Is swift a good company?

Does anybody else run into the problem of the planners automatically assigning you to a load right after you reject it?

The other day I got a pplan for a pickup for 13:00 I didn't get hours back till 14:00 so I put a mac 9 and rejected it and said my pta was for 14:00 and couldn't make the pickup time. Then a few minutes later **Load Assignment Origin** **Load Assignment Destination** pops up along with a message saying "well we are going to need you to swing by anyways and see if they'll load you late" This has happened to me multiple times and the first time it happened to me I went along with it and just showed up at the shipper to find out that they were closed. Now whenever they do this I just call ahead of time to make sure they will so I don't waste a couple of hours driving somewhere to find out that they won't load me. And usually when I tell them when I'll be able to get there they usually don't sound to happy and get an attitude. Then I get irritated and say well that's what you get for choosing swift, which might not be the best thing to say...

ops this turned into a rant my bad lol.

 

I never get forced loads but I also dont play along with that game, dont know what my refusal score is right now, was 49% acceptance rate when I got my scores a couple months ago which is still better than some drivers.

 

49%? Wow, they were telling me they want 75% or higher. I was just under that at my review.

Regarding dispatches to loads that don't materialize for one reason or another, I've had a handful of those in my four months of solo. Each time I was paid for mileage to location plus detention, then dispatched on another load. Although one cost me an entire wasted day when I sat at the shipper for five hours waiting for the CSR to get back to my DM with a pickup number (the shipper wouldn't/couldn't reference PO numbers or BL numbers). The kicker is the next day I picked up a load from another customer two miles away, gave them all the PO numbers, BL number I received on the dispatch... but the load turned out to be 8000 lbs instead of 40,000+ lbs.... ???? I called dispatch and they said, "Roll with it".... I turn up at the consignee and I'd only picked up 3 out of 15 PO's!? Oops. Got paid the miles and I guess Swift had to send another truck to get the other 12 PO's for a JIT shipment...

Be nice to have complete and accurate information on the dispatches.

 

yeah they want 75+ but not a lot of drivers I talk to has that high.

I dont turn down too many loads but I get a lot removed when I dont respond quick enough for them, sometimes I might have my pta set for 6am and they send load offers at 4am and remove them before I ever wake up. So not all of them are actual "refusal's". Or there are times they send a load offer while im sitting at a customer to be unloaded and they want me to pick it up 50 miles away within a hour. I would say I turn down maybe 10% of loads by my own doing.

My number should be up though since im doing a lot of local and trailer moves, figure in the past week I get anywhere from 3-5 "loads" sent and committed to me daily. Will also be doing this for at least another month and a load offer is sent for each trailer I move.


Now if you talk about some other scores im doing quite well, my idle is impressive according to my DL. It was a little over 20% 3 months ago and I havent idled much since and havent idled any in the past 2 months at all.

 

I once asked my DM if it counted as a refusal if I turned it down with new times and then accepted it when it was kicked back to me.
He couldn't answer.
I asked him to check on it, because I didn't consider it a refusal if I ended up accepting it.
My refusal rate has been through the roof, as well.
I told him that if he discounted those loads, I'd bet my refusal rate would not be nearly as high.

I seldom hear anything about my refusal rate anymore.

 

Oddly enough when I had my review I was surprised they had me on such a high refusal rate. After going though a couple of selected "refusals" and my reasons for "refusing" by using Mac9 to note the times I could meet it became apparent I'd had a slew of inappropriate load offers. Most of these came from the night shift at Fontana... that prompted a rather oblique comment from my DM that she couldn't comment on that since some of the night shift had arrived.... hmmm

I then asked whether my "high rate of refusals" was more a reflection of my willingness to "run and gun" or an inability to offer me loads that could be met. One classic that sticks in my mind was a load offer that had a deadline to pick up AND deliver three days in the past.... duh, I can't do time travel.... the shop hasn't installed the Flux Capacitor yet.

Since then I've learned that a lot of times when getting these "undoable" load offers a little chat with the DM goes a long way to explaining the situation. The time windows are often much broader than what they give you on the offer. In those cases I'll simply ask for a QC message noting the wider time window and sometimes the planner will send a QC message saying "You won't be penalized for late delivery". Then I accept the load offer "as is" and go run and gun.

Another thing, it seemed for the first month or so after getting my permanent DM that I was getting a lot of little ticky tack loads and my weekly mileage and income dropped. I had a chat with him, noting my drop in miles and the fact that some of my paychecks were less than when I was training. Since then my miles have increased well over 2500 each week. He seems to have me running consistently good miles every day.

 

yeah I agree moose, my DM never complained about it, only stated my refusal rate when I asked what my numbers were

 

Lathrop has a lot of these loads going on right now that were supposed to already be delivered, I know a couple of the locals I hauled were rescheduled and one of them was at Unfi which makes you pay a fee to get unloaded. I got there and they said "you have to pay $253 in order for us to unload you since the driver never showed up with this load"
This check was only 1700 miles but im doing a lot of local and the trailer moves but the check is still the largest I have ever gotten with Swift because of the short haul and higher cpm

 

I've heard other OTR drivers will volunteer to help out at some terminals with the short deliveries and make good money when long hauls are slow. Makes sense to do something rather than sitting around waiting for a "real load".

However, I will never volunteer to help out in Mira Loma again. Did it once and got the only service failure on my record. Getting in and out of the yard is an absolute nightmare with the guard shack keystone cops making sure everybody is late. Most any other terminal and I'd volunteer to help on short hauls.

 

yeah Mira loma can be a pain especially when you got all the trucks trying to leave at once, or finding the trailer sometimes is a nightmare, the map will show one place but the driver stuck it somewhere else in the yard where he found a spot and then just marked and said he put it in the loaded section.

Most terminals arent too bad, Lathrop it all depends just because driving into the bay area sucks at times with horrible traffic but if you can time things well then yes you can make some decent money. I know with the short hauls im getting 44 cpm plus the $25 short haul pay. If you can get several of them in a single day then sometimes you make more than OTR even with some being lives and especially if you get lucky to get some drops.

The only place I wouldnt care to deliver to again is that Unfi, did 2 in a row and the first day I went through all the hell getting docked and dealing with the fees and stuff. 2nd day I was delivering at 3am and I didnt make it to the guard shack until after 4am because there was a line of trucks not moving, then had to sit and wait to get docked because of all the traffic so finally got backed into a dock after 5am and unloaded by 6am. Started my 14 at 1am so just this one load ate up 5 hours of my time.