Swift ripoff scam dishonest Phoenix Arizona
Swift sucks
1) They do not pay practical miles. They pay off Ran mcnally, a system that rips you off on actual miles driven. So you end up working for free half the time.
2) The truck they gave me constantly breaks down. The opt idle has not worked correctly in over a year and a half, so I never get a good nights sleep. When I asked them for a newer better truck, after trying to have it fixed at 10 different terminals, they simply tried to give me a truck that had more miles on it, and was in worse shape then the piece of crap I was driving.
3) You are treated as just another number, with no respect at all. All they care about is keeping the truck moving. If it breaks down on you, you have to call their on road department who will put you on hold for hours, then try and tell you how to fix the truck yourself, before calling someone to come fix it. They will not reimburse you for your hours of waiting on cell phone. One time no one ever got back to me, and no one came to fix the truck till a day later, while I was left at side of freeway with no air conditioning in 120 Arizona heat.
4) When your truck is in one of their terminals being fixed, which will be most of the time, you have to beg people for a hotel room, and half the time, they will try to give you keys to some dirty filthy truck to go sleep in instead of springing for a hotel. If you get to hotel, each place will take payment differently. They tell you, you need a p.o. number or a com check, or a voucher, or it will be put on your fuel card. Ect.. So after calling your terminal that doesn't answer their phone, you are left with no way to get a room, unless your rich, and you will be below the poverty level driving for Swift. By chance you get lucky, and some how they spring for the hotel, the money is automatically taken out of your check and you are not usually reimbursed for any of it. Unless you put up a huge fight and call pay roll, then they will pay you back maybe like a month later.
I sent in my hotel receipts once with trip pack, did everything I was suppose to do to get money back, and I called weeks later and asked why I didn't get hotel money back, and the lady said I hadn't circled the price on the receipt . Un f***ing believable the crooks these people are.
5) When your truck is in the shop, they will rip you off on what is suppose to be your break down pay, 50 dollars a day after the first 24 hours of being in shop. They just simply wont pay you any break down pay unless you talk to you driver manager, who then has to talk to payroll, then they investigate it for weeks, while your paycheck is 150 dollars.
6) They will tell you to take pre plans that were suppose to have delivered days ago and claim you wont get a service failure if you take it. So you take it and you get a service failure. It makes no sense.
7) You will always be broke working for them, so you will always need a 100 dollar driver advance every week just to get by. You can get one a week. Yet you get your paycheck, and each week they have taken out for 2 driver advances instead of one. - 200 dollars, plus their fee for cashing it another 10 dollars.
8) If your truck breaks down and you are under a pre plan that delivers local the next day. They will refuse to let you t call it even if your truck is in the shop. They will give you a loner truck, that way they screw you out of getting break down pay, because they will say you were under a load and working.
9) If you have a family emergency and need to take a leave of absence. They don't give a flying s**t what is going on with your family. I have never dealt with such cold people in my life. They will demand to know when you can come back to work, next they will demand their truck be brought to nearest terminal and you fill out all the paper work for leave of absence, and you get something in the mail days later saying leave of absence denied, telling you to call your driver manager and get back to work right away.
10) They will give you a load with no time on it to deliver. You ask when it can be delivered, and they will say appointment was put off for another day. So you sit another day not getting paid, and still they have no appointment time, so they will just tell you to go to final at 8 a.m., you get there and some security guy tells you your appointment is at 4 p.m. and swift will refuse to take the load off you, and make you wait another entire day till 4p.m. with no explanation as to what happened. They will also send you to pick up loads at places after hours, you get there and no one speaks English and no one knows anything about the load that was suppose to be getting you home after being on the road for a month. They tell you to stay put at customers, and they never get back to you, but this time there is no where to park at only truck stop in town. So you are left tired, broke, frustrated, stuck in traffic at midnight after a 14 hour day, where you maybe only made 20 dollars for that day.
11) they will sometimes laugh in your face if you are in phoenix and ask for a load home. If you are in phoenix they will claim the only freight they have is to California. So they get you stuck in California doing small little 300 mile runs everyday up and down California, making no miles or money at all. Then they will finally send you back to phoenix, only to get your there, and force you to go back to California. Most all of your paychecks will be under 4oo dollars a week no matter how hard you try and run.
Bill
huntsville, Texas
U.S.A.
Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Swift Transportation
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Tammy
Albemarle,North Carolina,
U.S.A.
I know what you went through Bill. Been there too.
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Fri, January 12, 2007
Hi Bill,
I have endured all the same crap you went through in 2 weeks. I remember getting a load delivered to Mattoon,Illinois and we went up there with no heat and it was raining. Husband took me to orientation in Greer in the beat up rig they assigned him, but the heat did work. I was walking up to my husband at the shop that morning before class and the shop foreman (whatever they call themselves), made a nasty remark to my husband as I approached. He said, "Thanks buddy, there goes my raise!" I asked my husband what that was about and he said they got mad at him because my husbands driver manager was nice enough to put my husband in hotel the night before. The shop foreman said my husband should had slept in the truck instead of wasting company money.
