About to go very OTR with Swift

Discussion in 'Swift' started by Driver#3141592, Jun 26, 2020.

  1. Lucky12

    Lucky12 Medium Load Member

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    Duplicate reply deleted
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2020
  2. Lucky12

    Lucky12 Medium Load Member

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    You mention keeping your apartment because of Florida doesn't like UPS store address?

    There are mail services in Florida, Texas, and South Dakota that let you use their address for your domicile. I was a full time RVer for several years that is now getting into trucking.

    I used Goodsammailservice.com and they are in Crestview FL (Okaloosa County) in the panhandle. The local DMV quite used to issuing DL to their address. All legit, service starts at about 10 buck's a month if you pay a year in advance. You get a gmail like setup that shows what mail you receive daily. You tell them what to throw away, what to open and scan and what to mail to an address you provide. Google RV mail service for others, they work similarly. You also can get Jury Duty, so some RVers such as myself avoided sparsely populated SD for fear of getting a jury summons in winter.

    Your welcome.

     
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  3. WitchyWomen

    WitchyWomen Medium Load Member

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    Mmm, I love pie, Whatever company you work for it works living in your truck taking mini-vacations as hometime seeing the country. Or work and take 3-6 months off for an out of country experience trip. I lied I just like apple pie the other pies suck....
     
  4. Oakland Raiders Forever

    Oakland Raiders Forever Medium Load Member

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    Yes this ....

    When I went to living in my truck on an extended bases it really changed my life in a good way. I went to 0 debt of any kind and lots of bank account. Your life changes when you owe no one anything and when you have lots of cash saved up. I started taking a lot of mini vacations all over America. Grab a rental car and go to Key West or to Asheville North Carolina. A week in San Diego or Newport Beach. Money just isn’t an issue. It also makes trucking companies act very nice to you. I tell companies if you don’t like it fire me goodby click. Yep I’ve done it and guess what ? They still won’t fire me. Choose freedom over stuff and definitely choose freedom over payments. If you believe you absolutely must have payments in your life then make payments to your mutual fund or savings account.
     
  5. Driver#3141592

    Driver#3141592 Light Load Member

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    Well, I already quit. Swift is absolutely horrible. Since I worked there for 14 full weeks I figured I'd share some specific data about my experience. Keep in mind I was working non-stop and took no home time during this period.

    • Average length of haul is a joke. You will see more <200 mile loads driving OTR with Swift for 3 months than you will driving OTR with a real company for 3 years. I almost never saw a load over 600 miles.
    • My weekly miles averaged 2375 for this time. I thought maybe I was just extremely unlucky, but when I gave my notice my terminal manager called me to talk me into staying. One of the things he stressed was that at 2375 average weekly miles I was one of the top performers in the terminal. He couldn't understand why someone getting SO MANY MILES would consider quitting! I tried to explain to him that 2375 miles actually sucks by industry standards but he didn't believe that was possible. I should point out that Swift has been sending us constant messages stating that freight is better than ever so I can't blame the pandemic for this.
    • MOST of the loads I've picked up had fixed delivery times (or windows) that start around 20-30 hours after I'm able to arrive. If a typical load picks up Monday at 9am then it will delivery 250 miles away with an appointment to live unload Wed at noon. That's the norm. I would try to deliver early and one of three things would happen with approximately equal chances. 1) They would unload me early, but since they were doing me a favor I'd have to sit there for an entire day to get unloaded. 2) They would stick to the appointment time. 3) They would say I had the wrong information and my appointment time was actually LATER than that and make me wait until then. This is the norm at Swift.
    • Speaking of long waits, Swift does not pay detention. They claim they do, but only in cases where they are able to collect from the customer which they don't even bother doing. In 14 weeks I had way more 12+ hour live unloads and 8+ hour live loads than I could keep track of. I've gotten detention pay for about 1 in 8 of those loads. I guess technically you'll get ANY detention pay if you work for Swift, but it's barely any and you can't count on it by a long shot.
    • Trailer searches are even worse at Swift than they are at a normal company. Whenever I made a drop and couldn't get an empty I generally had to wait 3-5 hours for them to even bother sending me the information to go get a trailer! I wouldn't sit idly by and wait either. The last time I needed a trailer it took 5.5 hours, 9 messages, and 4 phone calls for me to get them to send me for a trailer. This was during the day too, not the middle of the night. When they finally did send me the info they sent me to a customer who, BY POLICY, does not release empties. That last part happens a lot. You can expect to go to about 1-3 places that simply never release empties every time you do a trailer search. Combine this with the slow planners and you can easily burn a whole day just looking for a trailer. It's pathetic.
    • Swift's shops have a bizarre antagonistic relationship with the rest of the company. I'm getting tired so I'll post more on this (as well as another batch of major dysfunctionality at Swift later).
     
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  6. Wasted Thyme

    Wasted Thyme Road Train Member

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    @Six9GS you're with SWIFT for a little while now. Any rebuttal? Ty mate.
     
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  7. nredfor88

    nredfor88 Road Train Member

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    Perhaps I'm missing something but the miles you're running don't seem to correspond to the trip info provided. 2375 miles per week is 337 per day. With all those short less than 200 mile runs and rare 600 plus runs, further reduced by long trailer waits and poor planning causing you to wait, how do you manage 337 per day? Again, maybe I'm not seeing something, but that doesn't see to add up.

    Looking at my own data over 9 months of data working for a mega (not Swift), I averaged 320.5 miles per day. During that time my average trip was 810 miles. My typical wait for my next load plan is no more than 3 hours, often I have it before my current trip is over. Finding trailers is rarely a problem, sometimes I need to go to a customer to swap.

    I'm just mentioning my number for comparison. Is Swift not paying you for empty miles or something? How do you get that many miles with such short runs?
     
  8. dptrucker

    dptrucker Road Train Member

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    what other companies you been with to compare?
     
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  9. bryan21384

    bryan21384 Road Train Member

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    These days, 2375 is about average. To get more than that these days, you have to push the envelope, either through performance, or through constant dialogue with dispatch. Long hauls are a treat these days for real. My average length of haul fluctuates between 500 and 900 miles.
     
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  10. Driver#3141592

    Driver#3141592 Light Load Member

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    Jun 26, 2020
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    I've gotten those miles by killing myself out here. Whatever garbage loads I get I do the best I can with them. When I got a rare load that didn't screw me over I'd run it asap and move on. I also don't take home time (ever) so there's an advantage there. I've gotten a few loads with decent miles (one was >2000) but the average is 439. I got that number from Swift's payroll site. I took the number of miles listed and divided by the number of loads. I do have a book where I tracked every single load I've had and I could double check their math but 439 seems right or even high.

    Are you OTR? Is your average trip really 810? How are you pulling that off? You don't get a ton of short loads?
     
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