My Experience with Swift Transportation begining 1/8/13

Hello newberick and hello everone else. I am a current prospect into the trucking profession. I currently live in florida but I see that my options are very very limited when it comes to getting hired. I am looking into getting a cdl permit through one of these big companies and Swift happens to be my number one/two with Prime Inc. I will be relocating to Texas in about a week so I can open my options to just about every major company that offers driver training. CRST is the only company that I have available to me in south Florida and I have done my research enough to know that I should relocate and spend a bit of money to go out of state. I am single with no kids and I am not worried in the least bit about home time. I just want a company that can train me correctly and not pay me low wage. Is there any opinions on Swift? If there is opinions on Prime Inc. that would be much appreciated as well. Thank you

 

where do you live. when you talk to the recruiter tell them you want flatbed. at orientation tell them u want flatbed. Tell your driver development manager you want flatbed. And if you ever get to Greer, sc Gary, Indiana or Phoenix terminal go to dispatch and tell them u want flatbed as far as i know you can live in syracuse for example and have your home terminal Phoenix or Greer or Gary those are the three terminals that do flats and they might hook you on a van load for hometime if there is no flatbed frieght near your house. Also heard they are giving all the flatbed drivers brand new cascadias with a streched out frame. Oh and are you going to be a student or do you have experience

 

Richsoucie if I were to move to Texas, how easy is it to relocate?

 

relocate as in move all of your stuff or just change your terminal you can be based out of any terminal regardless of where you live just have to let your terminal manager know you want to change your terminal and update your address on the driver kiosk. getting time off to move all your stuff might be a little difficult but im sure if you explained the situation and you have a good driver manager they would understand and you could get a couple extra days

 

yeah...as long as you're on the bronze fleet you're not able to take truck home. you can keep it on home time as long as you're only doing a 34 hr reset.any longer days off you loose the truck. once you go pass the bronze fleet, you can take truck home if you live pass certain miles from the terminal( i beleive its 50 miles). this is what was said at orientation in fontana

 

its different for different terminals Syracuse lets u take the truck home regardless and just an fyi you should be at least silver status after training I have not met any driver that was a Bronze its not that hard to get silver or even gold just dont hit anything and dont be late. Also some terminals will require you to drop your mt when you go in and will assign you one before you leave youll learn to avoid these as they are in the worst spots to find an empty just park at the truckstop up the street to wait for a pplan. Syracuse was my home terminal and they do not require this and they dont assign mt's just find one on the lot and let ur dm know the number. Fontana, Pheonix, Houston and Larado are terminals that will take your mt there are more but i dont remember which ones. I know that Syracuse, Greer, Salt Lake, Denver, Jonestown never took a trailer from me

 

Yup thats the norm if you get a good dm and you are a good driver (ie no service failures, no turned down loads, do them favors when they ask and just dont be a pain in the ###) they will let you slide i took my truck home for 5 days of hometime more than once and one time was 5 days hometime and my vacation which totaled out to 10 days.

 

What happened to the other 10 or 11 people who where NOT assigned mentors?

 

they get sent home until a mentor is available or put in the hotel for a couple more days if mentors are enroute i always used to call terminals i was near around wed and thurs if i didnt already have a student onboard