The Opt Idle didn't work either. My husband would had froze that night. So we put the truck in the shop for various repairs. The switch that regulated the heat didn't work. Instead of repairing the switch. A$$wipes turned the valve off in the engine compartment. I knew about 2 of them and tried to turn them on half way to Illinois. We spent almost 2 days freezing. After we dropped the load. We got a hold of our DM and asked to get it fixed. Almost an hour later she responded. They directed us to a repair facility in Effingham, Illinois. The repair guy came out and we opened the hood and he found the valve had been shut off.
Our opt idle didn't work either. The control in the sleeper was busted and we had to take turns at night sitting at the wheel keeping the truck running at high idle to keep the truck warm. That same day. We told them we were at our final destination and later reported we were finished and ready to roll. They had us stand by. We went to a near-by truckstop and kept bugging them to get a load. It was after 6pm and nothing. By 10pm I gave up and went to get ready to go to sleep. By 11pm. I was just about asleep and the Qualcom kept beeping. I finally got out from under my warm covers and went to see what the beeping was all about. They sent us a preplan. I started preplanning the route from Gurnee Illinois to somewhere in New Jersy. Just as I got all my route mapped.
I got another message that that preplan was canceled. I was mad. So I started to get up and return back to bed and the Qualcom started beeping again. I went to see what it was about and the dispatch told me about some load that was already late being picked up in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was already close to 12 midnight. The load was suppose to be delivered to Forest Park Illinois at 4am that same morning. It was really hot and she needed someone to bravely go get it and promised me a load to California if I took it. I got up and had husband drive almost all the way there. Mind you, I hadn't slept in over 24 hours already.
My husbands time ran out when we got there and the Qualcom beeped we had to hurry. It was already almost 5am. Remember, we had to drive from Effingham, Illinois to Indianapolis. We didn't leave Illinois til 12:30am. I drove that late load all the way to it's destination and got caught up in rush hour traffic and a bad construction zone. I know you may know it. Highway 294/290 going into Chicago. It was a mess. I got the late load to it's destination and d**n near collapsed. It was almost 1pm when we got out of there. We had our California pickup about 40 miles north of us and we had to be there at 2pm. Hell the consigner was already giving us hell over a late load that wasn't our fault and we got blamed for it. They had the nerve to ask us why we were so late delivering that load.I told them to tell that to the person that was suppose to deliver the load in the first place.
The receivers were rude to my husband. We got through that and was told we couldn't take a trailer. We had less than a hour to get to Gurnee Illinois by this time. I practically begged the company to let us take the empty. She finally got annoyed and let us go. We got to Gurnee on time and husband backed into the dock at 2:15pm. They didn't finish loading us til about 10:30pm that night. Hell I just went into the sleeper about 6:30pm and went to sleep. I had been awake for over 44 hours. I just collapsed.I hadn't eaten since I left the house 2 days before. Just wanted to get there and get this hot load off our hands. Pick up the other one and go park somewhere for the night, and SLEEP. Food came the next morning. If I didn't need the money. I would had told the dispatch to find someone else. We got loaded and headed to California. You can read about the rest of the hell we went through on the recent complains on here about Swift.
I loved the work. It's just some of the people in this company has not a d**n clue to what they are doing. I am not afraid of hard work and I think they saw that. They wanted me to stay on with them after they fired my husband. My husband said he wouldn't had gotten up to take that load. He had gotten used to driving solo for a couple of months before I joined him. He slept at night and drove during the day. While he was on the road. I couldn't sleep. So I got used to not sleeping at night. I did most of the night driving. I preferred night driving. It was a little more dangerous. My first time on the road driving a rig. My first day. I drove in heavy traffic in Chicago. I drove construction traffic. I drove in very heavy rains going through some mountains in Missouri at night. I drove in High winds that nearly took my hood off. I had my husband tape the latches on the hood down and went on. All I saw was tumbleweeds and highway stripes that night. I drove into Los Angeles at rush hour. Hey I'm not bragging, but I had never really operated a stick shift before this truck training. I had always driven automatic vehicles. I drove big transit buses, but were automatic. You know. I am a truckers daughter. I used to go with my dad when I was young. I always wanted to be like my dad. He's a 40 year veteran truck driver and a dang great one at that. I admired him.
Now Swift has screwed us over. Go read my complaints and see. Too much too rewrite. I am so disgusted at Swift. I gave up my job to be with my husband and now we are about to become homeless. I have a job interview in the morning and a trucking company just emailed me and said my application had been approved. Hopefully my luck is about to change. I just hope for the best.
You seemed to have went through the same things we did. I have read so many same like stories. We all need to do something. I am 48 years old and just can't see these companies walk over people like us. I have a dream too!
Take care Bill. Hope you have had better luck my friend.