Chronicles of a Swift trainee

Congratulations Marky84. Now the work begins. I'm sure you'll do a great job. Just remember to have fun!

 

Your training took entirely too long. Just remember that when you get your truck to go over it with a fine toothed comb. Any scratch, dent, crack, chip, missing part, etc should get marked on the condition sheet. If you miss something and they mark it up, you're now responsible for it whether you did it or not. Also, if you can (refuse to sign until you can) drive the truck around and get it on the highway. Mine seemed fine besides a few small things like cabinets not opening, but once I got it on the highway I felt the alignment was way off. The truck will be doing 55-62 most of the time so why check it out at parking lot speed?! For every day that the truck is in the shop you get $50/day breakdown pay. I recommend getting a truck stop pocket book ($12) because its hell trying to find a place to park when you have an hour left and the advertisement signs aren't around.

 

book is good to have. also list rest areas too. list truckstops that you have to pay to stop(i avoid those).

 

Just worry about working for swift for a while. The benefits are nice and if you go into the O/O program after a year, you'll be making way more than a company driver if you know how to handle money, plus you can do anything to the truck you like, and carry whatever you want in terms of pets.

 

WOW! I'm blown away that you haven't even gotten to do this "as your own man" for Swift and you're already talking about jumping ship. I've given Swift some serious consideration in part based on your thread, in spite of the ridiculously long time it took to get you to this point. But the reason I say this is that you have probably been given more training than 90% of the new drivers on the road. I don't know you personally, but unless you're a total moron (unlikely) it would be a good assumption that you're safer than 90% of the new drivers on the road. I hope whatever you decide it works out for you. I'm waiting to see what kind of truck you end up with. Hope it's a good one with good miles.

 

I lucked out when I upgraded to solo. Got a '12 Cascadia with just over 100k on it. Even though Freightliner is my least favorite truck ever, I'm happy I got a newer truck instead of a beat up POS like a few friends of mine got. I can't wait til my first year is up so I can get into the O/O program.