Swift Training Academy
 

I have finally started school with Swift http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tru...lies/sign4.gif

Today was day 1 of an 18 day training program, which we will do in 17 days due to the July 4th holiday.
We started with 14 students that actually arrived in class, and 9 more that were no shows. By the end of day one we lost 1 student to an invalid license. He said that when he got his CDIP they punched his old license and gave it back to him. Of course that license being punched by the DMV made it invalid, and he was Swiftly sent home.

Most of the day was filled with paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork! They want to make sure that you understand that you will owe them $3900 for training. Apparently you can go home before Day 5 and not owe any money. From day 5 through day 11 they charge a prorated amount, and after day 11 you owe the full tuition.

We also completed Swift's Work Well assessment, and completed our DOT physicals. Two students need to return to the doctors on Day 2 and try to pass the DOT physical.

The information supplied by recruiters was completely incorrect! Even though I specifically asked the recruiter if I should get my air brakes, doubles / triples, or combination endorsements and she said "No you will be trained properly to pass those tests in school", this is incorrect! Now I will take the combination and air brakes tests at the DMV in Clarkston WA on Tuesday after class.

I would like to post about this class till the end, so stay tuned.....

the info the recuriter gives is always 90% wrong did they give you a starting pay rate before you went ? heard that they cut it by 3 cpm just asking. good luck to you :tears:

They said .27 cpm, but that is yet to be confirmed!

Today was a good day with a test on Combination Vehicles and Air Brakes. We all passed those just fine.
Next we did about 4 hours on log books, and took 5 tests on the log books. Seems that everyone passed the tests, but we will review the answers in the morning.

I did not mention this before, but we must get an 80% or better on each exam, or group of exams. Anyone that does not pass an exam will be given an opportunity to take the test again on Sunday.

The hardest part of the day was the fact that we had to do our drug screen at 05:15. Of the 12 students, I waited till about half of them went because I really did not need to go. If you try to pee and get stage fright, you have 3 hours from that time to fill the cup or you will fail!

Of course I felt like I had to pee, so I stepped up to the plate. Tried and tried for about 5 minutes, but just couldn't get a drop. So I stepped aside to let others go ahead, and continued to drink about 2 gallons of water over the next 45 minutes. When all of the others completed the screen, I went in and pee'd like a pro. Best of all it was not dilluted from all the water I drank, so I was good to go!

I was in the bathroom every 30 minutes for the next 4 hours getting rid of those 2 gallons of water.

Now we did lose 2 more students today. One was due to a medical condition, and the second was because of a secret that Swift uncovered when we had to review the details on our applications. Just a word of advice, TELL THE TRUTH! If you tell them everything up front, they will look at the specifics and give may give you a chance because you were honest. If something comes out later, they will send you packing 100% of the time.

After class I drove over the bridge to Clarkston WA and took the Combinations and Airbrakes tests at the DMV. Missed one question on each test, and passed just fine. Paid the $100 for my skills test and I am now good to go!

So, at the end of day two, we have droped two more students. This puts our class at 11 students, down from the 14 that we started with.

We received an answer to the question today. This link shows Swifts cpm pay as of December 2006. This is the current pay with one exception, there is currently a $.01cpm pay cut for all drivers. So, just subtract $.01 and this is the pay!
http://www.swifttruckingjobs.com/doc...ng%20Scale.pdf

Hey, i went to Lewiston for my schooling. Say "Hi' to Vicky and Ed for me. I found out from talking to a guy based out of Lewiston at my home terminal when i was there, that Junior isnt there anymore. He got married, and he and his wife are running team, and he is O/O with Swift.

I started school there August 13th and grad. first week of Sept. 2008. Ask if they remember Cheez-It and Bret Michaels. =)

Oh, and not all recruiters are scumbags. The one i got never promiced me anything, never said 'you'll be getting 3300 miles a week'..or anything like that. I actually went to class and had MORE paperwork than i needed, such as my driving history printed directly from the DMV before i left. etc.

Will do! Vicky was great! She started us out with days 1 and 2, but had to go out on the road with students that are 2 weeks ahead of us.
We will see more of her and Ed next week when we start on the range! I will probably get Vicky or Bob as my instructor and then they will take us to the WA dmv for the tests.

I've never heard of anyone promicing anything.

Promicing or promising? Sure wish some of these drivers learned how to spell correctly.

Gee, have you ever heard of a typo? It happens to all of us!

Swift Academy Day 4
 

Well we started out the day with 9 students, even though we ended day 3 with 11. One student voluntarily left, because he was having trouble with all the written tests.
The second student got sent home because of an old arrest in another state. Once again, tell them EVERYTHING, even if you think it has been long enough since it happened.

