Covenant Dispatching - A Comedy of Errors

Well, I'm back. It took a while for my ISP to figure out where the new servers were for the forum but it finally propagated to my ISP so the address now resolves.

We had a lovely talk with Redcoat's DM's supervisor on Friday after he turned in his week's notice. He wanted to know why Redcoat wanted to leave and I told him it was mainly because he wasn't able to get home time to North Carolina and secondly because RC wanted to drive flats. RC talked to him first and told him that he really didn't get along with his DM and that he was tired of not getting home. The man told Redcoat that they wanted him to stay and that they would look into switching up his route to get him to North Carolina. Then I called him and talked to him for a bit and reiterated the fact that I have only seen my husband four times since December and that the last time was over two months ago. He told me again that they would switch RC over to a different account and I asked him why they didn't offer to do that a month ago when Redcoat told them the situation back then and he had no answer. I also told him how very unhappy Redcoat was to get that service failure when he first started dedicated and that I attributed it directly to the company's lack of communication with him when he made the switch. I told him if they'd have taken just 15 minutes to sit down with him to explain how things worked it would have prevented a lot of miscommunication, confusion, and hard feelings. He allowed that was probably true but, again, had nothing to say because what was done was done.

Then I told him that we appreciated Covenant hiring him when no one else would but he wanted to give flats a try. I told him we didn't want to close the door on Covenant and if Maverick didn't work out that maybe he would come back if Covenant would still have him. He said they'd save a place for him which is what I expected him to say but would be surprised if it actually turned out to be the case.

And that was it.

After Redcoat finished with his home time at my mom's on the 16th, there was a QC message waiting for him that had come over on the 14th at 1605. Job XXXX099 pick up in Monticello, MS on the 15th at 1100 and deliver to Huntsville, AL on the 17th at 1200. Redcoat left Tupelo around noon and headed down to Monticello. He got there that afternoon, got loaded, and spent the night at a Pilot near Meridian. Then he headed up to Huntsville this morning, arrived an hour early for his appointment, and sat in line for a couple hours along with 4 other trucks to get unloaded.

There was a truck in front of him at the dock and he timed it to see how long it took the man to get the paperwork. The driver backed the truck up to the dock and Redcoat could see the receiver dude inside putzing around. By the time he climbed down the steps and meandered up to the tractor, 9 minutes had passed. You would think that if they had 4 trucks in line that they might hustle just a little bit more (time is money after all). Just another one of those little things that adds to the frustration factor of this job.

 

Redcoat is in Conyers, GA waiting to be unloaded. After he finished in Huntsville, he had a pick up in Birmingham for a load that weighed 44K pounds. He said the truck was "whingin' like an old man" trying to pull the weight up the hills between Birmingham and Atlanta. The load initially was due in Conyers by 0800 but Redcoat QC'd that he couldn't make it due to a combination of hours and the location of Conyers being so close to Atlanta. So the night-shift DM changed the delivery time to 1020 and that worked out fine.

At 1447 on the 17th the QC beeped with the next job, xxxx498 pick up in Knoxville, TN at 0800 on the 18th (same time as the delivery time in Conyers) and deliver to Muskogee, OK at 0200 on the 20th. This puts Redcoat in Oklahoma on Thursday when he's supposed to turn his truck in on Friday. Redcoat was concerned about making it back to Chatt. in time but I reminded him that he should be able to turn it in at Hutchins which is closer to Little Rock anyway.

Over these past couple of months, Redcoat has been getting good miles once he got going (after time lost from getting different trucks). He got almost 3000 last week before his home time at my mom's house. If Covenant didn't pay such crap wages and if he could get home at least every other weekend and if they didn't have some such idiotic policies, it might not be so bad to stay. (Somebody slap me for saying that...)

 

Redcoats gets unloaded at 1115 and when he sends the macro 8, the QC beeps with a message that's he's been deassigned from xxxx498. So now he heads to a truck stop to hang out until he either gets another job or they bring him back to Chatt.