My Time With Swift

Well, my last trip out started out good enough. I left home on sunday to pick up a load in Cinci and headed down to Jacksonville, Fl. I almost had a stow-away. When my wife heard I was going to Florida, she wanted to come with me, but she had to stay home. While I was in Jacksonville, I picked up a load with 2 extra stops going up thru Virginia ending in Winchester, VA. From there I headed back down to Chesapeake, Va and that's where things really turned south.

That particular load picked up around midnight and had an early delivery time. I made it to my stop on time and after the live unload, I had about 3 hours left on my 14. I called my DM to see if there was anything going out and he told me to sit tight, that they were looking for something, but there just wasn't anything going out of Chesapeake. After I had delivered my load, I went across the street to Walmart and parked to wait for a load. Little did I know that I would be sitting there for almost 24 hours!

I parked at the Walmart a little after noon on friday. About 2 am I finally get a pre-plan fo a load getting me out of Chesapeake, but I wasn't really too happy about it. It had a pick up window of 8:30 am to 12:30pm and a delivery window of 8:30 that night to 8:30 the next morning. The load was going to Chambersburg, Pa, some 300 and something miles away, a little over 5 hours drive. So my first plan was to sit and wait until the end of the pick up window to pick up the load, then I would only have 3 hours to wait to deliver the load once I got there. Well, that was the plan anyway. when I requested directions to the shipper and customer (which I have learned to do on every load and I highly recommend. You get additional information with the directions that can be very important), it said that the shipper requires a 9 year old or newer trailer in near perfect condition. I had a T number trailer that was far from perfect. So I sent a message notifying dispatch about the problem and he contacted the planner, which said that my trailer would be fine. I knew better than that. I get to the shipper and, sure enough, they rejected the trailer because of a small hole in the roof seam. I called dispatch to find out what to do and he said to send a MACRO 55, so I did. 4 hours later, I finally got the trailer fixed, after I was first told someone would come out to fix it, then told to take it somewhere to swap it. On my way to find this lot to swap the trailer, my stupid GPS took me right by my destination and I ended up in North Carolina. If anyone is looking for a GPS unit, I highly recommend avoiding PC Miler. It really sucks.

By the time I got the trailer fixed and the load picked up, I finally delivered the load about 11:30 that night. I had been given a pre-plan for a short load that had me picking up a T-called load at the Swift drop yard in Martinsburg, WV and delivered in Hagerstown, MD-a whopping 45 empty miles and 24 loaded. I took the load mainly because the afterhours/weekend dispatch crew is absolutely worthless. The problem with this load is that I had gotten into Martinsburg at 12:45 am after delivering in Chambersburg, and the load wasn't due to be delivered until 8 am monday morning. I "worked/drove" a total of 45 minutes on sunday. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to turn this into a 34 hour reset, so that was an entire day wasted. I finally got a somewhat decent load after that, and I talked to my DM about the really crappy loads I had been getting. He said that after this,my load should get better. We'll just have to wait and see. Later that day, I get a message on the qc that my idle time was at 46% and that I need to work on getting that down. I did some simple math for them. From 12 noon friday after I had delivered my load to 8 am monday morning when I left to deliver that short load, I had driven a total of 8.25 hours. I sat for a total of 55.25 hours, with about 23 of those hours in a Walmart parking lot in 100 degree heat. Anybody wanna guess why my idle time was so high? Apparently the geniouses at Swift can't figure that out.

A couple of months ago, my DM had offered me a spot on his regional Sears dedicated account. At the time, I had to respectfully turn it down because I had two destinations I had to make. First, I had to get to Texas to pick up my son, which I accomplished last month, and second I want to get to Phoenix to take their road ready course, plus I wanna visit with my sister-in-law while I'm there. I told my DM this week that if he gets me to Phoenix in the next couple weeks, I'll jump on that dedicated route. I'm sure with that, there will be more consistant miles and a lot less sitting. It's not exactly my DM's fault because the weekend crew gave me this dispatch, but I picked up a load in Chicago to get me home on the way to Virginia. I'll talked to my DM monday and remind him about Phoenix.

So that's been my adventure the last couple weeks. Admittedly, I haven't been really happy with Swift lately, but I'm still here. I know there will be down times as well as up times. I just gotta get thru these down times to see the up times. I don't give up easily. I'll keep trudging along here, I know things will turn around soon.

 

I have the PC Miler 430 model, and let me tell you, this thing is flat out stupid! On more than one occasion, it has directed me to continue then turn on such and such street. When I stop at a stop light, I look up at the street sign, it is the very street that I need, the one that I programmed in as my destination. Oh, wait. That's my destination right there on the freakin corner! This #### thing still wants me to go one mile down the road and turn left into a residential neighborhood. I can't tell you how many residential neighborhoods I've been thru. It's amazing I haven't caused any damage yet.

It also has a problem with Illinios highways. It doesn't recognize them as truck authorized routes. Every time I get on a new highway in IL, it beeps a warning. It gets very annoying very quickly. Once last week, and I wasn't in IL for this one, I got the unauthorized truck route warning...as I turned into a freakin truck stop!!!

I've been to the website, even sent a message to tech support 2 months ago. Never got a response of any kind. I'm really glad to see customer support is top priority. I did see that they have an update that is available for download that is supposed to fix the IL problem along with "other known bugs". I downloaded the update, but the overall instructions are actually kind of vague, so I don't know if I installed it correctly. I did it two weeks ago and I still have the IL problem, and poor directions. I'm gonna try it again, and see what happens. I'm also going to call them this week and voice my displeasure, since they apparently don't read their emails.

Maybe the 740 model is better than the 430. My wife bought this one on the advice of my brother (who was a truck driver but has never used any PC Miler product), and this model was in our price range.

 

I just redid the update on my GPS. Actually I should say I just did it the right way. Apparently I misunderstood the instructions and basically didn't do anything to it the first time. Time will tell if it did any good or not. I certainly hope so. I can't afford to by anything else right now. Both of my previous mentors had Garmins and they worked pretty well. Even had features that I found handy that the PCM doesn't have, especially for a truck unit, such as approaching weigh stations.

The dedicated route I'm looking at is a Sears account out of Columbus. It goes as far east as I-81, about as far west as the Mississippi, and I'm not sure how far south. I don't mind running me to death. I do like to have time to breathe on occasion, but I don't like to sit still.