Swift Training Academy

[Hawkjr]

I swear i don't have no bad intentions when i say this but i think your post is about to stir up some controversy amongest the Swift Bashers... If you was here when that thread got started in that poor guy got Killed In WA which was a Swift trainee and all you would understand but i wouldn't be surprise if someone says something about that Heavy Haul thing...

But other wise glad to see your on a truck and good luck!!!

[dobry4u]

Again I hope to be able to post updates while I am on the road, so stay tuned!

Looking forward to learn of your progress! Be safe out there, driver

[SickRick]

Learn all you can. If you can run heavy haul, just IMAGINE HOW EASY them puny little dry vans will seem when you get to them.

Funny though - I picture wanting to do only D&H Dry Van and/or Reefer - as flatbedding & heavy haul look like actual WORK (as in you gotta get out of the cab and actually WORK). But the more I look, the more I find myself getting interested in Flatbeds.

Great that you have a mentor you've "clicked" with - that should make the next 6 weeks go a lot faster.

Excited for ya, as I sit here in South Florida with NO PROSPECTS for a hire - thinking about BUYING A RIG (against the advice of many) and going out chasing freight (I have a number of connections) on my own...

Rick

[Syncrosonix]

Hey Syncro,

I actually saw you come into the drivers lounge, recognized that hat! Anyways, my mentor had just arrived and he was showing me how to scan docs, so i wasn't able to stop you to talk.

My mentor is a guy named Oleg, he seems like a good guy and he is really fair!

you have oleg!? he's kickass! like jim kling, oleg is worth every dollar and them some. a couple of drivers i know got him some time ago. they're doing well. good luck with the heavy haul. i was wanting to get on that fleet for quite some time. the only thing holding me back was the lack of funds to move to the pacific northwest. heavy haul is pretty kickass.

it's unfortunate we didn't get to shoot the shizzle. the walk to and from the shell was further than i thought. by the time i was within a quarter mile of getting back to the shell, my feet were hurting like hell, and i stopped at the bbq restaurant. i had a bbq chicken sandwich. it was real good. now on my way to lovely utah! hopefully i can find a mormon lady to corrupt while i'm over there.

[Ford390pwr]

it's unfortunate we didn't get to shoot the shizzle. the walk to and from the shell was further than i thought. by the time i was within a quarter mile of getting back to the shell, my feet were hurting like hell, and i stopped at the bbq restaurant. i had a bbq chicken sandwich. it was real good. now on my way to lovely utah! hopefully i can find a mormon lady to corrupt while i'm over there.

Yeah, I have made a decision to get out and walk as much as I can in my down time. The day I sat at the hotel waiting, I decided to walk towards the Supermall in Auburn. I was able to walk through a residential neighborhood, check out a couple of bikini's and get to the mall in a good amount of time. Spent some time "Sight Seeing" at the mall, got a bite to eat, and replaced my phones data sync cable which i left at home. When I got back to the hotel, I mapqwested the route that I walked. It turned out that I walked 5 miles round trip, and that doesn't even include the walking around the malls interior.
If I can do that more often, I will get rid of these 10-15 pounds I have been trying to lose for years now! I am not really fat, 5'9" 185, but I do have a small gut. I know if I sit mt fat a** in this truck and snack all day, the gut will only get bigger!

Oh yeah, good luck with that mormon lady! I am sitting at the Petro in Spokane, Exit 272 on I90 till Monday morning.....

[Syncrosonix]

Yeah, I have made a decision to get out and walk as much as I can in my down time. The day I sat at the hotel waiting, I decided to walk towards the Supermall in Auburn. I was able to walk through a residential neighborhood, check out a couple of bikini's and get to the mall in a good amount of time. Spent some time "Sight Seeing" at the mall, got a bite to eat, and replaced my phones data sync cable which i left at home. When I got back to the hotel, I mapqwested the route that I walked. It turned out that I walked 5 miles round trip, and that doesn't even include the walking around the malls interior.
If I can do that more often, I will get rid of these 10-15 pounds I have been trying to lose for years now! I am not really fat, 5'9" 185, but I do have a small gut. I know if I sit mt fat a** in this truck and snack all day, the gut will only get bigger!

