Considering Switching To Dry Van

So... 25,000 drivers a year,quit Swift, it has the worst reputation in the industry and a low pay rate.. Yep great company. You top out at 45k a year there. Swift just lost 7 walmart DCs this year do to Swift being late and crashing with walmart trailers. P&G removed 9 of their DCsupporters from Swift due to "monetary losses" Georgia Pacific also reduced the account with swift dye to Swift crashing. Also notevery before CSA scores were removed from public eye Swift has a CSA of 76 the worst score among large companies.

Don't forget Swift is under investigation AGAIN for securities fraud. By all means keep thinking that Swift did not earn what's said about them and hey if you are happy making 30cpm when others are making upwards of 50 that's the kind of driver Swift wants. There is not a single reason to work for Swift when everything is better at a multitude of other companies. There is also nothing Swift does that other companies do not do while making you more money.

But hey if you think working harder for less money is good then that's what makes you a swift driver. Call me a hater all you want but it's people that pretend working for 30 or 35 cpm is a great starting point that keep truckers making less money now then they did 20 years ago.

Like I said there are reasons over 25000 drivers leave Swift each year.

Oh boy!

Eckoh, you don't know when you are in too deep. Facts elude you because you're focused on rumors and innuendo.

Reading your rebuttals is like reading the Readers Digest version of The Trucker's Report, or the condensed version.

This is classic!

Eckoh, you are exactly the type of person we created this site to warn people about. I couldn't have scripted this conversation any better.

Folks, you read it right here. Eckoh is the type of guy you're going to come across in every company terminal , every truck stop, and on channel 19 on the CB on a daily basis. He's out there bashing companies, spreading rumors, and touting his own awesomeness but in the end he has no idea what he's talking about and his performance doesn't even come close to living up to the hype. He is truly a hero in his own mind and has nothing of value to offer you when it comes to making decisions about your trucking career.

So when you're at a terminal or a truck stop or at the other trucker's forum and an Eckoh approaches you complaining, pointing fingers, and telling lies the best thing you can do is just smile, tell him how smart he his, then walk away and erase every word he said from your memory like it never happened.

I mean, the fun never ends with these guys! Here are some examples of ways to identify these "terminal rats" as we call em:

1) They never get their facts straight:

You top out at 45k a year there

Really? Because you personally made $44,000 in 9 months. So you're outright lying to people, you know it, and you don't care.

2) They bash companies over things that are completely irrelevant to your career:

• Don't forget Swift is under investigation AGAIN for securities fraud
• The people I talk with in driver lounges at the terminals are more positive
• There is not the inter-terminal politics here like I ran into at Swift

What in the world does an investigation into securities fraud have to do with you as a driver? Absolutely nothing. You're just looking for reasons to be a hater.

You like the fact that the terminal rats (people in the driver's lounges) are more positive, which has nothing whatsoever to do with your career as a driver, and ironically you're the least positive person we know around here.

And you didn't like the inter-terminal politics? I have no idea what you mean by that or how you as a driver would even get caught up in it if it did somehow exist. Sounds like more baloney.

3) They throw opinions at you that do not make sense on any level:

There is not a single reason to work for Swift

Not a single one?

• Largest carrier in North America
• Very strong finances
• Outstanding training program for new drivers
• Beautiful equipment
• Numerous types of freight to choose from including:
  
  
  • Dedicated
  • Dry Van
  • Expedited Team
  • Flatbed
  • Heavy Haul
  • Intermodal
  • Refrigerated
• Fantastic dedicated accounts with some of the largest companies in North America
  
  
  • Walmart
  • Quaker Oats
  • Ryder Logistics
  • FedEx
  • Target
  • Dollar Tree
  • Lowe's
  • Rite Aid
• Hometime options including home every night, home most weekends, home once a month, or live on the road full time if you like
• Seriously dedicated to helping new drivers get through their mistakes and get better instead of firing you for a minor infraction or two:
  
  Read this story: High Risk Driver
• Full tuition reimbursement if you work for the company for two years - your training will be 100% free!
• Solid benefits including:
  
  
  • Medical plans
  • Prescription drug plans
  • Dental plan
  • Vision plan
  • 401K
  • Employee assistance program
  • Employee stock purchase program
  • Disability
  • Life
  • Group accident
  • Critical illness

4) They're a hero in their own mind but they have to keep making excuses for their own poor performance. And the 'key signature' to look for: nothing is ever their fault:

• I had more downtime than I did the year before
• freight was better last year then it has been so far this year
• I had truck issues

5) They throw out rumors or opinions without any examples or facts to back it up:

Swift overall treated me like crap regardless of how hard I ran

Yeah, of course they did. Cuz it's Swift that has an attitude problem, not you.

