Question about brokerage company...

Good Luck Be Safe and Welcome to the forum

 

Unless a broker had been in business at least 10 years, and have a long list of O/Os pulling for him for 5 or more years, then you're taking a gamble. Under state and federal Commercial Code Laws, a loophole called "Caveat emptor," (beware the buyer in Latin) gives merchants the right to cheat you, so long as it's spelled out in fine print on the written contract you sign. Never mind that the contract is written in legal-jargon language that only an attorney can decipher. Commercial Code Laws are drafted with the assumption that all citizens had completed a class in civil and criminal litigation (which I have). When you review a contract, the first few paragraphs are intended to discourage you from reading further. They're usually full of rhetorical nonsense. Some where down the middle or the end of the long contract is where the attorney had buried stipulations that put you, the service provider or consumer, at a serious disadvantage. For example, it might say they won't pay you until they had received the original bill of lading with the customer's signature. If you had not taken a class in Commercial Code laws, you would not realize this fine print is illegal, because under state and federal commercial code laws, Xerox and fax copies of documents are just as good as the original for the purpose of processing payments.
A common horror story I've heard about brokers, is they first win your confidence by paying you in a timely manner for the first 2 or 3 weeks; then you begin to hear excuses as to why your pay had been delayed after they feel you've committed yourself to them as a business partner. You realized you've been exploited after you've already hauled $3,000+ in unpaid trips. If you notice a lot of the other drivers had been with the broker for less than 5 years, this is a clue that others had severed their relationship after they've been lied and cheated of their pay. Another scam is when brokers tell you a load pays (for example) $1,000 and he only charges 5% commission. What he's not telling you, the load really pays $1,200 (or more) from the client. So he's charging you $50 commission and pocketing another $200, which really brings his commission up to almost 21%. He also charges the client a diesel surcharge which he's suppose to pass on to the O/O, but instead pockets that as added revenue. One way to catch a cheating broker is to contact the client who paid the freight charge, and have them confirm that they had paid the same amount the broker had claimed. You should also adopt a policy of never hauling any more loads until he had paid up what he owes, so give the broker maybe no more than
$800 to $1,000 in unpaid trips, then don't do business with him again until those trips had been paid up. When trucking was deregulated in 1980, the rates had drastically gone down, but carriers are suppose to be paid within 7 days after producing document proof of delivery (signed bill of lading). A decent broker should extend this policy to O/Os and company drivers pulling for them.

 

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...r/39137-posting-for-good-and-bad-brokers.html

 

Check this thread out too. I'm working on starting my own brokerage, and this is a thread I started about the topic.

 

I got a lot of good feedback in that thread, and BHW was very active in there! After looking at starting as an agent for another brokerage and finding that some of their practices go against my beliefs I decided to just work at setting my own up.

BHW - you and the others really confirmed my beliefs about what to do and not to do as a broker in that thread!

 

This is my new line of work and let me tell you it is not easy at all... I used to agree with drivers when they said all they do is sit behind a desk with a computer.. LOL only if that was true, it may be for many but for others it is a lot of work.. The market is not an easy one to break into...

 

I hear ya there TJ. It's going to be a challenge for me as well. I probably need my head examined for wanting to do it, but there's not much else for me to do in an industry that I actually enjoy besides become a broker!