Switching Trucking Companies

I'm not in your shoes, but if I were I'd try talking to someone in safety and/or my driver manager about my situation. It doesn't seem like they'd want to lose a driver because the wind tore the door off an old rusty trailer. Good luck.

i did all that, even went to the head of safety for the entire company. Once Swift puts something on you they will never remove it. They have to admit they were wrong.

I was sent a preplan last night that had 6 different things you had to do or they would not pay for any of the run ...

Nearly any "JIT" (Just In Time) load has those requirements. I haven't had any problem with those or any other requirement listed in the Qualcomm dispatch. I've been paid fully for every load from Swift.

Did you notice you get paid on Tuesday for loads you file by the previous Thursday (4 days before payday)?

For instance unless you are from Texas you are not allowed to take an empty out of the Lancaster Tx terminal and if you go in with and empty they will take it from you and make you bobtail out.

I'm based in Memphis. Been to Lancaster twice. Never had a problem with my empty, including leaving it in the yard so I could bobtail to Walmart.

Don't think I'm some fan of Swift. That's just the company that hired me five months ago. I talked to US Xpress, but really I haven't found a reason to switch.

like you said you left your empty in the yard and bobtailed out.

Jit loads are fine, i have never not been payed for a total load but been screwed out of detention several times. The companies that require in and out times for detention will often refuse to put them on the bills or will lie about them. I had one where my appointment was at 7am i was in the dock at 7 am, they did not start loading me until 11 AM so the guy put on the bills that my in time was 11 and out was 1300, and he refused to change it because he would then be charged detention time by swift. I was on the phone with my DM before i would pull out of the door and had it fixed but i have found more often then not when they have a way to weasle out of pay swift takes full advantage of it. That has been my experience anyways. Others get different mileage so to speak.

Like i said everything start out great for me at swift, as soon as i called BS on a BS preventable then they started doing everything they could to pile the crap on. I had one friend who recently quit threaten to quit his first month there because they tried to service fail him for being on time. After he was dispatched the receiver changed the appointment time to a time that was not legally possible and tried to claim he was late, he told them that if they put a service fail on him he would call a cab and leave the truck in the middle of that lot.

From my experience Swift starts off great but they do not want to have but so many drivers earning their "full" pay by being a platinum driver long enough to hit diamond driver. My mentor was 2 months away from hitting diamond when he hit gator in the road from a truck that blew a tire in front of him, they hit him with a preventable because he did not swerve to dodge the gator when many terminals have signs saying you do not swerve for animals and debris in the road.

Don't get me wrong i thank swift for getting me into this career when many other "starter" companies wouldn't but at the same time any company that treats their drivers like lower class people is not a good company. There is a bad feeling when you go into a terminal and have to talk to people though glass behind locked doors. Not to mention its kinda sad when you get qualcomm messagage saying that the fleet leader of your terminal is so happy to announce they had no accidents for 2 days in a row.

Incase people are wondering, i'm not trying to find excuses. My thing is i want to work, in the 8 months i have been at swift i have taken home time only 3 times because i want to run as many miles as i can. Heck the last time i was home was in april. My issue is the company not giving me the miles to earn a paycheck. No reason ANYONE should ever have a week with 1200 miles on it, not when that person ran 2900-3300 for the first 4 months with the company.

like you said you left your empty in the yard and bobtailed out.

Let me clarify: I dropped the empty trailer on my own so that I could go to Walmart the store for shopping. I came back, spent the night, got my empty then headed to my dispatched shipper. Going out the gate either time there was no hassle about my trailer or bobtail.

As for detention, dock people have signed me in & out, I've been paid for it. Maybe I haven't paid as close attention to times as I should have.

Eckoh,

It sounds like you and Swift are suffering from irreconcilable differences, so it's probably best you move on. Are you going to owe them anything or is your contract up?

Unfortunately you know this entire conversation is going to be deleted, right? I mean, you've been here long enough to know you don't just go on and on and on lambasting a company.

