Profile For Mike F.

are you honestly going to tell me you never stretched in your seat, late at night with no traffic. Reached behind the seat (grabing that jug) to get some juice. Drive with both hands on the wheel when not shifting. I could go on. This video states "we can monitor your bad subconscious behaviors and work with you on correcting them." What does that say to you?

Now we at least know part of the reason you're horrified of this concept. Any other dangerous habits that will remove your CDL?

Iv got an illustration for you. Say you had cameras monitoring every angle outside, and the truck is operating in a 100% safe manner. Now a car comes and hits the truck, and there is no way to avoid being hit by said car. Do you really think it helps the driver of the truck to have his in cab camera scrutinized by a safety guy that drives a desk all day?

In the video it states that this will be a "in cab coach"; well I'd like to think my 3 yr w/o any accidents earns me the right to work for someone who can have just an ounce of faith in me.

And another thing, someone said it will only affect the driver if they leave the company. Not true! Driver retention is huge these days, especially ones who do lots of miles, on time and crash free. If a company like Swift loses, or scares them away, who are you gonna get to fill those seats? Even more rookies. It's a self fulfilling prophecy if you ask me.

If been wanting to try out a non-starter carrier for a while now, I guess when they install the camera they can also install a new driver from the training farm too.

I'm not being paranoid about saying the "Plus One" system is about not trusting drivers. They basically tell you that during the sales pitch. They tell you they used to tell the drivers the appointment windows but they were finding that a lot of drivers would wait until the last minute to deliver a load. And sometimes they would end up late because of it. Instead of telling you the window they try to come up with what would be the quickest you could deliver the load within the windows and then tell you those are the appointment times. It's kind of infuriating sometimes because they seem to assume you don't need to ever stop to use the restroom and they don't always factor in that you need fuel and very often they don't care about you running out your 14 while you sit on a dock. As long as you get the load delivered on time that's all they care about. There have been 3 times that I've turned down a load because it either delivered after my 14 would be up or I'd run out of hours on the dock only to get a nasty message from a planner saying, "What do you mean you don't have the hours? I'm showing you have plenty of time on your 11." (I swear some planners either are completely unaware of the 14 hour clock or think it restarts as soon as you pick up a load.) Anyway, I digress. The sales pitch for the Plus One system is that it will get you 1 extra load a week. (By forcing you to run as close to 14 hours a day as possible.) But when you really look at it, it only helps lazy drivers get more miles and helps Swift keep lazy drivers running. It actually just hurts motivated drivers. I want miles and more pay. I'm going to pick up and deliver a load as quickly as I can legally. If I didn't have to guess what the appointment windows were I could negotiate better schedules and keep running more easily. I know there have to be a lot of loads I've lost by guessing wrong on which way to negotiate. So, once again, I'm kind of handcuffed in what I can do. I've tried calling in to find out what the windows actually are, but unless I talk to my own DM, I usually get, "Those are the appointment times." Why? Because, not knowing me, they assume I'm asking because I want to deliver it later or something.

You can just cal and ask what the del time is, +1 is usually drop and hook anyway which rarely get rejected for early drop, or even pu for that matter. You need to stop trying to follow all the set out rules to a t and try being more creative. In anothet post you said they wolnt let you grab a trailer from a terminal if theres not one there? So did you just end up living there? No there probably was a trl there you just didnt see it, if therez really not one there jist drive over to tje terminal, as long as your average miles dont go over 10% of hub I promise you won't get a slap on the wrist. Good luvk buddy

Hey so Im a driver for swift and I have a couple tips for you. I would imagine these are things that would aply to all mega fleet drivers though. Tip 1. Your wasting far too much time finding trl, I call my disppatcher if I dont have a response to the qcom in 10 min, or if im just in a hurry. Plus any DL can help with that. Also ask a hostler where MT are. If im sitting around especially at a cust ill be proactive in finding a load anf not judt wait to get auto disp ( if my 14 is ticking ill just call and not wait for a qcom response). Tip 2 having a load thats 600 miles and del 2 days later ill ask if I can tcall it of if it can del early, if not, ill reject it ( swift isnt a forced dis company) . Tip 3 if you get a load where it looks like your gonna lose your ass cause of short miles or a overly long time to del with a closed window, call you DL and just politely ask if they can back you up with a better load once you del, if they say ill try, then you have somthing to talk about the next time you get a crap load ; ) Hoppe some of this helps, oh also try to get a sense of where the freight is moving at ( and more importantly where its not) Iv flat out rejected a load untill I got a back haul just to avoid being stuck for a day or more. Swift reallly isnt a bad company if you know how to play the system, if you just sit back and let the computer run your life your truck will sit and your wallet will be empty . Unfortunately the driver has to figure that one out, the company wolnt so it for you. And one last thing, if you happen to have a DL who inst going to work with you, bring it up with the big boss ( fortunate ly iv never had t hat happen) I heard the new boston terminal is a nightmare, I saw you mentioned adetroit?