Doing a litle checking on Werner I find several have placed 2nd and 3rd place in Driving Rodeos as well as million mile and 2 million mile awards. Many more have been awarded safe driving awards.

Most of the one I found have been with Werner 10 or more years.

You don't get these kind of awards without getting the miles and doing it safely.

I'm also sure these drivers could drive for any company they wanted. I have to assume they are happy where they are now.

What I have found is the drivers that bitch, for the most part, cause their own problems. Sure every driver have a slow period but for the most part companies want their drivers rolling. Remember, if the wheels are not rolling the company isn't making money either. In fact they are losing money.

I don't see a problem with a company being an ultra-Christian company.


kc0iv

 

Look at companies you want to drive for an apply, if I were you I would even check with Schneider. Here's the deal, if Swift even believes there will be a liability issue for the way they terminated you they may provide basic information. Any recruiter will ask for your side of the story, tell them the basics, let them investigate and then get back to you do NOT go overboard and spill your guts as you did in your post!

Also check with local companies near you, they may be more forgiving and they may even pay more than a bigger company and get you home more often.

 

Let's see if I read that right.

You had electrical problems with a company tractor and took it to their shop.

They could not actually fix the problem, but disconnected the front marker lights.

You knowingly took this tractor, with a known electrical problem and NO front marker lights... and left the terminal to go pick up a load????

What in the world were you thinking?

 

Wulf,

A valid point to be sure, but I'm thinking if he had dispatchers in his ear "ordering" him to get on the road and pick up the load the liability "may" lie with the company. If he refuses do they terminate him for insubordination?? That's between a rock & a hard place for sure///

 

Valid point to Roy, but it's the driver's job to make sure the equipment is safe to operate. He took it into the shop and they couldn't fix the problem. Dispatch ordered him to run the truck to get a load. In a way he is at fault for taking the truck knowing it wasn't compliant. What the driver should have done was go back into the shop and tell them he wasn't leaving until his truck was fixed. There was a fix to the problem all the guys in the shop had to do was call the manufacture of the truck and/or look in the owner's manual. That is what I'd tell the DM/FM and ask them to give me a loaner until mine was fixed and done the right way and not some rigged up unsafe mess.

 

No rock, no hard place. It is the responsibility of the driver to make sure the equipment is in good working order. I would have never driven that tractor away from the shop. Dispatch could not have forced it either, they would have had to find me another tractor.

A typical DM will try to apply pressure, sure. But as soon as a driver says 'this is unsafe and/or illegal', the pressure stops, IF the driver is correct of course.

 

You’re right…I should never have accepted the truck in the condition it was returned to me because as for as it being a public safety issue it was both unsafe and illegal.

However, because I was extremely desperate to go home at the time after being delayed for 12 long days after being out already for 4 weeks and because I was extremely aggravated about the entire situation (repeatedly being denied a loaner truck, given the truck back after 8 days of being in the shop and being repeatedly lied to, only to find out that they hadn’t fixed the first thing wrong with it yet, being stuck in a hotel for 12 long days and not making any money, and because of the situation when the truck was given back to me and because of the load I was under I had to make an immediate decision, not to mention that is was also 5 PM office closing time) I compromised my standards, accepted the truck anyway, and as a consequence lived to regret it.

By the way, I also never dreamed that a service technician with the approval of his shop manager today working for a major trucking company like Swift in this day and age could be so incompetent and unprofessional.

Another contributing factor to my very rash decision to accept the truck was that to me it didn’t matter anyway, because I had already made up my mind that as soon as I returned back from home time, I was going to put in my 14 day notice, since my miles in the preceding months had gone to crap anyway and because I knew from personal experience that Swift was a joke!

Nevertheless, although I realized the truck was unsafe and illegal as a public safety issue because the marker lights were disconnected, it still never occurred to me at the time that the truck was also a firetrap, since in that regard I had been assured that it was safe to drive by both the service technician and the shop manager.

However, hindsight is always 20/20, as very apparently the reason the shop couldn’t find the short was because the short in the first place obviously was never located in the marker lights! Obviously, it was located somewhere else as the fire unfortunately unequivocally proved!

Finally, the only reason I went out the last time when I ended up getting fired was because I was hoping to be reimbursed for what I lost in the fire. My intention, however, was to put in my 14 day notice as soon as I was reimbursed, but unfortunately I got screwed, I’m sure to save the shop manager's job, before that ever happened.

In any event, par for the course, even though I was hoping that a few recruiters that frequent this board would weigh in on my post, no one even addressed any of my questions let alone answered them. Oh well!