Swift 1 Year Review: CDL Training

hello myers team trucking here coming to you from phoenix arizona at our lovely um headquarters here i am excited to announce that i've been with swift now for a year and thought it'd be fun to do a couple of review videos today i decided to tackle the review of their training program so a little bit of background information my wife and i actually drove team for warner back in 2008 and then um that's a whole nother story in itself and maybe i'll do a video on that but we ended up leaving the field and my wife kept her cdl but i did not because at the time i didn't think i was going to get back in the trucking again so my first piece of advice if for some reason you're thinking about leaving trucking don't let your cdl go just renew your cdl and keep it because you never know you know things change in life you might find yourself back behind the wheel again so the onboarding process itself was really super easy the online application is very easy to fill out um you have to you have to sign up for and give them permission to check your your drug and alcohol record through that clearinghouse but that wasn't hard to do and my recruiter was joshua i forgot his last name but he did a fantastic job of walking us through and getting us lined up so as far as our cdl training i did my training in memphis tennessee which is another one of their terminals expect to spend three to four weeks there um if you progress well and you're ready for your test it takes about three weeks if you need a little more time they do give you more time to get ready to take it so [Music] i did my training in the summer it was july and you are required to wear long pants so that was maybe one of my little complaints there was that it was hot and muggy and um i did all right i drank lots of water i actually brought along an umbrella to help shade me from the sun a little bit but the very last day i did feel a little bit of heat sickness and actually end up cutting my day short that was the day before i took my test so anyways they will bust you in put you up in a hotel i actually ended up flying in and they still reimbursed me up to the cost of a bus ticket for that flight the hotels and everything i believe you end up paying that back over time but if you stick with the company for two years any money that you've paid ends up getting paid back the tuition itself is a little over six thousand dollars um on my contract they take out eighty dollars per week and then reimburse forty dollars so i take out a net forty dollars from every paycheck every week for the first year at the end of that year then they pay off the remaining loan um you end up paying a little over four thousand well 80 times 52 is 4160 so it ends up being a little over two grand that they pay off after the year um i actually need to call human resources or whatever to to follow up and see if they do indeed actually do this um i'm pretty sure they do or there'd be lots of very upset students out there if they weren't following through one thing i'm not sure about is it looks like on weeks like if we take a week off it looks like they basically set up so it looks like they take out 40 and then reimburse 40. so that additional 40 i don't know if that gets tacked on to the end of the 12 months or 52 weeks or how that's handled um i probably will do a very short um i'll probably do a very short video after i get these answers just to update people that might want to know how that all works so anyways any money that you've paid personally yourself at the end of the second year then they will reimburse you for that a little over two thousand dollars now this was a year ago so i know they've made some changes i don't know if the price of the class is still the same or if they're offering any other incentives um i will say for the training itself it's very much just geared on helping you pass your test you know we spent i want to say it was 12 hours a day practicing our maneuvers in the yard and then also going out on the road i did my training during basically the worst of the coven pandemic so my experience might be different than yours but at the time there was only two people allowed per truck so basically you and the instructor and you both had to wear masks one thing that that unfortunately took away from the program is it used to be that that the instructor and two or three students so i think there's four people per truck because they put seats in the back would go out basically spend 10 hours on the road on switching drivers so it's really unfortunate because of the pandemic they had to stop doing that however they do take you out on the road around phoenix i'm sorry not phoenix around memphis or wherever you're doing your training to get that that experience i didn't do as much on the road as some of the other students did like i said i had previous experience as a truck driver so there were other students that needed it more than i did and i'm i'm pretty sure they saw that so i did notice um you know i got to go out every day but i wasn't out as long or as often as some of the other students and i was fine with that you know for the most part i just needed the time more so just to fine-tune my skills and it's pretty cool because sometimes they would actually let me drive the truck to show an example to other students how to do things so i thought that was kind of cool so anyways after you graduate from that program you take your cdl test right there and then you do your road test i don't know if i'm really allowed to say much about that or not so but it wasn't that bad and they'll explain everything that you need to do and walk you through the process and if you're not ready to test just say i need another week and they'll do that so anyways after you pass your test and that's when you're officially hired by swift you do all your paperwork and then they will come and pick you up all right your over the road instructor will come and pick you up i did forget to mention one thing on the onboarding a couple things first of all um if you do your dot physical it has to be through concentra i did mine um through another source and they didn't take it so it has to be through concentra and then it's kind of frustrating because when you get there they're just going to do it again anyways so but you know it's i don't know what the redundancy is about second of all if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol don't even bother showing up because they're going to do hair follicle testing and urine testing and if it's in your system they will catch you and from what i understand every single class that they do this there are people that get sent home so you know if you that's something you really need to take care of and and address before you get into the industry because that will get you into trouble um the other thing you need to watch is your blood pressure if uh your blood pressure reads greater than 140 over 90 they are going to send you home to go see a doctor to get on medication and get that under control i had one additional issue that almost held me up i have a condition called restless leg syndrome and i was on a medication called reclip to help me with that and unfortunately one of the side effects of reclip is drowsiness so i had to go through the extra hoops of having my doctor from home fax in basically a release saying that i'd still be safe to drive if i'm on this medication i actually found that the medication was never really helpful so i just recently told the doctor to take me off of it all together because i don't want to go through that whole process again every single time i need to do my dlt so i actually found if anyone's got rls uh i found a actually a supplement that works pretty good so you can contact me and i can give you some information on that if you're interested so anyways um after i passed my test doing my paperwork i actually went back home because let me back up they will have an over-the-road trainer come