This is too funny and interesting.

I went to C-1 when they still had a school in St. Louis and that was exactly how the contract was worded. If you got your cdl, but didn't show up to the company you were supposed to work for you were not only on the hook for the cost of the school, but a huge penalty as well. However, if you showed up to the company and stayed with it till you had been in your own truck for a month, then yo quit you only owed the balance of the schooling. As for paying it back, C-1 was more than fair. As long as I allowed an automatic withdrawal they took $45 a week out. It worked out to a 9% finance rate. If I could have stood it at Star for a year the schooling would have only cost me a grand.

If you don't have the integrity to make arrangements to at least try to pay your debt, why should I trust you with a $50-$70 thousand dollar truck, plus my customer's freight?

 

Exactly. Deadbeats is deadbeats. You can try and justify it any way you please, but their actions tell the true story.

 

Maybe Texas offers more protection from creditors trying to collect debts than my home state of Missouri. I can tell you what would happen here. That amount in plenty high enough to get the attention of collection agencies and collection law firms. They will take it to court and get a judgement. They will wait a short time to see if you pay. If you don't they will garnish your wages. If they can't get it that way they will seize your bank account. While they are doing all this to collect they will record the judgement on your credit report. They can't make you sell your house to pay this. If you do they will seize any funds above first lien and sale expenses.

And all of that as inconvenient and irritating as it is, still isn't the worst part. And even after they pay the judgement, it will require many letters (3 credit reporting agencies) and lots of time and effort to get them to show that the judgement has been settled. That won't get you out of the woods, it just turns a total wreck into a major wreck. Finally, seven years after it was listed and settled it will go away.

As bad as these indentured servitude companies are, what your friends did to their credit reports and DACs is far worse. Once you pay your dues at one of these companies, as bad as it is, and leave you have a career. Now they have bad credit and a CDL that they most likely can't use anywhere. If they are your friends tell them to go back and tell the company they were homesick, stupid or whatever they can think of and get back in if they can.

 

people like that make it hard on people like me

 

I don't know what the contract at Swift is, but C-1 was fair. I couldn't stand the company I contracted with so I left after a month in my own truck. I was on the hook for the school, but I made so much more by leaving that it more than paid for the schooling. Not only is it irresponsible and dishonest to use the company to get your cdl and then neither go to work for them or pay them back, it also tells me you don't have the discipline to be counted on if you are offered employment. You have a cdl, but you don't know how to drive. This happens a lot in trucking and it's why these schools have to do things to protect themselves. FYI-people who know me from my comments about Roehl, McLeod and Star know I don't drink company kool-aid. It's just there is a lot of cost in getting someone through the licensing process and a company deserves to get reimbursed for their effort either through financial repayment or gaining a new driver.

 

The way the Swift school contract is written is actually very fair. There is no "indentured servitude" as some like to call it. You get your license and you either pay them for it outright or work for them and pay on it weekly at a rate of $37.50 for approximately 13 months.

Here's how it works: you pay $75/week. They give you back $37.50. After the 13 months is up, you don't owe anything and they stop taking it out. However, for the next 13 months, they continue giving you $37.50/week until every dime that was taken out of your check for that first 13 months is returned to you. If you stay for the entire 26 months, you will have paid nothing for your school.

If you leave before your school note is paid off. You do not owe the entire amount, nor is there any interest or big penalty. You simply pay the remaining balance. That's all. I know this from personal experience.

Sorry to blast that "big-bad-company" theory out of the water.


As to the O/P's friends. They are conniving, dishonest, immoral, selfish, thieving miscreants. They accepted a service with a written agreement to pay for it in one way or another and think it's funny to deliberately skip out on it like the skunks they are. Just because it's Swift that they ripped off, does not make it right or "funny" or even "interesting." They committed theft of service. They are thieves just as surely as if they had mugged an old lady of her Social Security check. And not one iota higher on the human being scale than someone who would do that. Since the O/P refuses to see the problem, well, that makes him a really good friend to have. But, judging from his posts here, he's about the same caliber of person as these malfeasants and therefore, will not be counted among friends of mine.

 

Sounds like your friends are some real losers! Might want to rethink your associations unless your just like them.

 

cmon hillbilly ,you are just being a malpheasant
i think somebody(not naming names) has been reading the readers digest on word power ,when they are laid off
i am just happy when my mouth and brain are on the same wave length and can spout out 1 syllable words