Swift apparently didn't pay any of their employees this Friday. Causing uproar.

The way I handled it was I paid for everything on the road by credit card and I paid off my credit card every month with my paycheck. If the company didn't pay me for 1 week or 1 month I still bought food with my credit card. I had cash in the bank to pay my credit card bill even if my paycheck didn't get deposited. Too many drivers approach paying bills like those desperate drivers that try to implement a split-break in an emergency AFTER they have used up their 11 hours for the day. It's too late.

During normal times ALWAYS put money into an emergency fund every payday instead of the "normal" spend every last penny the moment the paycheck is deposited and keep looking for more things to buy until credit cards are maxed out and then blame the boss or the president for not making someone rich.

 

Sounds like Swift is looking to downsize.

First cameras in the trucks and now an "oopsie" with pay?

Good way to get feet shuffling I think.

 

i never paid truck expenses. thier truck, thier money.

each week i was given "truck money" which was an actual advance on my paycheck, for tolls, lumpers.

i never used that money for food, drinks, snacks, etc.

if the fuel card they gave me would have been shut off, it was park it, and get home...they can find thier equipment on thier dime.

i do not support trucking companies to stay in business.

if i were an o/o, things would have been different, but as a company driver..??

no way.

 

Swift stock price down 40% in 10 weeks. Maybe it’s going to zero!!?!?!! If not this might be a great time for drivers to become owners, of stock…

 

i do not follow the stock market, well cuz i have no stocks.

but it seems to me that all the companies they bought out over the years, has finally come to roost.

to me, Swift bit off more than they could chew, which is reminiscent to other larger trucking companies buying up the competition.

and where are those companies today..???

stay small or medium sized, make a profit, have profit sharing, hire SKILLED drivers, not morons, reinvest in upgrades, live long and prosper.

 

Yeah I agree. Some would argue that the company appears to be run by incompetent drug addicts. I would argue that mega carriers have lobbyists and heavily involved in politics. If I had it my way, it would be illegal to have more than 100 trucks owned by any one company.

 

What would the point of be of limiting the number of trucks allowed when someone could just have 10 100 truck companies if they need 1000 trucks to serve their customers? Even before deregulation the only thing that limited how many trucks you could have was how many were needed to cover your limited area of your operating authority. When companies wanted to expand into other areas back then they simply bought out an existing company to take over their operating authority.
Doubtful that Knight/Swift is going anywhere in the short term.

 

Well yes I see the flaw in just arbitrarily picking a number to limit truck amounts. But if it was enforced seriously I think it would completely change everything about the industry for the positive. 100 trucks is just about big enough to cover any one sector in any one region anywhere in the country, give or take a little bit. The way things are done now aren’t necessarily the best way to do things. So just pretend they could actually reasonably enforce limiting companies to 100 trucks, and not let one person run 10 companies or any other of the inevitable loopholes. Well I think freight rates go up. Drivers should be compensated better. Customers have more options. Creates new opportunities for businesses that don’t currently exist, but would needed if Megas didn’t exist. It removes the inevitable monopoly trucking is currently heading towards.

 

Make lease op scams illegal and stop giving out government grants for each "student" that gets a CDL. Boom, overnight the megas will vanish.

Industry would be a million times better off and starry eyed sobs will stop getting financially obliterated by crooked ATA powerhouse scam companies like Swift/Knight/Prime/JB/Schneider/et al.

 

Decent in theory but the government decided in 1980 it should be a free for all race to the bottom. And that’s what it’s been ever since. And you can’t really say that trucking in general is moving toward monopolies when it’s a small percentage that have a sizeable number of trucks. Most carriers are still single or low number fleets.

The problem is the super low barrier to entry more so than fleets with a lot of trucks. What’s it take, 3 weeks to get a license? If that? You say drivers should be compensated better. Why? It’s not difficult at all to drive a truck down the road. It takes basically nothing to get a CDL. How many threads have we seen here by new drivers that damage stuff and act like it’s no big deal. Why should they be compensated better? Wages for driving aren’t a flat line. If you want more money then figure out what you need to do to go get it. Expecting anything the government would do to be a benefit is slightly foolish, after all, what got us to this point started 45 years ago because it was “too difficult” to start a trucking company and the rates were too high and it was costing the American people too much money.