Adventures in lumping

Lumper services and receiver lumper policies have become a pet peeve of mine.

So I accept a dry grocery load on Thursday going 150 miles in the direction of home, pays $500. Broker doesn't 'advance' lumper fees at the receiver, driver must pay and get reimbursed. It's a rare occasion that I carry cash, but this time I happen to have a few bucks in my pocket, so I don't worry about it. Broker also says they'll pay $120 for driver unload. Ok, so I have at least that much if I decide that I want to hire lumpers.

This is a straight through load, pick / drop same day. I arrive at the receiver 5 hours early for my appointment. Security realizes that I'm new and don't know about the 'no more than 2 hours early' rule. I offer to go park somewhere, but they give me a door anyway with instructions to NOT bother the receiving clerk until 15 minutes before my appointment time. I inquired about the possibility of driver unload in lieu of lumpers, and they told me that it was a 'lumper only' facility. Oh really?

So, I back in to my door and crawl back in the bunk. I've got a few hours, so I do a google search on the receiver to see what I can find regarding their unloading policies. Well, I come up with the company's manual of policies for their suppliers to follow. It explicitly states that the company will under no circumstances require any driver to hire lumpers. Another interesting point that's buried in the manual is that shippers are not penalized for double stacking freight, and that the company does not charge to down-stack pallets. These points will prove valuable when my appointment time arrives. I load the document onto my tablet should I need it later.

Well, my appointment time rolls around and I get signed in and sent to the lumper service. I decide that I'll pay them to unload, and ask for a price. Manager looks over the paperwork and tells me $206.50. Ok, I only have $150.00 cash. Can't afford you so I guess I'm unloading the truck myself then. Manager immediately gets a puzzled look on his face, then looks left, looks right, looks over his shoulder, then back at me. It was comical. "You can't unload yourself". "Well, I can't afford you, so it looks like we're at a stalemate here.", I say. He gets the receiving manager to come talk to me. Receiving manager looks over the papers and asks me how I'm going to unload. I tell him that I would happily get the freight off with a manual pallet jack. "But you have double stacked pallets, you can't get them down. And the lumpers aren't going to down-stack them for you." At this point I pull out my tablet and direct his attention to his company's receiving manual where it states that they don't charge to down-stack double stacked freight. At this point the receiving and lumper managers look at each other for a moment, then I'm directed through the door into the warehouse and told that someone would be out to get my door open so I could unload. There were about 8 other drivers in the room waiting, watching the whole thing and chuckling.

Surprisingly, I didn't get any resistance after that. The forklift operator that came to down-stack the pallets actually offered to pull the pallets out of the trailer for me. I accepted his offer, but still pulled half of them off with the manual jack. In the end, I had 33 pallets, 24 of which needed to be re-stacked into 18. 1.5 hours later, I was done.

I'm billing the broker $206.50 for the work. There's no reason that I should accept $120.00 if they were willing to pay the lumper service $206.50.

 

Agreed. I submit a professional invoice with my name, address and phone number along with an itemized breakdown of the work performed and the charges.

I've been doing a bit of research, and Federal law states that the shipper or receiver MUST reimburse the driver for ALL costs involved with unloading. OOIDA lost their bid for driver compensation in a court case because they didn't prove that the drivers weren't reimbursed even though they were coerced into using lumper services.

In a case where the path of least resistance is to use the lumpers, and the broker does not 'advance' lumper costs via comchek or t-check, then I will be sure to bill them for dropping my trailer and making a round trip to the ATM to get cash for the lumper fee. I will also add a charge for providing them with a cash advance, as well as interest charges and service fees.

Extending credit for delivery charges is one thing; coming out of pocket for unloading fees is quite another and shouldn't be a service that is offered gratis, in my opinion.

 

Well, you could google it and find it quickly. But since everyone doesn't share the same abilities to search and find information, I'll post the excerpt here:

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