Richard Stocking - YES, your company is too big!
Pros
Coworkers are awesome in the office.
Cons
This list is going to be long- -Swift has taken away many of our capabilities to do our jobs efficiently. As a result, drivers are more angry than ever. We no longer have the capability to accurately predict how much freight we need for the amount of trucks coming into the areas. We no longer have the capability to quickly and accurately find trailers for the drivers. -Perhaps the most frustrating is Swift's gigantic bureaucracy that has a nasty habit of 'passing the buck' to another vague department that no one knows the true purpose of. -Swift has proven time and again that they do not understand specialty freight, and no one is listening when we express our concerns. For example, when we first merged over we requested a macro to be created for yard checks so we could monitor fuel and temperature levels. Swift promptly denied us saying that the requested macro was 'not necessary for the business'. In the past few months we've paid several hundred thousand in OS&D claims due to trailers running out of fuel and spoiling freight. Still, no one listens. -From a planning standpoint, Swift's grading system makes no sense. The planner scorecards do not care about deadhead mileage. They only score on how often planners use the computer's recommendations to match trucks with loads. This is a system that can be manipulated to show flawless performance. The recommendation system only gives a mere 500 miles per day to most teams, requiring the planners to manually plan on an ANCIENT system to get drivers the miles to pay their bills. -We've had several office staff hospitalized from the stress since we were merged. And I do mean several. -Swift and their COO Richard Stocking require us to attend something called 'Swift University'. This has got to be the biggest waste of company money I have EVER seen. I was required to attend online classes for what was called a 'leadership training'. One of the courses was, literally, a documentary about the Secretariat-the race horse. With nothing at the end to translate it to how it helped me become a leader. The next video was a montage of inspirational speeches from sports movies. Swift has several thousand office staff that were required to take this course. Assuming everyone makes $10-$18 an hour, and that everyone spent the three hours taking this course, Swift spent an estimated $90,000-$162,000 to show it's office workers a documentary about a racehorse. -AS400 is ancient. SO ancient. It was written in 1988. The mouse was invented in 1992. The outdated computer system requires exponentially more keystrokes than any other system in the industry. Several office staff have reported severe pain related to carpal tunnel syndrome. -Drivers aren't making money. They are being VERY nasty to the office staff. There's only so much we can do when our hands have been zip-tied behind our backs and we're forced to bob for apples to get our basic duties done. We're doing three times the footwork and only capable of accomplishing 25-50% of what we were doing before. We've had to hire more office staff to keep up with the demand, and we're still struggling to push our numbers up to what they were before the merger. -Benefits are some of the worst I've ever seen. Insurance refuses to pay a dime till the deductible has been hit. There are much better insurance plans out there people. Don't be disillusioned thinking that Swift has a good insurance plan. It's only useful if you have a catastrophic accident. In the mean time you'll have to pay a fortune to maintain your good health.
