should i leave werner for covenant?

Me and my wife both have our hazmat and have been working for werner for three months. We are getting 4500 miles a week and 90 percent of our loads are solo loads, which wouldn't be so bad if they were back to back, but we have sometimes up to 12 hrs of downtime between each load, this is not condusive to a team at all. Werner also thinks its okay to give us 30 and 60 mile loads, and we get them often.

I think they just have way more solo freight than team freight and they are just giving us the leftover loads because they aren't really sure how to run us. We met a nice couple at a truck stop today who drive for covenant, and they claim the company is desperate for hazmat teams. They said they average over 6k miles a week and they showed me their notebook with all their recent loads. The guy points to a 350 mile load and says "they can't all be good runs" and I'm thinking, "this is an average load for me and my wife".

So I'm just wondering if we should jump the ship from werner to covenant, I've looked at some covenant posts and a lot are negative, but they are from solo drivers. Plus covenant has to be better than werner, right? I think werner or cr england is about the worst company in terms of reputation.

I've already spoke to our fleet manager and he said he'd put us on a watch list. We are now on a 1200 mile load that doesn't deliver for two days. 600 miles a day. Sounds like another solo load to me.

What do you guys think?

 

Check into US Xpress they were offering a 5000 (split) sign on bonus to haz mat teams.

 

And they run automatics...so half the work is already done!

 

Yea its consistent, if you can call 4500 miles each that. We sit more than we drive. We both take home 600 each. Not really enough to be gone from home for 8 weeks at a time and having to sleep while the truck is moving.

 

Just curious.... why are those two companies your only options?

 

Cause he only has a couple months experience....

 

Sad thing about Werner, hazmat does not pay extra so to me, it is not worth the bullseye on the back.
Werner has a lot of runs that go from one end of the country to the other. I was talking to a 26 year Werner man not long ago in Indy. He said he does trash runs, the runs that are left over after the teams are running. He said he goes from NJ, to ORGAN mostly but he does it as a solo driver. After 26 years he said he gets just about what he wants. Werner also gives a lot of the team runs to the training trucks. i would suggest talking to other team drivers and see what they are getting and who their dispatcher is. It may be worth a change there.
I was in the south region, so yes; I spent the winter in Chicago and the great freezer around it getting 19 cent a mile. Most of my runs were over 501 miles.
Two months ago I changed dispatchers. I now get paid a lot more and work in the south region. However, remember a lot more in Werner money......is not that much.
My year here is almost up......

 

Covenant as a company has been having real bad financial postings and very low stock value, I would be afraid to go to work for them just out of fear of bankruptcy.

 

Member Since: Mar 2011
Location: Lakeland, FL
Trucker? 7 Years
Posts: 20
My Trucking Photos: 0



Seems to me he could do much better than either of those with 7 years.