Shipper malpractice?

Yes this does not fall under coercion because the driver can relay with another driver or a team could take the load.

 

Wow, a shipper controls your trucks?

I don't get the thing about percentage of the load, they acting like an authority or another carrier?

Terminate the contract with them, stop playing games.

 

A lot of shippers have no clue as to how HOS and Elog and all that jazz work. So they plan everything in a "perfect scenario" world. I would honestly discuss with them and let them know what hardships their requirements are bringing. If they decide to do business elsewhere that just frees up your equipment to take on new (and possibly better) business. It's your company in the end, not theirs. If you have inexperienced dispatchers taking freight based on perfect scenarios you should probably do some in-house training and explain to them that nothing is ever perfect in trucking.

I use to manage a distribution center and I ended up removing appointments in 2016 and just turned everything into FCFS 7-4pm. It created some frustration on my end with lines going down because our production planner wouldn't bake in any breathing room, but they started planning the product to be a day late (ie running the product the day after receipt instead of just-in-time). We actually increased our productivity significantly too, which is kind of interesting how everything is connected like that.

The only thing I remained strict about was the delivery date. 99% of the time it was never difficult for the carrier to get there in that 8-9 hour window but it certainly removed the stress of trying to be there at exactly 8am.

In the end it's your business, you do what is right for it. Don't let your customer run your business, because they'll kill you and just go to a new carrier.

 

if you sign a load tender that states the appointment times and there are specific $ amount related to you not making it . you are liable for that $ it's your own fault for agreeing to this and if you have been doing this load for years and can't make it now because you have to do it legal and cannot your exactly why the rest of us are on eLogs ..... thank you