Negotiation Tactic ?

Remember hold for your price, i took a load yesterday upstate ny to plant city fl for 4400.00 4 pallets . The loads are out there be patience it will pay off!

 

Yep. Year end is coming up. There are a few times a year we we can make money and this is one. Shippers want to make 2012 look as good as they can. Yesterday a broker and I were $1,500 apart on 700 mile load. He just texted me to say he's faxing the rate sheet.

 

How do you go about signing the contract? They just fax it to you and you fax it back. Do you keep a printer and fax in your truck? How does that work?

 

I keep an all in one printer and scanner in the truck. My smartphone connects the laptop to the internet, giving me full connectivity. I pay $110 per year for a fax service, just so it looks more professional. That fax service when receiving faxes dumps them right into my e-mail as a pdf. I can also send a pdf as a fax just enter the fax number 18001234567@myfax.com and it goes.

 

I got a bit of inside info from NYK once. I had worked with this particular agent for a few months. One day I got a little short with him because they always call me when it has to be picked up NOW. He explained to me that they go through their list of transporters to see who ALWAYS does quick pay. They know he is broke, so they call him first if they have time to get a cheap transporter. They called me when they were desperate, I never did quick pay and (almost) never worked cheap.
So telling a shipper that you need money NOW in order to get a better rate is a little counter intuitive.

 

The broker will either e-mail me the rate sheet or send it to my e-fax 1-866-number. Either way I print it, sign it, scan it, and fax it back. Some guys have figured a way to skip the print, scan steps.

 

Makes perfect sense to me. I figure if they're calling me they've already exhausted all other possibilities and they're backs are against the wall and they are expecting to pay for that service. Often they've left it so late (or the cheap truck has fallen off the load) that I need to dead head 500 - 600 miles from my yard to make the pickup. I'm sure they move enough cheap ones that one or two a month to me is insignificant to them.

 

I almost never print anything. For broker packets and rate confirmations, I use the Comment: Add or Edit Text Box and electronic signature functions in Adobe Acrobat Pro. It works 99+% of the time. One or two brokers have insisted on a non-electronic signature on their carrier contract but never on a rate confirmation.

 

I don't use a fax service. Brokers have never balked about emailing documents in lieu of fax. My ex-wife books loads for me from time to time, and she always converts the emailed rate confirms to a PDF, affixes an electronic signature, and sends it back via e-mail. Never a complaint from a broker about this.

 

And if you put it to them that way they going to see you as a broke carrier that cant manage, Next.....