I'll try to summerize this quickly as it happened a year and a half ago so I'm not as upset with them as I was back then. I went to a local cdl driving school and got a student loan for thousands of dollars to attend this. The school was good and many companies came to try and recruit the students. (both local and over the road) I made the mistake of going over the road and chose swift because they have many routes around here and thier orientation site in saracuse NY was much closer than the others.
I put my regular job on hold just in case and got on the first greyhound bus to NY. At the end of the orientation I was sent home because there was not a mentor ready they told me so I went back to my old job and waited patiently for the call. After about 5 weeks I called my driver manager and he said 'OHH YEA WE ARE GONNA GET SOMEONE REAAL SOON, YOUR VERY PATIENT ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS KEEP BUGGIN ME'... I told him how i was still working.
I wasn't going to drop everything and bet on these guys being quick. I still need to feed my family. After another week or two I talked to my mentor on the phone and he sounded ok, and my DM told me i would have to take a bus to virginia to meet him, I thought that was kinda far but hey. I was ready already!!! Packed up and left, after many layovers and about 3 days on greyhound buses PACKED LIKE SARDINE CANS I got a call from the driver manager telling me my mentor didn't wait for me in virginia like he was soposed to so now I had to keep on bussin' down to florida. The buses we filled to capasity and i had a 7'tall basketball players arm on my shoulder the whole time so i didn't sleep at all.
Get to florida. Total time on buses 5days. Sleep 0. He picks me up smoking ciggerettes like he had a week to live, this sucks because i just quit them recently and my DM assured me i would be paired with a non-smoker. I let my mentor know what happened and how I NEED to sleep so he lets me go to top bunk. When i ask where the safety belts are he said i dont need them and that they are burried under the mattress and not to worry about it.
Now i was told many times at the school you NEED these belts and my commen sense told my being up this high if he hit the brakes i would fall so i dug throught the tangled mess and managed to get one straped around my gut. I couldn't sleep yet because i wasn't used to the bouncing around being up there yet. After a while he said ok lets see what u got and had me drive for about an hour. He said i was good as i was being a top graduate of my school. We ate, he drove a couple hours more and told me at 11pm that i had to drive. I told him I was too tired and he forced me to anyway.
I need to wrap this up so. Long story short he kept showing me how to cheat the log books and when i made a wrong turn he would yell at me so one night while i was driving at 2am i called my brother on cell phone and told him how this guy cheats the log books and is an a-hole when all of a sudden he woke up and started screaming at me while i was driving and threw my cell phone against the windshield. He continued to scream at me to the point i felt his spit hitting me in the face. I kept driving and feared for my life as we were driving threw the desert at night in new mexico. We made it to california and he made me handle everything even tho i didnt know what i was doing yet. I got the signitures and did the drop and hook all while he slept comfortably.
I was just figuring it all out on my own. We almost came to blows once more when he woke me up after a 4hour nap to force me to drive again when i finally told him i was done with him. I told him i wasn't going to drive. After talking to a supervisor that told me i would have to take greyhound buses all the way home and it would probly take over a week or two we all agreed we would run a load to NY where i would take a bus from there. I let him know I was done trying to drive at night with no sleep trying to see through his illigal 5% limo tint windows, so we worked it out where i would drive 500-600 miles a day from about 6am to 7pm and he would drive 7pm to 10pm and sleep at the same time as me and when i would drive during the day he would take cat naps and watch corney 70's movies. Lol
The last 3days he kept asking me to reconsider and promised he would let me go home for a few days off to refresh i told him i was passing on that offer. I went home and went back to my old job and have been there for the last year and a half keeping my eyes open for a local job that will take graduate drivers. Swift paid me for an extra day. Dont know if it was a mistake or a peace offering but that was my expirience with them. Should of taken a local job right out of the school when I had the chance, dont see local companies taking students anymore ; (
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