You see many posts on Facebook regarding Swift trucking and their accidents and mishaps, Are they really that bad they make Stobbart and Warberers look good, Whats the real story
Social media does Swift no favours with stuff like: “What’s the difference between a Swift driver and a toilet?-A toilet can always back-up.” But it is a huge fleet with a noticeable livery so any mishap doesn’t go unnoticed. I don’t think their incident-to-truck ratio is any greater than average. My personnel dealings with Swift drivers leads me to believe they are mostly inexperienced and lack training in the finer points of truck-driver decision making and etiquette.
I once found myself parked next to a Swift driver with flat batteries; who was re-setting his driving hours and hadn’t started the truck for two days. He had bitten the bullet and bought some jump-cables. He asked nicely and I was happy to give him a boost. He was a nice guy who had just retired from the prison service after 30 years as a guard. He had a good pension but wanted to see the World so had got his Class 1 CDL. He was from UP Michigan, Swift are from Phoenix, Arizona, and we were in Houston, Texas. He hadn’t been home for 2 months since he started but was loving every minute of his new career. He admitted it was a very steep learning curve and was learning from his mistakes. He was grateful for my help and would have given me his home address, saying I should pop in for coffee, until he realized he was never at home any more. An older newcomer to the road transport industry and not untypical for Swift or anybody else.
To put it into perspective, Waberers operate 4,300 trucks which is a lot. Swift transportation, on the other hand, currently operates an astonishing 19,600 trucks and an even more astonishing 57,300 trailers!
wire:
To put it into perspective, Waberers operate 4,300 trucks which is a lot. Swift transportation, on the other hand, currently operates an astonishing 19,600 trucks and an even more astonishing 57,300 trailers!
They brought a load of cardboard boxes into a yard next to ours. Driver dropped the trailer on a door, unhitched and drove off. Trailer was unloaded, parked up and Swift got notified.
Almost 3yrs later they turned up for the trailer.
Every company has bad and stupid drivers, as mentioned above, it’s the size of the company that makes the percentage of accidents look so bad, trouble with Swift’s is that decent drivers do not want to work for a company that has such a bad reputation, they pay disgustingly low wages for a start and they have to employ in experienced young drivers, they do not train them properly and then send them out on the road driving a 72 ft long 40 ton truck, these kids have no idea what they are doing most of the time and it attracts bad publicity, even more so when we see things on the back of every trailer telling us how they employ only the safest drivers ‘Award winning’ as the signs say. Swift’s do have some very good and highly experienced guy’s but we rarely see them, I have lost count of the times I have had to take evasive action to avoid being wiped out by their young idiots. It’s because the company is so huge that we see so many of their trucks in accidents.
I recall crossing the Susquehanna river on route 30 near Lancaster one day and having a Swift truck overtaking me and it had a guy sleeping in the passenger seat, the driver moved over on me and forced me to stand on the brakes to avoid being pushed over the side and into the river, seeing the number for comments on the back I actually called the company to complain and was told that it was because the driver was new and was being trained, so please excuse the incident, I asked if the trainer was the guy sleeping ?
