Husband/Wife Team to start with Covenant

It's been awhile since we updated. Ron and I finally finished our training and we did retain a tremendous amount of information from our trainer. We finished with a bang and have been running as a team for one month now. The first few weeks were amazing. We had the miles we wanted and made some needed adjustments to our new lifestyle and settled right in.
But it has not been a bed of roses. We learned the meaning of "nights and weekend dispatch". We learned what having a GOOD Dispatch manager really means. We had heard some stories about how it could be if you got one that was not available or who was apathetic to the frustrations that drivers experience daily. To be honest, this last week has been an emotional roller coaster ride. My husband and I have looked at each other in pure amazement and can not believe the mass of lack of communication that goes on daily. We are truly hoping this is just due to the reduction of in house staff and key players at corporate out for the holiday.
Well, I'll close for now with the hope that things will swing back to the way things were the first few weeks. If we find that this is just the way things are going to be, then we will post in more detail our honest experiences here. Here's hoping I didn't drive 100 miles for free today. I don't know about other companies, but the dispatched load miles are just not jiving with the gps miles.
Will update again soon...

 

Thank you Chris. We really appreciate your input. We are hoping for things to fall back in place. It is understandable that things get hectic during the Holidays...people filling in for others, limited staff, etc. And what you said about the gps vs com miles, that does make sense. I just have a predisposition to being quite literal.
çAs for those 100 miles, I finally was able to get it worked out. It just took being persistent with calling and emailing. I'll follow up by double checking our pay breakdown. We have only been in our own truck for 45 days now, so we are still in our learning curve. Overall, we have enjoyed driving as a husband/wife team for Covenant and have met other drivers in our travels who we hope to develop friendships. A lot of very nice people!
çRecently, we met another trainer named Darrel who is also on the executive council (as our trainer was). We had to repower his load while he was training another husband/wife team. Anyhow, we had another opportunity to really talk with him at one of our terminals. He was full of helpful information.
çWell, I'll have to close for now..."my turn to drive". We are on a load taking us from LA to TN.
Amazing...3 days ago it was 90 degrees in Arizona and today it was 27 degrees in New Mexico.
çUntil next time...

 

...Yes, we did train at the same time. That is the primary reason we chose Covenant. We also had an amazing trainer. With his many many years of OTR experience and a history of training husband/wife teams, we feel very fortunate to have gotten him. He answered every question I had and he did not sugar coat what the life of an OTR driver would be like. It takes a certain type of personality to do it.
...As for the specifics of how the training went with three on the truck...We alternated shifts between the three of us.

 

Our first home time after being on the road for almost 8 weeks was wonderful. We missed our families and friends so much!! But we are glad to be back on the road and it has started out just wonderful. TWO really good loads with great miles. Right between loads, we woke up in beautiful California to blue skies and perfect weather. I just have to send a thank you card to one of the dispatch managers at this last company where we had a live load. They were wonderful to us. Accommodating and friendly and QUICK! Oh and our inhouse communication has improved significantly. Qualcomm responses are much better.
Ron is REALLY enjoying this. I was teasing him about going back to his previous career. His company just loved him and would have him back in a heartbeat due to things picking back up. I don't think he'll ever go back though. He truly loves this! He takes his pretrip inspections Serious! So funny, when he does his tug test on the king pin, he always says, "pull it like you're pissed!" That's straight from our trainer, Dennis. We call that a "Dennisism". : )
OK, my turn to drive. Until next time...