Truck drivers who claim that Swift Transportation routinely shorted them in pay will get their day in court, after an Arizona appellate court judge reversed a lower court decision that effectively dismissed the case.


The order reverses the class certification ruling on a consolidated class-action complaint filed June 8, 2005, which alleges the trucking company used a flawed method to calculate mileage.

The case claims that rather than paying drivers on actual miles driven, the company calculates mileage using mileage charts. The suit claims that in doing so, the company arbitrarily assigns physical locations in large cities rather than determining the actual distance to a delivery destination within the city to shorten drivers' miles.

According to court documents, Swift's manager of contract finance from 1998 until 2002 admits these calculations consistently average six percent less than what drivers actually log.

The class-action suit originally sought to represent "all persons who contracted with Swift Transportation with a contractor agreement on the East Coast." The plaintiff moved for class certification on July 31, 2006, but the lower court denied the motion, ruling the plaintiff didn't have a claim under his proposed definition of the class and had not met the requirements to proceed on behalf of a class. In the decision reversing the trial court, the Arizona Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff does have a claim and can represent the interests of all affected contract drivers.

Swift declined to comment on on-going litigation, but explained that the Court of Appeals decision overturns the lower court's ruling in favor of Swift and that Swift plans to appeal this decision. Further, says a company spokesman, this matter involves a one-year contract from 2001, and the class is limited to a subset of owner-operators (independent contractors) who came to Swift through the acquisition of another trucking company.

This not a liability ruling, but merely a ruling that plaintiff may pursue claims on behalf of a class, and that the Court of Appeals recognized that Swift may present all of its defenses at trial.