People are friendly in a sort of adversarial way... a camaraderie similar to that of mutineers under an oppressive captain. Though just like those nefarious sea captains of old, the management doesn't really "know" they are doing wrong by the drivers. They just follow a philosophy that puts drivers at the bottom of the totem pole, and we feel it.
Terminal shop staff are kept at notoriously low levels, mainly by hiring freezes and low pay which drives away quality techs. Pay for company drivers on non dedicated accounts might be on par with the other major carriers, but it's 20-50% lower than smaller carriers, especially ones who focus on driver retention. Pay for owner operators is only about 5% lower than national average, and with the right driver leader/manager you can make all the money you can want to... but you lose out if that person leaves because Swift pays Driver leaders over 10k less per year than the national average.
Dedicated accounts are available to company drivers, and occasionally owner operators (mostly O/O teams). Unfortunately Swift seems to refuse to go to bat for it's drivers when faced with customer failures that provide a major impact upon the drivers. For example, one dedicated customer implements a load automation system that changes physical location of the Distribution Center as well as load routing... changes that would normally initiate a contract renegotiation... this automation was designed with major errors that need to be fixed at the software level, but Swift does nothing to attempt to pressure the customer to make these changes. Even though these problems created major issues drivers themselves have to deal with and ultimately lose the customer millions of dollars per year in labor inefficiency. On top of that another carrier used inside information to under bid Swift by a penny resulting in the loss of sometimes 20 routes per day... where was Swift executive management to call foul? No where.
