COVENANT -- From a wife's perspective

Tankers would be OK but they sound kind of like a local job to me which wouldn't work very well in our case since I move around the country a lot.

Redcoat has still not been routed to Chatt. to start his GP dedicated job. They just got a load assignment taking them from Michigan to Minnesota and then down to Illinois. When he sent the macro he reminded his DM (for the umteenth time) that he needed to be routed to Chatt. and of course he hasn't heard anything back except for the QC message they got this morning telling everybody not to call or email because the dispatcher was too busy trying to coordinate everybody's home time.

Nice to see that SOMEbody in that company gets some home time...

Anyway, is Covenant trying to absorb Estes? Redcoat says he's been getting quite a few of their loads lately.

He was telling me about the office of the shipper he just left and he had me in tears laughing. His choice of words along with that English accent makes his stories so funny that I cannot do them justice in this medium. But he has this knack of picking out the minute details and magnifying them to huge proportions. He was telling me about how they had the little hole in the wall for the driver to speak through and the place where you lean or put your hands was so covered in gunge that he didn't want to touch it. He said you probably couldn't have gotten it off with acid and a paint scraper. And the man inside the office was sat in this huge chair on wheels and he rolled from the window to the computer and then rolled from the computer over to the printer and then rolled back to the window. And the wooden floor had these grooves cut into it like little railroad tracks from years of that chair rolling to the same places so that the wheels just followed that groove. He kept on going describing this Estes office but I can't remember the rest. But it was terribly funny.

That's it for now. Stay tuned.

 

Hey Zip thanks for the recommendations. I called J&R Schugel but they won't work for two reasons. First you already have to have flatbed experience because they won't train and second they don't hire more than a 75-mile radius out of Charlotte, NC and I am almost double that from Charlotte. So they're no-can-do. Then I called Tango and they don't hire any further east of I-55 and Tupelo is a hundred miles east of that line. So they're out too. Dude was really nice though.

The two places I can use for a company to hire Redcoat is Tupelo, MS and Raleigh-Durham, NC. If they hire from those two areas then we're in business.

Finally, I can't post any of my work because it ISN'T my work. My company hires professional photographers to do that part of the work and I just do the sales. I'm just the ground pounder. But, hey, in one phone call this morning I made $180 in commission so every now and then I luck out and a sale comes along the easy way.

 

Thanks Rob. I've been reading your thread. I'm about halfway through it. Redcoat will have a year with the company in August and that's when I'm going to send in his app for Maverick. Isn't it weird that Superior will take drivers right out of driving school but Redcoat has to wait for his year to be up before he can apply....? That kind of doesn't make any sense for some reason. Anyway, Superior DOES sound like a great company and I see they have locations all over the eastern US so that would work as long as I stayed on this side of the Mississippi. You say once he gets a year to 18 months -- do you mean a year with the company or a year actual driving experience. And then you have to clarify it further -- a year driving in any capacity or a year team driving or a year of solo driving. I only ask because a year's experience is different things to different companies. Melton wanted six months SOLO experience. Schnieder wouldn't count his time with a trainer (even though we all know that is bogus because Covenant's "training" is actually team driving and your teammate just happens to be a trainer). But don't worry about it. Next week I'll call the TM in High Point to see exactly what they want.

Allow Me -- I had a look at C. Bean's website and it says they want a year of flatbed experience which Redcoat doesn't have.

Latest update.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Redcoat had had enough if getting shuttled all over the US instead of getting to Chatt. Yesterday morning he called the manager of GP dedicated and complained. They made their run to Minnesota and then back to Chicago on Monday and then instead of getting them routed toward Chatt. they got an assignment for a load headed to Oklahoma. That was the last straw and Redcoat made the call. It only took an hour and that load was taken off of them and they got reassigned for a load headed to Montgomery, AL with the first stop in Atlanta where they are to make a drop and then.... I'm assuming it'll be a bobtail to Chatt.

You know. This company is the world's WORST when it comes to communicating with their drivers. I think a lot of DM's would have a lot more cooperation from their drivers if they would just let them know what's going on. Redcoat had a sneaky suspicion that maybe they were getting shuttled all over the place because of the holiday coming up and there are probably a lot drivers wanting home time with their families. That might have been the reason why they were going everywhere but Chatt. And if that was the case, all Redcoat's DM had to do was SAY SO and Redcoat would have been cool with teaming until after the holiday (seeing as how he evidently doesn't qualify for any home time himself) and then getting routed to Chatt. BUT NO!! All Redcoat gets is a QC message telling them not to call or email their DM because he's too busy to deal with them. And so for 10 days Redcoat was left wondering when he'd get to Chatt. to start his dedicated route.

So we will see how it goes tomorrow.

Redcoat sent me some more pictures. He was somewhere in Chicago where he had to pick up a load of "display material" that weighed a whole 3500 pounds. He said it took him three tries to get backed into the building. He said it was a tighter back than it looks in the pictures because of the car on one side and a fire hydrant in front of him that was in the way when he was trying to get under the trailer. I also found out that the straight truck was already there so he had to get the trailer between it and the wall.

To me this is more evidence that Redcoat's backing skills are better than he gives himself credit for but he still refuses to back into a hole at a truck stop because he doesn't like doing it with everybody watching.

Stay tuned.