Landstar Agent | Jim Burkett

I've been in this for over 20 years and I've notices a level lacking accountability within landstar. See, if we the carrier do something that is unethical of costly or bad, landstar will come down on us. In this case, we picked up a load in Michigan in January bound for TN. Upon arrival, we are told that we needed an appointment. My dispatch notified the broker Jim Burkett who said that he'd look into it. To this day, this would be the last that we'd hear from him. The delivery was to rake place on Tuesday but could not be facilitated until Thursday evening at 22:00 effectively costing us 3 days of revenue.

We'd worked with Jim in the past and finding this out of character, became worried, even checking local papers to see if he'd had an emergency. Surprisingly, we located funeral arrangements for an elderly woman with the same last name and assumed a relation. After over a month of Jim not returning calls or emails we reached out to LS, multiple times. Their general mindset is, "He's the broker and you have to deal with him".

So Jim is flying the LS flag and all of it's glory, you'll stand behind Jim on us carriers but we can not get the same support??????? Interesting.

After a little more persistence, we reached someone in the dispatch area that listened long enough to reach out to Mr. Burkett. She copied us in on this email. Jim did not respond to our request but took the time to TRY to rip the LS employee a new one for copying us in on the email which we asked her to send. That didn't go over so well for im as her response was sharp, very sharp. I thank her for her attempt.

To this day, Jim Burkett has failed to respond or to reach out concerning the expenses associated with the additional wasted time on this load.

It never ceases to amaze me how brokers completely discount our investments in equipment and people as, "Industry standard", "That's trucking", "That's all that we have in it". or WETF it is that he is thinking but it's brokers like this and incidents like this that reinforce that brokers are not necessary and that their prevalence is the only reason that they are still around.


Boxer Global Logistics LLC
1843 Ross Mountain Park Rd.
New Florence, PA - 15944

 

You are so smart, (And you may be), please tell me where I will get direct freight. We have 2 direct customers and they absolutely love our service. I have a hubspot account where I track sales efforts. There are over 400 companies and 10,000 entries from our efforts. I go door to door occasionally and I hear the same old thing. "We use a broker"

So, I know what I'm talking about but we still have to try to eat. Now, the brokers exist because they have beaten us at a game that individually, we can not compete in. If you have 20 loads a day to ship, there are few carriers that can handle it committed. Depending on the length of haul, this will use 40-60 trucks. BUT, lets say that a carrier like Swift quotes with all of their expenses and provides a rate of . . $2.40. The broker will come in and offer $2.35 and get the freight. They will put it on the load board and the poor sob that gets the load gets it at $1.95 per mile. YOU will say, well the stupid mofo should not have taken it. I, on the other hand understand that there are a couple of sided to this.

I understand this mess and I still stick by my original statement that Brokers are not necessary and they are not. What they have is a convenience provided service that takes advantage of the laziness of shippers.

Did you know that in the airlines industry, it is illegal for an airline to operate at a rate under their cost? This was done to stop NWA from squeezing out smaller airlines on same lane service. Brokers have no transportation costs in this. Not a single penny of transportation cost and this is literally the transportation industry. So, what am I missing.

 

1. We would have reloaded on Tuesday (1),
2. Wed we sat, No reload (2),
3. Thursday 10PM delivery No reload (3)

We lost 3 days.