Why do drivers with 3-4-5 mill. miles continue driving for Swift?

I was .60/mile with Schneider back in 14-15. but they said 3/4 loads are no hazmat!! I hauled hazmat for 6 months straight. Unloading 9/10 of them, very few places they unloaded.
but yes, I was on bulk division.

 

Unless you have become super senior at a job and seen the difference in lifestyle over what a 1-3 year newbie doing what the next newbie driver is doing you don't know that those "lifers" are afraid of leaving their company. I and others have explained the benefits of staying put. Those benefits are significant. It's unlikely to be fear.

 

Staying 20 years at western Express doesn't hold a candle to spending 20 years at old. Dominion. This thread is about staying at a crap companies. No matter how you cut it , nobody asks why someone retired from ABF..

 

I was always afraid of making TOO much money and being moved to a higher tax bracket.

 

Agreed, some companies are bottom-feeders and some are top of the heap. What evidence is there the 3-4 million milers at Swift are afraid of leaving? A sticker on the truck doesn't mean they are still doing OTR for load-board customers. At every company Ive worked for, once you are reliable you get much better loads with a lot less hassle and mess from th customers, and usually for higher CPM or better pay. If you are already familiar with your employer, you get more may, you get better loads, and your home life adapts to your schedule life gets much easier. Some people like a more comfortable/happy life and can be happy even if some driver somewhere else is making more money for him. Lots of drivers, or families of drivers have a severe spending dysfunction and must always be chasing a 1 CPM raise and driving 70 hours per week in random places. There are MANY reasons beside being afraid to leave for staying at a company. Sure, if one ignores every happy Swift driver and only repeats stories from the unhappy Swift drivers it is easy to conclude Swift is terrible. That formula will "prove" every company is terrible just like listening to only angry ex-wives complain will prove every husband was awful. People make choices on the info and conditions they experience. What people say is not as reliable as what people do.

 

I got a job as car hauler just because it was a good paying job. I did it for about 2 years. I was driving for Bavarian Motor Transport. The hauled high end cars. We had to wear a uniform and drove cabover trucks but all car hauler are so small you still had lay in bed to put on uniform everyday.

They had this system were we had run the northeast Monday- Saturday morning. After we delivered Saturday afternoon we come back to NJ and reload for Monday morning to some place like Wisconsin or Chicago or Kansas City.

When it was slow they send us home and we had to call in every day at 10am and ready to go, or they tell us stay home and call tomorrow. We would do this for a week. So you could not really go anywhere because they might need you the next day. It was fun driving the $140,000 Porsche cars onto the truck.

You could put in for time off and they would approve it, but if the boat with BMW cars showed up at New Jerseys port. They canceled you home time because they had contract with BMW saying once the car were released and on the ground. They had 24 hours to get the cars on the trucks and off the port of NJ. So they would sent every truck they had to load. That’s including you even if you had home time setup. You get big money but they demand a lot more from you. I got tired of that deal.

this was truck we had to drive

 

Simple. They like it there. It's nothing wrong with working for Swift, Werner, or any carrier. Every company has ambassadors and complainers. If the job does what you need for it to do, pays the bills, and you're content, why switch? I just don't believe in making a change for change sake, or because it will score you a lot of points with other drivers. Kudos to those drivers for blocking out noise like you're spewing in this post.

 

I ran team with @ElmerFudpucker for several years with Swift. We started out on the Swift Memes division going everywhere to rescue drivers..

Jerry Moyes appreciated how hard we worked and especially how clean @ElmerFudpucker kept the windshield.



We both got over a million miles recovering trucks. We went our separate ways but every time I see a Swift truck in a ravine, it takes me back.

 

We were so busy recovering trucks we had to take bennies and Red Bull just to keep up. Jerry bought @High Stepper a 77 trans am with a 455. He would run the front door. We’d start at the basement on the CB and change every time just to keep track of old smoky

 

Maybe they just buy the million mile stickers at a flea market and stick them to their trucks