Abandoned load?

Hi,

My brother is an owner operator, he picked up a load from SC with 3 drops, 1 to MO and 2 to KS. However, on the 3rd drop the receiver rejected 2 pallets of peanuts and cleared the BOL clean and the driver notified the broker about the rejected pallets and advised to have the shipper decide what needs to be done with the pallets as he has another load to pick up in about 3 hours after the delivery. the broker couldn't come up with a place to send the rejected freight until about 7 hours later, not even to provide a place to send pallets but to say "he is still working on where to send the freight... long story short, since the driver didn't hear from the broker at the given time frame (8 hours), the driver decided to donate the peanuts to people in the neighborhood and truck stop and headed on to his next pickup.

so 24 hours later broker still don't have a place to send the pallets but wanting to know where the pallets were and still working on drop off site. When he called to check on the load broker was advised that pallets has been donated and broker threatened to file a claim on missing load and the driver said no, it's an abandoned load.
so my question is, could the driver be liable for abandoned freight in this type of circumstance? he waited for up to 8 hours before he decided on donating the leftover freight.

Thanks.

 

Yes, I totally agreed..thank you.

 

That's correct, but because we are relatively new in the business we weren't sure if it was okay to get rid of it hence we decided to call to make sure that the shipper wasn't going to be looking for those 2 pallets later on.