... i mentioned to eric that we stop for the night, he wanted to keep going .. he went to get his food and a experienced driver overheard me telling eric maybe we should stop ... he explained to me how he drove for years and dont take chances .. what he told me made sense and he made an impact.. eric came back and said he was leaving .. i told him i was staying , .. he called me a wuss and he pulled out, that was the last time i ever seen him alive again .. he wrecked his truck about 2 miles down the road and was killed ...

point to this story is listen to what some of the experienced drivers say... if you are considering anything that is giving you 2nd thoughts and you hear a experienced driver say he dont take the chance or you think there is a chance on wrecking , pull the truck over and park it .. dispatcher may be pissed but you will live to drive another day or better yet, the fam you may have hit will live longer now that you had common sense to park that truck ...
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or those of you who mentioned the 2nd job in the earlier posts, i do have to tell you .. i accepted that 2nd job and i am back on the road as of thursday morning... i will be looking for the unexperienced at truck stops and rest areas who ask for advise and tell them some of what i know and experienced ... some may accept advise from experienced .. some may think we are just old guys who dont know better but us old guys as i was called a few days ago are the ones who are still alive and out of jail to try and tell the unexperienced how the road really is ...


for the sake of other drivers out there and families you have not interupted yet, take some great advise , if you are tired, pull over, if it is snowing, park the truck ... if it is icy out, don't tempt it, if you are on mountains, stay alert and be careful, ... always remember, if you piss off the dispatcher, you are alive to find another job and with big companies out there, there is always a place to go ....


Bubba Trucker