Oh yeah, good luck with that mormon lady! I am sitting at the Petro in Spokane, Exit 272 on I90 till Monday morning.....

i've been to that petro many times. it's okay. it's better than the dinky flying j further east. the flying j in post falls, id is pretty good.

i dunno how far my walk was. it felt close to 5 miles. it was probably more, or a little less. i've been wanting to hit up the supermall. a month ago while i was laid over in seattle, i went clubbing with some friends of mine. had a good time. even got a fine lady's bare ass shaken in my face. she was great fun for the night.

[Ford390pwr]

So just a quick update on my training status. I have to say that I am very lucky to have the mentor that I am with. He has not tried to run us as a team, even though it would have helped him get the miles. I am learning about all the Swift policies, and the almighty Qualcom.

As I said earlier we are running with the Heavy Haul division in Sumner WA. We are in and out of Sumner every day to load at the Costco DC and have been running split loads to stores in Eastern WA. Since Costco loads do not run on weekends we are off till Monday. Instead of sitting at the Petro in Spokane all weekend, I decided to go home for the weekend.

We got stuck in Lewiston Friday afternoon with a load of paper to t-call in Sumner. Since my mentor would not be able to get back to Spokane Friday night, he had the tractor serviced in Lewiston. He was going to take the load and park the truck for the weekend at a drop yard in Spokane. I hitched a ride with another Heavy Haull guy out of Lewiston. This was a great experience where I got to talk to a driver who is just struggling to get by. This guy was telling me about how he is on manual audit because he has log violations, and he is just waiting till he gets fired.

So I will meet up with my mentor again on moday around 1400 when he gets back into Sumner.

I say I was lucky to get the mentor that I have. My classmate from the Academy got on a truck with a mentor and got off as soon as they arrived in Phoenix. They ran as a team the entire trip from Sumner to Phoenix. He was told to just drive and not to worry about the details. Now this guy is sitting in Phoenix waiting for a new mentor.

[Ford390pwr]

So we had been running great this week with about 650 miles for Monday and tuesday! By 0700 Wednesday, we had two preplans that would get us about 700 miles for the day.
Just as we left Costco in CourDlean ID, the truck started acting up. All the gauges started sweeping up and down, and all the dash lights started flashing. There was no throttle at all, and this was very intermittent. We were doing 35mph, then 12mph. The mentor was driving, and he knew that he could make it to the FreightShaker Dealer in Spokane, so he limped the truck there.
We called the Driver Manager and told her to take us off those 2 loads, we would be sitting in the shop all day.
Now, Tuesday was my first payday! A whopping $356, and all of it went onto my Comdata card because there is no direct deposit set up yet. So I got online and found a Bank Of America and started walking. Google said it was 2.9 miles, and I had all day so what else was I to do.... Anyways, it seems there is a lot of construction here in Spokane! So I ended up with a few detours which made my walk a little longer. So as I neared the address for the Bank I realized that it was no longer there!
Called the B of A hotline, and found another branch. Anyways, when all was said and done, I had walked a total of 11.3 miles today. Needless to say, my feet are now killing me!

When i got back to FreightShaker and asked to get into the truck to retrieve my contact numbers they had just pulled the tractor back into the shop and had found the part. The tech said it was a CPU which controlled all of the electronics for the truck. he would have it in and programmed in about 2 hours. I called my mentor, he went home for a while, and he said he would rather get a fresh start in the morning. We had no preplan, and all the loads would have been gone by now. So he got me into the Super 8 motel for the night.

I decided to walk down the street and get a good sandwich from a place up the street from the motel. This time I only walked 2 blocks, but it started pooring as I was ready to leave the restaurant! I ended up waiting a few minutes and the rain passed, for the most part.

Hopefully, the mentor will decide to work at least Saturday now since we lost a whole day of work. It doesn't hurt me any, I get paid the same whether I drive or sit all day.

[mike3fan]

Sounds like things are going well, keep the updates coming. Don't close any doors by not wanting to do heavy haul, in this industry the more you can be specialized the better off you will be, in fact push for it. Being home more and not being part of a large group of robot's hauling general van freight could be a great thing.

