CONSIDERING going with Swift

Troll much?

Swift is the largest truckload carrier in the country. It's also a starter company. Combine those two, and the raw number of accidents is going to appear to be pretty large.

Compare Swift's accident rate (accidents per x miles), and you'll find they are in line with the other starter companies.

 

while I believe you are idling, you can't possibly expect me to believe you haven't even gotten a qc message noting you idle too much lol...

 

Swift is so good last winter on the same day in a 2 hour period with in 100 miles swift had 5 single vehicle roll over accidents in Wyoming,,

As for the 20,000 or so trucks they have and 46 fatal accidents in 24 months,,one fatal accident is too many..

 

Remind me again how long you've worked for Swift?

 

what are you e-stalking me? Beat it

 

You Swifties may want to try this out being you have no APU's in your trucks... http://www.swampy.net/index.html and this works good if you like ice to all the time http://www.air-n-water.com/product/ai-215ss.htm ...just tryin ta help u out ya know..lol...have a great day ..JJ

 

They are like walmart a necessary evil. Good place to get experience and move on. They have all their drivers drinking the kool aid with these new "pay rates" ill believe it when I see it (maybe I just need to look at my check stub lol)

 

Not ever. I've only ever been complimented on my low idle % which is 5% in the winter and up to 50% in the summer. I idle when it's hot or when it's in single digits. I have never been uncomfortable in my truck during my tenure with Swift nor have I ever been pressured into being uncomfortable.

 

Like you I had a bit of a hiatus, but a 30 year hiatus. I regained my CDL January last year and drove 3 months with my O/O brother and never went to a school. Swift accepted my 3 months recent OTR experience in lieu of school and I had to go through their complete training program.

I went OTR solo for six months, then team dedicated for six months. Now I'm a mentor/trainer.

Orientation is three days. The first day is drug testing, drive test, and physical. Last year when I went through they paid you for the last day. Now they pay the last two days. They will provide a greyhound bus ticket to orientation and a hotel room (double occupancy) and a shuttle van service. You will need to provide your own meals for breakfast and dinner.

My first truck going solo was a 2012 Cascadia with 250,000 miles. Since then I've driven 7 different trucks (KW's and Cascadia's) as two trucks had to go in for extended repairs, changing from solo to team dedicated, etc. Now I'm driving a brand new 2015 KW T680 and love it.

I started solo at $0.25 per mile last year for long hauls. Before the new company wide pay increase effective 8/1 my solo rate was $0.32. After the pay increase it stands at $0.36 base for long haul. I'm not sure what the starting pay is, but some folks seem to think it is at $0.33 but I've heard lower numbers.

For me the biggest problem during my first year with Swift was unpredictable and slow dispatch. Last year the norm was to deliver a load and then sit waiting for another dispatch. That has changed fairly dramatically in the last few months. Now it's rare to not have at least one load stacked while underway, so I almost always know my schedule for the next load or loads before I deliver the load I'm under. That has made a huge difference in terms of time management.

Swift has a Friends and Family program for teams. Right now my trainee is getting ready to complete his training, get assigned a truck, then go right into mentor orientation in order to train his wife so they can start driving as a team. Normally to become a mentor you need at least 9 months experience from the day you finish training and go solo, but with the F&F program they allow a one time mentor status to train your teammate.

One thing to consider is that anyone that is driving as a team, whether as mentor or otherwise, is assigned a new truck each year. One year of teaming will put about 250K miles on the truck and they will then want to assign that truck for solo driving for the final two years of service so that the truck will end with about 500K to 600K miles.

You can take home time anywhere you want. Just give at least 5 days advanced notice and the zip code you want for home time and they do their best to get you there on time, but allow variance on the actual date.

In addition to the recent company wide pay increase there are a number of changes that are being implemented and under review. Earlier this week I read a memo posted at my home terminal in Jurupa Valley, CA that outlined dozens of things that have teams of managers and drivers working on making improvements. Some of them are already done or in progress, like the improvements to load planning and dispatch, direct communication with the CSR (customer service representative), more lenient overspeed policy, etc.

Overall I think Swift certainly offers miles if you want to run them. Running solo last year I averaged about 2500 miles per week, when I run solo now it's averaging 2950 miles per week. Team running as a mentor I'm averaging about 5800 miles per week.