On a side note, I had a Domestic Violence charge in 2005. Without all the details here, I never went to jail, and did 12 months probation. Because I informed Swift of this on my application, and was fully vetted by Swift's Security department, I was accepted into the school, and will be hired when I graduate. Some of the students that have been dismissed had the same charges from 2001 and older. Since they were not honest on the application Swift sent them home as soon as they found out about the charges.

Day 4 started with the class splitting into groups by home state. Each group observed the State pre-trip inspection. This was very detailed and each step was demonstrated by the instructor.

Next we had 4 different stations on the driving range. We split into teams of 2 students, with on group having 3. With 8 trucks each student had a truck except for the team of 3 which had on student switch in.

The stations included a Straight back, offset back, and two different docking stations. We rotated through the stations for one hour at a time, for eight hours today. This was a great day with a lot of hours behind the wheel. Everyone learned a lot today, and we all saw great improvement on the range.

Enjoy the posts Ford390, keep it up!

"Swift announces significant improvements to its driver pay plan!"

I don't care who you are, that's funny.

thanks for info i went to swift school in millington tenn. back in 07 thats what they started with also. had to go back a get retested for license last month because of raid on school in tenn as you all know.
sounds like you are enjoying it there stay focused and in between the lines :thumbsup:

Yeah Jay,
like i said that document was dated December 2006.

Thanks for the post...
 

Thankx for posting what your doing at Swifts training. :thumbsup: I recently graduated from Western Pacific Truck school :badass:with my Class A & all three of my endorsments, but can't seem to get a break from any of the :ranting: companies. I did talk to Henry a swift recruiter, but he said he would call me back in a week or two. :whistle: He also said the next training was in August. All these compaines for the most part want at least 1-3 years of OTR! Im sure hoping something pans out for me soon since I spent $4690.00 :bigthumbsdown:on truck school and to date have gotten nothing but apps to fill out & turn downs! :surrender:

I like reading the posts. BUT I can remember when I attended the academy there, Vicki made sure to tell us each and everyday, that we needed to look at the 3 weeks of training like a 3 week interview. Just because you pass and graduate, does not mean you automaticly have a job or will be hired. You are not hired when you leave school, you are officially hired after you get your driver code....that wont happen till you reach orientation.

I was at my home terminal in Edwardsville, and sat outside talking to a guy who attended the Lewiston school, and that was where he was based. He attended the school back in January. My road instructor i had ended up getting married and went O/O-team with his wife. so he's on the road somewhere with Swift. maybe you could find out what his truck number is for me, and PM me....i'm sure one of the instructors there would know it. =) All i know is it is a grey KW T-2000.

keep the posts up.....

You are correct, Vicki said the same exact thing to us on day 1. I am just confident that I will be able to complete all of my training, and I know I have never been turned down for any job I interviewed for. There is NO guarantee of employment by Swift for completing the academy. Just as SirCronus had NO guarantee of finding employment after graduating from Western Pacific Truck School.

I believe you said that your instructor was Junior. I will ask Vicki or Loary on Sunday if they have any information about him for you.

The best advice I can give you is to keep trying Werner, Schneider, Prime and the likes. These company all accept newbie drivers with a CDL and NO experience. They have lower pay, similar to Swift and the other training companies but they offer you a chance to get you foot in the door and get some over the road experience.

Also make sure you check with the companies on this list. http://www.classadrivers.com/index.p...isting&EmpID=1

Swift Training Academy Day 5
 

At the start of day 5 we gained one more student. Someone from the class that just finished State testing needed a little bit more help, so they have joined our class. So we are currently at 10 students.

Day 5 was very similar to day 4. We started out by completing a detailed pre trip off of the test material.

Next we broke off into five groups of 2 students and started rotating through five different stations. Everyone had a truck today, so no more sharing! The stations consisted of offset backing, straight backing, two different docking stations and a pre trip station.

After rotating through these stations at an hour each for seven hours today, we all got many chances to practice backing these trucks up. A big bonus today was that we used the same trucks that we will take all of our tests in for the harder stations. These trucks are newer, Freightliner Columbias, so they handle a lot differently than the driving range trucks which are the older FLD's.

Lots of great practice time behind the wheel today! We have been given July 4th off, mostly because the instructors are salaried and they would have lost the day, so day 6 will be on Sunday. Day 6 will be our last day in the classroom with some Hazmat testing and a Map reading class.

Today was a great day, we started with 10 students and we ended the day with 10 students. One thing to note about the end of day 5 is that we are now responsible for at least a portion of the tuition after today. There is a prorated formula for the tuition cost from now till the end of day 11, and I have listed it below.

