Memphis Mud and Millington Dung

To all those who are having a hard time getting a job trucking thinking about going to Swift Academy, take my word for it, it is a complete ripoff!

First off you will stay in a hotel with 4 or 5 other people in the same hotel room for 3 weeks, the hotel does not provide breakfast of any kind. Hotels down the street are $130 a week for one person, but you have to stay with the other 3 or 4 if you paid for the school not knowing (which nobody ever does obviously). You will get bussed in every day and treated like cattle. You better take it because you want to pass this school that you will find they teach nothing anyway- you teach yourselves with their trucks and why you are far better off just using someones truck locally where you live. There is no instruction of any value whatsoever and the bottom line is when you finish school you have to go out with a mentor who more than likely owns his own truck and does not want anyone driving his truck that has not been trained already.

The mentors want drivers who already know how to drive or they simply drop them off at any terminal across the country (if you are lucky, it might be a truck stop too) and tell them you do not have the basic fundamentals to drive- period. You are then out of $5000.00

For the first 2 weeks I did nothing but back up a truck, with all the people there I may have had about 2 solid hours a day backing up. After I got through the first 2 weeks I went to my home terminal and was supposed to be taught how to drive "forward" and in traffic, shifting gears, down shifting and numerous other practices. I drove forward for a period of about a total of 45 minutes in that entire week. They then told me I was ready for orientation and a mentor.

My mentor did not teach me anything, he already expected me to know how to drive and when I could not he dropped me off and told me I didn't have the basic fundamentals to drive. So here I am, wasted about 2 months of my life and now owe $5000.

Please people, do not make this mistake. This company is going to use you like a Bic lighter if they do decide to keep you, you will sit around in truck stops, at terminals waiting for a load, they do not give a dam what you think or that you expected to be making more money they will make up some kind of excuse that you don't want to run. Truth is its like a caddy yard or a Taxi company with no radios, they call their own people in the "click" and keep you hungry like an animal giving you just enough to get by. How do I know this? Because I had friends in the Academy who got through (who had prior trucking experience) and I keep in touch with them. They are in debt for the schooling so they cant quit, there are no other jobs and these guys would be on the street if they don't keep their $400 take home checks being out on the road 24/7 3 to 4 weeks at a time.

Folks I am not someone who is incapable, I have been through many things in my life, but this is a sham and or a ripoff, stay away from this company, they were hiring illegals and caught a few years back and I'm here to say they had more Somalians there than Americans. If these Somalians are going to be all over our roads we are all in deep deep trouble. It sounds easy, you simply get on a Greyhound bus (which I will never take again in my life) you go to Memphis, you get your license and you get a good job and pay it off little by little....life is good.

Sorry folks- it's a pipe dream, they are crocodiles! The owner Moyes- folks I don't know what he is but he isn't an American and everyone in Swift knows it.