Swift Transportation Swift makes you commit to a job, then wait till the job is unsafe to assign it to you. Phoenix , Arizona

8th of Oct, 2011 by User785196

New drivers think twice before you drive for a bad company. First of all you successful swift drivers that have no problem with your DM's this subject is none of your business, since you haven't gotten a true taste of what a nightmare Swift can be, because you got lucky. 1) I got a bad Mentor that verbally abused me, i think that mentors should be tested tried and trued before they are training you. I don't care if that mentors Grand mother can drive a truck better than me, so what, i drove great and they nit pick to find something bad to unnecessarily say about me and you. Does putting you down make you a better driver? My mentor passed a guards window at a Target terminal for about 20 minutes trying to make the old guard come out to his truck, why because he wanted to be mean and abusive to someone. Then after he did that he kept telling me that if the trip was late it was on me,,,what a hypocrite. Then when what comes around to him like the 4 bad things that happened to him, lost oil cap, side swiped, broken windshield(probably from someone he cut off) , and finally a truck backed into him late at night, all before a week was even over. He blamed me for all of that by saying i was a Jinx, whats that to me but one of the hundreds of bad things he said about me. Swift Mentors thing that you are their Bitch while you are in their truck. my mentor told me right after he introduced himself to me that i was going to basically be his bitch for a while. I thought he was joking, No people he was not joking. 2) If you get out of your mentors truck like i did in Phoenix, you will have many repercussions from a DM down the road.
First of all, the DM's already know that Mentor and he has already given the company many miles for them, and they won't believe that you've been mistreated. When my mentor called his DM because i was getting out of his truck early he handed me the phone to talk to her, and she started telling me that i had to grow up, that i was being immature and i had to stop being a big baby; Excuse me but what does taking unnecessary abuse have to do with being immature, and basically she was calling me a liar, and she was just as bad as my mentor with the name calling. It was clear to me that he had established some kind of odd relationship with her, or maybe Swift is so short mentors that they would rather lose a new driver then a mentor, which is what i think was going on there. Anyway i had to relive that experience when they asked me to fill out a three page report about that experience. I spent three weeks with a mentor for CR England and three weeks with a lease opp, & i got along great with them. 3) Here was the main part of the problem with a large company like Swift. They (DM's & Trip planners) can mess around with you and you cannot prove a thing, Its Brilliant. They can send you a trip plan and you have to commit to the job even though you don't have any details about the trip. I discovered that not only do you need extra time as there instructors teach for breaks traffic, weather changes, with Swift you will also need 4 hour of extra play to play the game of "Drive around look for a trailer, or you'll get your paperwork with a page stapled on it with the wrong trailer number on it, and when you finally realize that someones stumped you, you get to the right trailer and its got a red tag on it to fix a tire that should have been already fixed since it was there 12 hours already, and it has a load on it.
They will give you directions with a missing road on it, they will say in your assignment that no drop number is necessary, when they know that all Wal-mart & Sam's clubs will not let your truck in their gates out one. They will not include any thing that you need to know to deliver the job on time before you commit yourselves to getting the job delivered on time.
I kept asking them, why weren't these things written on the pre plan?
But the biggest problem which caused me to leave Swift was that they would send me a Pre-plan and i would send in a Macro 10 & 9, and i would get a you didn't give us your hours for the 14th or what ever day they made up. and it was a lie because if i hadn't given them my hours for that day then i could not have gotten the job that i just delivered if that was true. Then you send in your hours, and then do a Macro 9 to commit to the job again a second and third and forth time and they keep saying that you gave them the wrong trip number which is a lie, because you double triple checked it and it right, and i figured this out that this is how they will mess around with you, and you cannot prove it either.
I was in Philly at 12 and they waited until all of my spare time was used up before they tried to assign me to a trip four hours later, when traffic came & it was impossible to do that job safely.
Swift DM's always use the excuse for their abuse saying "OH that was a computer that did that", 'Baloney'
If it was a computer than it would assigned the job to me right away. Computers don't mess with you because you wrote a mentor up, however DM's would, but this is why its brilliant because no one can prove there is any abuse going on.
