My husband became an o/o in October, he was terminated for a minor accident and told to get his stuff out of the truck, he was released from the lease agreement. Now we are being harassed by a collection agency saying we owe $95000. We do not have the truck, do not know where it is. There was minor damage done. No citation issued. no property damage. It was in the kanab desert. I tried calling rapid response to ask them what happened to the truck, they said they will not talk to us. They said we still owe for the truck, the agreement was for the lease not the truck. WHAT????????? We have no idea what to do, except get an attorney. I am concerned that there others out there that are still getting leases for trucks and have no idea what they are getting into. Help me if you can. If not let me know if anyone else has had similar situation.

Swift I thought was a good trustworthy company. They seemed upfrint and honest. In may of this year there was a minor incident I had. I offered to take a suspension and pay for the damages. But no I was discharged on the spot over 1000 miles from my home terminial. Though I was given a bus ticket it stills seem unfair that your given 1 chance thats it. Had I known that they could have kept their job. One chance never was told that and they basically told me tough shit.

Any driver who attended a Swift Academy and terminated from 2004-2007, if you had a balance on your loan, you know all your earnings were withheld and applied to your loan balance. Every penny was kept despite minimum wage laws. Well you are entitled to get that back. The key is you have to call and request it they will not do it voluntary. Same thing with drivers that overpaid on their student loan accounts. If you overpaid they will reimburse you but you have to call in. Swift has hundreds of accounts in which drivers made over payments on and instead of issuing refunds they are waiting for drivers to contact them. if you attended Academy in 2003, they have no physical signed contracts they were all lost. I worked for Swift and have lots of info should anyone need it. Also they can not take away your CDL license even though contract state that. Swift is putting students through school knowing they can not put them on a truck and now you have just entered into a contract in which you owe $3900 and can not repay because Swift is not hiring and no other company will hire you with no experience. They would approve students to go to academy and get them to sign contract and then say they are not hireable due to unspecified reasons...They just did shady stuff to their drivers.

I am one of many who have been advised to retake all my tests to keep my CDL. I have obtained an attorney and are looking for as many individuals to pursue a class action suit against Swift. There will be no fees. I have information of who to contact. It would be greatly appreciated for the word to be spread out in order for all those who have been affected by this to get justice. I would like to hear from as many individuals who are interested in pursuing this to the end. Note there will only be one individual who will be the main plaintiff to stand for all those who agree to sign up for legal action to be taken. Get the word out so we all don't get screwed because of the fraud that was committed by Swift. My email address is [email protected]. Let us all stand as one cause after all we are Americans with rights and not scum to be walked on!!! Take charge and take pride in yourselfs for I do and I will not be taken granted.

The one thing I want to put on here for someone who may be thinking of going to swifts training program is make sure you have financial backup. My husband is currently employed with swift I will not bad mouth them because we did research and knew what to expect, but after one layoff and another company just up and shutting their doors one morning we felt this was the best way for my husband to change his class B license to a class A and get driving experience. Honestly the experience has been what we expected and had seen reported the good and the bad, EXCEPT the amount of time invested I don't think has been stressed enough. My husband spoke to the recruiter 4/7/08 got everything needed to begin training but all classes were full until 5/14 ok can deal with that had a little saving and my job to tide us over during the waiting time and the training which we knew was unpaid, once completing the classroom/range training it was 1 week before he could get into orientation and he thought get assigned a mentor, well it was another week after orientation before he got assigned with a mentor because 'they were short mentors and the needed to get the out of town students out first' so my husband and 2 other local men where last on the list because swift didn't have to pay hotel expenses for them. He finally got his mentor a great guy that taught my husband a lot and really did care about his training not doubling his income by pushing his students. No, the pay while out with the mentor is not great, but again we knew what to expect beforehand and figured any pay is better then no pay when your unemployed. Now to the point I want to stress to anyone thinking of doing this. KNOW you have about 2-3 more months of savings or incoming income for AFTER finishing with the mentor. It was 6 weeks to the day after returning with his mentor that swift had an available truck for him and his partner since he opted to be a team driver. He has now been out on the road for 2 weeks, and so far swift has been great in keeping them in loads and very little down time, EXCEPT even though he is now on the east coast and part of a team it was little 400-500 mile trips that got them there, so they only ended up with about 1000 for this upcoming paycheck which after taxes and the advance he took we will get $13.13 deposited for our bills here at home. Looking on the employee website for his pending trips pay next week doesn't look much different. IF I CAN STRESS NOTHING MORE THEN THIS HAVE FINANCIAL BACKUP!! We did for a few months but not the 5 that today marks from the time my husband first talked to the recruiter. We thought we were realistic and knew he would not be getting $800 a week but thought to start may at least be comparable to the pay he got while out with the mentor. And we are not greedy whiney people, but in trying to better our life's and avoid working for anymore company's that cant withstand todays economy and gas prices we felt this was the best choice for us. I just wish we would have known we were looking at about 6 months before he got a paycheck that could just get groceries much less help my income catch up the bills we are now behind on. Again not badmouthing swift after researching I don't think any company that you have to attend their training is any different, and my husband has had great trainers, mentor and DM it just wasn't stressed enough that you could be looking at 6 months before getting any type of paycheck, I feel bad that after 2 weeks out on the road away from his family to help support his family, that in his words his paycheck 'wont even buy you guys a pizza'.

Have backup or no bills to worry about if you are going to go this route!! you will probably have your training loan paid off sooner then you will get a paycheck that helps with bills.