Slow pay history costs broker $200

Booked a 2700 mile van load with a new-to-us brokerage for a little over $5k all-in this week. Got it on the truck and headed off towards the receiver, delivery in 4 days.

On the 2nd day, the boss calls and asks if I had any clue why Freight Capital is rejecting the broker based on credit history. Nope. I did attempt to check him through FC before booking, but their site was down and I didn't think anything more about it. Everything was smooth as silk with the document exchange. Loading took about 90 minutes longer than promised (no surprise there), and the shipper's only complaint was that I was the first driver to load their product in recent memory that could actually speak and understand English.

Freight Capital is rejecting the broker based on 60DTP history. So now I'm worried that we've got $5k invested in a load that's going to give us problems. I thought about it for a while, and then I figured the worst that would happen is that we'd have to secure payment upon delivery before the product came off the truck.

Long story short, the boss calls back on the third day, and says that it's all taken care of. Turns out that the broker is also a Landstar agent, and moved the load under the Landstar umbrella which satisfied FC. Why didn't they do that to begin with? Because it cut his $400 commission down to $200 (this according to the broker himself).

So all you brokers out there, be warned - 60DTP puts you on FC's 'do not factor' list!

 

I do have a full access login to the FC site. When I ran his MC, the site came back with an error that said the site was having problems and to try again later.

The rate on that load was good enough coming from that area that I needed to book it right then or lose it - a full 40% premium over what was already being snapped up by hungry carriers.

As for the red flag, that thought was there and that's one of the reasons that I wanted to run the credit check on his MC. On the phone, he came across as seasoned and old school, so I wasn't overly concerned at the time. Given the circumstances, I think the only thing I'd do differently if faced with that situation again would be to keep pushing for the credit answer before getting loaded.

As for his margin on the load, I believe that it's pretty slim. He told me that he just got the customer back. Schneider came in and undercut his rate significantly in order to get the business. The customer came back to him after Schneider proved to be unreliable. He said that the customer wouldn't even agree to pay his previous rate before Schneider came in. I'd have charged them MORE than the pre-Schneider rate, but I guess competition for freight in the northwest is fierce enough that he's got to take what he can get for now...

 

I got an extra $100 over the posted rate. I'm thinking that the carrier that originally had it dropped off at the last minute, and he had to get it moved. I wanted $5500 for it.

I'm with you there, but the owner of the truck that I drive factors everything through FC.

For that matter, why can't we just be handed cash or a cashier's check when the load comes off the truck? Well, we can if we ask for it. But the truth of the matter is that if we ask for COD payment, we'll be passed over in favor of the next carrier that extends credit. Business is business.