Lumping question

what is a lumper?

 

A lumper is a third party person (95% of the time) or company that is contracted by the company you are delivering to for the sole purpose of unloading the trailer. They also might have to sort and re-stack the load according to the receiver's policies. Lumpers are mostly used in the refridgerated freight industry. They are found in dry freight too, but not as often. Since I've been with KLLM (Oct. of '06) hauling TC freight, I've had to get a lumper at least 75% of the time to unload me.

A short list example of receivers who use lumpers in trucking:
Wal-Mart (both TC and dry)
any grocery warehouse i.e. Kroger, Tom Thumb, HEB, insert your local grocery store chain here.

Like I said, it's a short list. Anything I've delivered to a manufacturing facility was unloaded by those facility's employees at no cost to my company. Lumpers, with the exception of Wal-Mart, are not employed by the company you are delivering to. They are a contract company. The vast majority of the time the company you are driving for will reimburse the cost of a lumper if they don't already have a contract set up with the lumper service which means the driver is out nothing.

Hope this answers y'all's questions.

 

So a driver is expected to have cash on hand to pay lumpers? How is that possible if you have more stops to unload than you have cash? I've heard such horror stories about newbies making next to nothing, How are you supposed to eat until you get reimbursed? I'm guessing there is some turnaround time between paying the lumpers and getting the company to reimburse.

 

shoot i just paid (well the company did) $60 to unload my trailer of OJ here in greenville sc. I'm just not the one to unload a trlr then go drive.

 

The company should, and in most cases will, advance you the money on your ComData card, then you write a ComCheck off of your card to the lumper. Once you turn in the receipt, you and the company are even. The turnaround time for me is one week. KLLM uses trip pak scanning and transflo scanning for their paperwork. Whatever I have scanned in by midnight on Monday, I get paid for that Friday.

 

Are trailers packed for two differnent stopsm sometimes? where you have to watch over what is unloaded / sort stuff off the trailer?

 

Some are LTL (less than load) When I was OTR sometimes I would have more than one stop. Sometimes drop and hook. When I used to peddle I could have anywhere from 20 -30 drops a day.

 

I was independent,anytime I wanted to lump my load was no problem and I charged same price lumpers charged. as for peddling,I hauled flowers for years.the most drops I ever had was 36 through texas,all walmart.I use to get $35 per drop after first and last and $50 unload fee.

 

whats peddling?

 

just to give an example,I used to deliver folwers to different walmart stores.sometimes if it was boxed flowers I would have 20 or 30 drops,thats what they call peddling.