Covenant Dispatching - A Comedy of Errors

Sunday July 26th. 9:30 AM QC beeps with XXXX750. MT move to Fairburn, GA, pick up load headed to Jacksonville, FL w/delivery time 10:00 AM Monday. Redcoat leaves at 10:00 AM bobtailing, arrives in Fairburn in good time and finds the shipper w/no problem. He's been there before. Everything is closed. Nobody around except the security person in the guard shack. There are three boxes on the wall outside the office. One says "Covenant," one says "Swift," and the third says "All Others." Redcoat digs through the stack of Covenant paperwork until he gets to one that says Jax, gets the trailer number, and finds his trailer loaded and ready to go. He hooks up and is on his way.

He makes Jax in good time and after checking the few truck stops near the receiver, finds that they are all full. He decides to investigate the receiver to see if there is any place to park nearby and there is another truck parked along side the road about a quarter of a mile away from the receiver. He pulls up behind that truck and shuts it down for the night. Within an hour, another truck pulls up behind him and the three of them wait for the place to open up in the morning.

When he was about an hour from Jax, the QC beeped with a message that he had the right load but the wrong pro number. His heart thudded in his chest for a moment when he first thought that he had screwed up and gotten the wrong paperwork. But it was a Covenant mistake and they deassigned him from that job and reassigned him with another that had the right pro number and a delivery time of 9:00 AM. After that adrenalin rush, however, Redcoat reminded himself that next time to go through the ENTIRE stack of paperwork at the shipper to make sure there weren't other Covenant trucks going to the same destination. He dodged a bullet that time.

Redcoat set his alarm for 8:00 AM to give himself plenty of time to eat and go the quarter mile to the receiver.

Monday July 27th. Redcoat backs into the dock in plenty of time and takes his paperwork inside the office. There is one of those wire-mesh grates on the window protecting the office person from the criminal element on the other side. Redcoat walks up and she snaps her fingers at him without speaking.
Immediately offended, Redcoat says, "I'm not your dog! What do you want?"
"Your paperwork..."
He hands her his paperwork and then she points at him again.
"What do you want now?"
"Keys."
He hands them over. This makes no sense to him. What is the point of this? Do they think the driver doesn't have a spare set?
"Your license."
He hands that over too. Again, this makes no sense. And although he's seen this many times before, he asks the question anyway.
"Why do you need my license?"
"To get your CDL number."
"Why?"
"Security."
This strikes Redcoat as funny. He could see shippers wanting a driver's CDL number to PICK UP the load to make sure it isn't being stolen. But he just can't see a driver/criminal wanting to DELIVER a load. So many of their rules seem just so completely inane.
He heads back to the truck and starts it up with his spare set of keys just for spite. Lets it run for a few minutes and then shuts it down to wait as they unload him.

On-time delivery. 14-hour clock is ticking. QC all quiet.

 

No, this was a very small distribution center for Sam's Club/Wal-Mart and Redcoat was hauling some kind of paper product.

Monday July 27th (cont.) QC beeps with a new dispatch. Pick-up in Palatka, FL at 1:00 PM (refuel at Pilot on I-10 first) then take the load up to Opelika, AL arrive by 8:00 AM Tuesday morning. Dispatch says it is a drop and hook but there is an appointment time of 8:00. The address given for Palatka is 216 State Rd. and after searching around in MapQuest, RC determines that the address is really SR-216. By the time he gets down to the Pilot and refuels, it is 11:30 AM. There is no direct way to get to Palatka from the Pilot and the trip down takes 2 1/2 hours. The load is a drop and hook but GP rules state that you have to sweep out the trailer before you leave it and after doing that and several other things that burn up time, it is 3:00 before RC pulls out of Palatka.

He arrives in Opelika at 10:30 PM and checks the receiver to see if he can go ahead and drop off his load. He has a half hour left on his on-duty/driving time and if he can go ahead and drop off his load, that will leave him enough time to get up to the truck stop 4 miles up the road on I-85. He can get his 10-hour rest and wait for another dispatch in the morning. Redcoat lucks out in that he was allowed to drop the load and pick up another trailer. There was actually a space open at the truck stop and RC settles in for the night.

Another on-time delivery. Legal at 10:00 AM Tuesday morning.

 

Tuesday July 28th. QC beeps at 4:15 PM. Job #XXXX429 Pick-up Fairburn, GA at 3:00 PM on the 29th and deliver to Duncan, OK at 8:00 AM on the 31st. Drop & hook. Another beep. Job #XXXX430 Pick-up Muskogee, OK at 8:00 PM on the 31st and deliver to Palatka, FL at 8:00 AM on the 3rd.

Redcoat does the math and sees that he can get in a reset by 10:00 AM Wednesday. That still gives him plenty of time to drive from Opalika to Fairburn and get a fair ways across Mississippi maybe into Arkansas before he runs out of time. Fuel stop is in New Albany, MS. There is some consideration of spending the night to pick up his hazmat letter from the mother-in-law's house and getting his endorsement done as he goes through Tupelo but that would eat into any extra hours he'd have to get to OK. He decides not to take the chance of something going wrong and getting a late delivery. He can take care of the hazmat endorsement during some home time since he has to take it in Mississippi.

Redcoat spends the day trip planning and putzing around and will pull out at 10 in the morning.