Swift 3 months update -- my personal experience

So when I got my CDL I applied to a bunch of starter companies, Swift was the one that had the earliest start date open, so that's how I chose it. I just wanted to start my career as soon as possible. I planned from the beginning that as soon as I have enough experience, I will start applying for better options. So I have no particular sentimental attachment or bias to my company. This is my experience so far.

I'm with the Reefer OTR account with my home terminal in Jurupa Valley, CA. Disclaimer, your experience may vary.

PROs:

- The driver manager and office staff are genuinely friendly people. I've heard stories of bad staff but, although I don't have much to compare with, I do feel generally treated with respect.

- They take safety seriously. They won't give you any #### if your hours run out or if there are chains required. In fact they'll literally suggest you shut down rather than drive in chains and will proactively put in your layover in your next pay check. In general, as long as you send in the running late macro and communicate, they won't be on your ### about late deliveries.

- They seem generally conscientious about paychecks. I rarely have to chase them down for discrepancies, and the one time I did they corrected the mistake immediately. You're not going to be paid well. It is a mega after all. But you're not gonna be treated dishonestly either.

- My shop experience has generally been positive. So far only have had minor maintainence issues but they always did a good job fixing it. Once I had an electric cable that started giving me trouble on midnight on a Saturday and they sent out somebody in a van to replace it within an hour (I was lucky and was close to a terminal).

NEUTRAL

- You are just a number and while they treat you professionally and courteously, don't expect a warm environment. They don't pretend otherwise. What you see is what you get.

- They have a lot of terminals so you can request hometime at different places, if traveling is your thing. Their terminals are okay, nothing special, nothing horrible either

CONS

- Their support staff is clearly understaffed and overwhelmed. I don't blame the staff, only corporate greed and chase for profit. I don't expect the staff enjoy being spread so thin and treated like overhead to be streamlined and trimmed to the max, any more than I do. But yeah if you have an issue on a Thursday 4:00 pm, expect 30+ minutes of hold time when you call them. And the waiting music? Absolutely horrible elevator music, it will drive you insane.

- Lately, I'm getting a fair bit of downtime between loads. "Freight is slow". Your mileage may vary, I have heard different things on the internet, some say every company is affected like that, others say it's worse at Swift than elsewhere.

- Their planners don't seem to do anything beyond the minimum of assigning you the next load that the computer spits out for them. I'm not a picky driver. I've never rejected a load so far. I'm not someone who acts like a diva requesting a bunch of personal preferences to be catered to. But they've gotten me home 3 days late last time, and this time, although I put in my home time request more than a month in advance, it seems like they're going to make me late too since it's next Friday and I'm still 2000 miles away. It just seems like they don't even meet you halfway for the bare minimum of personalization towards your route needs.

- I've gotten a number of short deliveries (some below 100 miles) because as a new driver, they will ask you to do the things that others reject or else cancelled last minute. They always followed it up with giving me a nice long load, so I don't feel like I was particularly targeted unfairly, but you do want to be aware of this.

- Don't espect the truck wash to work at most terminals. Lol. Send in a company advance and get it done at a commercial truck wash.

 

Honestly can't say. I suppose I should list that as a small con. I don't really understand the system they use for planning, might as well be a black box.

 

Definitely trying, but there's only so much you can do if such a large company has an established routine and culture. The bigger issue is I'm talking to either my driver leader or on the weekends driver support, but I don't know what goes on in the back end with the planners.

 

Believe me I've tried everything to get a planner directly on the phone. When I call the Phoenix phone number and follow the voice menu, I get put on hold indefinitely. Never managed to speak to a person. I asked the terminal office today, in person, they gave me some numbers, these individuals are either off duty, or their number automatically redirects me to a driver support person on the phone.

I finally got a message today:

"
WAITING ON FREIGHT TO COME IN HEADING
EAST. NO LOADS AT THE MOMENT
[Name redacted]
PLNR PHOEAZ
DIRECT: 000.000.0000
CELL: 000.000.0000
RATE MY SERVICE IN VOICE YOUR CHOICE!
AZ,PHOENIX
ECT-NIGHT & WEEKEND COVERAGE"

Yeah. 000.000.0000. I'm telling you, it's impossible to speak to a planner on the phone. That's my biggest negative

 

I get it, I really do. I was in Illinois delivering on Apr 4. Got a load dispatched to Utah, deliver Apr 7. Since then, I've been stuck west of Utah.

For reference, I put in my hometime request on March 16, for Apr 21. There was no way for me to predict that they can't somehow route me to Ohio between Apr 7 - Apr 21. Inexperience, I suppose. I don't really know what the options and alternatives are and I naively assumed there's some sort of system for keeping track of where drivers are and where they need to be. We do live in the computer age after all.