pick you up at the hotel but i chose to go back home again that was on my own dime um florida had just reopened up from the pandemic as far as their dot offices go and what they do when you leave you have a paper certificate and you have so much time before you need to go to the dot and get that get your hard copy so i wanted to go back because i didn't know if the dlt was going to close again that was an issue that we had before and um that way i can go to dot get that all done with and not have to worry about extensions and all that so i went back home which is gainesville florida for me and met my trainer at the ocala terminal my trainer was donald jarvis and he was a fantastic guy we had a lot of fun on the road still a good friend of mine i call him up all the time and bounce things off of him and whatnot so my experience out there with him was wonderful what to expect with that is i believe it's a 200 hour program or more the first week or so you're going to be driving with the instructor sitting next to you watching everything you do after that first week and i want to say it's 40 hours don't quote me 100 on that but i think it's 40 hours minimum then if they feel comfortable they can let you drive unsupervised or they can even sleep while you're driving once you and your trainer feel comfortable with the idea of going team then you can basically run the truck like a team and really get through your hours quickly the trainers do have the ability to say we're not going to run as a team or we're going to run like super solo which is maybe you know time and a half for the truck and you know don't be afraid to tell them that you want that extra supervision i mean yes they're getting extra pay and extra mileage for your production but your training comes first and you know you hear in the industry about drivers that you know use your students for miles if you think that's going on then you need to have a talk with them and if you don't resolve it then you need to talk to your manager about possibly being switched to a different truck so anyways after that initial amount of time went by i said yeah let's go ahead and get to you know let's go ahead and run it like a team plus i was planning on running team with my wife anyways so um i got my time done in about six weeks you potentially could do it in about four to five um but you know we took a little bit of time off here and there um you know i think we did a couple of 34-hour restarts so you know just depends on how much time you need i believe you need it's either six months or a year of experience and a good safety record in order to become a trainer and you do get paid for both their mileage and your own mileage so it's a good way to make some extra money if you uh you know think you might have what it takes to be a trainer so after that was done donald administered my test they used to have it where you go back but and have someone else do it but because of the pandemic they were having the mentors do the final test i don't know if that's still hotter doing it but that's the way it was when i did it then after that um my wife didn't have to do the cdl training but she did have to do the 200 hours over the road because we hadn't driven the last three years and they were able to line her up with a female instructor to uh to let her get her 200 hours so after we both finished got together they put us in a truck and off we went so my overall feeling about how the school went for the most part it was really good i will say the first time around i did my training through a community technical college and i think we had a little bit better training through the community college than through the carrier program and that's probably i imagine the same across the board with all the mega carriers you know basically the program is there to get you to pass a test and then the over-the-road mentor part is where they really teach you how to do your backing and things like that and that's the other thing too make sure you get lots of backing experience um it takes a few months to really get good and comfortable backing out here but the more you could do over the road um you know the mortal will help you um what you could do is ask your instructor to hey you know can we just take a day at one of the yards and just you know a couple hours back into a spot go around back into it again go around back and do it again you know whatever you need to do to get that experience so i'm sorry i ran off track there for a second but oh yes i was saying was that back in 2008 2007 we did our training through a community college and it just seems like that we got a more thorough training and a little bit more real-world training and situations and stuff through there than we did through the carrier however i think it's still okay because you do get those 200 hours to iron out the rest of what you need to learn not to say that you know everything when you leave i mean we've been doing this for a year now and i'm still learning new things every week going on you know we make mistakes out here and we learn from them and unfortunately that's kind of how you learn out here on the road so i guess that's it in a nutshell i'm not saying don't go through the carrier it's actually not a bad way to go at all it's a great way to get your cdl without having to go through a community college and taking out a school loan you know through a bank or whatever and you know i feel like that i did learn enough during the uh training at memphis to get the basics down on how to maneuver the trucks um because these trucks have changed a lot since 2008 and the handling characteristics are different so you know i still found it valuable for me and i think you'll find it valuable too but you know that's one of the things to consider whether or not you want to go with the carrier or go outside the carrier to get your cdl and you know that's up to you there's pluses and minuses to both so that's it for today um like i said overall i was pretty happy other than a couple little things here and there with the training program but um you know swift really isn't a bad company if you're looking to get in the industry and you need to get a cdl they were one of the best if not the highest paying company that i found at the time that would hire from florida which is another store in itself because of the pandemics some of the companies were not actually hiring from florida because they were having a spike in cases down in miami and i explained to some of these companies i live like eight or nine hours away from miami i mean we're not having the spike like they're having down there but some of them were like well you know we're not hiring for florida right now but i think some of that has passed um that's probably not the case anymore the only other issue with working for swift or any other company really and living in florida is there's not a lot of freight that leaves florida so it's getting home isn't the problem sometimes leaving home they have troubles finding you a route we've actually been deadheaded as far as like north carolina or south carolina to get our first load so with that in mind yes i do recommend swift for their cdl training and um you know it's a good starting spot there might be better companies after you get one especially two years of experience but as far as a starter company they're they're fine so um i'm going to cover some other topics in another video in another video or two about my first year i should say our first year my wife and i and uh if you have any questions let me know in the comments and i apologize if you can hear the fan in the background um my wife is sleeping right now and we sleep with the fan on so i just thought of that now thinking i wonder if that microphone's picking that up so anyways stay safe out there peace out

Channel: Meyers Team Trucking

Views: 354

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: mM689eh9rfM

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021