Contingency Plan. Please Advice....

I had the situation while under a fresh produce load. Transmission blew out on a Thursday. Load delivers Friday. Maybe 150 miles from the receiver. The broker found another carrier and I paid dearly for them to take the trailer and make delivery.

Edit to add.
Penske and Ryder would not work with me. Need an account before hand. If you're a 1 truck guy you may as well piss up a pipe with them. I would hire another company again should it happen again.

 

The load paid about 3400 I think, iirc 1600 was deducted. Was a few years ago and I learned a lesson the expensive way. Small oil drops? Investigate immediately. $12,000 when all said and done.

 

You have a few options, none that are really great. Depending on how far from the destination you are the towing company may be able to make arrangements to use one of their tractors to deliver the load. I used to do this when I had my wreckers, charged between $3-$5 a mile for this service. I am sure the rates are higher today.

Ryder will rent to a single truck owner operator with their own authority, IF you have the right insurance, have them listed as an additional insured AND have a credit card with a minimum of $5,000 available credit. If you will need the truck more than 7 days you need at least $10,000 available credit on the credit card. They charge between $125-$175 per day plus .08-.10 per mile and you are responsible for any damage including chipped windshields! I have rented many Ryder tractors when mine went down, and paid for three windshields!

Ryder charges your card a $5,000 deposit, then when you turn the truck back in they credit the difference back to your card within 3 days. So, if you need the truck for more than 7 days they will process a new $5,000 charge every 7th day, then credit the difference later. That is why you need at least $10k available to rent from them. It is best to get pre-approved with the Ryder closest to your home base before you need a truck. Keep in mind, as a private customer and not a national fleet they will not make a truck available after hours, so you may have to wait for the next regular business day to pick one up.

With Ryder, it is possible to get approved as a corporate client and get a line of credit, although they have very strict credit standards and want a minimum usage commitment before giving you a house account. I found it easier just to use a credit card. As for Penske, I never had any luck trying to rent a tractor from them, not very cooperative.

Rental trucks are ELD exempt on short term rentals, at least 7 days and in some cases up to 30 days. Ryder has their own ELD that is available to use when renting their trucks, not sure how it would transfer records to and from your unit.

As for trailer interchange, that is for the carrier that takes possession of your trailer, and I would require it. Without trailer interchange they may not have to pay for any damage to your trailer.

As for the broker helping repower the load, some are better about it than other are. Ultimately it is their customer that needs to be serviced so they should have a vested interest in helping repower the load. That said, many of them will stick you with high fees for the "service", so it may be cheaper to simply pay the service failure or late load fees in your contract rather than pay for a repower.

 

Ryder is a pain the butt to get set up. I used Uber to get to the nearest Penske, did contract on the spot, no deposit, just had them listed on my insurance. Very painless process and if I remember correctly, turned out to be about $260 all together on 500 miles

 

Typically what's happened when I've dealt this is I pro-rate at the mileage rate for what the driver has run already. Had this happen about two months ago. Paid my carrier the lion's share of the load, deducted like $800 on $3000, arranged riggers to switch the pieces over, and paid a local guy the $800 to get it up to where it had to go. Depending on the circumstances, we've been able to keep things rolling until the carrier has been repaired. This was a time critical shipment, and all sides agreed to the course of action.

It was a bummer, because the first carrier is a driver that I work with some, too. It was just fortunate that it was a small piece and a partial that we were running. He was still able to turn some on the load, and deliver the rest of what he had on the truck later, once he got everything repaired.

 

I’m at three truck owner operator, and I have accounts set up at Ryder, Penske and RWC.

I also set up account at my Volvo dealer where they rent trucks also, just because you have an account doesn’t mean they have a truck that you can rent on site

You want to set up multiple accounts with multiple rental agencies