Best Swift Terminal-Worst Swift Terminal

Just got a link to this thread after I started a similar one.


Great info here! Thanks to all. This is exactly what I was looking for.

(Below is what I cut and pasted from the thread I was going to start)

- Mira Loma, CA. Hated it. I hate the Mira Loma terminal due to the fact that there are no laundry facilities, the break room is depressing and usually without people and the parking for trailered trucks sucks balls. Great place to put some poles, right where we need to back to park. Parking here is nearly impossible. Fontana doesn't seem much better.

- Gary, IN has the best truck service in my opinion. Brought my truck in a few days back to get the steer tires replaced and from the time I spoke to someone about it to the time the truck was out of the shop was less than 2 hours. In some terminals it seems that could be a weeks worth of work.
Laundry kind of sucks as well as the showers. Only one washer and one dryer leaving you to wait to get some wash done. Forget about it here but it's a step above Mira Loma, CA.

- Sumner, WA (home terminal) Parking sucks here. Service staff was not friendly and seemed offended when work needs to be done on the truck. I do like this terminal because my motorcycle is parked there.

- Columbus, OH. One of my favorite terminals. Everyone here seemed awesome all around, from the admin. staff and safety to those downstairs in dispatch. $.25 wash and $.25 dryers and there is more than one. Little hamburger truck outside the driver's lounge isn't too bad either.

- Richmond, VA. Seems like a decent terminal. I liked the staff. Shop guys seem cool and reasonable although when I asked to have my front end wobble corrected I was told it was the steer tires. Upon departing Richmond I still had the wobble until Gary, IN fixed it.
Plenty of parking here, never an issue. T-calls are reasonably smooth.

- Laredo, TX and El Paso. I liked both of these terminals. El Paso has a woman that sells homemade Mexican food out of the back of her SUV so that gives this terminal bonus points.

- Syracuse, NY. I thought this terminal was ok. Kind of quiet. Plenty of parking.

- Avenel, NJ. Its in Jersey. Enough said pretty much. Was here once and it seemed to be small with limited parking. And it requires me to drive in Jersey, my home state. Hate driving here, period. So by default I can't like this terminal.

 

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Did they ever pave the parking lot in Martinsburg, WV? Last time I was there(2004), it was a gravel lot that had potholes that would swallow your whole truck.

 

The only unpaved yard now is OKC, well some parts of Laredo. OKC hasn't been paved because they were planning to build a new yard - but, who knows where that is now with the pending acquisition by Knight.

 

Yeah before they redid Richmond Virginia terminal and the Martinsburg West Virginia terminal they both sucked the Martinsburg terminal is probably about three times the size of what it was and the Richmond terminal is huge now as far as parking lot

 

Man, no kidding. I have had those glad hands stolen Everytime I go there. Is there some kind of black market for them, like kidneys or livers it something. Mexico is just right across the border, just saying.

 

Martinsburg I hate, but not because of the people.

It is the stink bugs, and 'maybe' the shop. I'll get to the shop...

I was bused there once to pick up a 'new' truck. Not new, but new to me. A ProStar.
I got there at around 0300 and everything was closed down tight.
Found the truck, and the batteries were dead. As I had no place else to sleep, I made camp in the truck.
Lucky for me it wasn't locked.
It was cold and damp, and I had little with me as I just rode a bus to get there. All my bedding was in Memphis.

In the morning I got a jump from the shop, and then started to notice all the stink bugs around and in the truck.
It was infested with them, probably because the truck sat dormant for so long.
And you can't just squash those buggers! I spent hours catching them to toss them out the window, and more crawled up weeks later as well.

Worst truck I've ever had, but not because of the bugs. They paled in comparison.
I didn't notice the oil on the driveshaft when I picked it up because of all that water on everything. But the day after I did, and it was back in a shop. Not a terminal, but a real outside shop.
The transmission output shaft was leaking fluid.
They fixed it, and two days later i was back in another shop.

The third shop I went to for the problem was a terminal, but I don't remember which one.
The fourth shop was my home terminal at the time, Inver Grove, when I had home time.
No one fixed the problem, and the fifth time in the shop was right back to IGH the same day I got back from home time.

That was when I asked about the history of this problem. The guy in the shop told me that Martinsburg fixed it before I got it. They changed the output shaft seal.
Everyone else had done the exact same thing, including IGH on my home time.

I asked, if everyone is doing the same thing and it never gets fixed, WTF???
IT IS SOMETHING ELSE!!!
I then suggested that the race was scratched, so it would not matter if the seal was changed because the oil was leaking through the scratch.
AND DID YOU EVER EVEN BOTHER TO CHECK THAT, WITH THIS HISTORY??!!
He checked it, found a scratch, and replaced the output shaft housing.
Problem fixed.

Between that and the electrical problems, that truck was in the shop a full 6 weeks of time in the 6 months I had it.
Try being stuck with a truck that is in the shop 25% of the time. I went from Platinum to Bronze very fast, but going back up took a LOT longer.