Covenant Dispatching - A Comedy of Errors

Wednesday July 29th. Redcoat leaves Opelika promptly at 10:00 AM headed to Fairburn, GA. At 10:30 AM the QC beeps with a message he's been deassigned from XXXX430. So much for knowing where he's going after delivering to Duncan, OK. Redcoat get to Fairburn within a couple hours and has to wait an hour or so to be loaded. He is early so that is expected. He heads west and misses the turn off Hwy. 78 in Birmingham to get onto the new road. He ends up going all the way to Jasper before he can get onto the new road to make better time. It is 5:00 PM when he gets to New Albany, MS for his fuel stop and he decides to shut it down for the night. They are not supposed to stop within a hundred miles of Memphis. It's a little early but if he keeps going, he's not sure if he can find a place to spend the night on the other side of Memphis before he runs out of hours. In hindsight, the next day he sees a huge truck stop between Memphis and Little Rock where he could have stayed.

Thursday July 30th. Redcoat gets up at 5:30 AM, showers, eats breakfast, does his check call, and rolls out by 6:00 AM. On his way past Little Rock, he sees the Maverick headquarters. I told him he should have just wheeled it on in and talked to a recruiter then and there. Monday I will be sending them an application.

 

I'm hoping you are going with Covenant because they were the only company that would hire you. If you had ANY other choices besides them, then you're crazy for going to Covenant. If you had no other choice (like my husband) then at least you know what you're in for.

Thursday July 30th (cont.). QC beeps at 3:00 PM with job #XXXX835. Pick-up in Muskogee, OK at 3:00 PM on the 30th and deliver to Temple, TX at 8:00 AM on Aug. 1st. This is very do-able. No problems that Redcoat can see right off the bat.

Redcoat makes it to Duncan, OK and shuts it down at 7:00 PM. He spends the night in a nearby Wal-Mart parking lot and is 30 miles away from the receiver. He'd asked his DM if he could deliver early that night (because his QC info said it was a drop and hook) and his DM said no that he had an appointment time of 8:00 AM and to stick to that. The receiver is a Family Dollar store DC and RC has a load of paper towers for them.

Friday July 31st. Redcoat decides to get down there early in the morning on the off chance that he might be able to get unloaded. He pulls up to the gate at 7:00 AM (an hour early), the security guard won't let him in because he doesn't have a confirmation number. RC has to pull off to the side of the road while he QC's his DM to get a confirmation number. Meanwhile, three trucks pull through the gate while he's waiting. In record time, the number comes back on the QC. Redcoat is wondering if they already had the number, why didn't they include it with the job assignment? Once he gets in, he finds out that he has the wrong appointment time. It is not 8:00 AM like his dispatch says, it is actually 11:00 AM.

Redcoat does some quick figuring and sees that with an 11:00 AM appointment in Duncan, there is no way he can make Muskogee on time by 1:00 PM. So he will be late for the pick-up but he should still be able to make the delivery time so he acknowledges the XXXX835 dispatch and notes the time discrepancy in the remarks section.

In the meantime, the warehouse people manage to fit Redcoat in early and he is getting unloaded. He has to write a CommData check for $165 for a lumper. In talking to his English trainer friend, Redcoat found out that Covenant will pay the driver $80 lumper pay to unload the truck. He never knew that before and will keep that in mind for next time. This is only the second time in his nine months of driving that he's had to pay lumpers. Funny that the company will pay $165 for a lumper but they won't up the amount to pay one of their own.

Redcoat will be further delayed because some of the load has gotten wet from a leaky trailer so that means another OS&D report for water damage. Yesterday RC drove through rain for about six hours.

 

Care to elaborate on what exactly Redcoat has to do to get the same lumper pay? Remember, this is Covenant we're talking about. Also, most of the paperwork RC gets has "Do not call the receiver on it," so he tries not to call them if he can help it.

Friday July 31st (cont.). After stressing about getting to the shipper in Muskogee on time, and beating feet from Duncan, Redcoat arrives two hours late only to realize ... that he's a day early. He misread the QC and he's not due in Muskogee until tomorrow, August 1st. So he has some free time to get his XM radio antenna sorted out and to get his CB radio hooked up. He doesn't care to monitor the CB or to talk on it (he thinks nobody can understand him) but he's decided that one would be handy to have because many times the receiver uses a certain channel to call the drivers when they are having to wait to unload. So he's broken down and bought a little Cobra.

 

He said back when he went through orientation a year ago (at Hutchins in Dallas), they took three people out. One drove down the service road, one drove under the interstate to get to the other side, and one drove back to the yard and that was it. However, a couple weeks ago he was talking to one of the trainers and the man was waiting on his student to pass the road test because he failed it on his first try the day before. Apparently the road test has gotten more involved and he said it sounds like they're using it to weed people out. So evidently even Covenant is starting to get choosy on who they take. That speaks volumes about the status of the industry.

Anywhere ... almost. He wants to drive flatbeds. He says he's getting so out of shape driving a van that he just feels bad all the time. He wants to go to flatbeds to get a workout tarping, checking load security, tossing tie-down straps and chains, etc.

Good luck at orientation.

Friday July 31st (cont.). The QC beeps at 1300 with XXXX839. Pick-up at Hutchins on Thursday, July 30th at 1800 and deliver to Haltom City, TX on Monday, August 3rd at 0700. That will be 124 MT miles from Temple, TX and 41 loaded miles.

Redcoat got a reprimand over the QC for not sending a macro that he was starting his 10-hour break. Covenant DM's send out many QC messages not to call them or bother them with extraneous messages because they are too busy to communicate. So RC didn't see any point in sending a message telling of his 10-hour break since it didn't figure into affecting his delivery time of 1300 Saturday afternoon. He religiously sends a macro 47 every morning to notify his DM of his status as far as hours, but apparently they want more than that. Again, it would be nice if they could spell out exactly what conditions they want to know about and which ones they don't care about. Instead, they use punative measures to whip their drivers into going the direction they want. Like dog training. Rather than using treats, Covenant uses the invisible fence/electric shock method.

Redcoat will be legal at 0600 on the 1st after his 10-hour break.