Swift Academy Licenses Suspended

That's a good question! When I was in the Academy, the skills and road tests were adminstered by our range and road instructors.

We were told that our road test examiner would be adminstered by an instructor who had not had us as his students - so that your teacher would not be administering the road test.

However, the skills tests portion was both instructed, and "graded" (examined by) our own range instructor.

At the time of the skills test "exam", they did not explain that it was not, as I thought, an "in-house" exam - I just thought it was a test to see if we were ready to do it with the road test, not ahead of time as a separate part of the road test!

As stated before, we students had been assured that the instructors were all fully licensed as third-party examiners with the State of Tennessee.

This raises some interesting questions: Which examiner was it? Are they investigating more than one examiner? When the instructors were operating as examiners, would they then be considered TDoS employees? Does the phrase "third-party examiner" refer to one examiner or to the company that operated as such?

If the Swift instructors could be considered to be TDoS employees (as I would think they would) for those times that they operated as "examiners", then likely the State of Tennessee could be held liable for those examiners' improper testing procedures as a result of the State's negligence to adequately administer the licensing and oversee the operation of third-party examiners.

However, sources continue to indicate to me that there may be more to the investigation than that - after all, this is not just a transportation investigation, but is also being investigated by branches of the State and Justice departments.

No word yet either on whether Swift might allow the use of their trucks and drivers for disadvantaged Millington grads who are no longer in the industry.

 

All Millington students who graduated from May 2005 through January 2008 are subject to undergo re-exams to retain their CDLs.

Each state is handling the issue differently - some states are only retesting drivers who've had reportable accidents, have doubles/triples or HazMat endorsements, etc. Other states are retesting all Millington grads from that timeframe.

 

That's interesting, though not completely uncommon, as my contacts in the industry have indicated that problems with third-party testers have been around as long as the third-party testers have.

 

Wow, I think this is the first time you've admitted you work for them (Swift)!