COVENANT -- From a wife's perspective

Its a pretty sure bet , sorry to say that covenant wont take him back after quitting , whatever the reason was . They have such a high turn-over rate that they just keep running thru the driver mill to the next guy or girl ... Quitting may have affected his DAC too , then hed be lucky to get hired on with a decent company...Best of luck to you both tho.. Just the harsh realities of this industry

 

You can still do it.. Number of truckers has Arthritis. I have Arthritis from the neck down. OK So I can not Tarp a Flatbed or Lump a Trailer.. But I can do everything else.

 

Hey again Mrs. R....

I just wrote a long post and then proceeded to lose it

so now the readers digest version......why did he choose Covenant? They train you, OK, fine but then they force you to run team.....just cheap labor. The idea is to get training over with and get a truck so he can be on his own and then bring you and the dogs once in awhile. (some companies will let you take pets)

OK, we are in Boise right now headed to Tacoma, it's a gorgeous drive along the Oregon border then up into Wash state....then a couple days off in the hotel. Sounds great yes, but we are going to the hotel so I can bring my wife to a doctor office and get her some antibiotics for her sinus infection.

When we think of things, we'll come back and post more.....good luck to Mr. R....we'll keep our fingers crossed.

 

Hey again......forgot to ask...so did Mr R call Covenant today ??

 

Covenant was the only one that kept him after orentation I belive.

 

Another update. I've heard from Covenant and they are working on getting him a trainer. Not sure if it will be one of the five I requested that Rocks mentioned but we'll see.

For the record, Redcoat did not quit. He just needed to get off the road to get his wits about him to make the decision whether to quit or not. He had a go at my job and discovered that he just doesn't have quite the charisma that it can take to cajole people into buying something they really don't need. If he'd had more success at doing my work, then, yes, he would have quit. But when he left we made sure the door was still open for his coming back if he needed to.

Mt1trucker wanted to know why Covenant. Good question. He had applied to over a dozen companies trying to get hired and nobody would hire him because of one or both of these two things: 1) He didn't have a 3-year work history because he'd been retired since 2002 and 2) he didn't have his U.S. driver's license for at least 6-months (or a year or 2 years).

He first tried Schnieder and they wanted the 6-month minimum on the license (which he'd gotten in June). Swift wanted a year. CR England wanted 2 years. TMC (the company he REALLY wants to work for) was ok on the license but balked at the work history. Even though he had three of his friends notarize letters saying they knew him and that he'd been retired, TMC still wanted some kind of work history in the US (they weren't interested in anything he'd done in the UK). Same thing with US Express, Trans Am, Southern Refrigerated, and a bunch of others we tried. The ONLY company that would hire him was Covenant and believe me when I say he tried EVERYbody he could think of before them because he knew how they 'trained' and he knew he wouldn't like it.

When he was going through Roadmaster school we were frantically talking to recruiters and I was sending his application to everybody I could find online and they all turned him down. The day before he graduated he got his pre-hire letter from Covenant but we were still trying to find another company. He got accepted by Arrow, went to their orientation and found out there were almost 30 drivers there (over half with experience) vying for 4 slots. They washed him out on the last day. Then he talked to Swift again and we thought they knew about his license but halfway through their orientation they figured it out and sent him home.

So all this bad experience just turned him off to the industry right from the gitgo but we'd already invested thousands of dollars in it and no matter what, we still needed some kind of income.

And that's why he's with Covenant.

Finally, those of you who want me to team drive can put that idea away as it ain't happening. I talked to my mom yesterday and she's not doing so well. My mom is 73 and she's battling lymphoma and skin cancer by herself as my father died back in May. For the past year she was relying on her younger sister for support but my aunt was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is currently undergoing chemo. So that's not good. My mom is figuring she'll be having to do the same thing in the next month or so and when that happens, she's going to need me there to help her. I've arranged with Air Photo to give me work in Alabama (Huntsville/Birmingham areas) and they have enough film there to keep me working until the summer. That way I'll be nearby to help my mom as much as I can and still try to make a living.

So you can see I have a few family issues that makes team driving with Redcoat kind of out of the question at this point in time. Maybe when circumstances change, it might be different.

But anyway, the good news is that I have, in fact, heard from Covenant, they are aware of the dates when he'll be ready to get back to his training and they are working on trying to match him up with a trainer in that time frame.

Can't complain about that, right?

 

WOW....That is alot of tough luck there, I sympathize completely...

Considering all that, I think that he would be crazy to walk away from Covenent. Stick it out and make it work. I know that is easier said than done, but considering all the things you mentioned, I am surprised that RedCoat got any offer at all, especially in the current market.