6) They talk as if they're "in the know", like they were personally sitting in on corporate meetings:

• Swift just lost 7 walmart DCs this year do to Swift being late and crashing with walmart trailers
• P&G removed 9 of their DC supporters from Swift due to "monetary losses"
• Georgia Pacific also reduced the account with swift due to Swift crashing

So there ya go folks. The dissection of a terminal rat. When you see these symptoms in someone be aware of the fact that they carry a contagious disease. Bad attitudes are contagious if you listen to them long enough. Don't let your career get screwed up by someone else's delusions.

Eckoh, by the fact that you list just sooo many bad "facts" about one company, I know you just blew it all out your ... well, somebody open a window, please.

25,000 drivers a year,quit Swift.

Swift has 22,346 drivers as of June 10, 2016 (FMCSA Company Snapshot). So you say 112% of them bail every year?

Eckoh, get your Tonka truck and go play in the back yard.

Eckoh, I made close to 44k my first year at Swift. This year it will be over 70k. Where are you getting your information from? It's total BS. You have eclipsed the most annoying status here on TT. Congratulations.

I am not going to argue with you, pointless to argue with a know it all. I'll bet Richard Stocking calls you weekly with updates.

Yes there may be DCs performing poorly, most are not. Our year to date is well over 99% on time. Again have no idea where you get your baseless info from. Shame is you would be better served if you worried less about what Swift is doing because you don't work for them anymore. Help the newbies out and stop spreading your venom, it's ebarrasing.

Done.

To get back on topic with the OP.

I don't work for swift but I do run reefer. I find it interesting that you are trying to sleep so much at customers.

I normally start my day at 0100. I'd say 90% of my appointments fall between 0600 and 1500. By running at 0100 I am able to adjust easily for those on occasion 2000 or 0030 appts.

Logging sleeper at the customer is a must to save your 70 but I rely on my 10 hour break for sleep. If I can catch a couple z's at a slow customer it's a bonus but I never rely on sleeping at a customer during loading/unloading.

So my question would be are your customers that slow your getting a 10 in while waiting to be loaded/unloaded? Or is there another factor I am missing why you can't sleep on your 10?

Update:

I decided to stick with reefer until I can get on a dedicated account. I've got a few good reasons:

-- Familiarity with reefer schedule/customers. I'm used to doing set appointments now, and it's not unusual for me to go to the same customers. Plus, reefer drivers can pull wet and dry freight in reefer trailers.

-- My dispatcher. I've been with my DM for about two months and we're just now starting to work together smoothly. Not to mention, if by some chance I were to make another mistake, she might be more willing to stick up for me than someone I have just started working with.

--Connections. Swift owns Central Refrigerated, but they still work independently of each other to some extent. If I need something, unless it's a really general request, I have to talk to the planners or dispatchers in the West Valley terminal. The "dry" dispatchers/planners can't help me! I've started getting to know some of the people working in the reefer division, including a couple of dispatchers, a planner, and a couple trainers, and a few other people in the office. If I switched to the dry fleet, I would have to start all over, as it's a whole other world with different personnel.

Update:

I decided to stick with reefer until I can get on a dedicated account. I've got a few good reasons:

-- Familiarity with reefer schedule/customers. I'm used to doing set appointments now, and it's not unusual for me to go to the same customers. Plus, reefer drivers can pull wet and dry freight in reefer trailers.

-- My dispatcher. I've been with my DM for about two months and we're just now starting to work together smoothly. Not to mention, if by some chance I were to make another mistake, she might be more willing to stick up for me than someone I have just started working with.

--Connections. Swift owns Central Refrigerated, but they still work independently of each other to some extent. If I need something, unless it's a really general request, I have to talk to the planners or dispatchers in the West Valley terminal. The "dry" dispatchers/planners can't help me! I've started getting to know some of the people working in the reefer division, including a couple of dispatchers, a planner, and a couple trainers, and a few other people in the office. If I switched to the dry fleet, I would have to start all over, as it's a whole other world with different personnel.

