Walmart Rejects 20 Pallets..Stuck with Load

Good news! Thanks to half the trailer getting rejected the broker is going to HAVE to pay you for your trouble. Make sure you cancel the load you have for tomorrow as you are almost certainly going to be redelivering that toilet paper somewhere else.

I'd want 2.00 a mile for the redelivery+ 600 bucks for the two days. It's not enough to cover your profit but these kinds of charges are to cover straight losses not lost profits. I know it sucks, but these situations do happen in trucking.

EDIT: Just to be very clear if he wants the load delivered anywhere he's going to have to pay up. Make sure you mention that the 300/day rate meter is still running and will absolutely apply to time spent waiting for the broker to be reasonable.

You want a brand new rate confirmation for this that contains all of this information. You also want a line on that rate con that says the broker is liable for these charges regardless of whether his customer pays him.

This broker has been acting very squirrely this whole load and is absolutely not entitled to the benefit of the doubt here. If the broker doesn't give you this stuff in writing I'd call his customer and talk to them directly.

Obviously be a lot less aggressive if dealing with a mega broker. But if you're dealing with a mega broker it's time to call up their complaint line and talk to a manager anyway.

For the record if you came to me with that offer I'd mentally salute you for being a reasonable (yet not stupid) human being and sign the line that is dotted. This rate is fair so you shouldn't be negotiating down more than 50-100 bucks at most. You may need to give that up to make the broker feel like he 'won'. I know it sucks just grin and bear it like I do every single freaking day.

 

No you can't just sell the freight. The freight is almost definitely worth several times what you are owed. We're talking about 20 pallets of toilet paper. Think about how much cash that actually represents.

That being said they have to figure out what to do with the freight and your time isn't free. If they don't pay up I'm sure there are options with warehouses but I've never had to arrange (or have something like that arranged against me) something like that. I can guarantee you they don't want their freight in some warehouse collecting fees they never agreed to (but will have to pay if they want their cargo back lol).

The broker they are doing business with is the customer in this case. If the customer doesn't have the load assigned to your broker it's time to break through those guys and deal direct with whoever has the SCM contract.

EDIT: I know this situation is bad but illegally selling half a load of toilet paper far below market value is the kind of misery that only ex wives can top. Mega brokerages have managers. I guarantee that this guys manager doesn't even know there's a problem yet. Hell he's probably got your load on his screen with 0 dollars for detention and all the money the customer is paying for detention showing up as profit. Some morons actually think they can get away with this stuff lol.

I would try to get ahold of whoever their carrier relations people are and tell your side of the story. More likely than not management will wrap this thing up quickly when you start talking about warehouses.

 

I want to stop here and say that this entire situation should have been avoided.

1) You should have been told the pickup was FCFS and you wouldn't get loaded until the afternoon. As you experienced showing up in the afternoon is not an effective way to 'hack' this waiting time. I wouldn't have paid anything for the detention on pickup because I would have disclosed that waiting was going to be a thing.

2) The customer could have easily convinced WM to take the extra 20 pallets. They just had to call the buyer up and ask for a favor. They either don't have any favors left or they don't care because it's toilet paper and it isn't exactly spoiling. Regardless this was avoidable altogether.

3) They probably should have at least told you to bring it back by now. They would owe you at least what they paid to bring it out in this scenario.

Most likely this is taking a long time because you're dealing with a new broker who doesn't know anything yet. He probably ####ed up at some point and thought he could pocket some or all of the detention money. That plan went seriously wrong when the load got rejected lol. Now he's in a situation where he hasn't told management there's a problem and the problem is getting worse by the second. I've seen so many people get fired for getting into this exact spot it isn't even funny.

Remember kids bad news does not age well. If you have bad news to give get it over with immediately or you are actively risking making it several times worse. If it was so bad that you didn't want anyone to find out about it, it being several times worse seems bad.

I wouldn't blame the shipper here. From the instructions being bad in the beginning this whole thing stinks of a young 20 something year old kid who has no idea what he/she/it is doing.

 

This kind of #### happens unfortunately. At the end of the day we all just move stuff around for a living. Especially when you start dealing with big corporations you start seeing some REALLY inefficient uses of resources.

There's a reason why I like my customers competent. Even though I make less $ per load (competent people don't overpay... and when they do watch out) things are just smoother when the person you're dealing with is actively solving problems instead of creating them.

 

My god tell me about that

 

So jcrack08 - what happened????????????????????????????????????

 

20 pallets its like 2/3 of the trailer. They should have you haul it back for at least the same rate as you brought it there, if there is no solution to this already. That's the fair and right thing to do, ethically, even if it means the broker loses money on this. But it is Tuesday morning now, I hope, this is resolved somehow.

 

Weightwise wasn't a issue but the space your product took in the trailer should've not made sense .. I've loaded before and noticed I had less space than I should've had and questioned it.. turned out new dock worker added 4 pallets that were near my prestaged load.. always question it if pallet count and space left doesn't seem right