The economy is bad and is going to get worse. If he can stick it out at least he will have some steady income to keep things afloat. Once he gets alone, and has some miles under his belt, it will be a thousand times easier.

Sometimes the very best we can do is tread water and wait for a break in the clouds. Anyone who has been there knows exactly what I am saying, and those that haven't, trust me when I say it is a lousy place to be, but don't judge unless you have walked a mile in another mans shoes.

Hang in there Redcoat, tough times don't last, tough people do.

 

WOW, Yeah that can and is a problem. He not the only one with that problem, for I too.. Same with the both of you, I same problem as the both of you. So I am example it can be done...

I was terminated from Navajo back in Nov of 2000 cause I refused to drive while under Influence of Medication. At the time I had a 3 accidents while driving for Navajo last one month before, which was the only one my fault. But because of that one, I was turned away by everyone I applied with. I even applied with local companies, one after seeing me walk up said no cause of my medical conditions (Arthritis). So I applied for and got on Disability. I already been fighting the VA to increase my Service Connected part.

On top of that my father had Diabeties since he was 16 yrs old. In 1985 he was medical retired as a shipping clerk, due to his vision. In 1988 he had a heart attack which cause of his previous health, he nearly died from the Heart Attack, Kidneys, and Diabeties. 2000 he basically lost all his sight. He could see light but not see an objects. (Yet he still pass the Eye test in renewing his drivers permit.) I would sit with him, do odds jobs for him and be his eyes so he could continue to do something he enjoyed doing (work on Lawn mowers). Aug 16, 2005 he passed away from Cancer which they only found Aug 14, 2005.

Since his death, I worked on improving myself, teaching my self how to not get so angry, changing my attitude toward life, and toward others. Fighting for my own life you might say since the theme song for M*##S*H (suicide is painless) was my theme song of life direction. I was on 10 different types of Medications, from Pain killers, to Anxiety, anti depressants to blood pressure. I knew I had to get off of them.

I ended up moving over to the Philippines to be with a very beautiful young lady and stayed there for 10 months at the end of 2006. When I came home I came home to go back to work in Aug 2007.

Sept 2007 I went to see my local Doctor for a DOT Physical and passed. This doctor had stated to me earlier, I would not pass another DOT Physical. He was the one who gave me the first one I gotten back in 1996. He looked back and was amazed at the difference. I done really good in improving my health, I was in better health in 2007 than I was in 1996 after being discharged from the Military.

As Redcoat problem, I too had to search around for a company to hire me. I drove 4 years till I was terminated by Navajo. But since I had not worked. So all said I had no experience. I already read on here and other forums I would have to take a refresher and be treated as if I never driven before. Well I cheated that idea.. I landed a job with a small company and yes the job did not last and had to search out a job 3 other times in the last 6 months. 1 attempted to kill me, 2 went out of business, and one I was making more on disability. Recently I been approved to go with Swift, but I put it on hold for another job offer.

So I can relate to Both of your problems..

 

Posted by jadeshadowhunter in another thread:

I think that sometimes things get said in here in the heat of when the event is happening that don't get followed up on later when more information is available. This may not actually be the case with jadeshadowhunter but I think it may be a possibility.

I was given a heads up by Covenant's student coordinator who is working with us that Redcoat may receive a separation letter even though he hasn't quit. Apparently these letters automatically get mailed out after "x" amount of days that a driver hasn't been on the truck. This is a good piece of intel to know in advance so if a notice does arrive, then the driver isn't so freaked out by it.

I'm not sure what the point of mailing an automatically generated notice is except it kind of supports the fact many have said about the company in that it tends to be very unorganized.

Given that fact, I make sure all of our communications with the company are in the form of emails that I can save just in case I may need them later. People tend to forget what is said during phone calls but emails leave footprints.

Two more days here in Iowa City. We leave Monday to go to Forest City so Winnebago can do some work on our rig. Then we head down to Granite City, IL for my next territory.

I told the student coordinator that if he can get Redcoat with any of the five people Rocks recommended that would be great. He said he would try but wouldn't make any promises because he usually doesn't know where the trainers will be or where they are from which I found kind of odd but until I do this man's job, I don't have the right to be critical. It does seem kind of a "loose" way to do things though, doesn't it.

I'll keep you posted as always. I just thought I would share the info about the automatically generated separation letters in case others receive them for whatever reason.

 

Redcoat's wife, I'm not sure I'm replying in the right place for you to see this, but hopefully you'll get it. You can have the bank fax a form to Covenant with routing and account number on it and they can use that to set up direct dep. You'll need to get a fax number from them of course to get it to whomever they need to receive it and set you up. Hope that helps. Jane