Trailer damage from shipper/receiver, how do you handle it?

If the camera is small, mount it in the top corner of the nose. Would help but be blocked by freight most of the time. If you could get a camera to point into the trailer from the door frame that's small enough to not potentially block stuff from being un/loaded it would be better and could easily see a forklift causing damage.

Being a reefer, you could easily hook up a multicam DVR for recording stuff. If something happens, connect a laptop to it to review the video.

Any outdoor cameras would handle the conditions in a reefer, just have to worry about possible frost blocking the lens.

 

Thanks for this. I have four questions if you don't mind:

1. How useful is the front camera beyond the first two skids being loaded?
2. That in mind, which cameras caught the dirty deeds on the successful claims and how clear was the capture?
3. Any problems with fogging?
4. Some places prohibit phones/recording devices. Any issues with that? I'd guess not, since they're pointed inside your own trailer but worth a mention.

DVR config would be interesting, but I get why you wouldn't want to share. That selection could also be influenced by whether or not someone might happen to already have a 5G hotspot running 24X7 to leverage.

 

Cameras can but put inside of your trailer, how well they work i don't know. Here is what I had made and put inside my trailer, It helps but they still put a hole in my ceiling.

 

I definitely like this idea and also maybe have skuff plates installed 24 inches high front to back each side?

I find it’s mostly the dry freight guys that damage reefers when your trying to get out of an area. The loaders are trained to just ram it in there.

 

It shows an undamaged box when the loading starts, it covers the blind spot for the rear cameras.

The rear cameras caught more but in a couple cases, the front shows the driver shoving a pallet to the front so hard the camera was shaken.

No not at all, the problem is with the cases where there isn't any venting.

I don't tell them there are cameras but my lawyer said that if there is a problem, the shipper/receiver can stick it because the cameras are limited in their vision scope, the front one points downward and it only shows a few feet behind the trailer.

 

I felt that might be the case. Years ago I had a situation at a DFW warehouse picking up a load. The lift operator went into the nose of the trailer with the first skid hard enough to about knock me out of the bunk. I was in the trailer inspecting for damage before he could return with the second one. Instead of acting right, the boy-man bowed up and started making threats saying if I didn't get out he'd get the dock supervisor to kick me out. I said fine you're gonna need to get him out here because I'm throwing you out of my truck, now LEAVE and don't come back in here.

Dock supervisor sent him back to work in the deep freeze the rest of his shift, and someone else loaded the truck. No damage was done, but had there been, a front camera would have recorded him coming in hot.

 

Its the receiver causing the damage. Shipper will never load a damaged trailer.wow 6000$ in damages. are they ripping the walls out or tearing the floor up?. If they are causing that much damage i would stop going there .

 

Not always the case.

One of my drivers had a temp controlled load out of continental tire in I think Georgia going to a BMW vendor. They wanted a washed out trailer so we washed it, the driver took pictures of the box and then went to the shipper (not at continental). She arrived, told to stay in the truck and got loaded. The FL driver was out of control, they drove into the box and scraped the sides up, then hit the front shoring bar so hard it bent it all with the first pallet, the second one they pierced the protection side plate and tore that up. The third pallet they hit the door and busted up the cap and bent the track just enough where the door could not be opened easily. The door was shut, the seal was put on and the driver was told to go.

She gets to the vendor for BMW, she had the guard break the seal, back into the dock. Getting on the dock, she tried to open the door and it would only go a foot up. The fork lift driver helped got the door open and saw the mess, he called his supervisor who called the general manager to make sure they were not blamed for the damage to the trailer. They took pictures of everything before they unloaded the product, they wrote up a really nice and accurate description that they sent me about the damage. My lawyer sued the shipper for the repairs and downtime of that trailer, we had to take it off line foe almost a month before it was repaired and back on the road.

 

Oh wow what a horrible scenario. This is the reason i have a sd card full of time stamped trailer photos after/ before every pickup and delivery

 

What camera system do you have?