Swift Transportation Company, Inc. - Phoenix, Az.

????Serious????? 6 months?
I mean, that's something like saying that your 16 year old who got his driver license 6 months ago is now qualified to get into a Sears driver training car and start teaching other 16 year olds how to drive.....
it's a little unbelievable.

 

I made the mistake of trusting one of the recruiters at swiftquit, as soon as I got to the millington Tenn. school I heard so many bad stories. Found out after I got there my recruiter lied to me. So I got in a argument with my instructor about the whole thing. He claimed that swift had the best driving school in the nation. lol Everytime I'd talk about truck ratio hed try to change the subject. He kept sayin if you leave now you will look back and think what a big mistake I made. Well he was right. the biggest mistake I made was believing a recruiter and riding a grey hound bus and going there. I kind of feel sorry for the people they mislead and continue to everyday. When I told the instructor that my recruiter lied to me. He said, " well your gonna have that, its ok to stretch the truth a little bit". Needless to say I got on the next bus home. I currently have a job savin up to pay for schooling hear locally. if I can find the right carrier and cdl training facility. any suggestions? I'm in Indiana. I'm only twenty one so that rules out many nice outfits? closest facilities are Roadmaster, Ivy Tech Sage Pdti, and CDL training Consultants. INC which seems to me to be a CDL mill. Somebody PLEASE HELP ME?

 

The whole system is screwed up, and not just at Swift.

You have these people paying thousands of dollars to get certified to drive a truck yet the training is so inadequate that they need to be trained again by the company at a third of what a regular driver makes after they have already been certified they are able to operate the equipment.

I did not pay the Navy to train me how to use scuba gear so I could do maintenance and salvage operations. Nor did the hospital I worked at after graduating from respiratory therapy school pay me a third of what a regular employee made to learn the job.

If these OTR companies need drivers so bad as they claim, and care about safety, then they should do the training with highly qualified drivers and foot the bill for it.

Right now it seems to be arse backwards. The driver gets certified and then trained to do the job instead of train proficiently to do the job and then getting certified that they have the skill and knowledge to do it.

A company like Swift that hauls just about anything at any price to keep the wheels turning does not have enough trainers to require a high level of skill before being allowed to train. They have to depend on entry driver who are low paid and then get them training others because the massive turnover speeds everything up.

Most all companies have good and bad drivers so I will consider my treatment of Swift drivers on a individual basis and not say they are all bad apples. But company's that are allowed to operate like Swift, makes it bad for the whole industry. And it makes it harder for company's that want to treat their drivers right but can't do it as much as they would want to because of discount carriers like Swift, Covenant, Werner, JBH, Schneider, USX, and others, who are in collusion to force everyone to play by their rules which is get as much out of the drivers as they can, for as cheap as they can, no matter what the cost is to their reputation or how many family's and carriers they ruin.

Anyone who agrees to work for a outfit such as Swift with all the negative and mostly true derogatory info that is out there on them, is just facilitating bad behavior by them and others and lowering the standards of the whole industry.

 

I'll give you a bit of advice in two words: Pell Grant.

Get a grant to pay for the training. Don't go and pay for it out of your own pocket. You don't know anything about the industry yet. You don't know if you'll like it. You may love it. You may hate it. The prospect of your not liking it is too high to justify forking over your own hard-earned mulla for training.

Besides, the government has caused tutition at driving schools to go through the roof, given all the grants they've handed out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the past. Uncle Sam has made it so expensive at driving mills that you must play the game and get a grant. Anything over about a grand for training is too expensive, man.

And don't forget--your opportunity cost must be added to the total. This is the money you will miss making while you're in training school. If you're already unemployed, I guess we can call this cost "zero". But if you're quitting a job to go to training, you need to count the income you'll lose while at school.

 

Hell, I thought I had it bad learning how to drive - i can't even imagine going through one of these so-called schools. I had a friend that had been driving forever that showed me the ropes - but wouldn't get into a truck with me driving, lol. "You're on your own", was his benediction, so I got into a White 2-axle tractor - and just about destroyed the thing before I figured out how to shift the gears. Then they put a 40 foot van on it, loaded it up, and invited me to drive it to - wherever I was going. I don't remember, I DO remember driving that rig through downtown Dallas traffic with fully a week of "experience" under my belt. I was TERRIFIED. I came close to wiping out a lot of cars and people.
Then I went over the road with no more knowledge than a 4-wheeler driver getting into a semi and just -driving it.
Somehow, it doesn't sound much different with these driving schools.......