For instance.....did I read this right? Did you say you ripped a door off a trailer but it wasn't your fault, it was Swift's fault because their equipment was no good? I hope I read that wrong. Because if a door gets ripped off a trailer you're pulling its your fault, plain and simple.

But it's obvious you started getting less and less patient with them, starting getting confrontational with the office personnel, and they put you in the doghouse. Your miles dried up, nobody would cooperate with you on anything, and it all went into a downward spiral. I've been telling people to watch out for that kind of thing for years but it still happens all the time. You just can't get ****y with the office personnel. It always ends badly for the driver.

So go ahead and keep going off on em until it's out of your system and then I'm going to delete all this. And stop slandering companies that aren't here to defend themselves. I've been around long enough that I can read between the lines of your story and pick a lot of it apart. When you're confronted about certain specifics you're backing down on your initial claims and you're making outrageous claims about facts you can't possibly know like they're lying about their finances....that kind of thing. So I already know you're to blame for a good part of the problems you're having right now and it's too late to fix any of it so just move on and stop complaining about the company.

For me the trailer door was ripped off the side of my trailer last winter due to win and rust on the trailer. It was an equipment failure as the steel hook that you put the chain on ripped out of the trailer, they desided that it was my fault that the wind broke a rusted trailer i was forced to pick up. So they basically are going to dock me 6 cents per mile for the next year.

I thought I read that right. So that pretty much sums it up, right? You weren't watching your trailer as you pulled out, one of the doors came unhinged, you ripped it off, and Swift wanted you to pay for it. You tried to blame them, they naturally disagreed, you got all ****y and told everyone off, you were put in the doghouse and your miles dried up.

So now you've blamed them for everything. You said they screwed up your pay, said they were incompetent, and about a million other claims but in the end what started all this was you ripping the door off the trailer.

Did I miss anything?

Lol I wanted to say something so bad, but I knew Brett would jump in sooner or later. Since this thread is going to be deleted anyway...

not gonna Bad mouth the company.

Proceeds to bad mouth the company.

Now i do not know all the problems others have had i can only speak on my experiance.

Provides numerous hearsay examples of other people's experiences.

Incase people are wondering, i'm not trying to find excuses.

Three pages of excuses.

For me the trailer door was ripped off the side of my trailer last winter due to win and rust on the trailer. It was an equipment failure as the steel hook that you put the chain on ripped out of the trailer, they desided that it was my fault that the wind broke a rusted trailer i was forced to pick up. So they basically are going to dock me 6 cents per mile for the next year.

I thought I read that right. So that pretty much sums it up, right? You weren't watching your trailer as you pulled out, one of the doors came unhinged, you ripped it off, and Swift wanted you to pay for it. You tried to blame them, they naturally disagreed, you got all ****y and told everyone off, you were put in the doghouse and your miles dried up.

So now you've blamed them for everything. You said they screwed up your pay, said they were incompetent, and about a million other claims but in the end what started all this was you ripping the door off the trailer.

Did I miss anything?

yes you missed where I was sitting still when the door was ripped off. As in not moving not in the truck. So no it was not my error unless being outside the truck is where it's my fault following the shippers rules of not being in the truck while being loaded.

I'm not bashing a company on hearsay is stating what has transpired. They have not payed me for detention more then they have even when following their guidelines. Shippers have refused to put in and out times on paperwork because swift will charge them for keeping trucks idle for more than 2 hours past appointment times.

I know you do not like bashing WITHOUT first hand knowledge however this is first hand.

Here is another example I am at ExxonMobil right now for a live load, I accepted the load with the appointment time at 1000. Now once at the place they change the time to 1230 AFTER I arrive to not pay detention.

yes you missed where I was sitting still when the door was ripped off. As in not moving not in the truck. So no it was not my error unless being outside the truck is where it's my fault following the shippers rules of not being in the truck while being loaded.

So you're saying you were parked at the dock and you went inside. While you were inside the building someone backed in next to you and ripped your door off. Then Swift blamed you. Is that what you're saying?