Swift team drivers and mentor pay.

Swifts cool ... but it depends on the mentor. There are those in it just for the money and will push you to team as soon as they can.

 

They are fine via policy. But I've had a few planners and ect guys try too coerce it before.

 

Probably fewer trucks than that ATM. But anyone who wants to mentor is in high demand. They have been asking my students even during the recruiting phase.

 

To train right out of training???

 

There are teams. Matter of fact we even have dedicated stack teams. They take two trucks loaded with vehicles out of Laredo, then stack one on the other and go back.

 

Still the minnimum 6 months required. But they plant the idea in thier head early.

 

Yes. But again, if a trainee is so incompetent that they aren't capable of being upgraded to team, they are by definition a hazard on the road IMHO.

 

He's the new head of safety

 

I teamed with a guy for a short period of time who wanted to make more money than he was as a mentor. I wondered how that would be possible when mentors get pretty much every mile to themselves.

He then explained that he never runs team with a student because he doesn't feel safe. The first day teaming he slept in the passenger seat. When he has a student, he sleeps on the top bunk so he can get up at 0300 and drive a few hours before waking his student up to drive their time. Basically he was driving about 150 more miles each day than he would solo.

He only upgraded 2 in like 9 students, most of them didn't upgrade from his truck because they refused to stay on it when he wouldn't let them move on to team and they weren't getting the experience they thought would be required as solo drivers.

My trainer tried that #### too, and dispatch on the dedicated account we were running told him it was a team account. I was at 50 hours so he needed to let me run or get his ### off the account. He wanted to go home every day, so he started climbing in the sleeper and yelling at his girlfriend all night.

 

They asked me when we were sitting in driver development before sending me out with a van mentor. "You guys are coming back and training for us right?!"

Like training for what, how to make it through 2 days of 13 people tarping a load, 13 people chaining a shotgun loaded coil? Yea they were asking us to come back and be mentors before we even knew how to use a comdata card to pump diesel. Or how to scale a load. Or how to even conduct business at a shipper/consignee.

Now they don't accept new drivers to flatbed unless they train with a flatbed mentor, per the sign in the driver's lounge in Phoenix.