Carriers' mentality on late deliveries

Yes, you should expect it to happen if you're just hiring random power only carriers. The only thing that might get someone worse to haul it would be listing it on Craigslist or U-Ship. This industry is full of people who only care about themselves. From drivers who want to cheat their logs, carriers who want to double stack light loads on plywood on dedicated trailers, brokers who want to double broker, etc. You can still get burned even if you paid $10 per mile, but the chances of you getting a good carrier on the load decrease as the price goes down. I know you're swearing up and down that this is a good rate, but I don't see anybody on here agreeing with you. The rate is cheap, and it has the potential to be more, but that has nothing to do with you. Your customer is being cheap, and this is the ugly side of cheaping out.

As far as what I meant by not getting paid, read the reviews on the load boards for Freight Tec if you can. Something has to be wrong to be 1 star rated with lots of reviews. Even TQL stays between 2 and 3 stars. This is also another reason why you might have more trouble getting a good carrier. Regardless of if you're going to pay the carrier or not, all they have to do is look at the reviews of people claiming to not get paid, and it's possible that they figure they might as well just keep running with the trailer. There are people who keep the trailers for months with no intention of returning them, and when recovered they have stupid amounts of damage that the carrier's insurance refuses to cover.

It sounds like you really do care, but you shouldn't be losing any sleep over it if the trailer doesn't make it. The world will still turn, and hopefully karma will hit the scumbags who broke their word. As long as the police view it as a contract dispute instead of theft, change on a large scale will not happen.

 

Well see I think you missed a point I was making clear enough, you need to avoid doing this with new companies and build relationships with carriers who can be trusted. It seems to me that if you offered this to one of my trucks, and they took it, it would only be for a move out of a bad area because it is cheap, it is below operating costs for my trucks. Being able to use it without you arranging the freight going on it seems to be another problem, I would expect you to also offer some freight going towards the trailer desitnation as an incentive for ontime delivery so you should package it up to get it moved for the customer and this will give you some reassurance that it will not arrive late.

 

99% of shippers/brokers don't care about relationships.
They just care about having the cheapest truck show up and unfortunately you get what you pay for sometimes.

 

You live in a Capitalist nation. That's how it is. Why not pass those fees and maybe a few of your own on to the Carrier? If it's agreed to in writing at least you'd have some sort of safety net for situations like this.

 

I’m curious, what type of freight was going to be loaded on this trailer(when the customer gets the trailer), and did the company that was supposed to drop the trailer, were they planning on then, moving the trailer/freight when it’s brokered?

 

Was just curious if you work with this customer on the other side of the equation, in other words to you broker the loaded trailers for this customer? That’s all, was just curious.