i need help plz!!!!

To be clear, pulling a dry van does not make you immune to lumpers. Dry vans still go to grocery warehouses or other distributor warehouses. Any facility you make a deliver to as a live unload, the receiver unloads the product or you do. Some charge you, some don't.

There are some places, with some loads, that will charge a lumper fee even it is a drop. Some Walmart DCs come to mind. I have been at the receiving window for a drop & hook at a Walmart DC and the driver ahead of me is doing the same thing, but they tell him there is a lumper fee on that load. He advices them it is a drop, they say they understand but there is still a lumper fee.

As a general rule, yes, your company will know if the load they dispatch you on will have a lumper fee on the receiving end. They will have a general idea of what that fee will be because their drivers have delivered that same load to that same facility many times before. There can always be something to alter the final cost (did the lumpers have to re-stack a pallet because the pallet it is on has broken runners, did the lumpers have to re-stack a pallet because you drove too aggressively and have some pallets that have fallen over, etc?). If you drive for a small company and they rely on brokers to get their loads, your company may not have gone into a particular facility before and will be surprised when you call them and tell them the lumper service wants $372 to unload you.

 

Let's not go there.

 

Lumpers are legalized racketeers who as someone else noted tend to get flustered when you unload your own truck, and will threaten to walk out of the grocery warehouse they're contracted with if they allow you to.