Swift Transportation Company, Inc. - Phoenix, Az.

Slow down is my advice...you seem to be wanting to get out of your current job and jump into trucking.

 

check with your state unemployment office, you might be able to collect benefits for being terminated. you might also be able to sue them for unlawful termination as well, but that might be difficult to win, so let the state agency handle that complaint...........

 

You've got to do what you believe is best...but know this.......If you attempt this and fail Swift will blackball you and you may never get another driving job. That is a pretty high risk if you ask me......

 

What will you do if you get with a bad trainer, bad dispatcher, or do anything they seem undesireable, and get fired. Your DAC will be blasted, and then you won't get a good job with anyone for a loooong time.

A year seems like along wait when you want to drive.
I know how you feel. Years ago I tried every way under the sun to get a driving job. It took a year, and someone on the inside I knew.

Don't get discouraged, and don't make a mistake with a company that has a record of black-balling trainees.

If you have a good local job then you are ahead of the game. Believe me, the road is not what it is cracked up to be. But I have been where you are at. You will have to kiss a few frogs before you get the prize.

 

ProfessorSwift,

I hope you have positive proof of your ordeal. I hope you can nail the trainers and the company to the wall, just don't get your hopes up.

The odds of them rehiring you are small. The odds of them slamming your DAC are high.

The odds of getting this mess straightened out to your satisfaction are slim to none, and slim just left town.

I wish you all the best. I hate what these companies have done to trucking.

These companies get a lot of [jerks] and loosers to train. They soon begin to think all trainees are like that, and must be treated like dogs. Heck, they think all drivers should be treated like dogs, no matter the years of experience.

I have been that one man who tried to change things for the better at a company I worked for. I ended up quitting over the proposal I made. After I was gone a few months the manager presented the pay proposal to upper management as his idea, and it was approved almost word for word.

I did not get the benefits of the change, but the pay scale would not have been changed had I stayed, because it was a drivers idea, and as we all know, drivers are suposed to drive and keep their mouth shut.

So fight the fight. It may not help you, but it may help others who come after you.

 

Out of curiosity, are there not any privacy laws to protect drivers from being "blackballed" by a former employer? Up here the only record an future employer can really use is a MTO driver / CVOR abstract, which is an official record of performance maintained by the government, as opposed to a former supervisors opinion. If a former employer were to disclose anything in the drivers personal file to an outside source, he could and would be dealt with by our ministry of labour.

 

There is a law that states you can't blackball a person. The thing is you have to prove you were blackbaled and here is the problem with that:

The employer makes something up.

Same for employers who wont pay you. I once was forced to sue a company who kept me out for 3 months (I was cool with that part as I was single and had plans for that big check) and would only advance me $100 a week. WHen I got back to the yard, no paycheck.
By the time i got out of jail for assaulting the owner, assaulted him again and got back out of jail, filed suit he had all kinds of proof that I failed to turn in fuel reciepts, blew tires off the truck and didn't turn in reciepts etc. He covered all but the $2000 he had to pay me.......Then I went to jail a 3rd time for assaulting him.............he got beat up allot...............
His legal problems have continued to roll on...........the company is now in his wifes name and it is growing expotentially over the years. He has been investigated by the Feds because he recruits drivers from Auatralia and New Zealand, helps them to get Work Visa's and then strands them when they want to get paid.

Here is Landlines take on the story:

November 2001

I worked and trained new drivers for this piece of dirt for over a year. The shame is mine......the busted head was his.

 

First off, keep your chin up. You are going to be so much better off out of that situation. Went threw something like that a Swift. I put myself off the truck, they paid for a ticket for me to come back. The trainer wasn't worth 2 dead flies and doesn't train anymore. I'm not sure I would spend as much time fighting with them as trying to find a place you can get what you need. Just my opinion.

 

How Swift and JB Continue to be able to find drivers with the reps they have is beyond me....

What keeps these policies in place?? It must be VERY hard to manage a shipping fleet when you are only keeping drivers on for a period of only a few weeks or months at a time.......