What's wrong with Swift as a starting point?

Your facts are just plain wrong. A level 1 Mentor must have 6 months of experience. That may not sound like much but you can learn a hell of allot in that time frame.

 

Well, I saw a Swift driver sitting in the parking lot of Walmart this morning so I scooted on over to see if he had a few minutes for an interview. I have interviewed alot of drivers so far, he was the first swift driver.

He has driven for them for 2 years. He went thru their training program. Then stayed the duration so that his training and licencing were ultimately paid for by the company. He didn't have any complaints. His truck was brand new (the nicest one i've seen so far), thought the school was fine.

Two drivers now have encouraged me to just go thru their school (the other was an Interstate driver) and get on with it. Trying to get awarded grants to pay for a community college has turned out to be a big huge waste of time, effort and energy. The first counselor basically slammed the door in my face...'why should we help you, you have a degree. And btw, your job history sucks.' The nasty dirtbag wouldnt even look twice at me. Her final comment was...'Well i think maybe you just need to suck it up and go with Swift." That was on the heals of me telling her that I DID NOT want to go to work for swift.

So I went to a different job counsel in a diff county since I heard from a reliable source that some counselors are known for turning people down. I went thru the whole thing all over again (two weeks again of those idiot classes) so that I could be assigned a new counselor. I've been trying to qualify for two months now, jumping thru hoop after hoop after hoop. Now they want me to get a prehire before they will ok it.

But the lady at the comm college won't proceed with the other two grants until this big one is approved but class starts in a week and the other two have to be submitted a week in advance and oh i actually had already qualified for one of them but lost it when the first job counsel counselor turned me down so now i have to start all over with those but oh look, the dead line for submitting is on monday morning and I dont have a prehire yet for the big grant so we cant proceed with the other two and time has run out too bad oh btw people cut out and don't work on Fri so forget about getting anything processed.....Jesus Christ.

At this point Swift is looking pretty good compared to what those workforce counselors have put me thru. I could have been thru swifts school and half way thru my otr training by now. Right now I am looking at missing a second starting time for school becaues of this idiocy. I will not go thru this again. And if I had known, I would not have gone this route in the first place. I would have gone straight to swift.

The only thing bad the driver had to say was that the pay was low, he was getting .33 after almost 2 years. But he averaged 3500 to 4000 a week, said they'll give you all the miles you can handle if you want to run. Both drivers said it was an alright enough place to start. He is now applying to get on with FedEx.

 

Some people like Swift. Some people don't. It comes down to how much do want to drive a truck. If Swift can get you in and get you trained you might actually like it. You never know. I trained through them and stuck with it for a few years. Because I stuck it out and kept my record clean I was able to slide into a really good local job. The ultimate decision of where you go is yours to make. Just remember no matter where you go your first few months isn't going to be all that great. Good luck to you on whatever path you decide to take.

 

give USA Truck a call. they have similar paid training (400 a week for 4-6 weeks) and start solos out at 28 cpm, 29 after 3 mo, 32 after 6 mo and 36 after a year PM me if you have any other questions. i get about 3000 plus miles per week