Posting For Good and Bad Brokers

bad broker - William Coq from Trangistics Inc., Sisters, OR. He reassured me the D6H dozer was under 10' tall and weighed 36,000 lbs. great load for my step deck with ramps. too bad with the ROPS it is 10'10" tall, and with the blade on the front, winch on the back, and fluids weighs over 50,000 lbs. So I spent over $100 on permits, spent most of the day getting the load lined up, and drove 85 miles to pick it up for nothing.... and they tell me I was the second stepdeck with ramps to show up and not haul it.

 

I thought Landstar was supposed to be good...

Landstar needs to quit wasting our time by allowing their agents to post cheap freight on load boards. In my opinion, it is tarnishing their image. I was just quoted $350 for a 280 mile trip into a dead zone. And she was not even willing to consider a decent rate.

 

All depends on the Agent. LS excercises the same control over Agents as BCOs. They is no company policy against posting "cheap" freight, just as there is no company policy against hauling "cheap" freight.

 

Get set up with LS and you can see the rates on their board and not bother calling if it's listed too cheap. Once in a while you'll see something on a load board that's not on the LS board. My experience is those are usually cheap like the one you mention, or already gone and they forgot to pull the load board listing. If pickings are slim, I'll call on them. Otherwise I won't waste the time looking for it on the LS board and just call on others. They have cheap stuff posted all the time just like everyone else.

 

Here's a tip for ya, and it pertains to Landstar, as well as any other brokerage out there. If a good paying load even hits the load board, it will be moved almost immediately, most likely to the first caller, unless there is something odd or funky about the load. In other words, that freight sitting on the board for an hour, is probably cheap or has issues. Refresh Refresh Refresh refresh refresh refresh ugh!!! Always remember, it is a broker's JOB to get you take that load for as little as possible with the service required. When I was on my own, I remember one time I called on a LS posting on LSBroker, and the agent gave me a sob story that was all he had in it, blah blah blah. I called my friend who was a BCO, and found out they were keeping 30% on that particular load. She was a good saleswoman though, and without my friend I would have never known it was a lie. That's probably the biggest reason I leased on to Landstar, a fixed percentage of cut, no matter how lucrative the load pays (I haul a LOT of lucrative loads) and 99% of loads have a rate on them on the board.

 

40 and Red hit it. More often than not a LS load posted on outside board and not on LS board is garbage. And tends to Come from a garbage agent. I keep a naughty and nice list. Set the number up in your phone with a rating in the last name section. Then when you call it will tell you on screen if you should beware or not.

 

A lot of agents (ourselves included) have it setup so when we post our loads to the LS board, it automatically posts to ITS, DAT360, MembersEdge, and GetLoaded. Saves us a heck of a lot of time. You will see us repost them on those boards though so we can monitor hits on the loads and contact interested parties. We don't really post "garbage" loads though. We have 13 people working over 20 different cities full of our customers freight...no time to post cheap crap.

You will find there are LS agents who do nothing but "cut and paste" other people's loads and double broker freight. We've caught agents trying to double broker our customers freight. It's a sad state, but as of right now...nothing is happening to these "agents." It upsets us just as much as it does you guys because it tarnishes the image of all of us.

 

I was talking about loads that never hit LS board. Most of the time those loads have something won't and/or agent its less than reputable.

 

Good idea about setting up the phone with your own personal broker rating, Bill- thanks for the tip.

 

Markis Brokerage out of Texas.
What makes them bad? basically they are really unprofessional and incosiderate of the time and energy it takes to run trucking company.
They verbally committed on 3 loads and kept promissing that the paper work was on its way. I never consider a deal done until I sign a contract therefore I kept calling them for the paperwork and they kept telling me its on its way, you should have it any minute now. They went dark for a couple of hrs and finally I called and wanted to speak to a manager. She admitted to me that they went with another carrier. I was fine with that decision but I wanted an explanation why they waisted 5 hrs of my day and my resources for something that could have been easily avoided. Look we all understand that sometimes plans change, just be honest and let the trucker know immediatley of the changes. This broker basically told me "Whatever" and hung up. The same broker called me 3 days later wanting 3 trucks and I said to her "I do have trucks available, but not for you."