Finders fee for lost or stolen trailer?

I know Landstar pays a trailer bounty of $50 per month it's been missing with a cap of $300.

 

We will occasionally get messages with trailers to look for. The reward varies I have no idea what the amount is based on.

The latest one couple of weeks ago was 9 trailers at $100 for each one found.

Time before that was early last year the number was fewer but the amount was more. I don't remember how much just that it was more than 100

 

My company misplaced a few trailers last year and eventually offered a $250 reward for each one. I don't think there is necessarily a standard on this, just depends on the company and how long the trailer is missing.

 

So are y'all meaning to tell me that with hundreds or more trailers: these outfits don't put a gps tracker in the wagon? Just a little 9v blip to let them know where the unit is once a day?

I get sales people calling me for that and I only have a handful of trailers.

 

Nothing is 100% reliable 100% of the time.

We're a smallish private fleet with 600 tractors and an educated guess I'd say 2500 trailers give or take a few. We've got those little gizmos in the trailers.

Looking at the list of 9 they sent a couple of weeks ago all but 2 of them are '01-'06 model trailers. Old stuff relative to the fleet average age.

Equipment breaks. Batteries die. Even with redundant backup that dispatch is ( supposed to be ) tracking trailer changes with each load/location drivers don't always enter the information into the box. It happens.

 

I once worked for a company (under a hundred trucks) that put out a list of m missing trailers. How they went missing I don't know, we did dedicated accounts with a single trailer to a truck, or sometimes a few that would rotate in a set pattern. No leaving a dozen trailers at a shipper and then realizing years later that we are missing four.... If a trailer went missing it should have been noticed right away.


Anyway at one point my boss asked me to look into a certain trailer, turns out it had been left on a customer lot after we lost the account. After repeated requests to remove it the last they heard of it was from 3 years prior when they got a notice that it had been impounded and was to be sold at auction 30 days later. And three years later they wanted me to look into it....

I assured them that if the towing company still had it they most certainly did not want to know anything about the storage fees at this point.

 

Yeah tell me about it, i don't know why every carrier isn't doing that. it would certainly be cheaper than paying drivers to drive all over the state doing yard checks lol.

 

I was once stopping in Illinois to fill up and a guy from schnieder said they were looking for a trailer. It was about 15 exits down the road and I got 200 bucks for it. I'll stop for 200 bucks

 

Cornhusker moter lines always had a list of a few trailers that were Mia and a 250.00 bounty .
I once found a zeitner trailer sitting in a field in creston ia that had been there so long there landing gear was sunk into the ground and the reefer battery was dead ..3 year old trailer .
Called em up and they acted like no big deal and didn't even say thanks .