Swift Transportation Services review: poor treatment mentorship program 11

My opinion only... there are other companies out there like US X press, JB Hunt, CRS, ext with tons of complaints... Swift has very little complaints from employees compared to the above "driver grinders". I have been researching trucking companies for new hires and I am finding Swift as being highly recommended and reputable. Swift has a ton of drivers with very little complaints... It also sounds like Darian you are blaming others for not knowing what to do at the weigh stations. That is your fault. You should have asked more questions or asked other truckers in the industry for assistance. I mean come on Darian, you waited 9 hours before your training was completed and you brought up the fact you were not familiar with the scales? As far as all the GPS crap... You could have purchased a Thomas Brothers map for less then $20 dollars. Sounds like you are coming up with excuses instead of ensuring you were properly trained and blaming others. Most people do not get ANY time off for "family issues." 3 days seems to be reasonable, unless you had a death in the family or a family member in the hospital. Companies generally do not give time off. Especially if you were a newbee. If they gave you 3 days it sounds like it was a gift.

Darian, Really, you never had a chance to speak with your driver manager without your mentor around. Sounds like an excuse to me. Did your mentor follow you into the crapper as well? You could have not emailed your DM?

Jeff, you should have asked more questions about operating the trailer. The trailers do have operations manuals. You could have read the manual, figured it out... practiced with the equipment on down time on your own until you figured it out. Or called your DM. Unless your mentor was attached to your hip, you have no excuse. If you could not do the job due to the injury of your arm, then you should have notified your DM, or quit. You did not meet the physical requirements for the job which made you a safety issue.

Darian and Jeff... Your excuses are lame. Perhaps it is true that you both received bad mentors. So what! Suck it up... You must take responsibility for your own training. If it was that bad for both of you, you should have been on the phone day 1 with your DM. Sounds like both you guys are blaming the company for your failure to succeed and accepting no responsiblity. Trucking is not for everyone... and trucking companies do not like whiners or people that make up excuses for thier own failures. I mean.. come on Darian.. you wanted time off and you were only with the company less then 6 weeks... They still gave you 3 days and you still complained... Darian and Jeff, if you don't want to work hard or expect everyone to hold your hand in trucking industry, then you are in the wrong business. Go work at Mc Donalds. Then again, you might not like that because you would have to work.

wow.

i post a valid complaint and i get called names and accused of not working hard?

perhaps you will find the following enlightening:

my background, previous to swift was delivering flooring materials. have you ever done that? i thought so. if you had you'd know that flooring materials are heavy, and often have to be hand carried into job sites. obviously not the sort of job somebody who didn't want to work hard, or who had a severe handicap would do. especially not if the company felt he was a safety hazard. truly a different type of work than swift's drop and hook where the driver touches no freight. and once somebody demonstrated how to operate the tandem lever, i had no problem demonstrating that i was physically capable of doing that task.

if i can be faulted for anything here it is in assuming that my mentor actually wanted to train me. and not knowing the questions to ask about what i was doing. that's what a mentor is supposed to do. show me the ropes, teach me the things i need to know to perform the job safely. sadly, he didn't do that...

no, i've found another company who trained me properly, and am doing well. and in the process, making more money than i would have if i'd have stayed at swift for 10 years. in parting, coinsider that swift starts drivers at 26cpm, gypsum express starts them at 37cpm, and most companies seem to fall in between but much closer to gypsum than swift.

Sounds like you failed in training because you did not ask the right questions. It was your fault you did not ask the right questions. It was your fault you failed in your training. Stop blaming others for YOUR failure. The Mentor can not read your mind... Sounds like you don't want to take any responsibilty for your failure... Good luck...

are you sure you aren't a swift recruiter?

hmmm. first i was lazy and didn't want to work. now i am at fault for not asking questions i didn't know to ask. when in doubt the company is always right. i get it. and my son is also at fault for not asking about pythagorean theorum when being taught what a triangle is. don't you think i was asking questions about the things i realized i didn't understand. don't you also realize that mentor are paid 46 cpm for ALL miles driven during training. that's a powerful incentive to push trainees into team driving before they're ready. the mentor's job is to train. mine didn't. it isn't about reading minds. it is about seeing what your trainee is having trouble with and finding out why.

