Celadon or Swift

All Megas are Birds Of The Same Feather....Look at Highest cpm/shortest contract.

 

both are about the same.... look at the length of the contract. and while he is starving his first year. you will want to go get a job or 2. if your not already working. he's not going to make very much at either one. I read a report today about truck driver wages are down 59% nationwide. and they are 101% below the national average wages for all job/career markets.

 

I have been thinking about hanging the OTR-keys up for awhile now, good money @50cpm is hard to walk away from and have been keeping my eye on local day cabs. I saw an ad in the local paper looking for an experienced Class A driver to run day cab and stopped in for more details.....come to find out this company wanted to pay 36cpm to run a day cab covering a 6 state area and additional $9 bucks an hr to load/unload up to 1000 tires a day by hand. The guy even bragged that some of his guys made 180 bucks a day... I SAID GOOD LUCK FINDING ANOTHER SLAVE.

 

I was with Swift for 9 months and they just leave you alone as long as your not hitting things and making your appointment times but be prepared to have a thick skin because the dispatchers are down right evil but some can be really nice my last one was really good.after about 6 months he can switch to a dedicated and be home every weekend which makes life somewhat ok.The pay is miserable starting out but it gets better and after a year he can go just about anywhere and get a BETTER job working with decent dispatchers.I made it at SWIFT because I didn't hit stuff and made my appointment times and they left me alone and I got calls from other dispatchers wanting me to come to their load boards which I did and the pay was better and I had most weekends off.

 

I have to agree with this. I had a pretty awful experience at Swift but when it comes down to it everyone I dealt with personally was good to me, my problems came from night & weekend dispatch/breakdown/etc...all problem areas that I later learned plague almost any company.

Swift isn't a systematically bad company, they hire a lot of dumb####s though. If you do your job and don't whine and sit at terminals for 3 days because you refuse to take any loads you can do well there.
I really was surprised at Swifts tolerance towards lazy drivers, it seemed a lot of Swifts are able to just sit around and work very little but when they need a favor they'll never get it and their dispatchers definitely go the extra mile to give them ####ty loads haha

 

If it were me, I would choose Celadon. No question about that either. Swift can monitor your phone calls and conversations inside the truck. There's threads on here about that, so this isn't just something I "heard" over the CB radio. Go with Celadon and don't think twice about it.

 

Other thing to consider does he want to run team. Celedon Forces Team for the 1st 6-8 months it is actually based on milage but don't recall the exact number something like 75,000. After that you can remain a team or go solo. I just talk to a Recruiter Wednesday about it and that is one of the big turn offs for me...Haven't ruled them out though because everything else sounds great about them. Just not sure I wanna spend a YEAR (you team with your trainer) with another person. I am wanting to get out on my own and be able to take riders with me, can't do that with 2 full grown people in the cab.

 

This is from Celadon's training website.

What happens after I graduate from the driver training school?
After completing Celadon Driving Academy training, you have guaranteed job placement at Celadon Trucking. You will join a driver trainer to complete 10,000 miles over the road. During this time, you will receive $0.25 per mile that you drive. After graduation from the Celadon trainer, you will complete 120,000 miles as a team at a pay rate of $0.42 per mile split, which takes anywhere from 6 to 8 months. After 6 months, your pay will increase to $0.50 per mile split with the ability to make up to $0.60 per mile split.

 

He's in no position to negotiate and lucky Swift or Celadon either one will hire him.
It's feast or famine in his case. I'd still pick Celadon because I don't want someone listening to my private phone calls or private conversations.