I'm a 1 star owner operator. My miles are actually going down every week along with my dispatched days out and completed loads. Asked DM about this, she said she would look in to it and get back to me-- still waiting.... Asked about George Washington Bridge pay-- no response. Asked about detention pay on a load a while back, still waiting.
Thats the way I feel about the ranking too. I was gold at one point, but now am stuck on bronze. It means nothing cause of the dedicated account I was on. I drove fewer miles and made multiple stops per load. Now I am a local driver - I will be bronze for a long time!
That's the way I feel about it. I finally have nearly everything right on this truck, but if my shop time can cause me to lose rank then it is a flawed system and doesn't really count for much.
With all due respect, you have the option of choosing your shop. Company drivers are restricted to company shops (unless we manage to break it while far from a shop and can call Onroad about it instead, but that's another story) and company shops are slow. Very slow. I had issues sometimes where I would wait 3-4 days for one shop, then they would tell me it was fixed, but it really wasn't so I then had to wait 3-4 days for another shop to not fix it, and so on. Thus the reason why I started driving with no A/C, no radio, no CD player, etc. It took too much time away from me to get things fixed. Even with all that, though, I was solidly Silver until all the mess started with not having a truck available for me. When you sit for 2 weeks that you should have been working, that's 5,000 miles lost. Down to Bronze I went. I don't see the ranking system as a valid way to strain the wheat from the chaff. Bad things happen to good drivers. There are too many things beyond the drivers control (especially company drivers) that affect miles. It's all a moot point to me now, of course, but I figured I'd jump in with my 2 cents anyway.
You came up in conversation earlier. Well, your situation, anyway, which I imagine, is not as isolated as some would like to think. You are absolutely right about choosing a shop. I could have waited for the shop in Troutdale to open, but chose, instead, to bring my truck to TA to have the tires balanced and rotated. I figured it would take less time. Granted, I have to pay for it, so yes, I get to decide who works on it. I would have hoped the ranking system would not count legitimate vacation time or shop time against you. But then, again, if I had any say in the Family Plan nonsense you had to go through, you would not have left Swift. You would have had a truck available...or not have to turn it in at all.
I think this is an excellent synopsis of the "real truth" behind what my recruiter meant when she said the worst thing about the size of Swift is "losing contact with drivers." Lose contact, forget what's really going on out there, and make decisions based on an algorithm. Usually, that is not the best, most efficient way to run 16,000 power units, run by human beings, plus 30,000+ trailers all over a very large country. If the support system is not up to the task of managing that large a workforce, beef up the support system. Airlines learned that long ago and adapted. Airplanes don't get lost and flight crews aren't victims of "lost contact." It is sad, really, because it can be done. And done well. FAA flight limits and required rest rules are very similar to FMCSA--they are, after all, both part of the DOT. The company has to adapt.
I heartily agree this is the biggest issue Swift has with driver retention. Every driver is different, and has different wants and needs, yet Swift devises a one-size-fits-all plan, and refuses to deviate from it. Too many decisions coming down from the top that may benefit some but not all. That and too many decisions based on cost cutting. It's really gone extreme when they have more drivers than trucks. It may turn out that Swift did me a favor. I'm certainly much happier than I've been in a long time, and I'm rediscovering my love for the industry. Granted, a couple months is too soon to tell if I will really be happy at a certain company, and I can already list a few things I've lost by leaving Swift (running all 48, the flexibility I had with where I take my time off, etc.) I truly love trucking, though, and it doesn't take much to keep me happy out here. It's a shame Swift couldn't manage to do it. I had a lot of time in there.
