Need help. What to do with this load?

If you really want to play hardball. Take it home and tell them they can come unload it off your trailer themselves for free. Go do power only for a little while. You're not holding it hostage and you're not exporting them for "outrageous" fees. You're not even charging them to store it. You're keeping it safe for them until they come and get it...for free. It's going to cost them so much more to hand unload it and transport it. Personally, I would just deliver the POS load and do everything in my power to never get in that situation again.

 

Ah hell no, this is holding it hostage. You can ask your lawyer to show you why.

 

No word from Dino in a couple days. Maybe he decided it was a great time to take vacation?

Hope all is well on this one.

 

Funny, I am in the same situation right now.
Supposed to deliver today at 7.30am , but receiver says it's scheduled for Monday and won't take early.
Truck is in PA and I just gonna bring him home to MI if they don't find a cross dock. Luckily I have an extra empty dry van in my yard.
It's been 3 hours and no resolution yet. Curious how all this will play out

 

Well first I want to thank everyone for your help and your advice and your support. Especially @wichris and @Rideandrepair.

I did deliver the load and I did get substantially more than the original delivery fee which the amount was okay; however I certainly should have gotten more for the length of time that I had the load. Fortunately the load originated and ended not far from my yard and I really don't have much into this except for some fuel and some time. So I caught up with a few things around the house that I needed with the time off.

Now this is a really common question I think that comes up what do you do how do you handle it. I even had another broker that I do quite a number of loads call me about another load in the midst of all of this and we sat down for a little bit and we discussed it.

Now the way that I see this when this happens it depends on multiple factors. Are you far from your yard? Do you only have one trailer? Do you have a lawyer on retainer that you can consult with?

If you are far from home then you need to have this resolved right away. Ooida sent me a form, it's called a warehousemen's form. That form you send that to the broker and tell him you have X amount of time to get me a rate con or rate con with appointment etc, or this load goes into storage. I came close to doing that because these guys were trying to bully me into taking it with zero compensation and telling me oh, we'll take care of you afterward we have to bill them first blah blah blah. Never never permit them to do that. Make sure that you have a new rate con even if it's not the amount you want that has all of the amounts spelled out completely with no guesswork.

I think the most important thing in all of this is if they try to tell you that, just go deliver it we're going to take care of you we have to bill them first... Stand your ground that's the time. I told them flat out you cannot force me to work for zero compensation. They told me repeatedly that they couldn't give me anything they have to bill the customer blah blah blah but when I told them to load doesn't move suddenly they came up with money. That is the time to stand your ground.

If I had a second trailer I would probably have handled this a little more aggressively. Although I have to say I have no idea if they're actually going to pay me, and if not I'll end up writing it off or taking them to small claims court I can swallow that if I have to, but I have to say it was a good feeling to had them banging their heads against the wall and I know they were. And I know that the customer was really pissed off at them.

What should happen is that they should ask you what you want to hold the load and what it will cost to redeliver it and then they should call the customer and everyone should negotiate. The three times that this has happened to me I'm really not sure how involved the customer was and these customers are huge colossal companies I don't think I could have tracked anyone down.

So initially there will be some arguing and some back and forth and then they will come up with a number and that number generally is what they're going to give you and you're not going to be able to negotiate it.

Now if you have an extra trailer that the load can sit in then you probably can hold them off and try to negotiate for more. I would say that's the second level of this and it's probably a good idea to have legal advice at that point because now it isn't just that something happened with the load and you want to be compensated and now they're telling you they will compensate you with x amount. Now you are saying that amount is not sufficient and the load does not move until I get what I want or closer to what I want. A good lawyer can advise you but all of these contracts will say something similar to the effect of you are not allowed to hold the load due to payment or pricing issues etcetera.

So at that level you really need a good attorney that can advise you.

I would like to ask @PPDCT how involved the customer actually is as far as them figuring that initial compensation point and if what I've laid out here is about accurate for how this generally works.

If I remember correctly you don't do van Freight but I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. It's really a bad situation for everyone but the good Brokers this happened with me they did try to compensate me almost from the beginning. These clowns literally tried to send me a rate con that had the original delivery amount on it and literally it just said we pay accessories with no amount, no anyting.

 

Glad it worked out!

 

Not all brokers are direct with the Shipper. A large majority of them go through 3PLs. That could explain much of those bottom feeders that "can't" negotiate or give commodity details etc etc. It's because they can't call the customer directly.

 

This is where the fmcsa can actually help all of us, forcing brokers to disclose where the load comes from on demand, including just an inquiry.

 

Update on my situation: we took this load back to MI on Friday, 530 miles. Told them redelivery fee would be $3500.
We settled for $3000 and got unloaded on Tuesday morning

 

Absolutely delayed response, and no excuse from me. I think I thought I'd responded, but I was going back through my notifications to just kind of catch up on what I've missed the past year and change. Anyway, I've been pretty lucky in the past several years and I think I've had similar come up only a few times. I think you handled it about as well as you could've.

With regards to the customer involvement: there's some give and take. What typically will happen when I'm dealing with a carrier who's about to rack up accessorials (and this is specifically me talking, other brokerages may do things a bit differently, etc.) the very first words out of my mouth to the carrier are, "Did you get someone to mark your in-time on the BOL?" I'll then proceed to notify the paying customer of the situation. "Hey, carrier X on Load A is currently stuck because of X, Y, and Z." The next thing I do is discuss with the carrier what the accesorials will be. Are we looking at detention? Layovers? Storage? What you sent over at that time, spelled out yours. What I'd then do is contact my customer with what you're outlining for the charges. I'll break it down for them. "They are asking for X dollars, because layover, redelivery, storage, etc." Depending on how aggressive you were with that, I may get pushback. Most times, I don't. If I do - I'll call and discuss that with you, as the carrier. The idea here is that I'm trying to make this as best a deal as I can for everyone, because it's a crap situation for you and not of your making, and I'm also sensitive to my customer having to eat charges too. So, we negotiate. I also push back on the customer because it's not your fault. One of my favorite things is, "Hey, look. You need to go back after this guy because of X, Y, and Z." Depends on who's paying the freight- the shipper or the consignee. I've been able to in most cases where accessorials come into play, get my customers to go after the shipper for a discount, or what have you because their own process hosed the carrier, and consequently them. It's all about trying to find the right lever.

I'll say this - in most cases, the customer is absolutely involved in the discussion, if the broker and customer are worth a lick.

Anyway, really sorry about the nearly two year delayed response.