I got a Pre- Plan at 6 am & they didn't assign me it until 15 hundred HRS and that trailer was there the whole time just five minutes down the road, come on thats not a computer, no thats a DM playing "Lets Squander this drivers time, and make him look bad at the same time, Game."
4) Although Swift bussed me there to their terminal for their introductory classes, they said if you get off their Mentors truck you will have to pay for the ticket home,and they used that threat against me twice, once when i wanted to get out of my mentors truck in California, and then later when i Quit, Because i told them i can only bring the truck back if they bussed me home, which they refused to do. They wanted to hurt me some more telling me it's not their responsibility to bus me home, and i said yes it is, you bussed me there. You can't just ABANDON me there in Jonestown PA. Then they said that i was Abandoning their truck, and i said "Wow, you people are unbelievable, And so i said, "You haven't done enough damage to me already that you are determined to try and say i am Abandoning your Equipment, You abandoned your own equipment by treating me terrible, you gave me only 500 miles in a nine day period and abandoned me in Philly during rush hour traffic, well now you're going to have to pay me to deliver your truck back to Jonestown, or apologize to me for this and give me my bus ticket home."
I don't know if they do it any more but after i made $70 a week for CR England and was force to quit, CR England ay least bused me home. CR England never used that abandon me to find my own way home card that SWIFT LOVES SO MUCH.
I read in Swifts Manual that it was the DM's responsibility to keep the truck moving as much as possible, but keeping me sitting there when my T drop is just 5 miles down the road is not on me and my bad, thats on them. Trust me new drivers, only go with Swift if your out of options, and it is a last resort. If you make it through without a hitch and you become a mentor with them, then and then only will you do well with them. I got to tell you, you are expendable to them. It's like they must get a huge tax cut, or break from loosing new drivers. It seems like they want you to Quit and treat you as such.
You also have the problem of them not letting you know that you need a authorization number and trying to tell you you don't need one for things. Why, because you will buy things with your money not theirs, and not get compensated because they refused to give you an Authorization number.
Swift did this at Phoenix after the truck i picked out had a bad turbo in it. You will have trouble getting the mechanics first of all to place your truck on detained list, and when you try to get your hotel funds your DM wont give it till the Mechanics co operate. Then after you do that, your DM will put the money on your COM DATA card, but will not give you an authorization # for that money and it will come out of your detained money, which is why Swift loves ignorant new driver that don't and won't put up a huge fight to get your money in full. See Paying for that hotel is not supposed to be your detained money for having your truck in repair, but Swift DM's wont tell you that, because thats what they tried to do to me. Then when my first payday came and their was no money on it for detaining pay i figured out that i didn't get my DM to give me a Authorization # for the hotel.
Well, the truth is I asked for one, but the DM told me that i did not need one, which was a lie, and they knew what they were saying to me, because DM's get way more training than a driver does.
You figure that a thousand new drivers start working for them, none of which know how to defend themselves from Swifts Scheme they got going on, and they(swift) can save tens of millions of dollars by not compensating drivers that don't know how to protect the money they have coming. You would think that they would compensate you for buying Oil at a truck stop if you make a copy of your receipt, but what you don't know is that if that receipt does not have an Authorization # on it, you will not be Compensated, which means Swift just beat you for your money.
You would think that Swift would have your truck ready for you to drive, no they won't even give you a wench to adjust your brakes, and although you will need to sweep out a trailer now & then they wont supply you with a broom either, you'll have to buy that too, but they will give you the hardest time getting an Authorization number that the next time, you wont want to go through such trouble and you just pay for it yourselves to have some peace. You wont want to bother your DM for authorization #'s and get on their bad side, so you will absorb expenses, when you should have to.
Swift too has taken a simple thing like point A to point B and made it extremely technical so you would need a higher education to drive for what little money you will get from them.
I made much more money driving a straight truck where i was home every night and had much less responsibility then you will have with Swift.
I think that working for an unscriptious company like Swift is a huge mistake if you are not living at home with mommy, because there is a great chance that you will lose your car, and your house, or apartment.
This is a good company only for those that care only about getting that OTR experience in to work at a better company. So I finish by giving to you this warning "DON'T DO IT".

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