So here I sit

TQL again....

It happened to me once few years back. It had 2 picks on Friday. It took them too long to load my truck (dry van) at the first pick up in Los Angeles. So I had told TQL about the delay at the first pick up after I got loaded. And I was told to head to the second pick up which was in San Diego. Sure enough, due to the traffic, I arrived 3 minutes after their closing time. The workers refused to load me up because they were union workers. So TQL told me to wait till Monday to get loaded. I deadheaded back to Los Angeles (where I lived) and went back to San Diego on Monday and got loaded.

I arrived on time for the first pick up. It took them much longer than expected to load my truck and I went straight to the second pick without stopping. So I asked the broker to paid me $200 detention for the weekend which I thought was very cheap already. Guess what? The broker went crazy on me and didn't want to pay me a cent. He was saying that it was all because I was late and I was the one to blame. So I told him I will park outside the shipper till I get the detention. He screamed, yelled at me and demanded me to go back to the shipper in San Diego and empty my truck without paying me a cent. I refused and continued to parked outside the shipper. He continued to threaten me that he would call the police and take me to jail for stealing the freight.

After couple hours of fighting with him, he agreed to give me the $200. But he asked me to unload the truck and sent a flatbed to pick up the load. So in the end, I got $200 for picking a load from LA, drove to SD, back to LA, and got empty in SD, plus 4 days (Friday to Monday). They rather paid a flatbed to haul the load than paying me the $200 that I asked. Is the rate for a flatbed more expense than a dry van?

 

The way I see it, the contract was altered, and there's a disagreement about how much should be paid for "extra services," like babysitting, and extra drop. The driver is not holding the freight hostage - only negotiating while the freight still happens to be in his truck. I don't believe he used that as leverage, as everything he asked for seemed to be standard rate, especially considering it was during the Christmas weekend. In fact, he was letting them off easy.