Un desired loads

He probably spends a lot of time waiting for loads to get on and off his truck. If you're expecting it and have it factored in the irritation is a lot easier to take.

 

Oh yeah, He factors that and sleeps ALL thru the load & unload.

Likes night driving, hates the sun...I tease him that he's a zombie...lol

Hes a real cross country runner

 

1) It's risky. Produce (like meat and most other perishable foods) is an exempt commodity. This means that insurance coverage is VERY spotty. It's entirely possible to have a truck break down, show up 3 days late, and have the entire load turn into a claim because it spoiled on the truck. And insurance WILL NOT PAY FOR IT. This isn't an issue with non-exempt freight.

2) It has conditions that some brokers can't wrap their heads around. Produce customers are in agriculture, and they frequently have very little control over how long it takes to gather a shipment together. Trucks are routinely sitting there waiting for the farmer to get the product together for long time periods... And the customers generally don't pay detention. All of this requires the broker to either screw over trucks by omitting this information when they give them the load, or to have to #### near read a pharmaceutical drug disclaimer before giving out the load.

3) It pays badly for the broker. Produce customers buy a LOT of brokered trucks. They have no real choice in the matter as their freight is usually generated the day of shipping and has firm delivery times. Most of them have significant relationships with local asset based carriers, but the seasonal nature of their freight means that they will never ever be able to generate enough consistent freight to sustain a trucking company. Because of this they are generally pretty good at working brokers and pay them significantly less than many less informed customers. I have produce customers who I don't bother moving loads for who routinely send me emails with prices that are ALMOST EXACTLY WHAT IT WOULD COST ME TO FIND A TRUCK. Like to the penny. Basically they are saying they are willing to do business with me only if I can find a truck who will pay me for the service of finding them a potato load in Wisconsin. Sure buddy that's going to work great.

 

Yeah for a lot of those guys who really like to run hard produce and meat are perfect because a 12 hour wait to get loaded is the perfect chance to get a full sleep cycle in and start over. Not going to vouch for the legality of what some of these guys do, but it seems to work for them.

 

The carrier is definitely responsible. I'm not sure how that ends up landing on the driver but I wouldn't be shocked if it did. This is why having a claim happy produce customer is 100% not workable. It actually doesn't matter how much they are paying you, it isn't enough. To be clear if the carrier doesn't pay for it the brokerage is in a very tough spot. While technically they can't be held liable by the customer, the customer will often simply demand payment in full for the claim. It's very hard to tell someone no when they already owe you 200k and a significant % of your livelihood comes from them. If you make waves they might decide to make you collect the whole 200k and shut you down as a vendor. Probably not worth it over <20k. So you eat it and move on.

I pretty much call the USDA the second a claim gets put on me for anything but a load being tipped over. The only recent exception was on a load that pulped at 94 degrees... after being in a reefer for 2 days. The guy literally just didn't turn his reefer on.

Miraculously that claim was only 2200 bucks somehow (load value 12k). This is why that customer will be staying a customer indefinitely lol.

 

Hahaha...good to know...

 

I mean be reasonable about it. But if you're a day late and they are trying to put a claim on you instead of paying you to redeliver it somewhere else it's time to legally force the receiver to take the load. The customer won't be happy the USDA got called, but they won't be as angry as you'd think. THEY can't call the USDA because then Kroger/Walmart/etc might dump their ### as a vendor. The carrier calling? They can blame that on us without too much heat, especially if it's ########.

EDIT: Not that I'd care in the day late/claim situation. That's not ok and at that point I'm probably never going to pay the claim because I'm never doing business with them again.

The reverse is true as well. The reason I didn't lose my cool on the 94 degree pulp load is that I know that customer really well and I actually trust them not to screw me. And they didn't. Because that's not what they do. Then again I did cover ~700 loads for them last year and I'm pretty sure they only move like 3-4,000 loads so I'm not a super small part of their supply chain. The way it worked out they basically only lost the line haul and got reimbursed for the destroyed product. Sucked for them but I really appreciated it. They've definitely gotten it back in favors since lol.

 

After thinking about it some more I kind of hope the driver paid for every claim I had this year. None of them turned out all that bad, but it wasn't for lack of idiots trying. Not targeting truckers in general but these guys need to find a new occupation ASAP. These are 'I'm kind of uncomfortable with someone this dumb driving a vehicle this large' type mistakes I'm talking about. Combined with levels of IDGAF that truly boggle the mind and yeah I hope they paid for it.

I've consciously tried to avoid #####ing about drivers on this forum, but just like I don't try to defend all brokers you guys probably shouldn't be sticking up for EVERY truck driver. Remember that all the idiots you meet out there on the road are causing holy havoc for us people in operations.

 

I've done a lot of 1 pick multi drop reefer loads in the past 6 months. The product is always coming from a cold storage and delivering to different grocery dc's.

These loads can be a winner or as easily a big loser depending on how you price yourself. Typical would be a pickup at 7pm, then 1 drop the next morning at 5am and a 2nd drop at 10am, with the 3rd and final drop being the following day at say 9am. On 450 loaded miles.

You're tying up a lot of time in that load. It doesn't even make sense for a "backhaul rate" and everyone knows it. Problem is good luck getting a decent daily rate out of it. Only when trucks are tight do I bother with these or in a lucky scenario of loose trucks no-one wanted it so the shipper/broker had no other option but mine.

I will price every single one of these loads when a broker calls and has one but I don't do them cheap. I don't get them every time either.

I'm amazed loads like that will routinely sell for a rate per mile of say for example just a random "$2.85 a mile" and not a daily revenue rate. Brokers try to sell on rate per mile and it falls on deaf ears with me. That's for suckers who lose.

It's not that those carriers doing it so cheaply have lower costs than me. It's more of WTF are they thinking tying a truck up for 2.5 days on a rate per mile!? And they have to regret their mistake. But it is what it is. Multi stop = good profit money for me or I don't book it period.