Covenant Dispatching - A Comedy of Errors

I don't disagree with what you've stated. Traffic ticket was definitely RC's fault -- not disputing that. It was just another thing to deal with on a very bad day. Icing on the cake so to speak. Will tell RC to ignore what the paperwork says and to call the receiver anyway from now on. And yes, EVERY DAY Redcoat sends a Macro notifying dispatch how many hours he has left. The point here is that the DM doesn't bother to read any of them which causes more headache and wasted time. I understand that there are snafu's in this industry but I personally think that Covenant is the mother of all screwups when it comes to doing a good job in dispatching. The entire point of this thread is to give newbies who are thinking of Covenant an idea of what they are going to be dealing with when they get this kind of DM.

That being said....

Monday July 20th (cont.) 6:11 AM RC sends Macro 47 (does anybody actually read these macros???) supposedly notifying the DM that RC will need a 34-hour reset after making delivery. 12:00 noon cargo delivered (MT trailer) after waiting at the receiver for 6 1/2 hours. Two hours until pumpkin time. RC heads down I-285 and then east on I-20 to the Pilot to settle in for his reset. He can also send in two trip paks and get a shower. The Pilot doesn't have any food so he goes over to the TA to stay there. Sends a macro at 2:00 PM that he is starting his reset and will be legal at 11:00 PM on Tuesday the 21st.

At 4:38 PM the QC beeps with job XXXX660 pick-up in Bessemer, AL at 7:00 AM on the 21st delivering to Conyers, GA at 8:00 AM on the 22nd. RC QC's back that he cannot do as he is in a reset. Two minutes later they send him the routing info. Then he gets a message from the DM, "Why can't you deliver on time?" RC sends back that he sent a Macro 47 at 6 in the morning notifying of his need for a reset and how many hours he had left. DM sends back "When did you start the reset?" RC sends back the same info he sent a couple hours ago. Then about 15 minutes later he is deassigned from that job.

After that, there is a flurry of messages about RC's request for home time. The gist of the conversation is that since RC is now running dedicated, he can only get home time in Mississippi, his home of record, rather than in various states to meet up with me where I happen to be at the moment (like he did while teaming). The DM says he can get him to Mississippi but that North Carolina is out of his lane. RC asks the DM exactly where does his 'lane' go? (Another good bit of intel that could have been imparted to RC while he was at Chatt.) So far no answer to that question. RC will ask again in the morning. RC wonders why NC is out of the lane but he was just up here within a hundred miles of me two weeks ago spending the night at a chicken slaughter house. He also had a load assignment just before heading to Texas that was to take him to Ashboro, NC which is only about 45 miles from me but that load was deassigned.

The DM said that he will only go to NC for "load saves."

What is a "load save?"

End result -- Redcoat has given up on getting any home time.

 

HA!! I love the way you put it. I think I'll start to keep track of how many load saves Redcoat gets. So far he's up to two.

I've not posted to this thread in a week because Redcoat has been sitting in Chatt. waiting for his 'new' truck to be fixed. Monday night his DM called him to tell him to bring his truck to Chatt. because it had been sold and to stop in to see him at 10 AM Tuesday morning.

Redcoat thought he was getting fired....

But to continue in the spirit of this thread, RC left the TA where he was reseting at 5:30 AM Tuesday morning to make it to Chatt. in plenty of time for his meeting with his DM. And of course, he gets the "official" MT move message on the QC at 8:30 AM followed by directions to Chatt. from Doraville (of which he was almost 75 miles away from when he started). So by the time he got the message, he was less than an hour away from Chatt.

Nice to see his DM is right on top of things. Speaking of which, RC got to finally meet his DM ... sort of. Dude wouldn't come out from behind that glass window in that room (I forget what it's called but all you folks that have been in Covenant's building know which one I'm talking about.) Redcoat thought he might actually get a chance to sit down for a few minutes and talk to the guy to get some answers to some of his questions but that would have been too much like being civil. God forbid that a DM should actually come in contact with one of his drivers. Instead the man handed him his paperwork for the new truck and told RC to call him when he's ready to go.

And that was it. Took all of about 30 seconds.

Anyway, Redcoat has been in Chatt. all week making the truck swap and then getting his "new" one fixed (brakes). I say "new" because it's an ex-trainer truck but it's newer than the one he had. This truck is a 2008 with 291,000 miles on it and the stripes peeling off just like all the other trucks in the fleet. It actually was in fairly decent condition as far as cleanliness goes. RC almost made it out for the weekend with a dispatch to Georgia and then Louisiana but he got 80 miles out and decided that the jake wasn't working right and that it had something to do with the cruise control. Breakdown told him to turn around and come back to Chatt. so they could have another look.

They deassigned him from that dispatch so now he's sitting through the weekend. Maybe they'll have him fixed and ready to go by Monday ... hopefully.