Covenant Dispatching - A Comedy of Errors

Actually, Melton is the one I called first for RC. But they have changed their hiring requirements yet again. Now they want 6 months SOLO experience. RC now has 10 months total driving experience with 6 months of that team driving. Melton wouldn't count the team driving bit so in order to go work for them he will have to wait until November which by that time they will then probably want a year solo experience.....

Allow Me -- RC says that Covenant requires either a lumper's SSN or EIN on the lumper receipt. He said that if he drove refers all the time, then it might be worth the paperwork to form a small LLC and bill the company for the lumper pay. But they way they have it set up now, it would be difficult to try to cheat the system and it's not worth the chance of getting caught. Not only that, but if he decided to do the unload by himself instead of using a lumper, they wouldn't let him use their equipment for the unload and this stuff wasn't palletized. It was all loose.

Saturday August 1st. I stand corrected in that there are two different macros that you send for your hours. A macro 1 is your morning check call. A macro 47 is your 10- or 34-hour DOT break.

RC wasn't scheduled to pick up his load until 1300 but he called first thing in the morning and they told him his load was ready if he wanted to come on down and get it. RC left Muskogee, OK at 1030 and headed to Temple, TX. It was a non-eventful run and he arrived in Temple at 1745. With a straight-forward drop & hook, he left Temple a half-hour later at 1815 headed to Hutchins. Arrived Hutchins at 2045 and sent mac-47 at 2117 saying his break would be over at 0717 Sunday.

Sunday August 2nd. RC tried calling the receiver in the morning to see if anybody was there that would accept the load waiting in the yard at Hutchins but nobody was home. No surprise there but figured he'd try anyway. The load is scheduled to be delivered at 0800 and knowing what Doubledragon5 said is true, he plans on leaving at 0600 for the 40-mile trip. Other from that, there is not much to do today except laundry and maybe watch DVDs on his laptop.

 

Monday August 3rd. Redcoat is up at 0600 to make the 40-mile drive to Haltom City, TX to drop the load. When he's almost there, he pulls over to check his directions and another Covenant truck goes by him. RC reasons that the truck is probably going to the same place he is so he follows him. Turns out he is right. Protocol at this receiver is first-come-first-served so RC is now second behind the other Covenant truck. However, that truck's paperwork has an issue (GP's fault, not Covenant's) so it pulls over to the side and RC is now first in line.

The drive over took about 40 minutes and RC sits for two hours while he gets unloaded. At 0845 he pulls out and makes his way to a truck stop to sit and wait for his next assignment. While he waits, he makes a phone call to payroll to find out about his week vacation since his first anniversary with Covenant occurs on the 26th of this month. He finds out that they don't actually get any vacation days off but they just get the $500 about two weeks after their official anniversary. Oh, AND he gets his blue satin jacket.... hoo-rah.

At 0946 the QC beeps with job XXXX927. MT move of 33 miles to Denton, TX for load pick-up on the 3rd at 2200. Deliver to Alexandria, LA at 0600 on the 4th. 335 loaded miles.

Redcoat now knows from experience that the facility at Denton is by appointment only and he is not looking forward to driving through the night. He plans on showing up early to see if he can get his load sooner knowing that if not, there is a place nearby where he can pull off the side of the road and wait.

The Texas heat in the daytime is torture...no way to get any sleep to prepare for a night drive so hopefully he'll get lucky and be able to get his load early so he can try to sleep at night when it's a bit cooler.