Swift 200 hours journey

Anheuser wants you to come in full.... For a 46k load... 'Yes, I am.' (full)... I leave out the minus 65 gallons part.

 

I've been sitting in the truck for 72 hours while my mentor went home. I don't get paid for this ####. So I woke up today to see we had been sent a load. I sent him a text that they offered us a good load and his response was:

"Stop worrying about the loads I am excepting(sic) them not you. I am with family stop texting me back to back everything is alright."

And my response:

"I'm worried about 200 dollar checks for 70 hour weeks and a 72 hour reset in the middle of the pay period. I wanna make money. Enjoy your fam Bruh. Must be nice. See you whenever."

And his response:

"That's what swift does"

And my response:

"They send guys out with mentors who need a warm body to double their income, so that they can take home time while the student keeps making minimum wage for as long as possible while the mentor nets 2500 take home and openly brags about how 'we' are making so much money?"

He didn't respond.

I can't afford to sit at a truck stop, nor can I afford to sit at a hotel for a week while they search for a mentor that may be as lazy or crazy as this guy. He's really chill and I like his style of instruction, but his work ethic is way too chill and he's not a paper chaser. He's teaching me a lot of lazy ### habits and it sucks. When I upgrade I'm going to have to ask Swift to stick me with someone on the flatbed fleet for a week or two, so I can learn the securement and also how the freight/dispatch/DM's etc operate. And also so I can see what it looks like when a driver really works for their money.

If this was what I believed driving was really like, I would have quit already. Fortunately, I know that I don't have to live with this guy forever.

I called my coordinator and asked how many hours I had driven and after 3 weeks, he said that I had only driven 108.57 hours. That is unacceptable. Un ####ing acceptable.

 

36 hrs / week..... Wow, man, sorry.... And #### that.

 

To be fair I have done a reset, then just sat for 72 hours for a reset while he was on home time. So that's really two weeks worth of driving plus resets and sitting on my ###. I didn't need a reset though. He had a ton of time on his clock and I had 6.5 coming back, followed by 11.5 and 10.5 the next two days. Then the rest of the days were where I burned out my whole 11, plus a couple of hours per day while I had multiple ltl live unloads to stand around for. No need for a reset. Just burned 72 hours of my life at a #### flying J.

Swift pays trainees 50 per 24 hours when your mentor is on home time. So I had 2 days of driving...

1. 5.25 drv/6.5 od
2. 7.25 drv/10 od

As you can see, the 150 dollars for layover, if I can get Swift to pay it, will be more than half of my check this week. Whatever I can make before tomorrow at Midnight MST in terms of hours, that is my pay for the Monday after next. My 499 dollar check that I get on Tuesday this coming week is actually like 2 something after taxes now, because they tacked on an advance that I never took and I can't get payroll on the phone over the weekend(or during the week lol)

 

I was going to ask.... But that clarified. On the 8 / 9th day, if I'm not on recaps, that's no good.

Why so much on-duty? That'll kill your drive time. Maybe I don't understand Swift's policy here.... Or is 'od' off-duty?

 

I think the on-duty total equals on-duty & driving combined, not separate. Not sure though, I'm not on ELOGS.

 

Did anyone warn you to avoid Swift?

 

It's a real shame when trucking companies these days can't get proper truck drivers to train new ones.

 

They require us to be on duty when at a receiver for a live unload, because we have to count and locate specific pallets being removed on these ltl reefer runs. I signed up for flatbed anyway and got a van driver who went target reefer dedicated after a few days. Regional at that.

But the total on duty hours includes the line 3 hours as well. I have to subtract the driving hours from the total on duty hours to figure each one out and how many hours I will be paid at which rate.

 

Call your student cordnator and tell them to get your ### to the Gary terminal. talk to the terminal manager there or anyone behin d the window actually aand have them find you a flatbed mentor. won't be hard there, Gary's the main flatbed terminal. also the Chinese is decent from the menu that doesn't have Spanish on it.