Swift Is Good

I hate unions with a passion all they do is collect the dues and you can still be messed over by any of the companies were will the union be?
I will tell you they will set back and laugh at you.
I have personal experince when I was younger and worked at a meat packing plant I paid my union dues even thought I was 17yo I still had to pay for the dues and when I got fired because I was complaining about my body hurting from stooping all day.
They just sit back and did nothing while I got fired. Local 7 Union

 

I graduated from AIT, Phx., AZ., 1st in the class in Spring of 2004. Went on to work for a large driver mill company that was a nightmare with a "trainer" who should not have been driving. Yea... some things went wrong: 1) my mom having a stroke and my having to quit driving to care for her, 2) getting hit broadside with a divorce, 3) losing everything I owned in a hurricane induced flood in NC, and 4) finding out my 16 yo daughter almost OD'd from drugs and alcohol and was a heroin addict... this all happened in a matter of a few weeks.

My only point all along has been... drivers are taken advantage of by these driver mill companies and there ARE better ways to go and still drive. That being said, the fact that there ARE companies out there, union and non union, who PAY drivers a professional wage and treat them professionally, should tell YOU that it is possible and that you DON'T have to work for a company and be treated and paid like a worthless piece of meat. But as long as there are drivers who don't care, and are willing to work for the equivelant of $6 or $10 an hour... then that keeps these driver mills in control and keeps the wages down for many. Period. That is the fact.

Be safe, no matter whether we agree or not... but how in the world anyone can ignore, let alone condone, these driver mills and their treatment of people... is beyond me.

 

Different job, different union... I was a crane operator and in a union which sucked. So what? Even the diff. locals in the same union are different. Like any large group you have good and bad. You judge all unions at all job types based upon getting fired from a job you were at, probably illegally at 17, and because you whined alot. Your point is what? lol

 

i am thinking of going with swift, the training and pay with a trainer is the best i can find for someone wanting to get into this feild with no experiance, but just because other swift drivers are ignorant in there desicion makeing skills, does not mean all of us will be the same, just cause our truck would say swift on it.

 

I'm a few weeks shy of 6 months with Swift, and ready to move on. I can live with the pay, but I need to be home more. They have been good at getting me home every 14 days, I think my longest was 19 and I got 4 days off instead of 2, so that was nice.

my biggest issue is this: my runs home are usually loads from portland down to LA with a few days of slack in them. I live on I-5 so this works. however, my DM expects me to leave home a day early so I can sleep at the reciever and then deliver and have hours to run more. He'll ##### about the miles I run not being enough, and when I point out the weekend planners keep leaving me to sit he acts like it's my fault.

Another lame act of his was to hand me a load with 4 drops each 1.5 hours apart, with 40 miles between stops, in the bay area during rush hours. then when I bust my ### and get to the first drop early, I am still late for the second due to traffic. and he service fails ME!

and the sad thing is he's one of the good DMs here...

I'd quit today but I want another job first. I might go local if I can find a company here. Who'll believe me about the ####### SF...

Come to think of it, I wonder how many bogus SFs they give to new drivers to keep them from getting better gigs.

 

SkiddyFisk Allow me to ask you this, Did you tell your DM that it was impossible to make the drops as planned time limit? If no then the Service Failures are legit. How could it been avoided? Better planning and communications with your DM. I have ran across the same problem, where I had a load with 13 drops, and some cases only 1 hour in between. These were going to Grocery Warehouses so I knew I would not make it. I should have been empty by the load plan by Wednesday but got the finial drop off on the following Monday. Did I get a service failure? No, but I did get an apology from my boss for getting the load in the first place. ( He wished he had listen to me in the first place. I had a bad feeling about the load even before he gave me all the details in dispatching it)

inthewindaz; I wish you would inlighten us all with these companies that pays the entire time your in the truck. I've only heard of one guy posting about this, and yes he was a local type operation in the NYC area. Sorry the real world not like that.. I only worked for one company that put you up in a Motel every night, but I was out over night for 1 night. But that job was not going to give me what I needed in the long run. All the trucking companies does not accept it as Truck Driver Experience though I had to follow the same rules, do the same Logs and go through the Weight Stations as them just because I was driving a Dodge Dually pulling a goose neck trailer..

Your so down with these so called Driver Mills, where is an non experience driver going to get experience when the insurance companies will not allow the company to hire you unless you have so much experience? Asyour Experience level as you have it posted of the few Job that has as you discribed as to start out requires more time behind the wheel than you have.

 

I think the age alone was the reason I got fired they found out that someone in HR made the mistake by hiring me.
I always thought that you had to be 18 for that job.
I already had back issues because I got hit by a car in 93 on my bicycle it threw me 12 feet.

 

i think ... no I HOPE that anyone who chooses to go to work for swift knows that:
a) $1000/week IS TOTALLY possible ... but probably NOT in your first 9 months just due to the pay
b) swift's payscale tops out at anywhere between .42 & .58 cpm for solo depending on length of haul
c) $70,000/yr is possible if you run like mad - i.e. 3200 mi / wk average, .42cpm, 52 wks/yr ... but the miles aren't out there right now i would guess ... even with swift

look, WHO REALLY gets into trucking for the money? i'm getting into it because it's something that i think i will ENJOY ... but i'm not trying to get rich. who really thinks that they're going to hit the "big time" trucking anyway? again, it's all about enjoyment. i work in a 70+k/yr job now (sales) but am miserable sitting at a desk - this is my way out. wife and i have savings, stocks, and little extra to live on if things get tight out there for a while ... but it's all about living the lifestyle, driving a rig and enjoying myself. if it's BS, then i can leave and get back into what i'm doing now.

let some people on this board learn from THEIR OWN mistakes, take a shot at doing something new and maybe "risky", and see if THEY HAVE what it takes to become successful.

 

sounds to me like he's failing because of a) his own ignorance and b) a lack of work ethic:

• you DO REALIZE that your DM gets paid based on the # of loads you deliver / miles you run, right?
• you know that they manage at most 50 trucks at a time, right?
• you know that if he's not cutting it and getting the miles for your bf that bf can fire him, right?
• you know that it's NOT to the dm's advantage to have guys sitting around like morons, right?

call me a nasty man but your bf needs to realize that there are tools he can use so he's not ... well a tool.

good luck to both of you.

 

If you got your CDL from another school they will give you a physical test, Swift oreintation class (2 days) and a driving test, if you do O.K. they assign you mentor.
Training pay at PHX is 450.00 per week for 3 weeks and then goes up depending on Mentor evaluation another 100.00 for the remaining time with your mentor.
I have waited 3 days for my Tormentor to get routed back to PHX because of the logistic problems that has already begun with hurricane Ike. I am going back down to PHX tomorrow to hop on the truck.
Swift offered to put me up in a hotel for the wait but home is only 175 miles from the term. so i get to spend another day at home with Momma.