COVENANT -- From a wife's perspective

He's eating truck stop food. They don't have a microwave or a fridge so he has no way to store or cook any food. If they did, he'd probably be able to cut way back on his expenses but ironically enough, the fact that he doesn't eat any meat plays against him as well. If you go into any fast food place in a truck stop (and they can give serious competition to airports with their prices) and order 3 or 4 sides, watch how fast your money flies out of your wallet. Forget the dollar menu at Mickey D's. You'll never find that at any truck stop.

Anyway, I have a rather funny story. Again, there might be extenuating circumstances on the other end of the QualComm but somehow I doubt it.

So last week, Redcoat was off and his teammate was at Chat. for three days going through log class. While he was doing that, the truck was in the shop getting done to it whatever they do to it. On Thursday, his teammate had a run to South Carolina and then back this way to pick up Redcoat on Saturday.

This morning Redcoat gets a nastygram over the QC getting on to them for idling the truck over 30% last week and how that was totally unacceptable. Well, Redcoat couldn't resist. He QC'd back asking exactly when they went over the percentage. When he got his answer, he pointed out how could they be responsible for too much idling when the truck was in the company's own shop???

No answer back on that one.

Then Redcoat went back through whatever you guys go through to check on the idle time and he said it was actually only about 21% not 30% like they said.

Anyway, I thought that was pretty funny. Here's the company busting on their drivers for something their mechanics are doing. HA!

It's pretty sad though when you think about it. Redcoat said over the past few weeks they've been getting 6.6 mpg on their loads. Is that pretty good? It seems to me that must be pretty good because I only get 6 with my RV and it weighs 30K. I'm guessing a tractor/trailer would weigh more than that. So they don't get ANY kind of warm fuzzy for trying to get good fuel mileage but they sure get a cold prickly pretty fast when they supposedly screw up.

Sunday I sold over a thousand dollars worth of pictures for Air Photo. Every Sunday night I file a report with my boss for sales for that week. Monday morning I had an attaboy in my e-mail for having such a good day. Wouldn't it be amazing if Covenant would hand out an attaboy here and there when a driver does a good job under less than ideal circumstances -- which seems to be most of the time for these drivers.

Team Redcoat is in South Carolina picking up a load headed to Baltimore.

And that's all my news. Stay tuned.

 

Latest update.

Team Redcoat is on their way to California but when I talked to him this afternoon they were stuck in Lexington, NE because I-80 was closed. It's a good trip -- Baltimore to Newark, CA.

I have another funny story for ya relating to how truck drivers are treated like pond scum.

When Redcoat was at the shipper in Baltimore it was POURING rain. He had to get some paperwork signed by the security guard at the gate so he ran up to the kiosk and stepped inside to get out of the downpour. But the guard inside pointed to a sign that said no drivers inside the kiosk and made Redcoat step back outside in the rain. Redcoat said he was totally drenched and no way in hell was he going to stand outside in the rain waiting on this butthead to sign his paperwork. So he ran back to the truck and pulled it up to the exit and sat there blocking the exit just far enough so the guard had to come outside and stand in the rain while Redcoat signed his portion of the paperwork.

Now if the man would have let Redcoat come in out of the rain -- like any decent person would ... even though it was against some stupid policy ... what's the harm in offering somebody a minute of shelter? -- he would have signed all the papers and been on his way and the guard would have stayed dry in his little hut. BUT NO! This moron has to be a and try to show Redcoat how powerful he was by making him stand outside.

I'd say Redcoat got his revenge -- heh heh.

Stay tuned.