 

I had a housemate in Salt Lake back in the day who worked for Dick Simon when those guys' drivers were plying the highways terrifying people. He said when he started, he was offered the 'in-house' training, that indentured servitude baloney. Well, when he graduated, he still didn't know how to shift. This was fine to Simon, the outfit. He was sent on a run to California anyway.

 

I drove up to Ft. Smith, Arkansas a week before Christmas and I saw A LOT of Swift trucks on the road. I am currently out of work and 35 years old. I have a family and figured driving a truck would be something differenct from what I have done in the past.

I filled out there online application and received a call the next morning at 8:00am, the recruiter told me this:
3 weeks training for $3,900
$150 deposit and Swift would take out $37.50 a week
They pay for your hotel while you are in class
When you have worked for the company for one year they wipe away
the $2,000 for training and start refunding you your $37.50.

They pay you $350/week for weeks 1-2
They pay you $400/week for weeks 3-4
They pay you $500/week for weeks 5-6

Then you start off at .26 cents a mile for the first 6 months. 14 days out and 2-3 days at home.
Then after six months you go to .33 cents a mile
Then after one year of service you go to .35 cents a mile

Sounded good to me. Signed up for the January 16th class. Apparently they have classes every Wednesday. She asked if I needed a bus ticket, she did not sound pleased that I said I would be driving my own vehicle to San Antonio.


Well, I told a couple of guys what my plans were and they could no longer make eye contact with me. So tonight I jumped on the computer and well, I have read enough that it is now 3:18AM and thankfully scared that I found this forum.

Now, my question is, if Swift is NOT the company to start out with which one is? I am north of Houston, TX. I have already been approved for a Pel Grant and need to know which direction to go.

 

Wade, you have made two great moves already, moves most guys wouldn't have made.

1. You got a Pell Grant to pay for the overpriced training. Excellent, excellent move. I wish I would have made that move. I paid for my training out of my own pocket. I wish every day I had that money back, and know I spent 5 grand on tuition over 12 years ago. It's coming up on 13. Also, my opportunity cost was about 4 grand, as I wasn't working while I was in training. Plus my other expenses during the 5-week training period ran me about another grand. I have to add this to my idiocy. Yeah, 10 grand for training that was worth maybe 500. It's cool to read posts by folks who aren't making the huge mistakes I did.

2. You elected to NOT go with a POS outfit. Am I right here? I hope I'm not jumping the gun and being presumptuous. I went to work for that very company right out of school, and it was a colossal mistake. There are better routes than going with SwiftQuit.

First thing I'd do is try to find a training school. We actually call these "mills", but you won't really be going through a grinder, as you're not paying for it out of your own pocket. From your perspective, it's a training school. Go ahead and locate a couple of training schools that are certified. After you find two or three candidate schools, call a company like Crete Carrier in Lincoln, Nebraska or Roehl up in Wisconsin and see if they approve of the schools you choose and will hire you after graduation. These outfits are picky about which schools they approve, but this is because they're great outfits. If they approve your schools, and they'll hire you after graduation, choose a school and go to training. If your target school is certified, I think you'll be fine with at least one of these companies.

Assuming you have a stable work history, a near-perfect driving record, and no criminal skeletons in closets, you don't need much more advice than this. After graduation, you'll be going to a great company where you'll be trained adequately, plus you will have gotten a grant to pay for your training. Man, you can't beat that. All all I can say in addition is "congratulations", as you are the dude.

Now go make some more great decisons and you may just have a great career in trucking for a little while. Maybe even for a long while.

 

TIP - no you did not jump the gun. I am definitely not going to San Antonio to join up with Swift. I appreciate the information and will go in
the right direction.

Thank you.

 

Hey, glad I could help save yet another from the La Brea Tar Pit that is SwiftQuit trucking company.

Wade, all I have to say to you is...

HIGH FIVE...Go, Cat, go.

Now go get your training from a certified school. Definitely do NOT go the indentured servitude/slavery route.

You're set, man. You're doing it right.