Covenant Transport Does not care about sleep deprivation, Forced me to drive no matter how much i objected, caused accident and endangered public safety. Chattanooga Tennessee
This is from years ago, but it still holds ground. I was reading the other complaints and theres always someone out there who is quick to defend them. Ive got one thats inexcusable, because they knew full and well that i was a danger to myself and others in the condition i was in.
I worked for Covenant about 3 years ago. I went to their main facility, I drove with the promise of being reimbursed at roughly 30 cents a mile. I didnt want to take the bus, forget it. I never did get reimbursed, and i had to drive there twice, for whatever reason, i dont remember. It was roughly 400 miles each direction.
Anywho, training was..confusing, to say the least. I was paired with 3 other guys, using a shifter i wasnt trained to use. He still passed me.
Getting to the point, when i finally got paired up, the guy was so disturbing. I use that Lightly too. He didnt believe in a microwave or a tv or even showering. He was just some redneck, plain and simple.
As a result, i experienced the "Fight Club" syndrome: I Couldnt Sleep. At all. I went roughly 3 or 4 days with no sleep and still driving through the mountains. I made complaints with the people over the qualcomm. No one gave a d**n, it was just some black man returning the message 12 hours later, or someone who had come in to replace him (Hey, its ok if he sleeps right?). I came close to going over a cliff on more then one occasion, and when i was driving i was getting delirious and thinking that i had fallen asleep. Worst time of my life.
To make a long story short: I got into a bad accident due to sleep deprivation. The trailer wheel wrapped around a phone pole and the whole thing was completely fubar'ed. The load had to be trashed and i dont know what happened with the trailer. It was glass bottles, believe it or not. I didnt know what was going on even then, i explained the symptoms to a friend and it was described as crashing from meth. Yucky. Its like, youre awake but youre really not.
The police let it go, thank god. The dispatcher on the other end put me on a bus and told me to go home.
When tax time came, the report was that i had quit. I didnt, obviously.
If you ever end up in a covenant center, you'll see that theres many many people there, due to the High turnover rate. Other people have said this, im just adding to the list.
Another thing too: This company is Crazy about religion. They have a lot of absurd rules too on what you can and cant do, the only one i remember is you cant bring your wife along or something. I know the rules of being a private company, you're not bound by church and state separation, but theyre just absurd. Even had some evangelist come in and sing, the people who saw him described him as a man with a head like grapefruit and screamed and loved shaking his fist with a beet-red face (Eat your heart out Pat Robertson!). What did i do? Broke the rules and got drunk in my room (Yeah, believe it or not, they dont let you have a few beers on your time off in your private room..I rebelled and got piss drunk)
Last thing: When the training was over in a few days, they couldnt find me a trainer. Guess what they did in the meantime? Refused to give me meal tickets so i could eat. Yep, the company who hired me wouldnt feed me their cafeteria slop that's unfit for bums, hows that suit ya?
The trainer who showed up..well, i described him already..He was asleep in the waiting room and smelled like a toilet. I shouldve pretended i was "the friend" of me as an excuse, then bailed.
Theres other complaints too, but i dont remember, it was many years ago and ive moved on long ago.
Stay away, this company is poison. It will greatly increase your life-expectancy rate.
Mr X
none, California
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Mr xxx
none,California,
U.S.A.
Few more things to add, i wrote this last night and was busy
#2Author of original report
Sat, August 18, 2007
Their hiring process is very very intrusive. They make you get notorized letters from "friends or family" if you didn't work during a certain period of time.
To put it another way: If you took 6 months off in between jobs, they'll force you to have someone swear that they're aware you've done this and get a letter notarized (Paid by you, naturally). Doesn't matter who they are, it could be the homeless guy down the block who begs for change to buy beer.
And get this: For every period of unemployment, it has to be a different person. I never did get a reason for this from a legal point of view.
I know this isn't a law because ive worked for companies since then, the hiring process for Covenant takes a week alone. Other jobs im filed and ready to go in 2 days.
Another thing i noticed about these complaints is something i mentioned before, about being fired then being reported as quitting. There seems to be a high report rate of that, my guess is to avoid unemployment insurance and its easier to do write offs.
Like i said, the dispatcher ignored the fact that i couldnt sleep at all. Why? Dont know, the driver had a bad vibe to him, he was driving recklessly. It could have something to do with the week i spent at the concentration camp (Main facility in TN) (Complete with bullhorn of a man with a german accent reading from the bible and swearing his hatred for all heathens, i couldve sworn we were woken up by air-raid sirens, the only thing they didnt do is shave our heads and give us tattoos)
I did everything to try to get some time off the road to get back up to shape. The driver tried to give me pills that i wouldnt take. I forget what they're called (Yellow jackets??) but they're banned in a lot of states, including the one we were driving through. Right, they had ephedra, which is comparable to meth in many ways. Legally if we were pulled over, it would've been an arrest for being under the influence.
We weren't on any strict deadline, all we were hauling was a truckload of empty bottles, it wasnt anything like high-def tvs or a truckload of adult movies, destined for delivery to fine gift shops in a city near you. But the main reason he didn't give in to stopping? Money. Thats all. Getting the load there faster to get another load. He put money ahead of endangering public safety. Any ethics professor would have his a*s on a plate. What he ended up doing was driving most of the hours, totally illegal too.
You just have to picture that i was fresh out of truck driving school (I did 3 months and had a 98% average on the final road trip and skills test, one of the top in my group, i had 3 endorsements too. It was paid for in cash and i was not under obligation to any company to work it off). I was around 22-23 years old back then.
The trucks they put us on: Completely different systems then what i was used to. Back when i applied, they assured me they have many trucks that conform to my standards. They used the retarded super-10 whatevers, and i only catered to the old-school one. Asking for them to live up to that, you might as well go into an urban neighborhood wearing a swastika shirt and expect someone to give you directions to the nearest highway.
Nobody here has complained about the benefits package..yet. All i remember is the co-payment being high and good luck getting time off to go to the doctor.
Another company to avoid: Swift. They hire anyone with a pulse. The people in my training class were all under obligation to swift, and i talked to a few of them much later on, its worse then covenant from what i hear.
see ya, stay safe
Mr XXX