Terminated on 0-5th business day of class $0 owed.
Terminated on 6th day of class $1020 owed.
Terminated on 7th day of class $1190 owed.
Terminated on 8th day of class $1360 owed.
Terminated on 9th day of class $1530 owed.
Terminated on 10th day of class $1700 owed.
Terminated on 11th day of class or later $3900 owed.

As a footnote, I am trying to post as much about my experience with Swift's Academy simply because I wish this information had been posted when I was trying to make my decision. I am not trying to convince anyone that Swift is the best choice for them, I simply believe that this information could help others that are trying to decide if Swift is right for them.

I would think if you're "terminated" at any point you shouldn't owe a dime. Maybe then they'd do a more extensive look into your past job history ect. Now if you go through the whole deal and decide it's not for you, them you just learned a $4000.00 lesson.

The word "Terminated" is the word they used in the contract. Simply put, if you leave or are sent home from school after day 5 you owe money.

That makes more sense.

Man, I don't know. I think it's a real ****ty time to be getting into this. I wish you all the luck though. I know what it's like to get your mind set on something no matter what.

Swift Training Academy Day 6
 

Let me start by saying that I will continue to post in this thread until I have completed my training. I do not plan on abandoning this thread as someone has suggested.

So today was day 6 of the training program, and it was the completion of our classroom time. We started the morning with a couple of videos on Hazardous Materials. These are some old videos that were produced for MS Carriers, but also pertain to Swift since they acquired MS Carriers.

The first video was informational only. Pretty much just the basics.
The second video took us about 2 hours to complete. The video would pause every few minutes so we could answer questions on the segment we just watched. The test was 50 questions, and everything was covered in the video. This was essentially an open book test, and we all passed with flying colors.

Next we had a map reading class that basically acquainted us with the atlas and how to read it. We spent about an hour on the tutorial and then took a test on maps. This test was a team effort where we could work as a group. 40 questions that tested the different skills to mapping. The questions asked us to determine the distance between multiple cities, find the shortest route, compute the fuel consumption, compute travel time and other such figures.
This test was rather detailed, with a lot of group discussions, but we all passed the mapping test.

Next we had a powerpoint presentation on a healthy lifestyle.

At the end of the classroom instruction, we completed out Trainers evaluation for classroom instruction.

The last 2 hours consisted of a lot of pictures and youtube style videos on drivers that made bad decisions. We saw a bunch of rolled trucks, a few guys that thought they could make it under a 12'4" bridge and other crash pictures.

Day 7 will continue with more range time were we will continue to practice for the skills test and pre-trip inspection.

Today was Sunday, we started with 10 students and finished with 10 students. http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tru...n_1square7.gif

I asked Vicki today and she said that Junior is currently going Solo in his KW T-2000. She does not know his truck number, but Mark the school manager will. Apparently he has a daily game called "Where is Junior at today". I will try and get that truck number from Mark for you.

Swift Training Academy Day 7
 

Nothing too exciting happened today! We started the day with an hour for pre-trips, then started training on the driving range with our assigned instructors that will get us through the rest of our training.

We went through the same stations that we have been doing for the last few days.

For the last two hours our instructor took us for a ride around the block. He explained the basics of shifting and gave us a demonstration.

Day 8 will start with another pre-trip, and then we will spend the rest of the day shifting.

Like I said, nothing exciting happened today. We did start with 10 students, the guy that joined us on Friday retested at the DMV and passed so he is going on to his orientation. Now our class has 9 students, but nobody got sent home.

Great reporting! Keep up the good work!

Seems you are getting a bit more 'show and tell' than we got when I went thru the school. Ed was the guy on the range, as all of the road instructors were busy with the previous weeks class. Ed and a couple others were 'range instructors' but we usually saw Ed the most. We were put into 4-person groups, and we'd rotate from 60' and 100' straight backs, and 2 alley docks. We weren't ever shown anything about (proper) shifting till day 1 on the road, where we did the "Lewiston 500".

So am I correct in reading that pay scale that subracting .01 per mile as you said, you are only starting at .25 per mile? Please tell me I am wrong on that.........:hellno:

It is what it is, i will just be happy to have a job.

You know, that is one thing that i somewhat laugh at. I'll sit in truck stops, or in terminals, or whatever, and guys complaining because some load they got is only paying them $1.20/mi.

