What’s the point of a seal?

Back in my chicken hauling daze the poultry plants always sealed the load. And just about everywhere I delivered matched the seal.
When I would haul produce especially out of California, Arizona and Texas I would ALWAYS seal the load and have the shipper sign the BOL.
I didn’t build up those pallets and did not load them. I didn’t know what was in them.
CYA!

 

I get checked 100% of the time.

But I drive foodgrade tanker, which is all about the seals.

When I was in high school, I worked the receiving dock at Sears, and we checked every seal.

Apparently, the places you go to don't give a ####.

I don't know why......

 

I guess that would be a question for well.....the receivers that don't check. When I did van OTR, it was always hit and miss on who and when seals got checked. Most all of the high value loads like computers and smokes were checked. Some would say break it without checking. My food grade tanker loads were always checked. My last job we usually just watched them break the seal and bring it in.

 

Good suspenseful writing. I was hooked.

 

It may not matter FOR THEM whether they check it or not. I does matter for the very carrier who signed the BOL with a seal # written on it, in case there are any count discrepancies, even damages that were done even before it was loaded on your trailer, then the seal is your exonerating proof.

 

Quite honestly, the seal is a poor measure to prevent a cargo theft or any messing around with the load. The common practice is that when they hand a driver the seal, they don't seal it in purpose of restacking the load and adding some more partial load onto the floor. Then after unloading and before delivering the original "sealed" load, they go to a crossdocking service to unstack pallets and deliver the load with a sealed trailer is if nothing happened.
However, from the view of the delivery protocol and ensuring proper transfer of load, seal is still important.

 

I agree, but not if they don’t check it. If nobody checks it it could either be there or not be there in the end result is the same. That’s my whole point. I get how it could exonerate the driver under certain circumstances. But if you pull up to the guard shack and they tell you “back in the door 235 break your seal and take your paperwork inside“ and nobody goes out there and checks that it’s sealed on the door, you could have that seal in your pocket for all they know. Hell that seal could be on a space shuttle on its way to the moon. Who knows. So you back into door 235 and there’s five cases short… Then it becomes, “well the driver told us the seal was on the door but we never actually saw it”. That was the original point of this entire thread. I fully understand the idea behind seals. But if nobody checks them, it says if they don’t exist.

 

That depends on who your delivering to, I often had to deliver to McDonalds warehouse distribution centers, they always checked the seals, if the seal number did not match the one on the bol it was refused, not ifs butts, or maybes, you had to take it back however if that happened, all we'd do is get a knew seal and make sure it matched the one on the bol. Yeah I get what your saying though apart from Macca's most of the major supermarket warehouses like Cosco, Albertsons would never ever check the seal. The other advantage though was than it also showed that no one else had tried to open the back doors to steal anything.

 

Therefore, I recommend to make a short video with your phone showing that you are at their facility right about to back into their dock and the seal is still there intact before you break it as they instruct you to ... and then you show the seal lying on the floor.
It may seem a waste of effort, if not some paranoic behavior but whenever there is a seal number on the BOL it does have its legal meaning.
Perhaps, for a company driver, it is nothing to get in a twist over. More than a few trucks carrier can take a small claim or two, reprimand the driver at the worst case scenario.
A solo owner operator must avoid any claims at all costs, because keeping the cost of liability and cargo insurance low is essential. And in case there is a claim, they will be left alone to deal with it. And then, I assure you that they will ask the question if the seal was checked or not. In case the receiver refused to check it, you will say that they they did not care to come out and see it but the seal was intact and you have a video showing it.

 

That's true but they have security cameras so in case of any substantial affair there is a chance that they can retrieve the video showing you arriving with the seal.