Is swift a good company?

N oooooooo

 

im still 100% on time, I do speed a little but not as bad as most, I try to keep it at 59 or 60 when in CA

do they send you a message when you get a service failure?

 

Plus-1 is a tool for Swift to get drivers to run harder.
But that doesn't mean that we have to run by Plus-1 rules.

All Plus-1 is doing is stripping away any extra time on the loads before presenting the load to us as a pplan.
But that extra time is still there. All you have to do is access it.

It is a game you have to learn to play.
It is the bartering system, brought to trucking.

Plus-1 sends you a load with certain times that the computer 'thinks' you can do, and that is simply the opening offer.
Because whatever else you may think, accepting a pplan sets a contract between you and the company.

But the offer is always open to negotiation, by way of Mac9.
Mac9 is your mediator.
With it, you barter for better terms.

You are sent a pplan with certain times.
You are then expected to consider the plan - essentially doing an entire trip plan for the load - before responding to it.

If you find that the times are not to your satisfaction you are free to turn down the load - but you must provide a reason.
If you simply don't have the hours to do it, the reason is HOS. And at the bottom is a place you can type the explanation.
If the times are too tight you simply input the times that you can pick up and deliver - on your own terms, mind you.
If you need extra time for anything - time to shower, do laundry, hit up a Walmart for supplies, get a couple extra hours of sleep... whatever, you calculate those extra minutes into your times of pick up and delivery.

Treat Plus-1 as a contract negotiator, instead of a contract maker.

It is said that Swift does forced dispatch, but that is not entirely true.
Company drivers can not turn down a load simply because they don't want to go to a certain place (with the exception of a home time request).
But you can adjust the times of a plan as a reason for turning it down.
Bear in mind that if your adjusted times are accepted by the system, you will be required to accept the plan.
And if you input truly outlandish times, someone will notice and call you on it.


Learn which plans seem to have more time built in, and you can control your time much better.
Preloaded and drops usually have windows of time that you can work with.
Even some live loads/unloads have windows. Many times, in the pplan, you'll see shipping or receiving times - sometimes with FCFS (first come first served), and that can be a tip that a live has some leeway in the timing.

Personally, I see no reason to make a 0230 pick up - just because my hours come in at 0200 - on a load that I can pick up at 0700 and can easily deliver on time.
I see no reason to forego proper trip planning because the system wants me to drive RIGHT NOW to pick up in time, on a load that I may not be able to deliver on time.
I see no reason that I have to sacrifice sleep time to get a decent meal, shower, do laundry, a little shopping.
I see no reason to be treated either as a machine, or as a child.


And keep something else in mind - the new rules.
A 30 minute break within 8 hours on duty.
A 34 with 2 1-5am periods, on your home terminal time - and not before 168 hours of the last one.

In a full 600 mile day I take 3 breaks, spaced at 150 miles each. 2 short, and 1 longer to eat.
But sometimes I get hungry early, so my first break is the meal break.
I can't do that anymore without needing to take another 30 minute break before I stop driving.

And the 34 can easily turn into a 48 if you don't shut down at the right time.
And we all know that we shut down when the last load is finished - not at the optimal time of our own choosing.
Not to mention being forced to go on-duty in morning rush hour traffic, and thus wasting even more of our worthless time.

Plus-1 tries to make you burn your hours at the fastest rate possible, making a 34 all the more likely.
Well, I try to average my hours so that I never have to do a 34 reset. That means I have to manage my time.
And that means I have to fight (er, negotiate) with Plus-1 on nearly every load.

Learn the system or, yes, you will always be 'driving like a maniac to meet Swifts deadlines'.

 

Actually, they send you a message with the opportunity to explain it.

You might want to speak with your DM about it as well. The space they give for the explanation is very limited.

 

I work it, sometimes I might get a plan in at 6am wanting me to pick up 20 miles away at 6:30 umm nope I will put in 7 or sometimes even later if I want to sleep a tad more or I want to finish waking up and get some coffee etc, sometimes they are removed and sometimes they throw the plan right back at you with the new times.

Yeah I had a plan I didnt really care to take (cant remember the reason for it) but it was a live load at 7am and delivered the next day at 6am, I gave the system 10am and noon and it threw it back with those hours so I got stuck with it anyway.

I also dont try to take 34's either, my last 34 was a forced one by Walmart and the one im doing right now is at home since the DM im helping wanted me to take a break and see my family and not be out 2 months straight.

 

oh ok, havent seen it yet so I wondered. I try hard to always be on time and I turn down loads I KNOW I cant possibly do in the time frame.

 

Yup.
If you are within the time windows it will kick it right back to you.
If not it will be taken off you.

But in all this time, I have not gotten in trouble for it.
Many times I have gotten a much better load offer.

 

yeah sometimes I get better loads if I get one removed, if something like 200 miles comes in and delivers the next day I decline it and state im trying to work and normally will get something better within a few minutes

 

Adjusting the times on Mac 9 is like playing Battleship to me. I have stopped playing the game, now on every load offer or macro 30 I send a message and call in for the pick up and delivery window on the load. Macro 30 is the worst because the times are Plus One with no details and if you 'accept' it via Macro 31 they consider it a 'commitment' to the load. This is where I got one of my service failures because I thought the delivery time was adjustable due to the nature of it-- D 0001 turned out to be the actual time the customer wanted it there, no sooner no later, my mistake for not calling in and assuming. They beg us not to call in but with a Macro 30 load offer, you cannot wait 20 minutes for a message response; the load offer will expire within 15 minutes.

All said and done Swift has been around longer than I have been trucking and will still be around doing it their way when I am gone, which hopefully will be very soon.

 

During my review when I graduated from my training DM to permanent DM they noted that I had a high rate of "load refusals". What did that mean? It meant that I used Mac-9 with my pretrip planning to counter with offers of times I could actually do loads. In other words, they counted these as "load refusals". I would say that of the "load refusals" (counter offers) I did, maybe half of them were automatically accepted. So I'm not sure whether there is a disconnect in how they are judging "refusing a load" versus negotiating times.

As alluded to above, the times that come in with the load offers seem to be a "starting point". Often I'll simply call to find out the pick up and delivery windows rather than do a Mac-9 refusal anymore. I might also simply do a Freeform message to ask about those times (in order to get a written confirmation to CMA). Now my "load refusal" score has dropped and I'm accepting almost all load offers. This also might be a function of my new DM, who seems very on top of the load information. At least I'm no longer getting sent to 4 different locations to find an empty anymore....