Employer Profiles Who Hire Grads: Covenant Transport
Covenant Transport is more than just a trucking company. The carrier is a network of dedicated and dependable transportation experts offering safe, expedited, and temperature-controlled freight services to their customers in the United States and Mexico.
Covenant Transport carries goods from a wide variety of industries, including automotive, construction, paper and packaging, and food and beverage. This transportation provider isn’t just loyal to their customers, but to their employees as well. Covenant Transport treats its employees—drivers, technicians, and warehouse staff—like family. At Covenant Transport, you’ll earn a sense of appreciation and respect in addition to a reliable income. And they are looking for SWTD grads like you!
About Covenant Transport
David Parker and his wife Jacqueline founded Covenant Transport in 1986. The company started out small—only 25 trucks and 50 trailers. Since then it’s grown to become one of the largest driving fleets in the U.S., with more than 3,000 professional drivers. Covenant Transport generated $424.5 million in revenue in 2018, 44% of the revenue of its publicly traded umbrella organization, Covenant Transportation Group.
The organization as a whole has more than 3,000 tractors and 7,000 trailers. The company’s headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is spread across more than 180 acres of land. The facility houses their main terminal, home office, a maintenance shop, and a body shop.
Despite the operation’s significant size, they remain true to their core values of empathy, servanthood, and virtue. David and Jacqueline Parker began this company with their Christian beliefs and morals in mind and remain committed to those values. The guiding principles are:
- Treating others the same way that you want to be treated.
- Putting others before yourself.
- Acting with integrity, honesty, and fairness in all your business dealings, both with customers, vendors, and your fellow employees.
How Covenant Transport Finds Graduates to Hire
Covenant Transport hires graduates from all 48 contiguous U.S. states. This transportation provider partners with several public and private Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) schools across the nation, including Southwest Truck Driver Training (SWTDT), to find high-caliber candidates. Covenant offers on-the-job-training to qualified applicants. Covenant also offers Family and Buddy Plan training, which enables husbands and wives, partners, or friends, to train together. SWTDT students can look to the company’s lifetime job placement program to help understand all their options with Covenant.
Types of Jobs Available at Covenant
Team driving is an integral part of Covenant Transport’s recruitment model, although they do offer solo driving positions as well. Drivers with a Class A license and zero to six months experience can work as a company or team driver on regional, dedicated, or OTR routes. These drivers will carry either dry or refrigerated goods. Some dedicated driving positions require a minimum of six months of experience. Other dedicated driving positions operate in teams driving refrigerated trucks. These positions typically require six months of driving experience and reefer experience.
More advanced positions may stipulate additional requirements beyond a Class A license, such as being HazMat endorsed. The majority of jobs at Covenant Transport involve transporting nearly 3,000 packages or boxes per vehicle along with loading at multiple stops. Team driving jobs average between 5,000 and 6,000 miles each week with an average 1,500-mile haul length.
Some positions, such as flex drivers, demand greater flexibility. As a flex driver, you don’t have a permanent truck and you may work for a different fleet every week. You must be HazMat endorsed and have a minimum of six months of driving experience to become a flex driver.
Job Requirements
To be hired as a truck driver at Covenant Transport you will need to satisfy the following basic requirements:
- Be a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, or immigrant with authorization to work in the U.S. from the country’s Immigration and Naturalization Service
- Be at least 21 years old
- Provide a Social Security card or other form of personal identification
- Hold a valid Class A CDL
- Complete Covenant Transport’s orientation program at one of the company’s Tennessee, California, or Pennsylvania locations
- Have no DUIs in the past four years
- Pass a drug screening
- Have an employment record for the past three years
- Pass a DOT physical exam
- Pass Covenant Transport’s physical aptitude test
- Meet the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) regulations for driving tractor-trailers
Covenant takes safety seriously. If you have dangerous or multiple driving violations, they will be reviewed by the safety department before you are considered for employment. The safety department will also review critical or multiple–vehicle accidents, misdemeanors and felonies within the last ten years, and all drug or alcohol-related offenses. You cannot have any reckless driving tickets in the last three years or any speeding tickets of 15 mph or more in the last year. Any careless driving tickets in the last three years will also be reviewed by the safety department.
Driver Teams at Covenant Transport
Covenant Transport encourages driver teams. The company now offers driver teams a $40,000 bonus, meaning you and your partner get $20,000 each just by working together. If you don’t have a partner, Covenant Transport can provide you one through its Team Matching program.
OTR team drivers with valid Class A licenses get paid HazMat endorsement, a starting pay of 72 cents per mile (CPM), and a home time guarantee that pays $100 for each day you are late for your scheduled home time, in addition to other opportunities. One big advantage of being a team is you both get paid for every mile, no matter who’s driving, so you usually make more money. Working in a team also gives you someone to talk to and the potential for more transportation hours. Married couples are increasingly choosing to drive as a team.