Swift drivers, sound off

I don't know if would say pican pie is good. Give me some good Apple pie made with some nice Apples from Washington.

 

Na forget the pie! A good slice of cheesecake smothered in strawberries I could die for right now..

 

The ALL AMERICAN RESPONSE for sure!!!!!!

Why would anyone ruin strawberries with cheesecake....EEEWWWWWW

 

Hey!!!! I love my Poulun chain saw! That's just mean to compare them to Swifty grease monkeys!

 

Last summer there was 4-5 techs getting ready to leave in a 2 week period. One guy working the desk bumped me ahead so I could out of there. It was his last day and he didn't care.

They were all leaving for more money, better hours, better treatment. He pointed at the service department office when he was talking about the way they were treated.

Well I have to head to Nashville. My truck has been there at Volvo for 3 day. Coolant leak, PS leak, oil leak, headlight wouldn't stay on.

Couldn't get the bums to call me back. Gotta love it.

 

In order to understand payroll, you first have to understand some of the myths of the pay per mile scheme.

First, there are two words you will never hear spoken by a terminal employee: Minimum Wage. Minimum wage is ALL that your employer owes you. By that I mean, if you were to make a complaint to a state Department of Labor because you thought maybe you were being shorted, this is how the investigation would go:

Investigator: Show me your time card.

Driver: We don't use time cards; will this here log book help?

Investigator: Well looky here! You get to keep track of all the hours you work? They trust you to do that?

Driver: That's cuz I'm a professional!

Investigator: Says here you were on duty 58.5 hours that week. Where's your pay stub?

Driver: I gut it . . right he . . here in my . . can you help me? The #### chain is caught in the chair, again . .

Investigator: Thanks. Says here you grossed $422.22. Hmmmm . . I don't see your hourly rate on here. What're they paying you?

Driver: Pay by the hour? I wish! I get paid by the mile for every mile that truck moves . . well most of 'em . . most of the time. 32 cents a mile, loaded and empty, baby!

Investigator: So they pay piece rate? They don't really "pay" piece rate . . it was outlawed in 1936. They can call it whatever they want but they have to guarantee you minimum wage. If my math is any good, they only owed you $418.28. Looks to me like you came out ahead!

Driver: Came out ahead? I'll tell you, for all the extra hours I put in to being a professional . .

Investigator: What do you mean extra? Did you work more hours than you recorded here?

Driver: Heck yeah! All the little stuff that's part of the lifestyle . . sweepin' out trailers, waitin' on loads . . you know, the stuff that "comes with the job" . . why I could just go on and on about the work us professionals get stuck with and don't get paid for. Heck, if I logged everything I do I'd never have time to drive!

Investigator: So there's extra work required of you? What's the rate for that?

Driver: Rate? Riiiiight! Knock Knock . . Hello! Breaker 1-9!

Investigator: I get it. By law, they owe you a minimum hourly wage. By choice, they're calling it CPM or piece work. You see, they hope they can get you enough miles to cover the hourly rate they're required to pay you. Some weeks you'll make more, some weeks, not so much. In turn, you're required to keep track of the hours you work so they can be certain you're paid fairly. You're saying that if you log all the hours you're required to work while not driving, it will cut back on your ability to drive the better paying hours. Your solution to the problem is to under report your hours, right?

So they pull the wool over your eyes to make you think you can make more than minimum wage and then you pull the wool over your own eyes to make yourself think you're making more than minimum wage. What a beautiful system! I'll bet every employer wishes they could pull this off!

________

As long as your gross pay is equal to or greater than the minimum wage . . that's it. If it's less, your employer owes you the difference, per week. It can't be carried over, bad week to good week, it has to be paid in the period it was earned. If it's more? Congratulations! You've earned a nice little bonus for yourself.

If you log everything you do, from changing wipers to cleaning trailers, sitting through a log class, performing or waiting for repairs to chaining and, at the end of the week your paycheck says you made at least minimum wage for all hours YOU REPORTED, you were paid for doing all of it. If you made less than the legal minimum, your employer owes you the difference. That's all.

That's why they call it CPM. If the glossy ads in the trucking magazines said "Could Be Minimum Wage, Could Be More!" who'd respond? It's CPM when the miles are good and minimum wage when they aren't.

Right?

No. What driver in his/her right mind is going to sell hours for $7.15 /per (varies by state) when you can give them away for free by not logging them! If you sit and wait just a little bit longer and maybe that 2500 mile preplan will beep you back to life and all will be well with the world! "I can't log or give away precious hours now, can I?" So you don't "sacrifice" those hours to line 4 . . you'll need them to run line 3. And that's exactly how they want you to think. So YOU don't log it and thereby your employer has no record of the hours actually worked. And then you blame them for not paying you.

It's the "Industry Standard". Every company that can get away with doing it, will do it. They do it because it's legal, they're not going to get the quality of applicants they seek if they advertise minimum wage and every business forecast they make comes down to revenue per mile. They can't afford to pay you when the truck isn't moving so they don't promise to pay you when the truck isn't moving. If they did, they'd have 20% of their drivers sitting around looking for excuses not to drive.

 

It pretty much boils down to this.

However: For those to whom this thread is relevant, there is pay for sitting around. You get paid when your truck is broken, even though you're not working. You get paid for sitting more than two hours in a dock even though you aren't working. If you sit for too long waiting to be sent somewhere....you get paid for not working. If you have to make more than one stop from either end of the load...you get paid extra even though you didn't move the truck any further. There is no requirement to pay drivers for breakdown, layover, detention or extra stops. It is something Swift chooses to do.

