Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

That sounds like an inside job. Some supervisor loading the freight into his buddies trailer then sealing an empty drop trailer and billing it with the freight

 

I had a Boar's Head 5-stopper back in February that was completely missing all of the product for the fourth stop.

I called dispatch thinking I would have to put in an OS&D macro, and was told that it was Not Our Problem(tm). It is not our job to verify the accuracy of a load, and even if it was, BH loads are pre-sealed when we get them. So we couldn't verify those loads even if we wanted to, which we don't. The receiver would need to file a claim with BH and get it straightened out with them.

As long as I get paid for all miles and all stops (which I did), and as long as there is no reasonable way for me to detect the error short of breaking the seal and climbing into the trailer with an invoice in hand and manually counting the pallets, I am pretty okay with it being Not Our Problem(tm).

I did feel bad for the guy at the 4th stop, however. He had gotten up early on a Saturday and come into work for no other reason than to unload stuff off my trailer.

 

That's good to know in case I ever run into one of this situation.

 

Woke up this morning at the Pilot truck stop in Bath, NY. Bath is a small town in the middle of nowhere in central New York, with very pretty Adirondack scenery all over.

My son and I ate breakfast then grabbed a shower. When I finished, I emerged into a VERY busy truck stop. Seems a busload of tourists had pulled in.

Tourists were all speaking Foreign(tm), and it took me a minute to figure out which flavor. Turns out they were all German. Including the Chinese guy, which I thought was cool.

There was some confusion as to what the little creamer cups contained, so I helped them figure it out. I also helped the Chinese German guy find plain milk and helped a few other tourists locate things in the truck stop, since I believe in showing good ol' American hospitality to our Foreign(tm) brethren when they come to our shores, and since I live in these places and they don't.

Finally came of the truck stop with coffee in hand and saw one of the tourists taking lots of photos of the trucks in the fuel isle and in the parking lot. So I asked him if he wanted to see inside one. He said "Yes" and followed me to my truck. As we walked off, a woman joined him. Maybe she wanted to see the truck too, maybe she just didn't want him getting shot and kidnapped by some crazy American truck driver, I dunno.

Anyhow, I showed both of them the inside of my truck and they "oohed" and "aahed" about it, only in German. He seemed pretty impressed at the size, especially compared to European trucks which are much smaller.

They both took some pictures of the inside and the exterior, and hopefully I have provided them with a memory they won't forget.

 

That's very cool man. Glad you did that.

 

Yes, I dont know who caught the heat for that mix up, but it wasnt me.

I have to admit that I dont always check the address on the BOLs, just grab correct trailer number and roll. I spent all three days of that trip to MD thanking the stars that I checked and got confirmation before I headed to Reno.

 

I go through phases. Usually what will happen is that I'll get a few loads in quick succession that go to the address on the BOL, which is different from the address on the load assignment. Never "Half a country away" different, more "half a mile away" different. Or sometimes "across town" different. But still not what the load assignment said.

So after that happens two or three times, I'll think "Okay, I'm gonna start delivering to the BOL address if it's not the same as the address on my load assignment.

And as soon as I start doing that, I'll wind up with a load that doesn't go to the address on the BOL, and shoulda gone to the address on the load assignment.

This whole sequence has happened to me twice now, so I figure I'm doomed either way.

Mind you, it's been about a year since the last time it happened, so it's clearly not a major problem either way, barring cross-country Volvo loads. But since I imagine you got paid for all of those miles, I can't see any real reason to get twisted up about it.

 

I dont drop trailers outside office hours anymore for that reason alone. These may be 24/7 trucks, but we are not a 24/7 trucking company.

 

Just wait till you get a load where the company name and address on the BOL don't actually exist according to Google. I went back to shipper (I actually got 5 miles down the road before I thought to look) who told me to take it whereever my QC load info says to take it. I asked if they could confirm where *they* wanted it to go and the guy said, "Nope, just take it where your company tells you to".

 

Could have been a blind shipment.
The actual buyer of the product is a broker and resold to where you are going and the broker doesn’t want the shipper who the end user it is. Citting the broker out.