Covered Wagon Trucking in Jackson Georgia

Just rogerd here with another company that just doesn't work to well. I got hired on in February or so this year at Covered Wagon Trucking in Jackson, GA.
Here are some good things. Excellent dispatch, you will know your next load as soon as you empty, no kidding. Hard working office staff, they work as hard as you do, which is why I hung on as long as I did. Problems are taken care of fast, like pay discrepancies and even if you think you should have been paid a little more for a very difficult load, you'll have plenty of those loads. The checks are always good, though on the low end of the pay spectrum probably. They generally take care of equipment repairs as requested on a weekend when the truck is parked in the yard and they have good mechanics.

Here is what will happen if you work here.

Probation, this is a period of ninety days, and it is HELL! You will be hauling loads of steel stud and other formed metal from Clark Dietrich, in Mcdonough , GA. that are crazy dangerous. These loads shift and sway the entire time they are hauled, they sometimes bounce back often as not you get to your location oversized and or with crushed metal. These loads will have no belly straps and may exceed 8 feet tall from your straight deck, no belly straps because they won't allow it and they are stacked side by side at different elevations disallowing their use anyway. Most of the loads CWT gets are multistop loads, as many as five stops from my experience, and you will need to finish them in one day, so you will need to be fueled up and parked at your first location before any trucks get ahead of you at that stop or you will not finish the load that day.

Here is the scenario. You show up in the CWT yard in Jackson, you call dispatch, they give you load information, you go to Dietrich and wait for load to be completed, sometimes I sat there over six hours waiting though I am not sure that it was Dietrichs fault, you go and secure as best you can, then run the load to first stop two to four hundred miles away and park to offload early am, haul ### to your next stop and hope your not behind a bunch of trucks, throw hooks like mad and hope they offload fast, yes you will learn to throw hooks very well even though it is very dangerous it's the only way, secure as fast as you can and do this until all stops are done.

No stopping for ANY reason at all unless to offload.
Your pay will be $15.00 per stop after the first. You will get paid about .36-.38 cpm to run the loads into and out of some pretty rough locations in NC.SC. GA.TN. and KY., mostly. So here is the break down. 300 miles x .37= $111.00 that you did over night, then you get $15.00 per stop after your first stop on a four stop you will earn $45.00 for the stops that day and you may get about 150 miles on that four stop day, to equal a total of: $55.50 for miles and $45.00 stop pay for a total of $100.50 for that day. They will have a load for you that you may only need to drive a hundred miles or so to get, but you aren't on elogs yet so you are OK.

So Monday you earned $111.00 but it took you from 0900 till early am on Tuesday to get it, than on Tuesday you will earn $100.50, but you will drive all day for your stops and into the night to get loaded. Do all this until Saturday morning. At the end of a week you will drop the truck in the CWT yard where the overworked but gifted mechanics do repairs.

This is probation, but it does not change much after probation, and I know because I made it past probation.
The corker for me was when I just couldn't take a very dangerous load, at least to me, (and I complained regularly and stayed on because they said they would make Dietrich take care of this and that these loads won't happen again) from Clark Dietrich to, Cary, NC. This load was more than 8 feet tall and misshapen gapped and confusing or impossible to secure. CWT is very afraid of loosing this client and they go through drivers so fast that they have open door applications in the entry to the office.
This is all bad enough but what happened next is why I am writing this review.

I told Gerald Jr. in the office that I didn't think that I could anymore haul these loads, that though I had no accident and no citation to date for these loads, DOT officers had informed me that though I had enough hold-down, the loads were still not secure and that I needed some center lift strapping to secure them(belly strapping I am pretty sure). Gerald Jr. said that belly strapping is, discretionary. I guess that means, "If they load it, and you haul it, and something bad happens, driver discretion was in error and therefore drivers fault."
I gave my two week notice, and they strung me along for a few days, I asked Gerald Jr. if this was what it was going to for the next couple of weeks and he said yes, that if I couldn't haul the Dietrich loads, all of them, that they had no use for me. Then I asked him if he had ever asked a DOT officer about securing these loads, or sent a picture and ask someone, he said no, and that if I sent pictures to anyone and asked about securing properly, that he would, yep, you guessed it. "I will sue your pants off."

So I went to offload my gear, tarps, chains, binders etc. and Gerald Sr. was in the yard. I went over to get my pickup and noticed that someone had taken some of my equipment out of the bed of my personal truck that belonged to me. I went over and asked Gerald Sr. if he had given authorization for someone to remove personal items from my personal vehicle. He went ballistic on me and followed me around as I collected my equipment and put it back in my pickup. He said it all, called me every name he could think of, said that I was by far the dumbest driver he ever knew in twenty years and that Steve at Dietrich said that I was the, "stupidest driver he ever met". Though I only met him once and it was to see if there was any way to run straps through some of the lifts. Gerald Sr. was waving his arms and shouting, and told me that if I told anyone about this or posted a review or posted pictures, that Covered Wagon Trucking and Dietrich have attorneys, "ready to sue your pants off".

This is probably why no reviews have been posted about this company, they really tried to threaten me.

I hope this review may assist other drivers in making a more informed decision in regards to working for this company.

This is Rogerd.

 

That's funny cause they do have one old trailer down there that is set up with pipe pockets down center, and that would work well for this stuff, but they only use it for local work. Most carriers won't haul this stuff past the six foot mark, but trucking companies are getting desperate for clients I guess, Covered Wagon Trucking is very scared that they may lose Dietrich as a client, so they really go through drivers.

I learned at the end why there is no thread here for this company, and that is because the technique they use when you have a problem with hauling this stuff is to bully you by calling you names, making you feel small and incompetent, then convince you that you can't afford a lawsuit and that they have attorneys waiting to nail you. Pretty disturbing really.

Fortunately the rules are simple, no slander, tell the truth.

 

BTW, they will tell you that if you use your own equipment they repair or replace it if damaged. This is a lie, they just sent me a letter informing me that they will not be replacing any of my 2 in straps that I had to leave on a trailer in the yard for another driver to finish. They even asked me to leave them on for the driver, cause it was what I used for belly strapping. Five nearly new 2 inch straps I had just purchased from Howard Hill Enterprises, the most awesome 2s I ever used. I also used two boxes of tarp straps (bungees) cause theirs were dry rotted, that's why I kept some of my equipment in my POV in the yard.

 

You know, I am not sure that these guys run ads at CR. but I know they found me there. They do go through drivers fast, it was strange going from one safety meeting to the next in just three short months and seeing nearly all new faces and introducing yourself to a new group.
Thanks!