[Kevin0915]

Yeah, I have made a decision to get out and walk as much as I can in my down time. The day I sat at the hotel waiting, I decided to walk towards the Supermall in Auburn. I was able to walk through a residential neighborhood, check out a couple of bikini's and get to the mall in a good amount of time. Spent some time "Sight Seeing" at the mall, got a bite to eat, and replaced my phones data sync cable which i left at home. When I got back to the hotel, I mapqwested the route that I walked. It turned out that I walked 5 miles round trip, and that doesn't even include the walking around the malls interior.
If I can do that more often, I will get rid of these 10-15 pounds I have been trying to lose for years now! I am not really fat, 5'9" 185, but I do have a small gut. I know if I sit mt fat a** in this truck and snack all day, the gut will only get bigger!

Oh yeah, good luck with that mormon lady! I am sitting at the Petro in Spokane, Exit 272 on I90 till Monday morning.....

thats the key. getting out and walking. I use to work in a truck stop for a month (before going to school) and i would get a kick out of drivers whos card wouldn't swipe, having to walk in to hand us their card, then walk back out, fuel then have to WALK BACK IN....they were always had a hissy fit......or maybe it was because they were 5'7" and weighted so much they needed to slide their 5th wheel to get legal. I've started walking an hour every morning, bought some walking shoes just for that, so i dont walk in the same shoes i drive in. And in a week or so, ill buy a good used mountain bike to put on the back of my truck and bike in the afternoon.

But then again, there will be drivers who will say "you dont have enough downtime to do all that"

[Ford390pwr]

I've started walking an hour every morning, bought some walking shoes just for that, so i dont walk in the same shoes i drive in. And in a week or so, ill buy a good used mountain bike to put on the back of my truck and bike in the afternoon.

But then again, there will be drivers who will say "you dont have enough downtime to do all that"

I find that the walk actually relaxes me and helps me get to sleep a little bit better too. As for the mountain bike, I will get one soon and store it up by the spare tire. I have seen a couple of guys that do this even though Swift says "No personal gear stored behind the sleeper or on the cat walk".

[Ford390pwr]

So we had been running great this week with about 650 miles for Monday and tuesday! By 0700 Wednesday, we had two preplans that would get us about 700 miles for the day.

Just as we left Costco in CourDlean ID, the truck started acting up. All the gauges started sweeping up and down, and all the dash lights started flashing. There was no throttle at all, and this was very intermittent. We were doing 35mph, then 12mph. The mentor was driving, and he knew that he could make it to the FreightShaker Dealer in Spokane, so he limped the truck there.

We called the Driver Manager and told her to take us off those 2 loads, we would be sitting in the shop all day.

Now, Tuesday was my first payday! A whopping $356, and all of it went onto my Comdata card because there is no direct deposit set up yet. So I got online and found a Bank Of America and started walking. Google said it was 2.9 miles, and I had all day so what else was I to do.... Anyways, it seems there is a lot of construction here in Spokane! So I ended up with a few detours which made my walk a little longer. So as I neared the address for the Bank I realized that it was no longer there!

Called the B of A hotline, and found another branch. Anyways, when all was said and done, I had walked a total of 11.3 miles today. Needless to say, my feet are now killing me!

The tractor was ready at about 6pm on Wednesday, but we waited to get it till Thursday morning. I spent the night at a Super 8 in Spokane and had a good meal at a local pub.

We got in the truck and headed to a T/S to wait for a load assignment. Nothing came down till 2pm, so we sat around watching movies at the Petro in Spokane all morning.

One thing we found is that when the dealer replaced the CPU and reprogrammed it, they used different settings than it had before! Now the high rev limits at 1700 rpm as opposed to 2000rpm, and it appears that we are no longer governed for speed. At least not at 62mph as we had been before, but I don't want to go over 65 too much with Big Brother watching and all.

So we got a live load to pick up in Walla Walla prior to 1900. I drove to the juice factory, we got loaded and I drove again till we got to the Pilot at I90 exit 106 in Ellensberg. The mentor got some rest in the bunk, and then he drove the rest of the way to Sumner while I got some rest.

