Idle policies at Swift, Knight and Knight Reefer

I have been solo now for two months, and being larger than your average bear and growing up in Minnesota I need it cool. So I have been idleing like crazy, and there not happy with it. So then I ran my fans to keep me cool, and they had to come jump the truck. must have been alot they dont complain as much now.

Swift wants to keep our idle time below 20%, if its a hundred outside, and i am sitting over a hot tranny it has to be 120 in the truck how do we drive safe on no sleep???

 

Also if your at a red lite you should turn truck off.

 

you don't want to drive for knight. their people LOOOOOOVE playing interference whenever possible, which screws you over. especially when you're about to arrive to a delivery on time. some of their people higher up enjoy breaking the guidelines to suit their idiotic demands. at knight, if you want more than 2 days off, you will have to clean out your truck, and good luck getting back into one after your designated time off expires. oh yeah, whenever you're down in the so-cal area, have an empty, you'll be TOLD to drop the empty at a customer. then, as misfortune will have it, you'll get a load that requires you to have an empty. knight's planning doesn't make any sense whatsoever. it seems that the fontana area doesn't want drivers to have empties for any given reason. each time i went down there, i'd make sure to start my day off early as possible, so that after i empty out, my 14hr clock was minutes away. thus, blocking off their stupid attempt in getting my empty. yeah, it ticked them off, but i don't care. they don't actually give a turd about their drivers, either.

as for the phoenix terminal's policy toward idling, as long as you're running enough to stay under 40%, they won't tell you anything.i once ran the truck during an entire weekend in yuma. i wasn't ever told anything about it. other terminals, however, may end up saying something about it. i got written up at the fairview terminal for idling longer than 10 minutes. i was doing it to charge the batteries. it simply depends on the terminal you're at. after the fairview crap, i kept myself away from their terminals as much as possible.

at swift, just ask them if they'd like the freight to arrive rather than you becoming a morning news story. in order to get my rest, that usually got them off my case when it came to idling the truck. i also told them to run me north of i-70 as much as possible for the duration of the summer. that, too, helped in cutting down my over idle time.

 

What 3.14 said is pretty much how it is for KR as well. They don't care why the idle is over 40% they will scream at you for it. Sit all week end. They expect you to spend 75% of your time in the truck stop so you can shut off the truck. You also will run into and throw CO. all year long. They also will make you clean your truck out if you take more then 3 day off. Which means it may be another 3-5 days before they have another one for you to get into. They will expect you to be ready to go at anytime they call. If your not or won't they will let you sit another 3-5 days before they call you and ask if you are ready to run yet. Trust me, If you run for KR you had better be ready to live in the truck 24/7/365 and be a good little drive. I just got done telling them to stuff it because I wouldn't play the slip setting game.

Oh, one more thing. If you have any kind of a mechanical problem on the road they will expect you to be a mechanic and fix it. It may be there truck but they won't pay to fix it. They will direct you to do it. And then get upset because you do it wrong or can't/won't do it.

I'm on WC now because they where to cheap to send a mech to my house with batteries. They had me work on it for 3 hrs and then sent a tow truck to help me. I got hurt messing with the batteries. What would have cost them no more then $500 has cost them $5000+.

 

I find it so interesting how some feel the need to come up with insulting slurs for new drivers. So you were born in the driver's seat of your tractor? LOL


Anyway......Swift's policy says you don't idle unless it's your DOT 10. They want an 8% idle rate but you get a nice little message each month praising you for anything lower than 14%. We get them every month and run about 11%.

Did I mention I idle when I want to? I'm sitting waiting for a live load (I'm irritated, been here over 3 hours they're late and have loaded 3 trucks ahead of us that came in after us) and I've idled the whole time.

pfft. I'm in menopause.....I don't sit in the heat.

 

My wife is that way.

YOU ARE THE HEAT.

 

Isn't that the truth. I finally decided it's like that scene from one of the Star Trek movies when Spock is in the "heat core" of the ship.