I'm fed up with these Service Failures!!

What is bad about the arriving early is that do not tell you what they mean be early in some case. Sometimes they will at least no more than one early. As far as Home Depot, I will show up early or at least call the store. If they tell me to go ahead and drop and they want now, then I will send the macro. Never got in trouble for that

 

I have been seeing some with threats of fines for the driver at $300 to the driver if you choose to deliver early and $500 fine to the driver if the load is late. I can't imagine that could be legal.

I've got some BS SF's too.

1. Backed up to dock, they unload 2 pallets then tell me night crew will finish. Night crew comes in and says that is not their job. Sit all weekend backed up to this dock, come Monday morning, they tell me to move out of the way for another truck to back in then they will get to me. Got MT call sent in followed by a SF reply. Tried to fight it, but wasn't making progress and my mentor was offering me to team with him so that SF stayed on my for a year.

2. Get MT'd out last Christmas Eve eve, no Mt's available for next load. Pick up and delivery time expire with no MT trailer solution. They start freaking out that mac 1 and 2 have not been sent, I say where is my MT? Got up to the final on Christmas Eve, place is a ghost town. Sent a message they are closed, they reply to check with the guard shack lol, it's the guard shack that is locked up. In retrospect I should have just sent my MT call right there, push my PTA to the 26th and returned on the 26th for actual delivery if I had known they would throw me under the bus like that.

3. Accept a load and start pretrip/fuel come to find out a big truck just wrecked up on the freeway an hour ago (my CB was turned off) caused me to be late for pickup to this heavy Costco load. As was my habit back then, I would arrive and go Off Duty til the drop/hook was all done, in this case it was 45 minutes, then go On Duty Arrival and Loaded Call. This was to save my clocks. Swift SF me because they said the 45 mins OffDuty contributed to being late lol. In retrospect, should have logged it all On Duty and detoured to a scale and sent Mac 50 with what I believe would have been over weight numbers.

There were a couple more that I thought were Plus 1 loads with extra time-- 1 was deliver 0001, whodathunk the customer wanted it there at that time and another Live Load, run 500 miles and Live Unload in same 14 hour window

There was another one that was taken off me, picked up in Marinez CA going up to Yakima area WA, some 700 miles with only 12 hours on it or something, thought it was a Plus 1, plus coming off hometime I generally just take the loads and don't squabble with the mac 9 times, anyway my DM says other driver make it on time all the time, I argued that I only go 55 in 55 MPH states, have 2 tickets already.

 

Talk about a nit picking company,if you're smart you'll start looking for another company to drive for.Does'nt matter what you say,what you do,Swift is going to give you a SF just because they can.You have 4 just imagine how many other drivers have.

 

I have seen one in about 3 years. Forgot to send my arrival call by 10 mins, got a SF, fought it and won. Told them to pull up the QC locator and it showed that I was where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. Then it turned out that our trailer was actually at another warehouse 5 miles up the road.

 

At some of the terminals, they have driver lists up on the wall, driver name, driver code and truck number assigned. Then you go along the list and it shows each drivers' stats like SF, On Time, Idle Tim, Total Days Out etc.

 

How many SF,s can you receive before Swift takes action?

 

Since Plus 1 has come out, Service Failures are on the rise. New drivers coming in every week, don't know how to adjust times on the Mac 9, or maybe too hungry to take a chance on having that juicy 2000 mile in 3 day load taken off so they go for it. Anyway so Swift has had to adjust policy otherwise they'd be firing hundreds of drivers every week. Now it is based on so many service failures: on time percentage. Take a whole bunch of short loads in a short period of time and manipulate the system percentage if you're pushing 3 or 4 SF.

 

That is another problem with Plus 1. My last student, well he informed me that it was not really discussed. In Mentor training we were told that it is our job to teach them. Well, what happens when the Mentor also does not really know what it is. How can he teach it. I still can not believe the number of drivers that I talk to out here that does not really know what it is. Some even still do not know what MAC 9 is, even after taking the class.

 

Funny thing is, it is so simple.
At least, I think, to those of us pre-Plus1 that had the low-down on the loads from the start.
We at least know about time windows, especially for drops and preloaded.

One of the better changes Swift made was with Mac9, allowing us to adjust the times instead of simply refusing the load.
Even if night or weekend DM's don't want to tell me the actual windows, I can play with it.

I can send a Mac9 refusal with new times, more than once if I want to shorten my times a bit.
I found that out one day when I accidentally put in too much time. After the auto response came back as taking the load off me I sent in a new Mac9 with better times - but still more than it gave me the first time. It was sent back to me with that second set of times, which I then accepted.
It might be only a minute off... say, if you put a delivery time of 1500 but the window only goes to 1459.

But you can do multiple Mac9's on the same pplan until you get to the point that you simply can't do it in their time frame.
And at that point I figure - send it to a team, because I can't do it legally or safely as a solo.

 

Yup, just sent mac 9 three times on preplan.
All 3 rejected, so fine.
But if even the third one had been in the window, it would have updated.

And all these sf's, ....
3 yrs and I'm 100% on time and 0 sf.
And i've talked to lots of drivers with the same...
Got 3 bs ones, fought em, and they were taken off.
You gotta get your DM to go to bat for you.
And mac 9 the times with some cushion...