The WORST Shippers and Receivers - Truckers WILL NOT Buy Their Products!

As any local driver, I hated house deliveries when I was peddling freight with Overnite. I could write a book on my experiences doing residential work. People go out and try to bypass the retail store and think the truck driver is going to perform the same service. I have left many homeowner looking at a 800 lbs roll of carpet lying in his yard, wondering "what am I going to do"---LOL Or delivering a washing machine and the homeowner thinking that you are going to install it--LOL Stories after stories.

 

I'm currently at Dickinson Frozen foods in Sugar City, Idaho. appointment time was 1300, I got here at 1200, it is now 1853. I'm still waiting

 

I finally got a door at 2200 and was loaded and back on the road at 0030.

 

Paragon Foods - Warrendale, PA

6 am appointment, in the door at 5:45. It's now 11:30 and they've barely touched my trailer and there's only 2 other trucks here at a 15-door warehouse.

Basically counting down the days to the e-log mandate, when I leave this industry behind with middle fingers in the air

 

The Penske operated Kroger Shelbyville IN DC is pretty horrible. They act as though appointment times are guidelines they have a right to ignore at will. This year three separate trucks of mine got held up there for 12+ hours. On each occasion they told the driver 'what are you complaining about we pay 25 bucks an hour for detention'. Needless to say they give no one any information about how to get this mythical detention money. I probably spent 10 hours of my time trying to get these guys to cough up the money they promised. No luck.

Next season I'm not sending trucks to Shelbyville anymore. If it had been 3 out of 50 or something I could have lived with it to keep the customer happy. It was more like 3 out of 10.

EDIT: And I'm a broker. Believe it or not we feel pretty victimized by some of these shippers and receivers as well. Mostly our issues come on the receiver end. Very few people are actually angry at their meal ticket (the shipper). I don't enjoy spending 2 hours of my time 'negotiating' with dispatchers (really they call and try to make you understand just how unhappy they are) whose trucks are laid over. I don't enjoy having to go to my customer and ask for detention, knowing that it will piss off her boss.

If I had ten bucks for every time I called a DC to try to find out when a truck of mine was finally going to unload I'd be at least 3 grand richer. If you asked me to make that call for ten bucks I'd pass. (spending half an hour on the phone with people who don't care getting transferred around to the right department? Not worth 10 bucks)

 

I just wonder if this industry is ever going to wake up and do something at all about these increasingly stupid detention times.

 

I'd like to see 15/hr after 2 hours be the minimum. Warehouses could be smarter about scheduling but they have no incentive to do so. It's not about the money, I'm trying to keep the shipping rates down, but it would give them some reason to optimize their dock around minimizing waiting time.

EDIT: I bet the shippers and receivers that use all company trucks have super fast loading and unloading times. Amazing what bearing the cost of the wait will do to your priorities.

 

They're not going to do anything even if they will be required to pay by law for detention. They will do what they already do - will lie that you arrived later than you did.

 

I doubt anyone is going to risk a major fine to save small amounts of money. You're right that drivers won't make any more money than they do today, the rates will change slightly downward if a rule like this exists. It's either not important enough to change how you do stuff or it is. A lot of the worst offenders think they do not pay detention.

Of course they do. I deal mainly in produce, and my customers do not usually pay detention. They also routinely pay 2-300 dollars more than other similar loads to find trucks. Trucking companies are basically charging them for detention up front. I make that clear when I book the loads so that everyone is on the same page.

 

I deliver to that place regularly and hate it! Place sucks donkey ****