Swift Is Good

Well I'm in my 5th week of training at Swift and freight is definitely slow for me and my mentor. The best we've had is 4400 miles for both of us Lol.... I was talking about how the 70 hr restart rule is dumb in orientation but lately there is no way that is even a concern with a 34 hr restart like 2 times a week. Oh btw any of you guys at Swift what would be the things you would recommend I do my first weeks after I get my own truck so that everything runs smoothly? I tend to be a worrier and low clearances in cities like Chicago concern me. Has qualcomm directions ever put you in a situation that you didn't like? Should I just buy a laptop and trucker gps software so that won't worry me as much?

 

There are two types of Qualcomm directions. One is MapTuit, which is about as useful as a chocolate hammer, and standard, which is as useful as the person at the customer who wrote it. I had a pretty basic car GPS with a "truck route" mode, and I'd pair that with the standard directions to get my route. Standard directions got me from the highway to the stop, and the GPS got me to the offramp. They also include useful stuff like "Will recieve early/late" or "no 14 foot trailers", and will (ideally) help you avoid any low bridges.

I hear they're phasing out the standard directions sometime, too. Guess too many of their loads were on time, so they had to make it a little harder.

If you DO end up stuck with maptuit only, good luck - you may as well use Google maps, since it's the same data, but much easier for a human to read.

 

What GPS do you have that has a truck mode?

 

They did take away direct directions for a while but they brought them back right away because too many people complained about them being taken away. Never really had the qualcomm send me to any low bridges or any bad spots.... YeT.. But I use my microsoft streets and trips along with qualcomm and atlas directions.

 

Garmin streetpilot c550.

 

Can anyone tell me what the comfort zones are like which areas they are, supposedly the 905 comfort zone is what the weird lady who submitted my app to swift put me in for but I am not sure what area that runs me and when I look at the website for the company I see alot of different color blocks and ovals to indicate the comfort zone and I sure hope its the one I told her I wanted where it basically is nothing north of PA and as far west as texas

 

The comfort zone thing is basically recruiting ########. We went over it earlier in the thread.

 

not really recruiting bs I was hired on for midwest comfort zone and thats what I run havent left the midwest yet.

 

As you saw on the web site the country is broken up in 7 "Comfort Zones" to drive in a Comfort Zone you must live in that "Comfort Zone". The zones are 901 is North West, 902 is South West, 903 is North Central, 905 is North East, 907 is Western, 909 is Eastern, 910 is Centeral. Then 48 states is I believe is 05. I have run the Western, Southwestern as well as all 48 states and made good pay in all areas.

 

If you go to their website an look under the "our locations" tab a map will come up. On the bottom right hand side there is a button that says "comfort zones" that will bring up the outline for them. When I drove for them before they were pretty good at keeping you in the zone unless you requested a trip outside. Sometimes it would take awhile to get back. Some terminals offer multiple zones you can run in. Like Albuquerque allows you to run in the 902 (southwest), 907 (western 11), or 910 (most of the country east of the Rockies except the northeast. You can also change comfort zones as long as you are in the comfort zone you wish to change to when you request the change.