Solid, level headed reasoning. Regardless of you being a fellow Swiftie, your decision is very well thought out and best serves your current career needs.

Solid, level headed reasoning. Regardless of you being a fellow Swiftie, your decision is very well thought out and best serves your current career needs.

Thanks G.

Those reasons are good enough, but I'll add one more for educational purposes for anyone else reading this thread: the way the freight moves.

So far, I've discovered certain "hot spots," if you will, for refrigerated freight: West Valley City and a few others north of Salt Lake City in UT; Twin Falls/Burley, ID; Grand Island, NE; Philadelphia, PA; Dodge City, KS; and others. Unfortunately, Denver, CO, is not one of those "hot spots." I don't mean there's necessarily tons of freight in those areas. I've just noticed I've gone to those areas for a particular customer more than once. In fact, I've even done identical runs before--Quaker facility in Philly to the Ocean Spray facility in Toma, WI--one of my favorite runs so far.

How this all works in my favor right now:

Sometimes I need to be home on a particular day, which can be hard to arrange sometimes without being stuck at home for a week making no money. That happened this week--I wanted to be home yesterday, a Saturday, and they got me to Salt Lake a week early. From there they got me a run to Denver, 5 or 6 days before my hometime.

So now I'm in a predicament. If I keep running, I might get too far from home; but if I try to stay really close, I might not get very many miles. Well, I've been running reefer with Swift long enough to know there is always freight moving between Utah (specifically Salt Lake, but other cities as well) and CO (mostly Denver), and it's not too hard to get specific runs if you just ask.

Suffice it to say, I got a three-stop load to Oregon and Washington that they had me t-call at the SLC terminal , did my necessary training at that terminal while I was out of hours on my 70 (see the thread "High Risk Driver"), then got a load back to Denver. Still a day early. I sent a couple messages to my DM (who my friend "message-only" DM forwarded to the planners) about doing local runs in Denver.

When I didn't hear anything I just called and talked directly to the Denver planner, who remembered me from the messages he had received. I ended up talking to him on the phone that day and the next day, and he got me a couple 8-mile runs from the terminal to customers. Yeah, you read that right--EIGHT, not eighty or eight hundred. He threw in an extra $25 on each run--easiest money I ever made (ok, maybe not, but close), and I only used a couple hours off my 70. He was happy and I was happy.

Best part? He got me a load from Greeley, my home town, to Detroit--it's a 1200 mile run with a tight deadline, and the trailer is preloaded. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not--doesn't really matter to me.

What does matter to me is what I learned this week. I'm not too afraid to get home so early now because I know I have some options to keep me running. I also learned that local runs, if available, are a great, easy way to stay busy while I'm home if I can do them. They're obviously not as good as running actual miles, but they're better than nothing. And I talked to that planner enough he might remember me next time--who knows?

So there you go. I hope that's helpful to some other people on here. At the Salt Lake terminal this week, one driver was frustrated he wasn't getting miles, and asked me about reefer. I wanted to tell him all this, but hadn't really put it all together yet.

To get back on topic with the OP.

I don't work for swift but I do run reefer. I find it interesting that you are trying to sleep so much at customers.

I normally start my day at 0100. I'd say 90% of my appointments fall between 0600 and 1500. By running at 0100 I am able to adjust easily for those on occasion 2000 or 0030 appts.

Logging sleeper at the customer is a must to save your 70 but I rely on my 10 hour break for sleep. If I can catch a couple z's at a slow customer it's a bonus but I never rely on sleeping at a customer during loading/unloading.

So my question would be are your customers that slow your getting a 10 in while waiting to be loaded/unloaded? Or is there another factor I am missing why you can't sleep on your 10?

Interesting--so if you had an appt at 1100, would you still start your day at 0100 and just let your 14 run out at 1500, even if you were still at the customer?

I usually try to take a 10 before I get to the customer. So if I delivered at 1100, I would take a ten before hand and then go to the customer at 0900 or earlier with a fresh 11 and 14. If they take less than 4 hours to unload me, I'll probably just leave. But if they take more than 4 hours and I have to leave for my next p/u right away, I'll just finish 8 in the SB at the customer and roll to the next p/u and shut down there for 2 or more hours while they load me, then keep running. But that's why I'm tired too. So I want to know more about how you make it work for you.