If you take your arse out of the cab and unload the trailer, you get paid for it. (Maybe take a broom back there with ya while yer at it, yeah?)

Between all the stuff you do that you don't get paid for and all the pay you get while you're not doing anything (okay, you're playing on the computer....that's something, right?) I think it pretty much evens out. In fact, you might even be coming out ahead a little. But, what do I know. I'm actually running the dollars and cents of it.

We won't go into all the expenses Swift covers that they aren't required to. Like when your truck is broke....you get a free hotel room. Well, not really....Swift pays for it. When you're at a terminal, you are usually provided with a TV, shower, coffee....a place to park your arse while you b**** about how badly you're getting sc***ed. There is no requirement to provide these things. It all costs money.

 

Well written and well thought out post, IMO, Barclays. There are a couple of things missing, though. It is a lot of "apples to oranges" comparisons and there is always the issue that someone chooses to be a truck driver, but let's go with this comparison.

If they qualify to drive and are not too much of an idiot, they will keep their license and would also be able to keep a regular job and thus could choose to work Home Depot, for example.

Hourly employees are fortunate to get 40 hours as then they are full time and get benefits. Expensive to the company and so customers do not get those great prices. Let's assume you are one of the lucky ones and, then if you go over, you get the infamous "Time and half" so many hourly workers crave. Alright, we will assume you are one of the blessed few hourly workers who gets 50 hours a week; overtime and full benefits.

If you are working at the typical Home Depot with 3 years experience you will earn, on average, $13 per hour. Time and a half is extremely rare as it is much cheaper to pay two employees 25 hours each plus they do not need to pay benefits to part time employees. But let's say you are that lucky.

40 hours x $13 +(10 hours OT x $19.50) = $715 Gross for the week

It is rather unlikely you would work 5 days at 10 hours a day but more likely you would work 6 days with a one or two longer days and chances are good they will often be weekend days. Similar to a truck driver: 6 days on 1 day home.

But we would count commute time since you MUST commute to have that job. National average commute time for Home Depot employees is 20.3 minutes. Basically 2 hours a week. Home Depot must give you lunch, but you have to be there so even if you are wolfing down a Blimpie or somthing you cannot stray far so I count lunch hour as part of work day. That is 6 hours more. Now, you have actually invested 58 hours in your highly rare 50 hour a week paid hourly job.
58 hours invested = $715 check

You would be a demi-God of hourly workers if you could convince Corporate to give you more hours yet. It is not your hourly wage that matters to you as much as your take home pay, so you are pretty much stuck at that pay until you educate yourself at your expense and time and make yourself more valuable or get promoted in some way.

Compare that to the average Swift Truck Driver with three years of experience working in the West. We will say they drive a conservative 2100 miles for the week at .34 cpm

2100 miles at .34 cpm = $714, so basically the same pay check.

We will say that you worked 6 days here as well. We will also assume you got no detention pay or anything like that. If you average 50 mph while you drive, you actually will drive for 42 hours. The rest of that time will be spent hanging around a terminal, eating long lunches, playing X box in your cab and so forth and, yeah, a couple more hours sweeping trailers, greasing 5th wheels or changing the infamous lightbulbs. Call it 45 hours total.

"Wait", you say, "At least I get to be home at night in my Home Depot job". True, you do. But, again, you CHOSE to be a driver, presumably so you could be by yourself (or with your loved one), listen to music when you want and see the country while getting paid. One assumes you knew driving would entail not being home. Further, since you are not going to be home at Swift, lets say you decide to actually drive 2600 miles per week. I guess many of the drivers here who drive for Swift agree that is possible. (If it is not possible, you are likely getting detention so let's keep it simple.)

Now your pay is $884 for the week for 52 hours driven plus 3-4 hours sweeping trailers, as above. 58 hours invested working in some capacity = $884

You still have the freedom that caused you to choose truck driving in the first place. You have seen large swaths of the country. Eaten what and when you want and slept pretty much when you want. Many educated people qualified for other careers choose driving for precisely the reasons above. Look at the thread on this forum talking about what people did before driving. There are a lot of well qualified people who choose to drive. But you can also start the career as a 21 year old high school drop out with barely enough money to eat.

If you are not a screw up, it is unlikely you would be terminated and should have far more job security than does almost any hourly employee. 70% of all goods sold in the US are on a truck at some point. Regardless of economy most items sold still have to be transported.

So as long as you can count yourself in the top 50% of drivers in terms of performance, you will not be let go (unless you are union in which case it is only how long you have been there even if you are a complete moron so you can be the best worker and too bad for you until you have seniority. Plus, if you work too well, a boss will let you know that you are making others look bad and that needs to stop...God I hate unions, but that is a different subject). But if you are let go, with that clean driving resume, you can go nearly anywhere else.

To my way of thinking, for the guy or gal who has little to no education, but does have discipline and is not a screw up, driving is a much better life. If some do not agree, then they can take that hourly job. And, for some people it is no good. Gotta be really tough on a family man or woman and I feel for them and their children.

If you are clever and want the life, many of the big companies will offer you a chance to move up. DM, then maybe supervisor, terminal manager and so forth. Swift has a number of lower to middle management that started as drivers.

So you can do an awful lot with that "crappy hourly wage truck driver" job. But the choice to do it, or not, is one of the many things that makes America great. McDonalds is hiring 50,000 people, I hear, so if trucking is just too Sh##ty to contemplete for someone there is always that for the driver who feels abused. Holy crap, I just wasted almost an hour doing this post and did not even get paid for it!!