luckily, there are other companies who take driver development seriously. my advice to others is to seek out these companies and leave swift alone. you will be much better equipped to be on the road if you do.

wow. this is interesting.

your increasingly hostile and belligerent attitude indicates to me that somehow, somewhere you have a personal stake in this. otherwise, why bother. it also indicates a shoot the messenger attitude towards anybody who doesn't agree with you. if you noticed, i haven't insulted you no matter what the provocation, but instead calmly stated my experiences. you on the other hand keep insisting " no that's not what happened, you are to blame." i am not going to comment further as there is nothing to add. others reading this can decide for themselves whether histrionic rantings are more credible than the experiences of those who were actually there.

Jeff,

Today is 3-8-13. You posted 9-9-11. Nothing has changed. I have not seen anything at this site going back before 2008. I obtained my CDL from Professional Drivers Institute in New Buffalo, MI [protected]. I highly HIGHLY recommend the school. They not only were professional, but sincere in their training. The staff was fantastic in helping in every way. The motel was not the Ritz, but was clean, with mini-fridge and microwave. My initial plan was to team drive with an ex-girlfriend. (That would have been a MAJOR mistake. I always knew she was a flirt but after I saw how she was around so many men I about ###. I come to pick her up after she completed a week after I did, only to find her drunk and dancing for two other men in their room. Not someone you want to be out on the road with. I could see me with a gun to my head in some truck stop in BFE. She goes in and dick teases some dude and the guy decides he’s gonna get some of that one way or the other. That’s a whole other nightmare. My reason for writing is as follows.)

It took me until September to actually give the driving training a try. A recruiter for CRST said they would train me for solo training. I went to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA. For a refresher course. Another very good facility and staff. 2 out of 2 ain’t bad. Then the ### starts. At CRST I was told it is all team driving. This site has many complaints about team driving situations. My “roomies” were “team drivers” whose team had quit and they were sent back to Cedar Rapids to wait for another driver to team with. After a few days, I get a trainer and we head out. 1st day out he drives and talks. No training and little talked about in terms of driving related conversation. Day 2 I am behind the wheel. “here’s some money for the tolls and watch for the weigh station. What weigh station and where will it be? No trip planning, fueling discussion, toll instructions, nothing. Then he’s off to sleep. Same thing everyday. For everyday of the next 2 weeks I received no (as in none, nada, not one F’ing bit) training. No backing, no docking, no city, no, Qualcomm, no trip planning, no fueling, no drop and/or hook, etc. NOTHING. Oh, wait I apologize. 2 days before I stepped down in Arizona (I live in Michigan), I drove all 10 hours of the daytime driving. I was told to enter no driving time in my logbook. That did not set right, because I thought I had remembered fro my PDI training that falsifying the logbook was a felony. Yes, I did it too. The day I did step down was because the trainer told me I would be heading back to Cedar Rapids to get my “team driver”. WAIT what is that ### all about? I was told it would be 4-6 weeks with a trainer OTR. I was not at that time, nor in just another 6 days be ready to drive team let alone solo. I had been taught NOTHING. I had been used as a mileage mule. The trainers receive extra pay to be a trainer but they also get their CPM pay. He made of like a bandit. Don’t get me wrong he was a nice guy but in no way a trainer. Now after several weeks of taking my time to check things out better I see “trainers” from all the companies I have researched have the same or very similar pay plans. The incentive is not there to train new drivers. The incentive is to use trainees as mileage mules. Nothing seems to have changed since 2007. AGAIN WAIT, again I am mistaken. Things have changed. FOR THE WORSE. I have been looking and entering every truck company I have seen and heard of in this complaint site. UNBELIEVEABLE!. I have not found one single company that has no complaints filed here. 90% of them for schooling scam issues. Of those 90%, 90% of them involve tuition scams, housing in bug infested (as I said mine were decent places which seem to be the exception or simply before the companies found a way to save another 5-10 bucks) overcrowded rooms, poor classroom and field instruction issues. Then the companies find any and all excuses to dump drivers who do ask questions and stick them with the contracts they hide until the unsuspecting trainee ends up clear across the country in BFE> This even though there is a school within 500 miles of where they actually live. That's kind of strange in itself. Wonder why? Oh yeah get the sucker over a barrel. In any case, the reason I wrote Jeff is to assure you this has been going on for years and continuously gotten worse. WHY? Because as was in my case the state paid for my schooling. My experience in that area of things was good and legit. Thing is though since then the schools have found ways to circumvent the system and scam the government and/or the unsuspecting, already over a barrel financially strapped and desperate “student”.