Now we wait at the Terminal in Sumner for another load, but nothing as of 1000 on Friday. Looks like I may go home again, no sense in sitting at the T/S all weekend and losing out on my training time!

I have my replacement phone sitting at home. Oh yeah did I mention that my Blackberry went through the washer a couple of weeks ago? Well the LCD is bad, the camera don't work and the Keypad is a little hard to use. I took it apart and dried it out the best i could but was only able to send and receive phone calls, and tether it to my laptop for internet.

Thank's to everyone that is following these posts, and thank you for all the encouraging PM's, you know who you are! I don't want to post mindless dribble, so I will try to keep the stories as interesting as I can.

[Syncrosonix]

I find that the walk actually relaxes me and helps me get to sleep a little bit better too. As for the mountain bike, I will get one soon and store it up by the spare tire. I have seen a couple of guys that do this even though Swift says "No personal gear stored behind the sleeper or on the cat walk".

they say it but they don't follow their own rule on it. however, i did get barked at from somebody at the denver terminal for having my bike on the back of the mid-roof volvo i had been assigned to. he gave me the gauntlet of the fear tactics about dot this, dot that, and i have never been stopped, pulled around back, or anything at ANY weigh station i've been across. i've taken my bike to the world famous burnside skatepark in portland, oregon. i had a freaking blast there. it was the closest thing to a religious experience i ever had.

[Kevin0915]

i didnt take a close look at the bike, how do you keep it up there besides bungie straps? i've got my bag chair strapped down to the cat walk right in front of my spare tire. never had anybody b!tch about it yet.....

[Syncrosonix]

the bar above the spare tire is where i slid the handlebars between. besides using bungees to keep it in place, i used a cable lock so that nobody could steal it.

[cdswans]

I swear i don't have no bad intentions when i say this but i think your post is about to stir up some controversy amongest the Swift Bashers... If you was here when that thread got started in that poor guy got Killed In WA which was a Swift trainee and all you would understand but i wouldn't be surprise if someone says something about that Heavy Haul thing...

But other wise glad to see your on a truck and good luck!!!

I said it in that thread and I'll say it again here . . Swift heavy haul training is the finest Driver training available, period. You will experience a variety of equipment, terrain and weights of loads that 99% of your peers will never know. I did my 2 x 6 (two trainee graduates running team for 6 weeks) with a guy who trained on the J C Penny account. I'm not boasting. I was very confident with any load, he was terrified of anything over 15k. I spent half my time retraining him. While I was hooking, pulling and breaking down Rocky Mountain doubles in my first week, he was pulling clothes down from a rope hook. That's all there is to it. The only thing I can think of that would make your training better would be ice and snow, which I'm sure you're praying for! There is nothing more relaxing than 104,000 lbs, downhill on Snoqualmie when it's slushy.

I'm sure your trainer is doing a fine job but I'd like to add: It doesn't matter who thinks how hot the freight might be, especially Costco, it won't ever get there unless you and the truck get there first. Drive to get you there and let the freight follow.

I hate to close on a sad note but when you get your hands on that 10 speed, as I'm sure you will, you're definitely going to miss those three extra gears. Get over it or go heavy!

[ronjon619]

What is Swift's heavy haul?

[Orangetxguy]

What is Swift's heavy haul?

Swift's "heavy haul" consist's of 4-axle tractors, pulling either a 4-axle 53 foot dry van, or pulling a 45 foot 3-axle dry van pulling a 28 foor 2-axle dry van (rocky mountain double) behind it.

105,500 pounds is the weight configuration. BUT they do not pull regular "Heavy Haul"....RGN or Lowboy frieght.

[ronjon619]

Swift's "heavy haul" consist's of 4-axle tractors, pulling either a 4-axle 53 foot dry van, or pulling a 45 foot 3-axle dry van pulling a 28 foor 2-axle dry van (rocky mountain double) behind it.

105,500 pounds is the weight configuration. BUT they do not pull regular "Heavy Haul"....RGN or Lowboy frieght.

ok, gotcha.......

[cdswans]

3 and 4 axle reefers, as well.

By the way, Jerry's in line for a haircut . .

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