Newbie looking for advice

[chefj]

I haven't driven since the late '80's and I am getting my Class A with Hazamat this week. I am wondering if you know of any companies that will hire someone with my credentials or lack of. I have a clean DMV and am willing to drive as many miles as necessary. Any advice will be welcome. Thanks, James

[ohio joe]

you have to start over just submit applications to companies that train! schneider, swift, werner etc.. Or put yourself through truck driver training school!!! :shock:

[tjv189]

Do yourself a favor and avoid Swift at all costs. If you would like to know why, let me know. I will be glad to tell you, because I drove for them for 10 months and regretted it very badly.

[tjv189]

Do yourself a favor and avoid Swift at all costs. If you would like to know why, let me know. I will be glad to tell you, because I drove for them for 10 months and regretted it very badly.

[Drew10]

I would have to assume that you would be no different than anybody else starting in the industry, and assuming a clean driving record, or at least a hireable one, most starter companies would put you to work. You would be with a trainer for several weeks. Alot has changed since the 80's, especially with technology in the trucks.

[chefj]

Thanks for the info, I was thinking I'd have to start over. Oh well, Gotta do what you gotta do. TJV189 I would like to know about Swift. i can;t PM yet, so you can e-mail me at chefj1118@earthlink.net. Thanks.

[tjv189]

Well I guess I can just explain a little bit here regarding Swift.

Postives: The only positive is that they have a decent training program, and are a good company to get your CDL with.

Negatives:

-They treat you like a number. Many times you will contact your DM and they won't even know you by name. My first DM thought my name was something completely different for the first 3 months, even though I reminded her constantly. They don't care about a driver's individual needs/desires (especially hometime).

-They run absolutely horrible equipment. Whether you have a Freightliner or a Volvo (I had each of them at different times) it will spend a lot of time in the shop. While its in there, you will have to watch like a hawk to make sure you are paid for downtime. If you don't, I can guarantee you will get screwed. Also, I would say 90% of their trailers (especially the MS Carriers ones) are JUNK. You will often find that the trailer doors won't close the whole way no matter what, and will have quite an adventure getting the tandem release handle to pull 90% of the time. Very very poor equipment.

-HOMETIME. They will try to screw you here in every which way possible. They will say that you get 1 FULL day off for every 6 days out, but then when you are out 15 days they will only give you a day and a half off. This is barely enough time to pay your bills and mow your lawn before you have to head out again. Then getting home is a different issue. Not sure where you live, but they seemed to never have any freight whatsoever where I lived in Western Pennsylvania. This made it very very frustrating to get home/out of home. I remember one time when I was coming back out on a Saturday afternoon at 11am. I sat in the truck for 7 hours straight before they sent me a load, and it was one that was picking up and going to a location out of my region. Needless to say, this pissed me off.

-They always make you find an empty trailer before you can get dispatched, and they have a very poor system for finding you one. They almost never have any empties on the yard at most terminals, so they will send you to about 5 random places to look for one, and chances are only one of those places will have one. As you can imagine, this gets very frustrating. They really need to be able to send you somewhere where they KNOW FOR SURE there is a trailer for you.

-They give you absolutely HORRIBLE directions to most customers. This not only is frustrating, but very dangerous. The directions are so bad at times that they will be telling you to make lefts when you should have made rights, to go 2 miles when you need to go 5, and will tell you to turn onto roads/streets that don't even exist. Their half assed directions got me into sticky situations quite a few times.

-They will make absolutely no effort to make you happy whatsoever. Let's say you like to run the midwest, like I did, so you pick that "comfort zone". They will fail to keep you in this comfort zone about 50% of the time. I hated running the east coast, and I made that clear to my DM, and that is why I chose the midwest region. But guess where they would try to make me go every time? East coast. I know you have to go where the freight goes, but if you are going to send people out of their regions all the time then don't even give them the option of choosing a region. Also, let's say you like to drive during the day mostly, also like I did. Once they know this, you will see nothing but loads that pick up late at night, forcing you to take them on very little sleep, which is unsafe. Then they wonder why they have so many accidents.

-They are forced dispatch. Even though most mega haulers are to my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong), let's say you get a load when you have all your hours available that picks up in friggin' Philadelphia at midnight and has to be in Altanta at 5am two days from then. Those are two places I absolutely hated to take a truck into during the day, let alone at night. But guess what? With Swift, you have no choice! You have to take it whether you like it or not! I know that is simply just how trucking works, but if I could do it again, I would look for a non forced dispatch company so you can run the way you want to run and be safe doing so.

All in all, it seems that Swift goes out of their way to piss on your leg and screw you over. They acctually make an effort to make you UNHAPPY. Trust me, this is not the best company to work for. They are disorganized and don't care about their drivers as much as they need to. As I've said before, trust me, you can do better than Swift.

Hope this helps.

[tjv189]

chefj, I hope you got my above post.