Yeah, you get raped when you start out..........ANYWHERE. Doesn't matter what your profession you go into, you are going to start out much lower than where you'd be in a year or two. i forgot what i started at...might have been .26/cpm, but i've been here for 8 months, and now am up around .34/cpm on long haul loads, and anything under 300 or something, i'm getting .44. "OOoooohhh my..that sucks....you could do better going somewhere else...". Yeah, i COULD, but i chose this road, and there are no exits for the next 4-5 months. So what.....you're not living off my paycheck, i am. I am content with making $600/wk take home, sure..$1000 a week would be much better. Sooner or later i will be making that. But you've gotta start somewhere, yeah??

Be lucky to get a job in this industry regardless what it is. I've always said, dont like your job (whatever it might be)....quit and go somewhere else. there are 100 other people who desperately want your job.

Swift Training Academy Day 8
 

Today was day 8 of our 18 day training, and day 1 of shifting. We started out by heading over to Clarkston WA, which is just a couple of mile from Swifts Lewiston terminal.

Our instructor is a real nice guy. His name is Bob, he has been a driver for 15 years, with Swift for 10 years and a Trainer for about 2 years. Bob is a very calm/laid back kind of guy, but he is making sure that we know what we need to know. I can't even remember how many times he said for the test you need to do it like this, but in the real world it's a whole other story.

Anyways, he took us around what the call the Clarkston 500. It's the port of Clarkston where they have some nice wide streets, not a lot of traffic, and enough room to get the truck moving in 5th or 6th gear before you need to slow down. Spent 1.25 hours going around this course and getting accustomed to the way the truck moves when you are traveling faster than 2 miles per hour.

I was able to pick it up pretty quick. Of course I had my share of mistakes, but all in all it went very well. I felt very comfortable when Bob said it was time for my student teammate to take his turn at the wheel. My teammates name is Dave, and he is about as competent at this as I am. He was also able to get into a groove and only had a few problems shifting because he couldn't get his timing just right. Basically he kept trying to press the clutch to the floor, so he couldn't get into the next gear.

After Dave ran the same course for about 1.5 hours, Bob had him peel off and get onto a different road. This was a small two lane road that runs along the Snake River. Not a lot of traffic other than us, another Swifty, and a few motorcycles. The goal on this road was to get going a little faster, then slow down. Shifting through almost all the gears, but also getting an idea of the other obstacles while going at a slow enough speed where we could get comfortable. We took this road out 27 miles from the Lewiston terminal where we turned around and I took the wheel.

So now I am driving on a real road with guard rails, a few 4 wheelers, another Swifty student (stuck behind us), and a small construction zone. The purpose of this road, and this day was shifting. So I would get the truck up and into about 6th or 7th and then start slowing down and downshifting to 3rd. The instructor behind us wanted to get it going faster, so they were always real close behind and trying to push me faster but Bob said screw em we are shifting not driving highway. I even came to a complete stop and started out again in the middle of the road and hes like whats wrong? I said I just wanted to shift all the way down, and back up. He said cool, I just never had anyone do it on this road unless the messed up so bad they couldn't recover.

After lunch Dave started driving and Bob had him go through downtown Lewiston. Now we have lots of 4 wheelers, lights, intersections, and something we never encountered before, road signs. I started to see pretty quick from the back seat that Dave was still focused on shifting, so much so that he was missing the signs, and hitting the curbs. This gave me a great chance to learn from his mistakes. Dave drove for a long time on some windy two lane roads, with a few minor grades. He even got out onto the highway where he got to go through the weigh station.

We swapped over and I got to experience a bunch of windy streets that were more residential with slower speeds, some small inclines, stop signs and intersections and a few different obstacles. We still had a bit more time to spend driving around so Bob directed me to Highway 95, which is a 7% grade that they call Lewiston Hill. I asked him what gear I should take the hill at and he said "your the driver", so I said okay I will try 6th. This truck has a small load of concrete blocks and it weighs about 15,000. I was able to crawl up the hill at 25 mph in 6th gear, and he said that was exactly what I should have done. Half way up he said want to see something cool, and I'm like NO. He engaged the cruise control and said to take my foot off the accelerator. I proceeded to climb the rest of the hill at 25mph, about 1500 rpm with the cruise control on.

At the top of the hill, we turn around and start to head back down the hill. He already said let the engine do all the braking, so I was good with that. He said what gear are you going to go down this grade in. Since I read the book, I said 5th because I climbed the hill in 6th. Well I quickly learned that 5th was way to slow, and I shifted up to 6th. Took the hill all the way down in 6th and let the jake brake hold me back at about 28 mph.

I have to say that I was working this up to be a bigger deal in my head. I felt like I had real good control of that truck the entire time, and could have gone a little faster. At the end of the day when we got back to the academy he looked at us and said that we had just done the trip that he would normally have us doing on day 2 of shifting. I would say that we are doing fairly well, and he will have an even bigger challenge for tomorrow.

