Posting For Good and Bad Brokers

What do you mean they don't have to pay high perishable claims. Of course they do that's why you have to carry more insurance when you run a reefer. I've had 5 or 6 big claims in my lifetime paid and never once had a problem I get tired of people putting wrong information out here. If the insurance company didn't pay than that means something else is wrong. And a little word to the wise it don't fall on the brokers if something goes wrong it's the responsibility of the trucker and his insurance company. Now with certain loads Talking about fresh tuna or fresh shrimp I have had more than one insurance company on those loads And the brokers Get extra bonds. Rarley and I do mean rarely especially today with the quality of trailers that is made do you see these kinds of problems maybe 40 years ago yeah. So if they load of beef put a brokerage firm out of business that means something really bad went wrong or the driver didn't have insurance or the Broker didn't have insurance something really got screwed up. I'm not getting into all the technicalities of it but that would be very unlikely today. And with the seafood companies that I know and brokers you don't have your ship straight you aint picking up squat

 

Oh and one more thing if you been in the business as long as you say you have or act like you have 9 times out of 10 if a load is late 1 day or 2 days and let's just say that it gets rejected they usually have somebody else already lined up ready to take it if that's the case. Or another market to take it to with a buyer ready to Do something with it. I don't know where you've done produce or seafood some of the things you guys say on here is amazing to me. Kind of problems that you're referring to is things that happened 40 years ago. For a entire load to get rejected last time I seen that was a load it wasn't even meat or seafood it was ice cream That's how long I've been in the business so it actually makes me wonder Are you actually driving a truck or are you 70 years old sitting behind a computer on your tail On these forums just talking

 

I did 3 loads of produce last year. Two were for some broker that was familiar with our trucking company, had some loads near my house, and begged me for weeks to run some of them. I agreed and it turned out to be a mistake.

The first load was from some Amish. It was squash right out of the field. Get to their loading dock, oh you have to go over to so and son's barn its about 3 miles away... So I follow them down some horsepaths and wait several,hours while they load hot produce. My reefer never would pull down to the temp they wanted it set at. #### thing ran all night at high rpms.

So I offload that in Lake Park, GA then reload at the same place for the trip back north. Delivered early in the morning but my reload wasn't ready until that night. Didn't get out of there until midnight. This was Friday night and I was the last truck to leave. I knew as soon as I pulled from the dock there it was overloaded. I could tell by my air gauges I bet it was at least 82,000 lbs. Yeah I was dropping more gears than normal for sure on that trip up 75 to TN. Luckily GA coops close at beer thirty so I never wasted time scaling it or having it cut and just trucked on. I had to deliver the next morning at 8am.

And they took their sweet time until noon. I told this broker to lose my number and never call me again with any of that ####.

Another broker I used to run pre-packaged salad mix for. Those loads were time critical and paid exceptionally well. One time he saw my truck in Florida. He asked me wth are you doing down there? I laughed and he told me he had a load of cabbage going back up to his shipper that I run loads out of. He paid a good rate too. This load was night and day different from the ones above. Product was already chilled, in bins and all pulped the correct temp. Ready to go. Loaded and out of there in 30 minutes. Same thing at the receiver, they got their cabbage quick and I was gone. I'd haul anything for that broker if he called. But overall I'd just prefer not to haul produce period.

And too many,of these freight brokers out here jack carriers around when say a Wal Mart DC rejects a perfectly good load of watermelons. Of course these things happen and other buyers can be found. The load re-routed and more money paid on the line haul, but, to me that is just more excuse for delays and lost time. And freight brokers will try to get you to do that for free. And like I posted above even a true produce broker can be a complete douchbag too. Unfortunately for the very few competant brokers and brokerages out here the #######es make it to where I won't even consider produce. Same thing with fresh chicken. No thanks.

 

Now, that said to get this discussion closer to track. I would like to say Triple T Transport out of Lewis Center, OH is a very good brokerage imo. I've done a few loads for them recently and I can just tell they are on top of everything, do what I expect of them, do what they say, are easy to work with - I can just tell they do everything right from my driver perspective. Hopefully I don't hear from higher ups that they're 60 days or longer to pay or something like that. That would be disappointing lol.

 

I've seen 27 perishable claims over 10k between myself and other brokers I worked with. We got the insurance company to pay once that I recall. I'm sorry but your experience is a mile deep (you've been doing this a long time) but it's about an inch wide since it only covers loads that you, a competent driver, touched. In perishables 95% of the big problems come from the worst 10% of the driver pool.

Honestly the only protection we've ever consistently had is whatever the trucking company was still owed. This is why most guys moving a lot of highly perishable stuff LOVE doing repeat business with carriers. The more money they owe you the less damage they will take if you #### up somehow.

 

That is why you pulp check the produce before you ever put it on a trailer. Especially if you're going down a horse path down to a person's barn to load. Actually you should pulp check everything. Unless it is someone you have done business with that is very reputable

 

If you had to pay 27 claims Somebody is seriously screwing up. Most insurance companies after the 1st 2 will drop you so how you ever got 27 claims is amazing to me.

 

Of course, I know that it should have been pulped, blah, blah, blah but my situation at that time was I NEEDED the work plain and simple. I could have driven off and said #### that but I didn't. I have done that before many times but sometimes after a few lean months it's harder to leave it sitting there and drive away like that.

 

It was over thousands of loads on thousands of different carriers. I'm a broker. Personally I haven't had a claim over 5k since 2015... Which is the last time some idiot used his load locks wrong and had every bin in the trailer get destroyed when the load... they say it shifted but it looked like the aftermath of a Quentin Tarantino movie where all the extras were watermelons.

EDIT: I should say that the above claim from 2015 was probably as much the loaders fault as the drivers... But the driver makes a LOT more money than the loader and is signing a bill of lading that says he's responsible for the well being of the freight. Failing to do the last QA check on a load of an exempt commodity is a mistake that probably costs a couple of hundred bucks on average. Unfortunately that average is a large sum followed by hundreds of zeros and people suck at worrying about the unlikely stuff.

 

Stuff that good drivers do and bad drivers don't. Stuff that costs brokerages tens of thousands of dollars sometimes.