Lumpers, and the new driver...

Usually the company pays for the lumper

 

Ask the company you hire (or are looking to hire) on to. My company pays for lumpers. Period. Even have a dedicated message on the Qualcomm for it. Send in request, a few minutes later you get approval back. Done deal

No approval, truck just sits. *I* ain't paying for jack

 

instead of usually substitute "always".

they "your company" can't make you use a lumper and make you pay for it.

most of the places I've been to had lumpers and the company paid for them. "usually" it was our option to unload ourselves instead of paying the lumpers. hitch, they paid us $100, but would pay lumpers upto $200.

lumpers are generally pretty fast, they get paid by the lb. or truck, not by the hour.

Its in your fmca manual somewhere, you can't be coersed by receivers.

pay us to unload or we'll let you sit and rot for 2 days.

yes, I've heard the horror stories... but in general, people are just out doing their jobs and looking forward to the weekend like we are. Per capita there aren't that many hitler's out there... my 2 cents anyways.

 

As the others stated, you won't be out of pocket for any lumper fees. Unless you lose the receipt.

However, you will sit a long as it takes. The more you #####, the slower some of them get. It has gotten much better over the past couple of years...detention and all

But it's still not worth my time to pull a reefer load of frozen anything into a grocery warehouse.

 

If you think a load of loose boxes will take between 30-40 minutes then you may not want to pull any loads that are not palletized.

Even pallets I expect to be sitting there for at least 45 mins, there are certainly exceptions where the forklift driver is a true PRO and he does not have to go far with the product and can be done in 15 to 20 minutes, however I have found that to be the exception not the rule.

Good luck

 

Thirty or forty minutes? Heck, it'll take 30 or 40 minutes at some places to find out it's gonna take 3 or 4 hours. The company will pay the lumper, you may have to jump through a hoop or two if your dealing with a broker who is a bit sticky, but they have to pay. Like others have said, I don't work for free. I also don't lump for a discount. My boss offers a lumper $200, he is offering me $200, the only difference is I will minimize the chance of getting a case rejected by strategic stacking and such.

The only good thing about off-the-street lumpers of days gone bye is that at least they knew who was paying the bill and had the drivers interest closer to his heart than the warehouses.