No seal and load rejection scenario.

I do put a seal on every load I take, hoping for it to protect me from any claims other than damages done to poor or inadequate load securements and that's regardless of whether the shipper requires that or not. If they don't I still put my metallic seal and mark it on BOL. It is sometimes impossible to know what the exact count of the load is or what conditions the content of the load is. I think that if I put the seal on, then I'll have my alibi; "hey, they loaded it I secured it with the straps, closed the door, sealed it and locked it and now it is here the same way they loaded it....there was an intact seal on it, so nobody entered the trailer and changed anything" Not only that....I am paranoid to the point of making short video clips of me sealing and braking the seal at the immediate surroundings of the warehouses, if the shippers/receivers are lazy to do it themselves (most of the time they are). Too paranoid, Hugh?

Not to mention of signing it with SLC... If they don't allow it I do demand access to the dock and physically be able to count it.

 

Depends on what it is. Raw food products, sure. A trailer load of snow shovels that just requires a count, nah.

 

Ya I got confused by that

 

What difference does it make? If the receiver simply declares it refused regardless of the commodity simply because a seal is not intact, without inspecting and counting the load, you really think they would pay that out? Not my insurance company..

 

Big difference. Remember when Tylenol didn't have safety seals? Raw food product that may have been tampered with, they're not going to use it.

 

To simply declare an entire load garbage without inspecting it because something possibly could have happened is ridiculous. What is the most likely scenario? Cargo theft would be the most common reason a seal is broken. Again. A decent insurance company will say they aren't paying for it. So at that point it can become the receivers, or an agreement to go back to the shipper, to another warehouse or maybe the driver just keeps it. Either way, they don't pay stupid claims. Can it be argued the driver broke the agreement on the load confirmation by seal bring broken? Perhaps. Does that load confirmation dictate when the carrier's insurance company will pull out their checkbook? Heck no.

 

Just pull loads where they use bolts lol.

I carry my own bolt cutters now. About 80% our loads are steel cable or the bolts.

We have one shipper that the loader applies the seal, they used plastic for awhile, but typically metal.

How about the old pre trip, in trip walk around to make sure it's ok?

And last but not least, please don't fool with someone else's equipment. Take the dude, and roll around in the dirt for awhile if it's really that overwhelming.

 

We have one shipper that uses plastic, bit it's a zip tie made for men, you have to cut it off with side cutters, nobody's just gonna pull it off.

 

I had it happen once. Had one of them plastic seals. Stopped as a ts overnight. Next morning pretrip it was gone. Looked in side, load was entacted. It was 4000 pound bags of metal dust fragments. Had several on there. Called my company. Told me to sit tight. They made calls on their end. Eventually got back to me and told me to seal it with another seal. Write new seal number on bol and a few other bits of info so reciever would accept the load. Got to the reciever and all was good.

 

Cargo theft is easy and cheap to determine. I imagine the cost of ensuring a non contaminated food source could be pretty pricey depending on the product and packaging.

Heck, in some cases product liability insurance may require they reject a non secured load. Imagine the potential losses if a contaminated food or medicinal product led to a death.