Now, we got back earlier than the other trucks, so I did not hear how it went for other students, but I am sure we will get all the horror stories in the morning. As far as I know, we still have the same 9 students that we had when we started out day 8.

.25 per mile is way beyond getting raped. i thought i was getting the shaft starting at .30 per mile 4 years ago. How do pay scales go backward over time. Yes i know, it's a job and you have to do something but .25 per mile to leave home and drive a truck is just depressing.

I say ditto to Kevin's response.
As for me, when you don't have a home it's not depressing when you leave.

Swift Training Academy Day 9
 

Today was day 9 of school, and day 2 of shifting. We spent about two and a half hours driving around town, and through the hills. A lot of different driving situations for us to experience.

This afternoon we spent an hour doing a Pre-trip practice test where I learned what I needed to practice even more. I was able to hit all the different parts, and did the inspection but I missed a lot of words and Washington wants to hear those words. So we will take the actual test for the school on day 10, and I will pass after more practice tonight.

Spent the next 3 hours on the range with backing, docking and offsets. I have a pretty good handle on the skills maneuvers, so I should do just fine there.

We did hear a few stories about the other students. Apparently there are a few that are getting on the instructors nerves with the way they are driving. It sounds like some of the instructors will be a little more anal so they can weed out a couple more students. Apparently one guy is getting in the sleeper and well he is sleeping. When he is not sleeping he is playing with the phone. Now add this to the fact that he is not doing so good with the driving, and he is about ready to get sent home.

Another student is having problems with managing the trailer. He is running over all the curbs, and getting real close to some 4 wheelers. Apparently the instructor needed to use the emergency brake to avoid an incident. The trailer was getting dangerously close to a sign when turning the corner.

So at the end of the day, I went back to the motel and surprise I have a new roommate. Only time will tell how this will go. Apparently he went home last week and is now returning so he can get more time shifting.

That is all I know! Started the day with 9 students, ended with 9 students and will ad the 10th on the morning of day 10.

I thought this would be a cool little addition to the thread. I downloaded a program called GPSED to my Blackberry. Started a tracker once we started driving. This tracker includes the driving that both Dave and I did on day 9.
day 9 | Author Ford390pwr | free Mobile GPS Tracking Service

Swift Training Academy Day 10
 

Today was day 10 and it was a great day to be in Lewiston, ID. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I love the weather here. In eleven days I have only seen a little rain, and has never been cold enough for long sleeves! I did not check the high temp today, but I bet it was about 85 degrees.

So, day 10 started on the range. Today was TEST day, and boy did that scare some of these people. So Dave (my team student), and I started with the 100' back and the offset back. We both passed with no problems and moved on to the 90 degree alley dock and 45 degree alley dock. Again we both passed and moved on to the Pretrip test.

On the pretrip we both did really well. I missed a few points, but squeaked by with a passing score. Dave did even better than I did, but he missed a step on the airbrakes test, so he will need to retest in the morning. Not a big deal, and he will make it just fine through that test.

After the pretrip test we moved on to learn how to couple and uncouple to a trailer. We both picked this up pretty quick and had a lot of fun with it. We even got to drive bobtail around the range so we could line up to the trailers from more than 5' away like all the other students were doing.

After lunch Bob, our instructor, threw me the keys and said let's go. We headed west on highway 12 to highway 127 and continued over to highway 26 in a town called Dusty where we traded seats and Dave drove. I logged 2 hours on line 4 and 74 miles today. This was a greatroad trip with a bunch of little hills and a few small towns to navigate through.

Now I turned on my GPS when Dave started driving in Dusty. He headed back over towards Highway 95, where he was able to run down the Lewiston Hill like I did on Tuesday. Dave logged 2 hours on line 4 and 79 miles of driving.

If anyone is interested, I have uploaded the GPS Tracker for today. I also shot a video from the back seat as Dave drove down the Lewiston Hill, but i will need to edit that a little bit before it is posted anywhere.
day 10 | Author Ford390pwr | free Mobile GPS Tracking Service

When we got back to the range we learned that all the other students spent the entire day on the range trying to pass the tests. As far as we could learn, everyone has taken the tests and a few need to retest in the morning. I will have more information on that later.

For our team today was a fun and rewarding day where we got off the range and out on the road. For everyone else it was just another hot day driving circles and practicing their backing skills. We started day 10 with 10 students, and when we went home there were still 10 students, so all in all it was a good day for everyone.

Good thread, I have always enjoyed reading peoples day to day progress and travels on here. Keep it coming.