Is swift a good company?

just call and ask for the window
yeah they tend to give loads you cant make with your hours and they claim they go by your hours available which is bull. There have been times where i had 2 hours left and they would send me a load that delivered with 500 miles on it...unless we have a button to turn our trucks into private jets...

They also claim its calculated at 50mph but there has been plenty of loads I averaged 60mph and still almost didnt make it in time.

 

My DM's will give me the window if I ask, but it is not that easy with night and weekend people.
Some of them are down right rude when I ask.

Calculated at 50, even if the roads are 35MPH.
Or, calculate at 50 and then send you on a route that adds 100 miles.
Or...
I'll get a load assignment picking up 30 miles away, with a pick up time 30 minutes from this very minute.
No time to do a pre-trip, no time to check a map, no extra time to start the truck and get out of the truck stop, etc.
It's like they expect you to be driving the minute they send it.

I use Mac22 a lot - sometimes just to bug them about these little details.
Which, of course, just makes me a little bit more late.

Last night they reset my PTA to 0700 this morning.
This morning at around 0600 get 2 pplans.
Why not send me the plans last night, since it is clear they already knew.
And yet other times it is just the opposite. They reset my PTA, then I don't get anything for most of the day - and then they expect me to be able to run all night after being up all day waiting.

Well, I can play the game as well.
Have to, or I would always be very stressed out.

 

Apparently running split sleeper messes with them. A fellow swift driver said they start messing with him he will run constant split sleeper and they will finally call him and ask him to stop because apparently the computer has a problem calculating it and the typical log personal doesnt understand the split and the planners cant figure out what hours he has and is dm will beg him to stop and then he doesn't get screwed with for a while. I have to try running split for a few days in a row and see what hapoens. I have done the split on a few days but not back to back. It has save me a few times because the planners send crap and I need the load to get home. This just happened on saturday and I got the load there and on time. I bet the plsnners figured I wouldn't take the load lol.

 

I run split sleeper ALL THE TIME and NO ONE from Swift has ever said a word.

That said the log folks at Swift DO NOT have a clue when it comes to splits. I trust the Qualcom to get it right for me but I also do the math in my head (beforehand) to see if my thinking is right. Only time I miscalculate is if I forgot about a 2 hr break I took at a customer during loading/unloading. Then I end up with more hours than I was expecting, which is always a nice suprise.

 

More is better than less On hours. you know how some of the super truckers holding the benches are at terminals lol.

 

Well, at least his DM seems to be adept at looking at his hours. The Swift software requires a DM to go through several different screens in different parts of the menu to get a good look at a driver's hours, and some of those screens aren't in obvious sections of the menu. I have a new DM now, so we will see how it goes. My previous experience, especially when getting into certain areas of the country and during night shifts, is that DM's and Planner's often don't have a clue about your hours. I've had hot load offers that require 30 hours drive time when I only have 14 hours left on my 70 or 700 mile loads that have to get there in one shift of driving. Sometimes it seems like they throw load offers against the wall and see which one will stick...

... but my all time favorites are when they offer a load that was supposed to pick up and deliver days in the past. I always give a new ETA in the future and note that my Flux Capacitor is not operating...

 

Lol I sent a macro 9 with no time and put in the comments "truck not equipped with jet pack"
then they told me to put the times in and I replied with "Good one I cant on a muti stop load" they removed it lol

 

The whole Qualcomm "mac" communication is a tad archaic IMHO. Basically the "mac's" are "MACROS" that generate preformatted e-mails. What they don't do is automatically update any kind of database. I think this is an important thing to understand for many drivers. I think many drivers think that when they send a "mac" that it will update a database that DM's and planners can see and quickly understand their HOS, etc. This is absolutely not the case. DM's and planners need to plow through a series of e-mails generated by Mac's and go through several parts of the menu in the software to see that kind of snapshot information.

IMHO Swift would be well served to get software that would be updated automatically and give DM's and Planners a single screen that shows all pertinent information about a driver's HOS. Until that happens the best thing a driver can do is use Freeform messages to their DM to give that kind of information in a concise manner and make a phone call if the situation becomes complex.

When you consider that DM's are managing about 60 drivers and working with software that slows them down, their job is more than just a little challenging. They aren't out to "get you", they are simply asked to dig a ditch with a spoon...

 

Not totally correct. There have been times that after sending a loaded call I will put in hour available at PTA, and have had a message kicked right back saying that my l-call is wrong, and that I will not have the hours available that I am saying that I will. It does know your hours. It is also the way that the system is set up. The majority of the time that you have a pplan sent, it knows if you have the hours. Now remember that it is basing this on just your hours. It is not really considering a live load or traffic since it does not know this. Only the driver can figure this in. I know that I have sat with my DM and had him pull up my screen one time, and everything that he needed was right there.

 

Being a mentor is a good way to make more money, but look at some of the jokers they hire I have had guys who can't turn right, one guy told me while he was driving at sunset that he couldn't see cause his eyes where really bad, one guy who was on so many pills he had to take one so his stomach can handle the rest of them. Also they do like to scre ya on Laredo Texas loads once you get down there say it is a Friday afternoon you ill probably be stuck til Monday because Laredo local drivers are to important to deliver loads that sit there (also it is a bad idea to jump thru a window and proceed to beat the guy on the other side, that tends to get you no loads also) there lease program is horrible up to 640.00 a week for new truck plus another 200.00 for insurance they also have strange charges for performance and other strange letters that take from your pay check. In my personal opinion swift is not a good company especially when your own driver manager has to ask what's your code cause he don't know your name