TQL - "What kind of a rate would you need to make that work?"

Well Jim, I hate to break this to you but the wheel here is in motion.

 

Unfortunately, a large portion of the TQL broker follow what has to be a corporate mandate to not post correct cities, to continue to look for cheaper trucks AFTER you've booked a truck on the load and the driver is heading to pick it up, etc. Sure there might be a few guys and gals that have scruples, but for most of the rubes working their first job ever, they don't. This had been going on for many years now, so it is obviously condoned and encouraged by TQL management, making them scum. If you'd like to post who you deal with that DOESN'T act in this manner to defend the company, go for it.

 

I hauled over 35 loads with TQL and I can attest to some of their shady and bottomfeeder practices. On 2 separate loads they short-payed me 135.00. One was for a late fee that was included in the rate confirmation. Another one was for a load that had to be reworked that I had a receipt for but was never included in the check even though that particular broker agreed to reimburse me for it. I could have filed on their bond for insufficient or incomplete payment but chose not to. I just negotiated the unpaid charges to other future loads. I have also had numerous loads canceled on me when they found a cheaper truck. PR lady,does Steve Pascall still work there? He was a real piece of work and one carrier I know still has his recorded voice mail of him cursing out another driver. However keep in mind that TQL has over 700 agents and brokers they use and one can be different to deal with from another one. I have also dealt with a few very honest TQL brokers that didn't try to pull out shady stunts,but they were in the MINORITY. I agree that they also like to pull the trick of listing a different pickup or delivery location,which is usually 100-200 miles off. For the most part TQL is no different than a shady and bottomfeeding sales company that only pays top dollar when they really have to. Even than they will still try to pull stupid tricks until the last minute when you are at the dock.

 

Hey PR lady, I heard a certain carrier is so upset with TQL that they got one of their own hired on there just to infiltrate the company and reveal all the shady practices and do as much harm as possible. Karma is definitely a *****.

 

Sorry in advance for such a long post, but I've had a question to ask drivers about for a long time and this seems like the place to do it!
I've haven't been in transportation for very long, but I've already started to see just how toxic most freight brokers can be to drivers/ the whole industry. I've seen it first hand and I've read about it on forums like this: the practice of freight brokering seems to cost the industry A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT and yet it's of little to no benefit to most drivers and only marginally beneficial to shippers. People talk about just not using brokers, and maybe some people actually do it, but I can tell you right now that there aren't many of them because the brokerage industry still plays a very central role in commercial transportation. All of this is to say that I have a question and I'd be interested in hearing everyone's feedback:
Could freight brokers be replaced (almost) entirely be a single, well-designed website? I mean, really, why not? Why couldn't shippers post ALL their load info to a site where carriers/dispatchers/drivers could take the load by clicking a button? Do we really need to make a dozen phonecalls, send faxes, and check in over the phone FOR EVERY LOAD? Shippers think that they need to use brokers in order to find (good) drivers, but all the brokers do is post to load boards that anyone could use and take the lowest bidder. It's all one big illusion on that end. If the shipper could upload his shipments and then just watch as carriers took them online without ever lifting a phone, how could a broker make things easier for them? Furthermore, carriers think they need brokers because... well, actually they all pretty much seem to recognize that they DON'T need them.
Maybe I'm missing something, but can anyone tell me why something like that wouldn't work? Would YOU have a problem with doing business that way? I really appreciate your feedback as well as the hard work that y'all do to keep the country alive.

 

Brokers are actually very essential. 99% of shippers don't work directly with O/Os or very small fleets for the simple fact that they can't provide the services of a larger carrier or broker. A shipper/customer doesn't want to give 1 load here, 1 load there and then have to follow up on each one. They just don't have the time or personnel to handle that. Do you think someone like Del Monte who ships thousands of loads DAILY has any desire to post each load for any whack job off the net to take 1 load at a time? Never gonna happen, that's why Transplace has the contract to manage and tender all their shipments. So to sum it up, we absolutely need brokers so we can pick & choose where we want to go. Most brokers are actually very fair, easy to work with and can make very good money running for brokers alone. Then you have the scum of the industry, TQL. They are what everything wrong about brokers is. They pay crappy, they are very unreliable, they lie, they don't pay for any accessories nor do they care about long lasting working relationships. It's all about how they can screw over someone to get as much money out of them. The reason they don't give carriers the pu info is because they don't want the dispatcher to call the shipper to confirm why the load has "cancelled" because 1 out of 2 loads you book with TQL will magically cancel. Next time THEY call you about a load, ask them what their MC# is before the conversation goes any further just to turn the tables.

 

Sorry I offended everyone, I will refrain from offering a different opinion other than what is in the majority.

 

I personally welcome all responses/opinions. Makes the forum that much better for discussion.

 

Wish you coulda seen it cat but alas. and to fortycalglock tyler in dallas has been good to me as have the few others. AND AGAIN I will say that the experience I have had has been good. I never said that EVERY time I called on a load I took it only the ones that worked for me. Now please be respectful in my bashing as i only have one eye, 2 steer's, 3 fingers on both hands and my wife thnks I love my truck more than her.

 

There is already a loadboard that lets carriers book a load posted directly by a shipper. It is called realtime freight. The shippers that use that board offer even cheaper rates than a lot of brokers do. That board is a complete joke and a waste of time. A lot of the big shippers and fortune 500 companies only use major asset-based carriers and large brokers. Most shippers will never give a contract to a one-truck carrier or one-man brokerage that has an MC number that is less than 3 years old. The main reason is because the larger companies can offer to haul a bunch of contracted loads a lot cheaper since they have volume power. Not to mention they have 24-hour customer service and if one truck breaks down with a time-sensitive load of produce they can find a repower that a one-truck carrier can't offer. Been there,tried that. Unless I owned a fleet of 10-20 trucks or more I realized I was better off negotiating spot market rates when loads outnumbered the number of available trucks than to be stuck in a year-round contract. Even the contract shippers sometimes have spot-market loads that they will give to a single truck carrier when they need to cover the load at the last minute.