Finding the best broker

Always reminded of the old Amos and Andy line.....

He is the broker, you is the brokee.

 

Hope so, those would have been some fowl chickens.

 

Is there such a thing as a good broker?

 

Same as lawyers I would think.

You know the joke, is there such a thing as a good lawyer? Yes a dead one.

Or what do you call 1000 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean? A good start!!

Works for brokers too!!

 

Get set-up with Landstar. You can get onto their alert system that will send you an email (mine comes to my phone) and it will tell you the rate. This has been my savior in tight markets as they are not like many other brokers that will take a bigger cut if they can. LS has a good amount of agents that will not deal with cheap freight. But in an area like you are talking about you need to be able to call as soon as the load is posted or it will be gone.

 

I got an email yesterday from the Carrier Development Manager of a broker we took one load for about two months ago, wondering why we haven't hauled for them since. "Our relationships with our carriers are extremely important to us and we want to make sure your experiences with us have been positive ones."

I'm still working out my reply. I'm trying to keep it professional but I keep slipping. How's this draft look?

Dear Broker,

Thank you for checking in. I'd be glad to offer some feedback. We have hauled one load for your company and the agent we worked with was a pleasure to do business with. We delivered the load as promised and moved on to other business. Since then, our experience with your company hasn't been so great.

It's really a toss up why we haven't done business with you since.

On one hand there's the lack of urgency on your part to resolve some administrative issues with the invoice and BOL that resulted in our payment being settled nearly 60 days after we sent our invoice. There were certainly some things we as your carrier could have done better to avoid the trouble. I accept that, and have improved our processes to prevent the same issues. What bothered me was that, once the load was delivered, getting paid was entirely my problem. With the exception of the shortage of two cases of product faxed to me by your claims person about 50 days after the invoice (she was really good to work with by the way, very helpful), the other two problems required multiple phone calls to even figure out what the problem was. The people I worked with generally had the attitude that they were doing me a favor by even talking with me, and clearly were in no hurry to get things resolved or offer much help for me to solve my problem. I took the load on good faith and delivered as promised and I expect the same diligence on your part to promptly and clearly notify any disputes that could delay payment as promised.

On the other hand there's the half dozen loads I've been interested in and called to check out. Each and every load has been offered on average 60% of the rate I've routinely am offered from a half dozen other brokers with similar freight in the same markets. Once or twice the agents have acted like I was imposing by attempting to negotiate. As a result, I will only call your agents as the last resort, since after that many times I know what to expect.

So you tell me: does that describe a freight broker that you as a carrier would seek out to do business with?

Love,
Your Carrier.