Broker punishing me for their mistake

It did. I agree with you. I would have verified the temp with the shipper. But it’s not totally his fault. In my opinion… and those are like buttholes.

 

There's no shenanigan in this situation. A reefer load BOL always has the temp on it. That's a legal document and exactly what the insurance company will go by.

In the unusual situation where a BOL doesn't have a temp on it you defer to the shipper and get them to make a signed notation on the BOL stating what the temp setting needs to be.

 

Regardless what the rate con says the first thing the freight broker is going to do when his boss asks is cover his own ###. The freight broker will tell his boss he told the carrier to go by the BOL because everybody doing reefer loads knows the temp on the BOL is king.

 

Good thing for OP he got it in writing. Hard to refute evidence in writing.

 

I've lost count of how many times it happened to me that the rate con stated 34* or whatever only to find out at the shipper I'm picking up a -10 load. And I never had a load rejected due to it being set at the wrong temp either..

More often than not brokers don't have a clue about what your load is or what the temp should in fact more often than not you're not even talking to the actual broker you're talking to one of the lackeys that stares at DAT all day looking for trucks to cover the broker's freight.

Keep in mind there's a large subset of owner operators out here who don't like frozen loads because they either have an old unit that can't maintain frozen temps or if it does it's screaming to do it in high speed all the time.

So when this situation presents itself they'll choose the WRONG path of "saving a little fuel" and then end up with a big expensive claim on their hands. Ridiculous but it happens all the time.

 

Yeah apparently that doesn’t matter.

 

That doesn't really matter though. That's between the broker and the broker's boss. Ultimately they will wash their hands of it because they know legally it is driver error.

 

I think you missed the post where OP stated they got market rate to return the load to the shipper because of the evidence they had in writing.

 

If that were true you would have been paid and that would have been the end of it. A broker is not your employer. He is a party to a contract with you. That is all. Implicit in that contract is the expectation that you, as a carrier, know what you are doing. Use your head for a second. If the bill says to set the temp at zero and you set it at thirty four what do you think might happen to the cargo?

 

That doesn’t matter either. The broker will just say he didn’t agree to that. Because rate confirmations with load details aren’t legal documents. And having something in writing is no longer proof.