The start of my first year with Swift.

I guess I missed something or my posts have been worded badly. I've never had a great command of the English language. I don't see anywhere that I got a SMACK DOWN from Swift.

Please let me know where Swift gave this to me. Yes, I did catch some paper over curbing a tire. I did it and they followed their policy. It has been a rocky road, but as Mrh pointed out I started at the worst time of year. The week ending today I drove just over 3k miles. My weekly check will be about 600 bucks net. I'm due for another raise at the end of this month. So far Swift has done what they promised and the vast majority of issues have been caused by my inexperience. I will say the Swift mentoring/training program leaves a lot to be desired, however I think it's an industry wide problem. They are pumping out drivers as fast at they can and it's either sink or swim. If I had to do it all over again I would still go with Swift. I would have chosen a better time of year to start.

 

A guy who I was in school with has been having a different experience then I have. When I was slow he was burning up the highway in the east and midwest. I've been running steady the last week and he's been sitting or having other issues. We are both stuck in CA this week and I've been running I5 about 100 miles behind him each day. He's a Platinum driver and can request loads. He's been getting some pretty bad loads. I'm Gold hand have to wait. My loads haven't been that bad, the timing could be better and I'm going to fix that tomorrow.

I see this as a game. You make an adjustment to your strategy here, Swift makes one there. Both of you are working on maximizing your own earning potential and they may not be in the best interest of each other at the same time. There are a lot of moving parts to this game and it changes by the hour.

Like Mrh, there are times when I would just sit in Lathrop. Once I figured out that I could go in and talk to them, let them know I didn't want to sit and I would take a short load to get a long one, I haven't sat for very long. They repositioned me to a better spot and I ended up getting a load. It didn't work out but I haven't waited long...recently.

I don't think Swift is much different than any other big company. They all seem to be doing about the same with a few tweaks here and there. If you want to be a company driver, pick one and stay with them until can't take it any longer and move on. If you want to be an o/o then learn what you can until you can pull the pin and run.

I have a plan and I'm sticking to it. It may not work out every single day, but every day I learn something new. That's one of the reasons I'm on this site. I've always felt that has a member of the human race we have a duty to teach those who come up behind us how to succeed and do our job. We also have a duty to learn as much as we can from those who have gone before us. Why make the same mistakes over and over again?

For those of you who make career decisions based on this thread, please, do more research. As my previous signature said, "The quality of advice you get on a free forum is worth exactly what you paid for it."

 

LOL...that has crossed my mind.