Complaint Review: Swift Transportation / American Truckaway

Many years back in Portland, OR I fell for an add placed by Swift Trans saying make up to $52/yr working out of Dublin, VA.    Needless to say it was very misleading if not false.    I witnessed a bad end of Swift that some drivers might never see such as missing major expenses while doing this type of work and I was incurring expenses going into Canada and finding a motel/hotel room at night before being flown back to Dublin, VA the next day and even then it was anywhere from a 24-48 hour turnaround for the next load.

On top of that you were only paid for one way trips with no flat deadhead rate of pay to even make this profitable.   Where the project might have been heading eventually was transporting drivers back via private motor coach and didn't stick around long enough to see that even take effect.

In regards to Swift missing major expenses every other trip, this occured for about 3 months before I started auditing and finding out what was going on.  I kept detailed records of my trips and expenses and managed to get reimbursed and that is something I should never have had to do on my home time but had to get my finances in order.

Bottom line is I was working for a very disorganized company and saw the s**t end of the stick with American Truckaway.   Any experienced driver Swift might have hired in 2004 was lost due to a lot of internal B.S. and more than likely shorting drivers on expenses where it was just not profitable for anyone.   To be honest, I would have not gone out there in the first place had they treated their experienced personnel right.

I'm sure other drivers claim Swift is great but they just don't know about some of their botched operations which have cost the company time and money.  My reason for leaving was pretty accurate as I was dissatisfied with the job and lack of training and the way they decked one truck to the truck I was driving set me up for an accident that would have been preventable had they decked the truck I was hauling cab first rather thain tail end.

My reasons for leaving were valid but lesson learned, don't quit in Dublin, VA unless you want to be transported back to your home via Greyhound.  What happened the day I quit was that my next load was not ready and they would not allow me to go out and find my truck.  I really got tired of the waiting game and all the BS with the missed expenses on every other trip and when confronted in the yard, I decided the operation was not worth it to me and that ended my realtionship with Swift Transportation.

To anyone entering the trucking industry, it is not as profitable as it once was with these general frieght companies and you can also thank the U.S. govt. and insurance carriers for making it worse for drivers wanting to succeed.   The industry itself has become a closed industry and putting your time in for 2+ years and then taking many years off to try something else seems to destroy a worker's chances of getting hired on anywhere due to the recent experience restrictions imposed upon the companies by the insurance carriers.

I doubt today's trucking industry will ever change in favor of the driver.  Too much corruption and hard to say with the flow of cheap labor into the country (i.e. immigrants) which guarantee wages will always be low with a continuous pool of newbies to choose from.  Eventually something will give and hopefully more people will become away but a lot of these general freight companies may very well go the way of Arrrow Trucking and someone will f**k it up and that will be the end will zero bailouts.   Need to break up these major general freight companies and make it profitable again for the independents (wishful thinking).

Be safe out there!