COVENANT -- From a wife's perspective

Latest update.

Team Redcoat made their drop in Atlanta and just now got the QC message for an MT move to Chatt.

Stay tuned.

 

Kinghunter I called Hunt this morning. They want a minimum of a year flatbed experience because they do not train. Cross that one off the list.

 

Latest update.

Change to the change. Team Redcoat's DM called them ... on the phone!... (what a concept!!!) and asked if they would take a run up to South Carolina headed to New York. He said after that he'd get them to Chatt. so Redcoat could start his dedicated job. Redcoat could tell that his DM was kind of in a bind and what the heck, it's a holiday weekend. He probably would have sat in Chatt. over the weekend anyway so they went ahead and took the run.

Stay tuned.

 

Hey Rocks! Figured I'd start with yours. Redcoat is handling his vegetarian diet as best he can. He's a vegetarian because he cannot bring himself to eat the flesh of any animal on principle. He is such an animal lover but not to the extremes of PETA or anything. It amazes him sometimes how the various truck stops charge extra for meatless food. One time he ordered some kind of sandwich and they charged him FIFTY CENTS EXTRA to take the meat off of it. That just totally makes no sense. So, yeah, trying to get something good to eat on the road has definitely been a challenge and I can tell you for sure that he's not eating very well.

Let's see...today is Wednesday and Team Redcoat made it to Chatt. on Monday. Finally. Redcoat got the keys to his truck Monday afternoon and called me to give me the report on it's condition. And the truck's condition was...terrible. Just awful. I cannot believe that Covenant hands over such nasty equipment to their drivers. I remember how Rocks told about the condition of her truck when she got it and how she worked all night cleaning it.

Redcoat's truck is three years old and has 500,000 miles on it. He said whoever had the truck before left all of his stuff in there -- clothes, toiletries, food, bedding, the works. He said the grime was so thick on all the surfaces that he had to scrape it off. He tried to clean the seat and all the gunge just turned to a kind of muddy paste. There was food crumbs in the cabinets and a half-eaten Reese's peanut butter cup on the dash. He spent an hour and a half cleaning just the driver's door. Everything has years of dirt and grime on it. He took it through the truck wash and even the finish is dull. He cannot believe that someone lived in such filth. They should have had a bio-hazard sign on it.

He went over to the detail shop to see if he could borrow a vacuum cleaner but they said no. Evidently those people are contractors and not part of Covenant so they weren't inclined to share their shop vacs. But they told Redcoat to put his truck on "the list" to have it cleaned so he did that on Tuesday. When he got the truck back, he said all they had done was vacuum out the floor. There were still crumbs in the cabinets so I think he had the maintenance people vacuum it out for him.

Tuesday he had to go to log class because he found out he had several violations. Three of them were where his teammate had woke him up to drive and Redcoat went ahead and started his log not realizing that his teammate had woke him up early and he'd started driving with only 9 1/2 hours of rest instead of ten. I don't guess he'll have to worry about that anymore. Covenant also told Redcoat that he was missing some logs (3 I think) which is BS because Redcoat always sends in his logs with his trip pacs. No telling what they did with them but now he has to do new ones to replace the ones that are missing.

I asked him if he learned anything new in his log class and he said he learned that he is supposed to note somewhere on the page every time he does a tire check. There's no space for it but it has to be written on there anyway. There's also something else he's supposed to write but I can't remember what it was. I'll ask him tomorrow and let you all know. I'll also ask him if he's heard anything about the rumour Rocks wanted to know about.

Today he found out that he could put his truck in the shop to have it checked out which he did and they didn't find anything major wrong with it. The maintenance man told him that rather than spending the hundred bucks to get the inverter installed that he should save his money and wait because he will probably be getting another truck by the end of the month or in August. Notice I said ANOTHER truck...not a NEW truck. I don't think he could get that lucky.

Redcoat told me that his truck has a big dent behind the fifth wheel where it looks like somebody had pulled out without the hitch being locked. The outside has been pretty well abused and the inside definitely suffers from neglect. Such a shame.

Redcoat discovered that there is a kind of snack bar on the second floor of the office building and that they actually let the drivers eat in the same room with the admin people. He was shocked! He was under the impression that they kept the drivers separate from the admin types I guess to protect them from drivers' wrath for how they are mistreated. He said he also was allowed to take a crap in the "posh" toilets. There was no sign saying he wasn't allowed so he availed himself of the facilities.

He is going to put himself on the board tomorrow morning. His teammate had found a new partner already and left for New Jersey this afternoon.

So that officially ends Team Redcoat.

Stay tuned for the adventures of Redcoat Dedicated.

 

Latest update.

Redcoat has elaborated on the log class he took. The other detail that I couldn't remember last night was that he was told to put the BOL number next to the company ID number as it is required while in California. That part he didn't know.

Then I asked him about Rocks' question and he said they did mention that in the class. The way he understood it, DOT has the right to all the QC GPS info so that they can compare when the truck is moving to what is written in the log book. DOT has always been able to do this but as Redcoat pointed out to me, it would be a "right ballache" for them to have to sit down and go through all the QC information so they don't seem to press the issue that much unless they are trying to bust somebody that has already done something wrong. Redcoat thought it was more like Covenant using that as a threat to their drivers to not try to "adjust" their logs to make them legal.

Speaking of log violations, Redcoat found 4 full pages of log violations the previous driver had stuffed into the book that was in the truck. I wonder if that had anything to do with why the man no longer drives for Covenant....

Redcoat is now on the board and waiting for a dispatch.

Stay tuned.