mileage discrepancy issues

Hey all,

Not sure if this is the right website/forum for me, but i couldn't find one for driver couriers (car-based) and figured this was my closest shot.

I have recently begun a courier position as an independant contracter. While filling out an excel spreadsheet to keep track of my mileage for reporting purposes, I started noticing discrepancies between what the company was reporting as my mileage and what the real mileage was.

Since I was using Mapquest to calculate my pickup to drop-off mileage, I figured I'd tap some other services as well. So I looked at Google Maps and Yahoo Maps as well.

With Google, whenever it offered multiple routes I would take the shortest route, even if it wasn't the most practical.

I then compared the average between those three services plus what the courier service was paying me on and found almost all my runs would have at least a few miles less from the courier service, but sometimes 5/6 miles and even one where there was a 9 mile difference between the avg mileage of the four services and what I was getting paid on.

On their own it's not a huge deal, but when you factor in doing this full time all week it does add up to a decent amount, especially over the course of a month.

When I inquired with the courier service about this I was told they use PC Miler. So I went to that website and took a free trial and got mileage on a few of my waybills and noticed that even when selecting the PC Miler shortest route (instead of practical/faster) it didn't match up with what the courier service was paying me on.

When pressed further I was told that the courier services hands are tied and they won't rebill the customers because the mileage they get on runs comes directly from the customers who may be using older/outdated software?

This will amount to easily hundreds of dollars "lost" every month, which I don't view as particularly fair. But as an independent contracter, do I have any recourse here?

I'm not trying to create problems, trying to be a team player and work hard for this company. But I eat enough miles on my return trips that I don't get paid for, and don't think it's right I should eat these miles too.

I'm brand new to this, so not sure what to expect if I look at other companies or try to write in adjustments on my weekly reports I receive from the company (they require us to check off our waybills and to sign off and there's a part at the bottom saying that once we've signed we can't go and dispute it later, etc)

There is space on the sheet across from each run to adjust the mileage, but I'm worried that if I'm doing that all the time they'll tell me to go blow and hire someone who isn't as observant.

Am I being ripped off here or is this fairly standard and the courier service can't do much because of the customers?

 

Since I haven't done this before, I have no idea if what I'm being paid now is reasonable or not.

I get $0.75/mile during the daytime runs. If I work at night, a run starting at 8pm onwards pays $0.85/mile. If I pay them $18/week to rent a company blackberry with walkie-talkie feature and GPS for them to locate me, then I get an additional $0.05/mile "raise" (that's what they call it)

They also have a fuel surcharge which we get, that is around 10% right now. And they reimburse for tolls and some parking.

For deadhead miles they only compensate you if both the pickup and destination are outside their service area AND it can't be routed through their service area as you deliver.

I looked at seven waybills and compared the mileage they reported plus yahoo/google/mapquest and the discrepency from the average mileage of all four combined amounted to over 25 miles.

Seven runs might account for a couple of days of work, depending on the runs. So over the course of a week I'm easily losing $40-$50 I would expect.

At the moment I'm putting anywhere from 2-3K miles on my car every couple of weeks (a good chunk I don't get paid for since I may drive 20+ miles to reach a pickup location and then sometimes 50-90 miles home from the drop-off), which will surely take its toll. An extra $200+ per month from those "missing miles" would sure go a long way towards helping to make this more worthwhile.

 

Right, I guess my issue is that they state they use PC Miler and then when I check PC Miler I see the following for a few of my runs:

PC Miler Practical: 20.6
PC Miler Shortest: 20.2
Courier Service Reports: 19
Discrepancy Range: 1.2-1.6 miles

PC Miler Practical: 52.9
PC Miler Shortest: 49.9
Courier Service Reports: 48
Discrepancy Range: 1.9-4.9 miles

PC Miler Practical: 53.3
PC Miler Shortest: 50.9
Courier Service Reports: 48
Discrepancy Range: 2.9-5.3 miles

PC Miler Practical: 50
PC Miler Shortest: 48.5
Courier Service Reports: 41
Discrepancy Range: 7.5-9 miles


And that's just on a handful of runs. That's going to add up pretty significantly on a monthly basis, which is what I'm finding so frustrating, I hate being taken advantage of

 

I spoke directly with the general manager who told me they use PC Miler. And he spoke with the company owner about my concerns and relayed back to me that they wouldn't rebill the customers

Although it's kind of odd that they have a spot on their weekly sheets they want us to sign where we can make corrections/adjustments to the mileage; if they aren't going to allow any?

I'm very new to this job, so I don't want to piss them off, as I could use the income right now. But I just hate the thought of having hundreds of dollars each month that I'm not properly compensated for.

So I'm not sure what to do moving forward with these guys. I'm starting to keep track of what mileage my GPS reports for a run, plus I use my cars trip feature to track my "real" miles.

At least I can start building a log of the mileage discrepencies across the board each week and find out what it's really costing me, and then if I have a large enough divide I can present it to them and see if anything can be done (i.e. by that time hopefully I'm viewed as a team player and helpful driver?)

 

The general manager tried to say that the miles are coming directly from the customers, and that "company xyz" will only pay for 48 miles on a trip to "company pdq" and not the 52 it really is.

So they're trying to play it off like their hands are tied and they can't do anything about it.