TONU, please read about the trick

Then the customer pays the TONU. They don't pay you say?

Question: Why are you shlepping freight for a scum bag?
Answer: because it costs you nothing

 

My customer cancels maybe 5% of loads and it's basically always because there's been a product issue. For some reason upper management is almost spiritually against paying accessorials. Because of this they have to pay 10-15% more than other types of customers to get trucks covered.

Turning around and asking this customer to pay for TONU's and detention when they are the best paying load available by 200 bucks is pretty lol. If you're there overnight you get layover. If you show up at the pickup and we cancel the load we pay a TONU. This makes us saintly for produce.

Some people are probably wondering how I can sleep at night right now. It's because I disclose all of this when I book the load. I have zero interest in having someone call me every half an hour to ##### so I make sure everyone knows exactly what they are getting into.

EDIT: I also very rarely have to pay TONU's because I usually have another load on offer. Sometimes with the same customer but not always. I'll start paying TONU's to trucks who haven't shown up yet when trucks start paying me for falling out. Vastly more trucks fall out on me than I cancel loads on. The balance isn't even close.

 

Yes I'm familiar with the bait and switch. That's when someone wants to cover a load and they pay a good rate. Then they get a call from a cheaper truck. Usually goes like this: He/she booked my truck Friday to load Monday afternoon. I leave with my outbound load Sunday, unload Monday AM and begin to bounce to the shipper. That's when I get the call, "The shipper just canceled the load but don't worry I have another one." He/she is so kind to offer me less money to go farther from my yard. I tell he/she to shove the load and deadheaded home. A deal is a deal. One time I was on the hook for $400 in over width permits. Kat from LLI Linehaul out of Toronto, ON. Piece of scum.

Why do they fall off if the loads pay so well?

 

I pay well enough to not need to book additional trucks. Most of the time it's because they run a reefer and the drop they were far too optimistic about took 5 hours to unload instead of 30 minutes.

When I offer someone another load it nearly always goes to somewhere within 100 miles of where we agreed and the pay per mile is the same or I don't offer it. Customer have been known to make destination changes on me like Lakeland FL instead of Orlando FL at the last minute. That #### is super annoying and usually ends with the customer giving me an extra hundred and me giving the truck an extra 200. Cost of doing business.

 

We are a broker and pay TONU when a truck arrives at the shipper and we have to cancel. In cases of a large deadhead we usually pay but not always depending on how far along into the process we get. We are mostly an LTL broker with trucks close by the loads we post. Occasionally we'll get a carrier that deadheads a long way and it's always a fight with the customer to get them to pay if the driver hasn't at least shown.

I would say though that carriers cancel far more freight than we do. Probably a 6 to 1 ratio. I think the industry would be more serious about paying TONU if there was a fee that each party had to pay for canceling (that would include the carrier). I've got a few laughs from carriers over the years jokingly asking for a cancel fee when they cancel a load last minute.