Accident showing with swift during training. Can I fight it?

Do you have any other accidents on your DAC?

 

You're confusing the two I think. It will count against you with the Swift rating system for one year, it will stay on your DAC longer.

 

IF Swift reported it to the DAC system. If I were the OP I would check into my DAC report and see if it is there.

On another note, in regards to the difficulty of entering that particular customer, many customers have difficult to #### near impossible entries. Many of my regular customers in OKC have tight entries off narrow two lane roads that require a left turn AFTER getting INTO the ditch on the opposite side, especially with a split axle flatbed. Do what you have to do in order not to hit anything or curb your tires, even if that means stopping and putting on your four way flashers to GOAL.

@bluestreet if you have any plans to own your own truck someday this becomes far more important. You absolutely want to avoid hitting anything or getting hit (like parking in a vulnerable location in a truck stop). Small cracks become big in a hurry with plastic/composites and you are looking at significant cost and down time.

Regarding Platinum status, it can mean an additional $5000 or so in bonuses per year. Do everything you can to get there. Someone indicated it is a safety bonus. That's partly correct. It is a blend of safety and performance, with performance (average miles per week and on time deliveries) being most of the equation.

 

Platinum is .05, with a preventable you are gold for a year. Did the math and that would cost me about 350 bucks or so worth of bonus at the end of the quarter. Not a huge loss, but definitely not the sort of thing you want preventing you from going to another company lol

 

What are you going to fight? An accident is like being pregnant! Either you had one or you did not. If you had a chargeable accident it is what it is. Some companies will mark something like this down as a non reportable incident. You should have went right to safety told them what happened and ask them to file this accident that way. However you have a chargeable hitting a stationary object accident on your record. Live with it. Change carrier if you feel like your being screwed but this accident will be part of your DAC and in the end if this is listed as an accident and you signed the paperwork you own it now. Nothing to be gained by disputing this on DAC. I know a guy that tried to dispute an accident DAC file and got sent a faxed copy of the whole file from their carrier. Dispute denied! On a side note care to guess how much money the larger carriers pay out for accidents? It is in the millions of dollars every year. this is money that can't go into buying new trucks or trailers. Money that is not available to maybe pay for a raise. I will never understand why a driver will continue moving a truck and not clear the area! I can't count the times I have run and stopped a driver because they were about to hit a stationary object. About 4 or 5 months ago I saw a driver wrap the right side of his tractor trying to do a 90 into a garage type loading dock. I can't estimate costs but I suspect somewhere around 25 to maybe 40 thousand bucks damage done just to the dock. No telling the damage to the tractor. If you hit that object put your big boy pants on and own it. Just take the corrective action to keep this from happening again or you might find yourself unhirable!

Edited to add I know that Kroger. Kroger also had a very tight dock in Houston. This does not mean you get a mulligan.

 

No. Accidents that happen on private property should not show up on your MVR or be a part of your PSP. It most likely will be on your DAC and will follow you. Having an accident is not a death sentence. Just learn form it. You will be OK.

 

Yes. But after a few years.

I broke a set of curved concrete curbing that had not been cured after telling that foreman that trailer will not fit into that VA parking lot in Sayre NY. He told me I don't wanna hear it get that load in there.

It's in there and he started yelling. You broke the #### curbing. I told him you never listen that truck aint fitting without some damage. I think they are still yelling.

 

Swift will have this preventable accident on their records forever. So if you quit Swift and want to come back (I don't know why but some people do) they will throw this in your face.

After you leave Swift is the time Swift will report this preventable accident to the DAC (Hire right). That is, if they still subscribe to the Hire-Right services. Somebody mentioned they don't use DAC anymore, but I find that dubious.

They seldom enter this information on the DAC before you leave the company. It is nothing but a blacklisting service and to get maximum benefit of that blacklisting, they often await until you leave the company or prepare to leave the company before blacklisting you. The law allows Hire-Rite to distribute that accident information for 7 years since that information was entered or last contested. So, for 7 years from the time Swift posts the information of the accident, not from the time of the accident, every employer that uses the hire right service, will have a report of a preventable accident caused by you. It is indeed a bad deal.

Your PSP and MVR will be clean and their is nothing preventing you, as of yet, for working for any company. However, you best be upfront about the accident with any company that uses the DAC (Hire Right) service. Many companies don't use that service.

Now, as matter of procedure you could contest this preventable accident with Swift. But you are not going to win.

And their are no "incidences" with any of these Mega crap companies. Everything (except for maybe a deer strike) is a preventable accident. Everything!

As example of this ridiculousness let me tell you about another "student" at Swift. Now this guy was a good driver and didn't deserve the preventable accident report Swift gave him. He contested the accident with Swift and lost: Just, a big waste of time.

What did he do to deserve the huge stain Swift gave him on his DAC? He snagged a CB antenna on a low hanging branch while backing into a dock. That is it! A $5 CB antenna got his training extended and a preventable accident on his record. Now if that isn't silly enough. The antenna on the truck was not even Swifts, it was his mentors own personal CB antenna.

Here is the real kicker to this story. While I was at Swift I must have installed a dozen antennas a year. Swift buys the cheapest antennas they can find and they just fail, break, shatter, all due to stress. You could drive down the road and they would just snap. In fact, I never struck anything with any of the antennas I replaced, but Swift wouldn't know the difference if I did. I simply went in the shop and asked for a new antenna when needed.

Scared by the BS put into his head by the desk jockeys, he called up Swift and filed an accident report for a cheap antenna. And they obliged him by putting a preventable accident on his record and extending his training another two weeks.

His mentor being wise to the Swift ways, gave this guy, and all his students, specific instructions on how to handle the situation if he ever got into any accident. The first thing he was told to do was wake up the mentor and discuss the situation before calling Swift. That is not what this guy did. If he did that, the situation could have been solved without the preventable, but this student put more trust in Swift then he did his mentor. Bad choice.

Oh and after all that, Swift refused to pay the mentor for the antenna the student broke.