COVENANT -- From a wife's perspective

Hey everybody! Man, I need to post more often. Y'all are gettin' crazy on me in here.

I need to update everybody on the situation and I also have a few questions on training. I'm going to call the company but everybody knows that trying to get them on the phone takes quite a bit of patience so I'm going to email them too.

But first let me get to some of the posts that have been made since my last update.

Boonie I'm with ya on that one. I'm doing everything in my power to try to hang on to our motor home so I can keep working and have a place to live. My sales have been crap (folks have been locking down their discretionary spending) and Redcoat has been doing more sitting than driving....although it's not entirely Covenant's fault. He lost several days of work when he had to go for his green card interview in Memphis last week and he's lost several days of work for his trainer to get home time down in Orlando this week.

Believe me, if Redcoat COULD change companies, he would do it in a skinny minute. But trust me when I say that there is no one out there that will hire him at this point in time. He still hasn't had his driver's license for six months (that will come in December) and he still doesn't have 3 years' worth of work history that many of the companies want. In lieu of that, he would probably need to have at least a year's worth of OTR experience before anybody will even bother to have a look at him. So he's just basically got to grind it out at Covenant and do his time (sounds like a prison sentence doesn't it) until he can be in a position to get something better.

MCR6468 and Stanman63 -- y'all were freaking me out about your political views. Little bit of a detour there but I'm glad you got back on topic. MCR I always value your contributions to this thread because you're adding your experience with Covenant as a solo driver and it doesn't look too pretty does it. Redcoat is coordinating with his friend that drives for Werner for this guy to make the jump to Covenant when Redcoat finishes his training...whenever that will happen. That's a gray area that I have questions about.

baseballswthrt and honor roll, Redcoat's confidence is definitely improving and he has learned to drive within his comfort level. As an example, they had a load going from Nashville to Miami and Redcoat got the first shift. He said all was going well but when he got to Atlanta, the traffic was pretty crowded so even though the speed limit was 70, he backed it down to 55. Then when traffic thinned out, he hammered down to 65 again. They had a certain amount of hours to get the load down to Miami. He said his trainer poked his head out of the bunk going through Atlanta wanting to know why he was going so slow and Redcoat told him to just go back to sleep. They made a driver swap in Gainesville and got the load to destination with an hour to spare (even after they'd left Nashville two hours late). Redcoat's trainer tried to criticize him for losing time but Redcoat stood his ground and said as long as they made it on time, that's all that mattered.......to which I thought -- You go baby!!!

I don't have Redcoat's pay statements handy but last week he got paid a little over $300 and this week it was $365. So the checks have been tiny but it was enough to make the second half of our 'house' payment that I owed the bank so that gets us caught up until it's due again in two weeks.

Stranger I was glad to see your post about Covenant's earnings even though I find them very unsettling. I've been keeping quiet about Redcoat's trainer after having flamed his other one so badly at the beginning of this thread. All I will say at this point is Redcoat is a better person than me because I wouldn't have lasted three days with this guy. Religious fanatic and ##### is putting it mildly. This dude has bought into the company party line so much that he proudly wears his Covenant shirts (only the red ones because blue is the Democratic party color) plus he's looking forward to getting measured for his longevity ring AND he spends a hundred dollars each week buying Covenant stock. And that's all I'm going to say about this guy as far as his ideology.

No MCR!!! They can't go down the hole until Redcoat finishes his training and team driving!!!

Right now, Redcoat is in Orlando waiting to hear something from his trainer (the man who refuses to spend money on a cell phone). He's been sitting in a hotel since Wednesday while his trainer get his home time (the man with no furniture in his condo). He's guessing they'll probably have to deadhead out of Florida since everything goes in but nothing comes back out.

I can't resist telling a funny story. Redcoat told me that his trainer (a young single guy) is looking for a woman. Now this is a guy who decided to go to work for Covenant to be a truck driver because he heard the owner's message and was inspired to be a part of the mission. Anyway, Redcoat told him there are dating websites that have Christian values that his trainer should check out so he could meet a woman with his same beliefs. His trainer said that he was thinking of going to eHarmony but Redcoat told him not to go there because that website was for 'normal' people. I hope I haven't insulted anybody but I just found this too funny to not share.

I have met Redcoat's trainer a couple times and both times within an hour I was ready to get away. This man is so one-dimentional it is pathetic. He has no tolerance of other people's beliefs (or non-beliefs) and bases his judgements on much misinformation. He has a total lack of awareness of how world events play into US politics that affects us all. He doesn't care about world news because he says as Americans "we ARE the big picture." It's a shame because this young man's heart is in the right place but his thought processes are just totally skewed because of his refusal to consider that there might be other possibilities. And to me, that's scary.

 

Hi all,

I found out something new today. I found out that the reason why Covenant was the only company that would hire Redcoat is because they underwrite their own insurance. Which makes sense. I friend of mine who used to own a small trucking company said his insurance company wouldn't let him hire Redcoat either because of the short length of time he's had his U.S. license. So I was curious how Covenant got around this and now I know. That explains a lot of things like why they are losing money (lawsuit settlements) and why they pay peanuts compared to other companies.

Redcoat is still sitting in Orlando making $50 a day retention pay.

Two more months to go until he hits six months with his license. Maybe he can start over with Schnieder if they are still hiring by then......

 

That could be. All I know is that when Redcoat applied to them they all turned him down using the excuse that their insurers required a minimum amount of time for him to have his US license. Schneider said they needed six months, Swift said a year, and CR England wanted two years. After that we quit looking at the training companies and he went to Roadmaster to get his CDL.

Speaking of training, are there any Covenant students reading this thread (or recent students)? On Covenant's website (supposedly) they say the initial training time with a trainer is 45 days. But Redcoat's trainer says it's really 35 4-hour shifts. Has anybody else heard about this 4-hour shift deal?