Maverick .... from a wife's perspective

Final update.

Redcoat has been with Maverick for almost 6 months now. Last week they put him into another truck. Notice I did not say a NEW truck. His FM told him that he'd have to be with the company for 5 years before they would give him a brand new truck. As expected I guess. Everyone gotta pay their dues.

So his 'new' truck is a year newer than his other one and has 200K less miles on it. The red light for the QC works so now he knows if it's an important message or not when it beeps. Since you have to stop in order to read the QC, it's small things like this make life so much easier. However, his QC is an older model so he can't read as many lines as he could the other one.

It appears that this truck will do better pulling the hills. He won't know for sure until he has a trip through West Virginia. So far he's gone from the yard in Madison up to Ohio, back down to Georgia and now back up to Indiana. Pretty much flat territory there. There is that one big hill in Chattanooga and he has a full load of lumber so he'll know how it does there in a few hours or so as he's heading up I-75 as I write this.

Hopefully his gas mileage will be a little bit better.

One thing he really needs to get fixed is the driver's seat. Not only is all the padding gone in the bottom but the shock absorber is worn out so he's doing this crazy bouncing for every little bump. I think he took a couple of bungees and tried to tie it down to keep it still.

Redcoat has settled into the Maverick way and I have settled into my own work routine again after the trauma of my mother's death.

I think this thread has pretty much run it's course. The whole point of it was to give prospective Maverick drivers and their wives a glimpse of how it might go when new to the company. Redcoat is no longer new to the company (in my opinion). He got his first letter last week with NO VIOLATIONS as far as turning in paperwork, log book errors, etc. That cheered his heart.

For the most part, Maverick is a great company to work for if you don't mind being a conformist. Do things exactly like they want them done and you and the company will get along fine. If you want to be a non-conformist, then don't work for Maverick. It still bugs Redcoat to no end having to tarp loads that no other drivers have to tarp but that is what Maverick wants so that is what Maverick gets. Having said that, Redcoat prides himself on doing an immaculate tarp job. Even though he hates doing "unnecessary and pointless" work for little money, he does have his image to consider as he's rolling down the road.

Redcoat is definitely WAY much happier with Maverick than he was with Covenant.

This will be my last post to this thread but I will still lurk in the forums and speak up occasionally if I find the need to do so.

There are many threads in the forum that detail the daily grind of trucking from a first person point of view so it's kind of pointless for me to try to detail Redcoat's escapades from a second-hand point of view. Redcoat is a much better storyteller than I am but his stories lose much of their humor and emotion when I try to retell them. Maybe one of these days I can get him to start posting on his own although it's kind of doubtful because usually he's too tired from work at the end of the day to bother with writing.

As I close this post I want everyone to know how grateful we are for all the help and advice and knowledge we've gained from this thread. Redcoat has made several friends through this medium and that's a big help to him.

Time to turn this channel off now. Bye my friends.