Finally got my own truck

Yeah I wasn't trying to go after you in particular. It's just an anonymous internet forum and I've seen a lot of people lie on the internet over the years. I'd have fired the customer given what you told me here. What DC was it going into? They sound pretty culpable too.

 

Wasnt a dc like walmart or costco. The good ol boston market. I don't remember which vendor. Produce markets suck.

 

Gonna guess it was a smaller melon shipper too. Yeah I won't work with most of those people. I know I just went off on a bit of a rant about truckers who don't pay for claims but there's a special hatred in my empty brokers heart for shippers who try to lower transportation costs by putting in as many claims as possible.

Completely ruins them as customers. I have to move a LOT of loads to cover a 9.6k loss on a 12k melon load. And make no mistake the broker on that load was SCREWED. The customer owed him much more than they were claiming so they were going to withhold it. He was going to have to sue some mom and pop melon shipper to get 9.6k? Probably a write off because he's certainly not going to be able to stick it on the truck.

And you're 100% correct about the fact that the big wrong move was waiting for 4 days. Those 4 days destroyed the product. You probably pulled up with a good load of melons. It was the brokers job to figure out what to do with them, and he just straight up ignored that. You have my sympathy. If I had a soon to be former customer pull some nonsense like that I'd have called my other customers and sold the load to one of them. Gotten you some new paperwork and had you deliver it to a different DC in the Boston area lol.

 

@boredsocial

So what your saying is, you have that clause bc it's EASY for you. Instead of relying on good carriers, you will hire anyone to move your freight and make a buck. If you used quality carriers ALL of the time, you shouldn't need that clause. You said it yourself, you have some good carriers.

This is why I only do business with people I trust. Your clause tells me I CANT trust YOU. I would be more than willing to escrow the amount of freight payment, so that when load is complete with clean BOL's payment is released upon completion that day. In turn, if there is a claim, money is held, on that load only till resolved. Are you willing to do business that way. I am. No more 30-45 day pays for carriers, and no more loosing a valid claim for you. Now I realize that load values can reach way higher than the freight rate, but again, nature of the beast. What do you say? Put your money where your mouth is I say

 

I'd love to have both sides escrow. I think that's the direction the whole game is going eventually. Especially if/when someone figures out how to automate it with block chain.

I wanna be clear I think the American system of corporate finance where everybody has net 30 terms is a ####ed up dinosaur from the way back days before computers. I think it's outdated and should be changed. My customers get paid in 30-45 days by their customer, I get paid in 30-45 days by them, you get paid in 30-45 days by me. The end customer just got 30-45 days of free cash from my customer, my customer just got 30-45 free days of cash from me, and now I'm getting my time from you (my companies actual average DTP is 28... we shoot for 21 but #### happens brings the average to 28 .)

It's just another example of rich people making poor people finance their businesses. It's similar to how working people are routinely expected to allow their job to wait 2-3 weeks to pay their first paycheck. That's ######## too. We have computers which means workers could be paid every single day if we wanted. Those finance charges you would wrack up doing that are unjustified relics of an era when you needed an actual human and a paper check or cash to pay someone. Today a computer can just move the money from one account to another without requiring any input at all. These banks get a whole lot of money for nothing.

 

Nah it was a good shipper, well as good as any produce shed is. The melons went on the truck fine. They got to the market fine. It was the small time reciever playing games. And a big brokerage firms bottom of the totem pole employee dropping the ball. Plus this was a long time ago and i knew a lot less. As i saidn i learned quite a lot from that experience. If it happened today id be empty that day or on my way back with the product.


But the only reason i brought it up was in support of what i said about freight claims can't be held against a freight bill.

 

I'm not sure I agree. It's usually the shippers responsibility to figure out what to do with rejected product. I'll handle it if I have to, but generally my customers do. Usually I have to wait an hour or so and they call me with a destination and what they would like to pay. I then take their offer to the carrier and business gets done. Somehow that process broke down here and it cost everyone a lot of time and irritation. If I'm assigning blame to the broker it's because he failed in his role as backup. A role that he has for every single other person in the process who isn't actually driving the truck. If something goes wrong it's someone elses job, but if they don't get it done it's my job. If that makes sense.

When I say I'm a freelance transportation manager I'm not kidding. I do what managers do, which is track what's going on and make sure it all goes right. And when it isn't going right it's my job to make sure that gets handled too. If I can hand it off to someone else that's good, but if I can't I'm where the buck stops. This is why my regular carriers like me a lot lol. My loads run as smooth as I can make them run.

EDIT: There's also a bit of threat in my offering to take care of it. Obviously if I sell it to one of my other customers all the details of the load including origin and destination are going to get into their hands. This is a big part of why my current customers would never let that happen. The person who handles these situations at my primary customer owns the company. He'd NEVER let some freight broker who doesn't work for him dispose of rejected product. That job is delicate and hugely important to P & L for the year.

 

This we can agree on. Fuel companies what their money now, same with repairs, tires, parts, the government, etc. the rest of us are left holding our d***s in our hands

 

You missing one very


I'm leased on with Western. I pick my own loads from Schneider, XPO, CH, coyote, ATS and a few others. It's a 70/30 split with no trailer rental fee. How much you make and where you go is up to you if you're bringing in your own truck.

If you're in an area where they have freight they'll offer it to you, but you don't have to take it. I will say that their freight pays pretty well. Their 500-700 mile freight pays really good because that's a one day run for me.


I'm leased on with Western. I pick my own loads from Schneider, XPO, CH, coyote, ATS and a few others. It's a 70/30 split with no trailer rental fee. How much you make and where you go is up to you if you're bringing in your own truck.

If you're in an area where they have freight they'll offer it to you, but you don't have to take it. I will say that their freight pays pretty well. Their 500-700 mile freight pays really good because that's a one day run for me.

You missing one very important point to this argument.
Yes that dock worker might be only getting 12 bucks
An hour, but there's a 90 percent chance that the truck
Driver doesn't get a dime for standing back there for 2
Hours while they load the truck.

That's free labor to him so he's already pissed off to
Begin with.
It's a big reason I won't touch a reefer anymore.
You want him to count and inspect every pallet then
Somebody dig in their pocket and pay him for his time.

I don't care who pays him,company,broker,shipper,whoever.
But since nobody will,he'll just sit in the truck until their
Done loading and go pick up his paperwork and leave.

 

What i dont understand is why it is up to the driver to pay lumper fees. I dont think brokers should have to front the money either. The shipper should add the cost to the invoice for the goods purchased. Thats like me ordering a product online and then charging ups a fee when they deliver it to my house.