**warning**m2 express, las vegas, nv, breaks seals, lies,deceives, co-mingles freight

Our company contacted M2 Express regarding the shipping of gaming equipment on 4/25/14 from Las Vegas for delivery to Walker, MN on 4/28/14. Gabriel from M2 Express dispatch provided driver info and the pickup was made as arranged. After the cargo was in the trailer, the driver was switched without any notification to our Company. This was discovered by our dispatcher when an attempt was made to confirm truck location using the info provided. Of course, the driver that was reached was not the driver hauling our freight. We were unable to rely on Macro Point tracking of the driver’s cell since all trucks were heading towards the same general direction.

Numerous calls were made to M2 offices and the dispatcher’s cell phone, none of which were answered or returned. Several emails were sent asking for truck location and driver contact info. Even though our emails were being received directly to our contact’s cell phone, we could not get a reply for 8 hours.

With about 7 hours remaining to delivery, we finally received an email stating the driver’s ETA is 0830 to 0930, which would be about 60 to 90 minutes behind schedule. With 2.5 hours remaining to delivery, a text message was received stating the truck is 130 miles away. The information from both of these updates was FALSE!

When the replacement driver was finally reached at around the time of delivery, we were informed the truck was 580 miles away from the drop off point. The driver blamed weather conditions and promised to stick with an ETA that would result in being 8.5 hours behind. Granted that the weather was not ideal, however we had another truck making the same run at the same time who managed to arrive when scheduled.

The real catastrophe of this horrible experience with M2 was revealed at the conclusion of the run, when the doors were finally opened at the casino to unload. For a truck that left Las Vegas about 97% empty since it was to contain just 3 slot machines, was now filled with boxes and crates for other companies and deliveries. Our initial reaction was complete shock and disbelief when notified by casino personnel about the full truck of foreign cargo, prompting a call made to the driver who denied stopping to pick up anything else and was unaware of any additional contents. Pictures were reviewed via email of the trailer just after being loaded and how it looked upon arrival. The view of the machines was completely obscured due to a massive amount of extra cargo that supposedly was never loaded into the trailer in the first place.

The trailer was locked and affixed with a numbered seal after loading was completed in order to comply with Gaming Commission rules and regulations – meaning that the truck is never to be opened and the seal to never be broken until the truck arrives at delivery and Gaming Commission personnel are present. At first, the driver blamed a routine stop by DOT in Salt Lake City, UT as the reason for the broken seal. As the driver began to grasp the gravity of the situation, he confessed that he had stopped to help out a disabled truck, and loaded their cargo into his trailer. The seal had been super-glued back together in an attempt to back up his lies. M2 Express had previously received a list of “Carrier Gaming Requirements’’ from our Company, expressly stating that all of these actions would be prohibited, and if anything unplanned occurred, that we must be contacted. So in summation, all rules were disregarded and no contact to advise us was ever attempted.

Casino staff and on-site Gaming Commission personnel rightfully decided to reject the delivery. This decision would mean that these machines would have to be returned immediately to the manufacturer to be disassembled and inspected. The casino has footage of the driver eating at their buffet while the doors to his trailer were left wide open and unsecured on the property, underscoring his blatant disregard for the valuable property of others he was entrusted with. The fact that the driver’s initial reaction after lying and attempting to deliver under fraudulent circumstances was to eat at the buffet of the very same casino he financially harmed while leaving the slot machines unprotected speaks volumes as to the poor judgment and lack of industry ethics, which equally shows the thought process of M2 for instructing and condoning this behavior in the first place.

Many calls were made to M2 corporate dispatch in an attempt to remedy this disaster as we felt they had a responsibility to cooperate and make things right. The individual we were instructed to speak with was readily available and seemed agreeable to a reasonable solution on the actual delivery date. This gentleman ended that evening with a plan to store the illegally loaded freight in a local Minnesota warehouse and would deliver the slot machines to the Vegas shipper’s affiliate in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Not surprisingly, this person or anyone else from M2 could not be reached the following morning, and after numerous attempts, are still avoiding contact with us, which is now 15 days later as of this writing.