Comments By Nathan G.

I am starting swift training . and from what I understand it's rated one of the best in the country. But everyone thinks different tho. So good luck with your choice

Swift,

I leave for training in less then 12 hrs. I have to do 4 weeks of class and 4 to 5 weeks with mentor. I am not nervous about class I already have permit. My biggest thing is getting into a truck with someone I don't know. My biggest thing is what if my mentor and I can't get along? What happens then? I am the type of person that can get along with anyone. Do I have the option to get a new mentor or am I stuck with one?

Try CRST

I got felony had no problem getting picked up. but on the other hand I also don't have any drug or alcohol charges and a clean mvr. so good luck bud hope its work out

good luck theron I am headed to swift Monday in crystal lake IL

Headed to Swift in Utah! February 15th!

Shoot where I live in IL the city gives us free parking for as long as we need or want

I am going to swift driving academy in crystal lake IL this week. what are some things I should expect? what are some does and don't? Any help or advice would be appreciated. thanks in advance

old school you are very helpful I just want to say thanks from all of us rookies thanks a bunch

Ok everybody, AdkMatt's report is another example for you to see of how a rookie doesn't really understand the whole protocol of how you get things done. We had Christine give us a similar experience just the other day.

He's appalled at the condition of a truck he had to "recover" and considers it as a sign of how bad the company is. But any experienced driver knows that they're likely to find feces smeared all over the inside of an abandoned truck or even worse. Pristine tractors don't ever need to be recovered - it's the whacko drivers who leave their tractors somewhere odd and then quit and go home. They've usually failed badly and target their misguided frustration at the company by leaving them a ridiculous cleaning job.

Errol pointed out how to use the proper macros to communicate successfully. Most rookies want to talk about things with their managers, but soon you learn that electronic communications usually do not get ignored due to the fact that there is a written record of how the communication went.

There are things like what these two "new to the industry" folks are experiencing that turn many away at the beginning of their careers, but if you hang in there long enough and learn from the kind of folks who are here at Trucking Truth you'll find out how to get yourself to a level of experience in this business that is both rewarding and very satisfying.

It's tricky at best when you first get started, but being humble and teachable will go a long ways toward helping you lay hold of success in your initial trucking job.

thanks a bunch makes me feel better knowing some about the company. trucking has been in my family years. I already have a jump start I went got my permit on my own. I studied my butt off walk out of dmv only missing 1 question on the whole test. I was pretty proud of that. not that what I just said had anything to do with swift. I have the mind set to follow thru with what I have started. I just wanted to get some advice from you veterans. I tried to get advice on facebook but to many people putting me down for wanting to drive for swift. thanks for your support and advice I will keep you posted on my progress.

Nathan, we have had a lot of drivers in here go through Swift's training and then go on to have successful trucking careers. Look, you are going to find all kind of negative things about any of these larger companies, and Swift is one of the largest ones out there.

Here's the deal: There are a lot of people who jump on the "truck driving band wagon" because they think this career will be an easy paycheck - after all when you go looking for available jobs there are always truck driving jobs advertised. Then you've got the misconceptions of truck drivers making money hand over fist, and it all comes together to produce a vast array of folks trying to make a start into a business that they have no understanding of at all. That is where the proverbial "poo" hist the fan - and it happens a lot at these larger companies just because of the sheer volume of people who start and fail very quickly at them. Then, their frustration at failing leads them to believe they were somehow misled or mistreated, when in truth they were totally unprepared for what they were getting into. That is when they find that there are entire websites and forums which seem to be devoted to slandering the big truck driving companies for mistreating their employees, so they jump right in there and share their exaggerated tale of woe to see if they can top the last guys disparaging remarks about the big trucking company, and it just becomes a big bunch of crybabies trying to out do the other one with the worst tale of "woe is me" - look what Swift/Schneider/Werner/Prime/C.R. England did to me!

You've got nothing to worry about with Swift - if you want to get into this career and you are prepared to do what it takes to get it started, they will train you and put you in a really nice rig, but brother you had better be prepared for a fast ride! They will expect you to learn quickly, and they just don't have the time to babysit you or hold your hand. That is just how it works out here - doesn't matter who you go to work for - you will only help yourself if you are a self starter who can figure out how to get things done. We use the word solo a lot when we are talking about truck driving. After you spend some time with a trainer at a company, then you will go "solo" in your own truck - solo is a good word when describing this career. You are on your own much of the time, you will have a dispatcher, but they can't help you make the proper decisions. So many people when starting out in this career make some poor decisions, and they come back to bite them. If you'll hang around in this forum and soak up some of the valuable assistance you can get here, you will be just fine when you go to Swift, or whichever company you end up starting with.

If you haven't done it yet, you should take a look through our Truck Driver's Career Guide, follow all the links you come across, there is a lot of valuable information in there for someone like yourself who is just getting started in this business.