Swift and hometime...can you take your hometime anywhere with enough advance notice?

Yup, but to be on he safe side, talk to your home terminal safety person first, that way they don't make you change yor residency.

 

Doc,

You can take your hometime wherever you like. Swift just requires that you send a hometime macro (canned qualcomm message) with the zip code you want to get to and the date you want to be there. They've been pretty good at getting me home on time, but they'll let you know up front that getting to where you need to be on time is not a guarantee. Swift does have a terminal in Richmond, as well as Avenel, NJ, and Sumner, WA. If you just want to park the truck at a terminal, you would use that terminal's zip code in your hometime request. There's not much to it, really. Good luck on your training, whoever you choose to do it with.

 

Most major carries cannot make any sort of guarantee as far as home time is concerned. Requesting far in advance and being very specific helps, but it's still not a sure thing. You'll see once you're out there that expecting certain things to happen the way you plan (eg predicting) is pretty much a waste of time. Expect the unexpected, thats what my trainer told me day one. And man was he right...

 

I'm based out of Otay Mesa (San Diego).
My home times are split between my sister in MN and my girls in Denver.
It is soon to be split 3 ways, because my oldest younger daughter is going to live with my oldest elder daughter near Sacratomato CA.

I know, I know...

At Swift you take your home time where you want. They just need the HT request at least 10 days in advance.

And as to getting you where you want to be, when you want to be there...
It has been at least 6 months since I have needed to turn down a load due to a HT request.
The planners get me there within a day (+ or -) of my request.

Of course, it helps if you have a good on-time and safety record - and are on good terms with your DM.

 

Ditto, Swift will send you where ever you tell them you want to be, but its a 5 day out request, and no shorter than 12 days since your last home time. So if you took the 1st off, your next starting home time request would be for the 13th, as an example. And like others have said, there is no promise of being there on that exact day, but they do make the effort to get you to where you want to be. What I see drivers doing, and I think the planners mess with drivers a bit too is. A driver wants to be in Florida lets say, he's in Kansas, and they put a preplan on the truck to go to California. But the driver on the home time request said he wanted to be in FL in two more days, but he takes the CA load, knowing that its past the deadline for when he told Swift he wanted to be home, thinking, 'oh its going to get me more miles, because they still have to send me back home'. So drivers will sometimes get greedy and go in an opposite direction, just to get more miles and mess up there own home time schedules on when they said they wanted to be there.

Now sometimes they will send you East to go West and South to go North. Meaning you might have to go in a different direction to get to an area where there is freight that will take you to where you wanted to be.

So you'll see how it goes.

 

FINALLY, after 11 years in this industry, I now KNOW why I dont work for Swift...... What kind of Nazi mentality is that????

 

Its amazing how you don't even work for Swift and yet have an opinion about something you know nothing about. I find it very amusing, lol

 

your right, I dont work for them, never have. But if you agree to hold up your end of the deal by delivering on time, taking care of the equipment etc, then I am of the belief they (insert company name here) should hold up on their end of the deal by not screwing you around when you want to get home. I dont know about anybody else, but when I ran OTR, when I wanted hometime, there was a reason for it....meaning I had enough for the time being. NOT the time to become greedy I would say. What say you?