How do you deal with brokers that call several times checking up on you?

Honestly, guys like you are my favorite people in the universe to deal with. I *hate* having to run down trucks during the day. A quick heads up letting me know what time you're going to be in, when you're loaded, a periodic, "Hey, we're here, and we're still on track for delivery at XXYY DTG", and "Hey, at the receiver," saves me so much headache, and means I'm not bothering you when it's not convenient for you guys. If I could train all the drivers and companies I work with to do that, my job would be so much smoother.

 

Doesn't surprise me. The amount of times I hear complaints about this on my end in the course of a day, it actually annoys me by proxy.

Incidentally, this is also why in my in the initial booking conversation ask the following: "Hey, when do you think you'll be over to pick this up, so I can advise the shipper?" Get my answer. "And do you have a ballpark on when you'd want to deliver?" Get my answer. I generally like to check in the day of pick up (if driver's not picking up same day) to make sure we're still on track. This covers both our butts so I can let appropriate parties know, say, if you're hung up at your previous delivery. Past that, I don't like to hound my carrier, since you've got other stuff to worry about - chiefly, getting to that pick up and delivery.

 

The same way I deal with telemarketers police whistle they don't like it

 

back in my days of long haul, i did not have a cell phone, we all had to stop and use pay phones...i'll be darned if i could find any.......that's how i dealt with them.

my company would back me up as well...they knew i was doing the job, and was always early to an appointment. never had any service failures.

like this one time, i was 3 hours early...yeah, i was on east coast time, i had to go to CA....i thought i was running a bit behind.....shoot, i got there 3 hours early.....

 

The question didn't mention anything at all about calls while driving. He was just complaining about being pestered by agents checking up on him.

 

Because the broker knows when one is driving and only pesters when parked?

 

Well since you want to dwell on the side issue, it's not illegal to answer the phone while driving if you have a headset. The only thing that matters is whether or not you want to take the call.

 

Once I was five minutes away from pulling over to take a nap since I was getting sleepy then the broker called and we spoke for three hours about fun stuff and before I knew it I arrived at the receiver.