Idling hate mail from the top??

Lone Bear, for one, you have way too much time on your hands, and two, you are going on the assumed misunderstanding that Swift doesn't allow us to idle when we need to. They only ask us to be reasonable in when we idle. For example, where I am right now, at 11pm, it is 63 degrees and I am not idling. I see no need to. I'm cool, I'm comfortable, and the only thing keeping me from getting any sleep is trying to follow your ramblings. If it was warmer, even into the 70's, I would most definitely be idling to run the air. If it was colder, depending on how cold, I would either use my bunk heater, which keeps it plenty warm, or idle if it was in the lower twenties or colder. Last winter I was getting messages TELLING ME TO IDLE if the temps dropped below 20 degrees. But even in those times when we would idle to be comfortable to get some rest, we can still shut the truck off to go inside to eat or get a shower. Do what we can to save fuel and costs, but you would be surprised at the number of drivers leave their trucks running while they are inside watching Monday night football.

Do they send out messages when our idle gets too high? Sure. So what? There is no threat to lower our idle or lose our job. They just tell us to do what we can go get our idle down but still be comfortable. Would it be nice to have an apu? I don't know. I've heard some that are pretty darn noisy, kind of like the reefer sitting next to me that is going to make this an awfully long night.

So your ranting and rambling doesn't really prove anything other than you probably aren't a driver. If you were, you wouldn't have time to do all your "research". Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't care. What I do care about is people who don't drive for Swift, dont know anything about Swifts operations or policies, yet still feel the need to bash on Swift over stuff you know nothing about. All those numbers you throw out there is completely irrelevant to the subject of the thread because at the end of it, we actually can idle if we need to.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm turning my truck off and going to bed.

 

Sorry everyone for acting like a jerk.

Ok, being a jerk.

That was all just in fun.

No harm meant.

Not on drugs. Too much work. Too little sleep. Haven't taken a day off in a month.

Yeah, I knew nobody was on me, I was just having fun. It was Sunday, I'd worked a 10 hour day and I was letting off steam.

My fault.

MM3, I've been reading this forum since 2005. And other trucking related sites. Articles, trade publications.

As far as I know, Swift pioneered the franchise terminal model for trucking.

Based directly on Ray Croc's model for McDonalds.

According to the financial pages, Swift has about 40 terminals.

Each is independently owned, and has its own territory. Competing with each other.

Knight drivers complain about each terminal taking care
of its own first.

You've never had to deal with that kind of thing?

The story says a Swift owner op husband and wife team left to start their own company, building Knight based on what they learned at Swift.

They hired on at Swift only so that they could learn everything about trucking from the most successful company in the country, from the inside.

An o/o husband and wife team. 1 worn out red truck. That grew into 4,000 brand new trucks. All paid off.

1 mile at a time.

I don't know if it's true. But I like that story. Any trucker, with hard work, can become the next Knight.

Not saying it's bad, either. Yeah, I pick on Swift. A lot. But when their drivers stick up for 'em, loudly, it says a lot.

Sorry, again. Especially for the thread jacking.

If ya want, everything I posted previously on this thread can be deleted. I won't mind.

Most of what I know, I learned here.
This has been my school. And I want to thank everybody on the forum for taking the time to teach us guys.

Even us grumpy guys who work too much to post most of the time.

 

Amen,, thank you for not idling I grow tired of unnecessary idling while I'm trying to sleep.

 

Umm you work for swift,it's the worst job you've ever lost.... to the original post.

 

@Lone Bear Interesting story about Knight. Did you know how the current Swift transportation was started? One flatbedder from Salt Lake who moved to Phoenix and began hauling steel and veggies back and forth to California. When Swift meats wanted to get out of trucking he bought their authority and was off and growing.

Referencing back to your story about Knight, I heard that the founder was a cousin to the Swift owner who had asked him to come over to Swift and help out for a while. I don't know if it is true, it may just be lunch counter talk.

 

And one more thing Lone Bear, apparently you don't know very much about franchises. Since you seem to be fond of McDonald's, I'll use them as an example.

Your favorite McDonald's is a locally owned and operated franchise. That is a local person (or in some cases a local corporation that owns several) owns and operates that corner restaurant. They rent the rights to use the McDonald's name and serve their food, paying a royalty to corporate McDonald's.

The Swift terminals are not franchises. They might be locally operated, but they are not locally owned. They are fully owned by Swift Transportation. And although they are all owned by Swift and must follow Swift guidelines, the terminal managers (the local "operators") are allowed a freedom to run their terminal as they see fit. That is where we see the differences in policies between different terminals. And there isn't really a competition between terminals. Sure, some may seem to give a priority to "their" drivers, but if you have a problem you can always go over their heads. They are driver support, and if they aren't doing their job they can be held accountable.

 

That is a poor assessment of the trucking industry and business.

If Swift has trucks sitting it is only because of a problem they created!

The fact is, Swift is most likely misrepresenting the number of trucks and drivers it has so it can misconstrue it's poor Safety Stat. rating. In late July, Swift reported having 17,989 trucks and 21,026 drivers. It was also in intervention status for piss poor driving. By August they report you figure of 25,685 trucks and 22,386 driver. Immediately, their poor driving score drops from 75% to 67%. Did Swift take delivery of 7696 trucks in just one month? Was Swift able to hire 1,360 CDL holders in addition to the 2,103 they have to hire just to keep up with their 100% turnover. That is 3,463 drivers hired between July and August. Did Swift take delivery of 7,696 trucks and hire 3,463 drivers in just one month? You best believe they didn't. What they did is increase the fleet size numbers reported to the DOT to recalculate the Safety Stat scores in order to compensate for their crappy drivers.

 

Were you driving Moby Dick?