Riddle me this...

I am certainly in no ivory tower. However, and I understand people need to vent and let frustrations out, my point in being active in this board as a Swift office employee was not to be a target. My point in being here is to provide answers to people. I am doing this of my own free will, and I was doing it before my boss found out about it, and I am not being asked or encouraged by Swift to do this.

Some people have their minds made up already, and nothing I can say will change that. But there are drivers who have questions that they want answers to, and that is what I am hoping to provide. And I have a few questions now and then myself.

 

Ok lets address these issues.

ECT: There are two main ECT centers. Memphis and Phoenix. There are some 16000 trucks on the road. Memphis handles every terminal from Lancaster east. There are on average 7 or 8 people answering messages and phones during the week. Some drivers send a message, then call two minutes later, which delays things further.

The "invalid trailer" thing you get? Here is something that you may not know: your DM, ECT, nobody gets a message about that unless the driver sends a message "hey fix my loaded call". And sometimes when a driver does send that message, the loaded call will get fixed, but your DM or the ECT person will not send a message letting you know it was fixed.

I hope one of those days that you just roll and answer the QC is not one of the days where the shipper gave you the wrong trailer number, and you drove 400 miles in the wrong direction...

If a L/O declines a load, thats their right. However, if we do not have team miles, (and I know some drivers think we just create loads anywhere at any time, but its not true) then we cannot give them anything else. Every now and then, you may have to take a shorter run! Welcome to trucking. If you are in Laredo on a Saturday morning, and you turn down a load going to Memphis for Monday because its not enough miles, there will be a solo company driver thats been here 4 weeks that will be happy to do it.

Planners are not supposed to push PTA's out to 12/31 anymore. It happens, but I havent seen it in a while. Usually, after a driver declines enough loads, the planner will just stop planning that driver. Why waste time? Especially if the driver is declining because of miles, and there are not any better loads to plan.

And as for the Memphis/MS Carrier thing... huh? Do you think drivers that worked for MS have a little star by their driver number so we know they worked for MS? Seriously. Give me your valid complaints about Memphis, I will answer them. I know a little something about Memphis.

 

Use your QC. Tell us the phone number is bad.

This company asks drivers whats going on all the time. There was recently a survey. Did you do it? Or did you think to yourself "they dont really care" and ignore it. Cause, some of the things we learned from the survey, we are working on fixing. There is another survey coming up. I see my boss all the time talking to drivers, having meetings with groups of drivers getting feedback. So yeah, you cant say Swift doesnt look for feedback, because we do.

 

When I send a message to a driver, I always sign it with my QC code, and I get messages every now and then from drivers I worked with weeks ago.. but not often. The system design is in place because if drivers were calling CSR's when they had to wait 10 minutes for dispatch, CSR's would not get their job done. It still happens, a driver will call the JIT line. I transfer them to the ECT supervisor.

Oh yeah, the directed message still exists, I just cant remember the macro for it... 31?