Hard to tell. That rating comes from members here. I think Swift gets a bad rap mainly due to its size. With 19,000 drivers, give or take a few, there is going to more accidents and more complaints. But, the rating does surprise me considering the number of disgruntled current and ex Swift drivers that post.
Swift gets a bad rap becuse of many things.
1.) they hire many new drivers that have never drove a truck. When you are mostly a training company you will have many mishaps.
2.) mentors, there are many good ones out there, including my old mentor but there are many bad ones out there as well. All you need to have to become a mentor is 6 mos experience and no preventables. The requirements might be more extensive but 6 mos is not enough time in my book for someone to have what it takes to train.
3.) as new drivers, they aren't familiar with many of the common cortosies that many truckers give each other and apear rude, eather by thier own choosing, or just lack of experience.
there are many others but these are 3 that come to the top of my head
In my opinion Swift got a bad rap because they grew too fast without implementing policy. Instead policy emerged from middle management.
There are a few very bad polices (in my opinion) that came from the top that effect Swift. A general business policy of providing the cheapest freight rates possible and grow as fast as possible is one. Yes through an economy of scale and being large so you can negotiate the best prices for things like fuel, replacement parts, etc, but, Swift also uses a business case of hiring the cheapest labor. You are big already and now you have to grow even faster to keep up with the cheap contracts you have written. That means cutting more cost in a vicious circle. It is one thing to hire newbies .. it is quite another to put in place an infrastructure to enable these newbies to be successful.
Management is horrible and many DM's have little patience or a clue. So you hear of horror stories. There are no checks and balances in the system to ensure the integrity of the DM's .. so drivers quit. (Well above and beyond the usual high turnover reasons)
Let me provide an example. Gordon trucking measures the DM not only on on-time service, and fleet utilization but also measures home time. If a DM does not on average get their drivers home forhome time requests .. they do not get their bonus. Swift as of 2006 does not have such check and balances. Instead the DM is strictly measured on fleet utilization. So you hear of horror stories of 6 weeks on the road no home time or some stupid bullsh*t.
You see lots of posts that provide evidence -- especially around training.
The plus is that they have lots of freight and I understand will keep you moving.
I do not work for Swift .. these opinions come from a business study I did awhile ago and following up occasionly.
and I do work for swift and will back what you said. Pay has gone up but the other parts remain as you said prety much. Last DM I had didn't get me miles but I always got home, this DM I curently work for gets me plenty of miles but home time is minimal.
The same labor will be available to every company. Don't think for a minute that when the number crunchers find a way to show bigger profits they won't be jumping on the bandwagon too. To think otherwise is just naive.
Right now I kind of doubt it will hapen, now swift does have a tex-mex group that drives south of the border where we can't drive and they are from mexico. I don't think they can do what you are saying but you are right, if they could they would.
