Covenant Transport - Chattanooga, Tn.

No Bubba- that old bus was going slowly in the slow lane, the Covenant driver just wasn't paying attention (according to her, read the other posts to get more info on the accident). i have seen those accident pics before, they are in the N Little Rock Safety director's office, along with a lot of other 'memorable' accidents.

 

hey; out there, i know what you mean about covenant using the drivers money and paying tolls out there.i got another big one for u where does the 500 dollars deductable of there insurance go when you get a scrape on the trailer and they just do minor repairs you know they aint turning that in on their insurance because i have been hearing for a long time covenant is struggling on money matters but they will turn you in to dac.One day i walked into payroll and I personally heard a pay clerk talked to the internal affairs about some thing a driver had said couldnt make it all out but the clerk said they were on the phone with internal affairs and after that they would help me.I will tell new drivers to watch out what covenant will do, they are not a christian company by far that is why they want to team up with their sister company U.S. EXPRESS TO BAIL THEM OUT OF THEIR TROUBLES. I had a 30 day teamer with me and we had a dispatcher to shut off our comdata cards be hind are backs and we were unable to even fuel up. My teamer was forced to take a bus from N.J after she would not drive solo from there (after 2 weeks) The dispatch is a lot of the problems drivers face. We actually had a supervisor of dispatch ask what a steer tire was after we had to get one replaced prior to driving in the Virginias. To say the least,they thought it was not a necessity even though a large piece of rubber was missing. It is also a crock that any load be so important that the driver is not to stop on a 12 hr. run to even use the restroom or stretch (if they had any sense they would realize that endangers the driver,passenger and others on the roadway. The wrong directions given also often puts a driver into a dangerous location in the cities. Maybe Jimmy Shields should take a little time off to pull his head out and wipe off his eyes. I think Covenant should be hit by the DOT for forcing their drivers to do things against the actual laws, and fine the crap out of the company and the ignorant dispatchers. To say the least I no longer work for them nor would I ever recommend anyone else to. Covenant you can kiss my [rear].

 

Hey ExCD- your story is so familiar, I should record it except that I have heard it a dozen times before. My thirty day teamer (the dumb and dumber method) and I had a couple of dispatchers like that (Mike Clark, aka Spider). My last dispatcher was much better (michael mcJunkin) but there were times that i would call him to give him a heads up on reapir times, and he would be confused about what i was talking about.
How about having to take your old tires back to a terminal (with a shop) when you had them changed? I remember one time I dropped off three at Columbus- whatta pain!

 

Mack- getting them to replace tires was never a big problem, aside from sitting on hold for anywhere from 5-40 mins to get the replacement authorized. The big problem would be if you were in BFE picking up a dropped (and loaded) trlr, they wanted you to use T/As or (the few) Pilots with shops.
Case in point: Kimper,KY (Near pikeville) picking up a loaded trlr going to breiningsville, PA: Trlr was loaded with 34000 lbs of poptarts and nutrigrain and only had three flats (one with a hole bigger than my fist) and five working lights on the back of the trlr.

 

I worked for Covenant for two years. I was teaming with a guy and we were on their "Elite Division".... Pulling air freight. Our truck would run 72 mph. Money was great although we had to run our tail off. Which I didn't mind at all... would much rather run hard than sit and fiddle faddle around at a truck stop somewhere. The guy I was teaming with wanted to retire. I was told I could continue to pull air freight with the new team driver that I found to replace the driver I was teaming with. Once my new team driver got on the truck, we never pulled the first load of air freight. They cut me off just like that.... after declaring and assuring me I was still on the air freight team and they NEEDED ME. They stayed on my case once they got word my team driver was retiring to find another team driver or they would assign one to me because they couldn't do without my truck on those air freight loads. HA!!! All we did mostly was SIT. It seemed I was on the phone constantly fighting with dispatch. I was promised over and over again... the next load you will be back on air freight. The last straw was when we had one of our fights (dispatch and me) and they cut my card off in retaliation. I took their truck to Hutchins and went to work with a different company within the same week. I never received my last tiny paycheck from them either.

 

wallbanger:

thank you for your additional comments. all information is appreciated, especially by our clients.

your 'logbook' post gave us some insight as to why this accident probably happened - fatigued driver.

i respect truck drivers but a witness says this lady was driving a fully-loaded truck very aggressively (fast, close lane-changes) before the accident.

again, thank you.

 

Sure halfcard- you'd think with all the witnesses, a police report, etc. this would be an open and shut case. But covenant was trying to low-ball your clients, weren't they/

 

yes, that is right. they acted very badly at a settlement meeting, and that is putting it mildly. at the time, i and my clients strongly wanted to settle the case.

take my word that i am not the type of attorney who just 'forgets' about these things.

 

Well, I not too sure if I can help anyway. At the begining when I started working there, I did had alot of log problems and their rules in the log dept is to have them fixed when you are red flagged at a terminal. After having been flagged like three times, you will have to take a class, which I never had to. But I have went over my max hours per day or the 70 hour rule, but like over 2 hours at least. I do know this for a fact, some dispatchers (Managers) do sometimes make their drivers go over the hours by threating them in ways as I was told by other drivers, but I never had that kind of problem with my dispatcher and he was very good with me, but on that last day at the terminal after having my accident, he just like he didn't care. There was one time that I had a load that was number one of getting there on time and I got very tried and started to lose myself. I decided to go and pulled over at a Rest Area and sleep for at least one hour. Well, I over sleep and it was like three hours late and one of the dispatcher said to get that load over there (Like she was pissed off), so I get the load over there in 15 minutes and started to backup in a L-Shape dock and ended up bumping into a fire thing with my corner bumper that was in the middle of the parking lot. I didn't do much damage and looked ok when I left, but when I got back on the freeway, the bump came loose and ended up rubbing my tire and did make a very big hole

Shane