Those lumpers!!!

It's official, I'm done with Safeway/Albertson's and Americold DC's. Got here at 7:20 am and sat until 11:00am. Then got a call that there was something wrong with the BOL and not all of the items were on it. So they rejected half the frozen load. Made a few calls and pleaded my case to the dock supervisor, and said they would have to reschedule. I called Convoy and explained that I need a ratecon for returning the load to the shipper, and the rate would be the same as the rate up since I had to cancel a better paying load because of the shipper's mistake. They sent the recon and I left. Got 45 minutes away in the middle of 3 day weekend I-5 traffic trying to leave Seattle and got another call from the dock supervisor. Said they worked it out with the shipper and could unload me now. I said, sorry, that ship has sailed. Then the phone rings from Convoy, and the shipper authorized them to give me $1,000 if I would return the load. So here I sit at the Safeway DC for the next 10 hours. I figure by 1:00am the traffic should clear out enough and I'll drive the 14 hours straight home. I know what you're thinking that I should have just kept going since I had a ratecon, but I know Americold would have found a way to nix that deal after I got down there. So I took the offer.

Just called one of my contract clients and they have a load they're willing to give me tomorrow morning at 7:00am. So it's a win after all.

 

I get reimbursed 24 hours after submitting paperwork. I never use the brokers money so that avoids their fees which can be negotiated to zero sometimes if you must. If I use my EFS fuel card to cut a check I do have to pay a $1.50 fee for that. I dont think any of it is a big deal. Charge more money on the load if you want to. You do have that ability. Or you can just turn down the load offer.

 

The lumper fees are bad but some of the loads I do are prepaid by the broker or the consignee doesnt have lumpers so no problem there. After only doing reefer for a short period of time my issue is the absurd tracking that they require with some of these brokers. Why call me for updates if you require tracking and vice versa.

How do you guys get around the tracking requirements?

Honestly feels like invasion of my privacy.

 

I let them track me. Dafuq do I care? If they decide to show up at my house, I'll put a weed eater in their hands and point to my fence line.

 

Say no to lumper freight!

 

I am glad you get reimbursed in 24 hours. If its no big deal to you for the fee you pay, that's great as well, and please don't take that as being disrespectful, as that is not my intent. I have always always and continue to feel that we should not have to pay any fees. If all the loads were prepaid or directly billed, we wouldn't have this issue. We as owner operators, were hired to move, freight from point A to point B. If we use quick pay we usually are charged 4% of our agreed upon rate, but we always have to absorb a fee to have someone else's freight unloaded from our trailer. Even an amount as small as $1.50 adds up over time...

 

I have a burner phone that I can run off my hot spot, it’s not so much the tracking as much as I don’t want it on my personal phone very rarely do I have to track though

 

The shippers could easily stack the cases on the pallets the way the customer wants them.
The robot machine stacking the cases on the pallet at the end of the assembly lines doesn’t care one bit of it gets told to stack five high or seven high. It is capable of doing any height .
I hauled ONE load that required lumper work, and the company I worked for would pay the driver $50 for doing it or they would pay limpets $175 for doing it.

Really pissed me off that they would pay lumpers 3x what they would pay me to do the same job.
I just refused to haul another load that contained food products of any kind.

the absolute worst was deliveries to or from Hartz Mountain pet supply warehouses.


their deliveries had 50 or 60 different items on the trailer and each had to be counted and sorted and separated

and inside the trailer looked like you had taken a pet store and just dumped it in the top of the trailer .

nothing was in boxes or containers or anything.
I got detention pay, but it took me nearly 20 hours to do it , in south Alabama in the summer , was over a hundred degrees in the warehouse and much hotter inside the trailer .

then a week later my dispatcher put me on the same load , oh heck no!
I ain’t going back and doing that again.
Not happening .