Now the real inspiration in my writing. Your situation and correspondence with Commander Blue Balls. What an ### hole! If he is not a recruiter than he should be. What a ### shoveler. “I have been researching trucking companies…..” my ###. All one has to do is type in a companies name here to see he lives in a deep dark cave. As I said before I have researched, enough to see this industry has gotten far worse in the last 7 years. Type in any of the major and now even many of the lesser-known trucking company names. I typed in CRST, Stevens, Covenant, Sisbro, C.R. England, Swift, U.S. Express, P.A.M. J.B. Hunt, Super Service, Western Freight, Trans Am, USA, and 3 or 4 others. On this site and pissedcustomers.com and some other sites the absolute major issues is the schooling scams. In addition, they do so with the governments blessing and help. No oversight or insight, in sight. The phenomenal crookedness is just that. Phenomenal.

Commanderbig(BLUE)balls is like the old elementary school playground bully. He seems to come across like that redneck hillbilly in Deliverance. You know the guy that says, “You sure do got a purty mouth. Squeal like a pig.” His mentality is such. Right from the get go when he responded with his ignorance shows his character. He seems to think that by insulting, belittling, badgering and bullying he can make his statements valid and true. He acts like a certain political party in this country. I bet you I could tell you his. People like him think that they are superior. He’s a self-proclaimed Commander. Hitler only made corporal in WW1, but became a commander, so what does that say about the title he chose for himself. Very angry individual. People like him are a dime a dozen. Self-proclaimed “Commanders” do not intimidate me. I am the son of a “Command Sergeant Major”. (A true Commander does so with understanding, compassion as well as experience and knowledge) Talk about invoking a sense of intimidation (God rest your soul Dad.). In any case, Jeff the thing he seems to overlook is the trainer’s responsibilities for the added wages he receives to train. How does a trainee know what questions to ask in a field that he is trying to learn? Talk about calling people idiots. His comments reflect his own idiocy. There was no call for him to take the offensive stance other than he felt like being the stereotypical redneck driver from days of old. Before the trucking industry had become so complex. To those of us who want to learn, learn properly and drive within the laws and safety concerns of everyone on the road he exemplifies what is wrong in the industry. Belligerence, pig headedness, short sightedness, and simply a ###.

I have resigned myself to the fact that this is a dirty and criminal industry. And, that even those that could make the changes, refuse to address those concerns and issues. That said, I wish to hell I could find just one legitimate company more concerned with getting the job done the way jobs used to get done. Safely and correctly. He talks about hard work and then only sees hard work as sitting in a cab for 10-12 hours, turning a crank, standing on a dock, hanging out in truck stops, looking for a date with a lot lizard. Hard work also comes with dedication to learning how to do a job well, safely as well as profitably for the driver, company and the public. Hang in there Jeff if you decide to keep trying. Post the name of a company that is good as well as legit if you should ever come across one.

Another discouraged licensed useless CDL-A holder

My husband works for swift, yes he gets all the **** about it but they work well with him and it pays our bills so no complaints. He does otr. The last time I was out with him we came across 2 swift drivers who knew absolutely nothing it pissed my hubby off so bad that after a yr and a half of turning down mentorship he finally accepted. He couldn't believe that the trainers did that all about the money bs. Now he's going to become a mentor the extra money will be nice but it came second to my hubby he wants to teach these new drivers all the stuff he can so that when they get off his truck they won't be like what we came across. That's his main concern, me as the wife money is mine lol. So hopefully a few more drivers will step up like my hubby and train to teach and not for the money.