Judge: Swift Transportation Misclassified Drivers As Independent Contractors

Right, 2 seperate entities. The truck is being purchased through their financing division.

You in turn are operating that truck under their authority running their freight? Are you free to take the truck while under their authority anywhere you want?

 

Schneider has run stuff differently just to avoid stuff like this.

Their are a million companies that run stuff like Swift and limit the contractor from going outside the company. Swift just may be the one of the first to get called on it.

Basically Swift wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want that truck and driver dedicated to the company and under their thumb as an employee and not in any competition with them for freight. But they also want to call the fleecer an independent contractor so they an screw him with less then minimum wage and avoid paying the taxes on it.

To do this, they lease him a truck under one contract that defines him as an independent contractor free to take the truck where he wants. Then he gets a whole another contract to sign that that says he will lease onto only Swifts DOT number and be dedicated to Swift. So taken apart both contracts look legal. The catch is, you don't get one contract without the other.

 

As I indicated before, I've only had experience with one company as a lessee. The sub-lease was one of their trucks, which I in turn was obligated to run their freight in their trailers.

The terms of the lease were outlined clearly, including an amortization schedule that included what the pay-off would be at the end of the lease if I wanted to buy the truck and get the title.

I signed a sub-contractor agreement. It never dawned on me that after the fact, I would hire a lawyer to sue them because I didn't realize they had stuck a gun to my head and really intended to screw me.

The lease was a walk away lease and after about 6 mos. that's what I did, I walked away. Got my own truck/trailer & authority and haven't looked back.

 

I suspect this is only the beginning of a very expensive redesign of the entire trucking industry. If this ruling holds the IRS will be able to go after these companies for years of Social Security tax. And they could be hell liable for the value of benefits not provided, which in turn could open up IRS 125 fairness testing issues.

 

Not only that but think about the millions of undocumented workers who have been paid under the table doing everything from restaurant work to landscaping & construction work. If and when they become documented, the lawyers will have field day going after their former "employers" for back taxes, wages & benefits.

 

This is why I'm a company driver.
I make less, but the headaches are less too.

Now I may be a bit simple but it seems to me if you run under somebody else's authority then by definition you ARE an employee of theirs. If the check from the consignee is made out to the carrier and then the carrier pays you then you ARE an employee. If the company you run for won't let you take "your" tractor to a competing firm and haul one of their loads at your discretion then you ARE an employee.