What would you have done?

To be honest...I got that idea from you.

I glean off your wisdom every now and then.

I understand reputation etc, but, brokers are a dime a dozen, and so are truckers...and neither party works for the benefit of the other. its a shark-fest out there. A few bruised knuckles never stopped a good fight and a handshake later...lol

Yup, Exactly what is not being considered...and guess what, wait till Elogs kick in. The downstream shippers/ receivers will be screaming @ carriers

 

I see your point. I am just not sure if it is ok for a shipper to not being able to load your truck in a timely manner. Not understanding they have a load ready to ship, you get there and now see it is not ready since you have to wait. I know it's because of the long line of trucks. That is the shippers responsibility to get them loaded. If Fed Ex or UPS came to your business to pick up some boxes do you think they will wait hours for you to get to them? Honestly not trying to be a jerk going back and forth with you but this whole waiting thing is horrible. I honestly don't know what I would of done. But I understand that someone would lose whether it was the first shipper or the second one.

 

I cannot answer as to what the OP should have done. That is between him and his conscience. I can't believe the world will come to an end because the broker will have to find someone else to do the load.

Now as TQL was brought up let me tell you why I will not pull a load for them. I was in Tampa, FL delivering a Pepsi Load. I was picking up later that day at a beer plant just down the street. I had time to kill so I brought up the DAT load board and there was a Tampa to Tampa run. It turned out to be for Estes but TQL was the broker. The going rate was $280. So I bid $280. They countered with $200. I really didn't care and it was my first time to do business with TQL so I agreed. Picked up the load and delivered it no problem. Then they paid me. $165. No explanation as to why the $35 deduction. So, if they are going to screw me over on a cheap load, they are not going to get me on an expensive load. Too many other folks out there want my services.

 

Sure! FCFS or not there must be some time tolerance level. It was not like he completely rejected the booked load in favor of another, he came there, ready and equipped. So he saw 30 trucks in line.... Perhaps the op should have waited a few hours to show some good effort before quitting. LOL I mean, I consider falling off a booked load a really bad vice, but to be perfectly honest, I can't help not to blame the op for what he did.
I am serious about waiting a couple of hours.

 

Delivery was next AM either way. Literally the only reason they cared was the driver was hourly. They'd been warned that it was a produce load before they took it... And the load was picking up on Saturday which meant recovering was going to be hard.

And yes time is worth money. I'd already bought it. The fact that he wasn't willing to give me what I'd paid for was why I was annoyed. And if anyone feels the rate wasn't fair... I recovered it in <5 minutes with someone who wasn't being an idiot about wait times.

EDIT: I think context is the most important thing when it comes to fallouts. It's also the most important thing for carrier selection. Yes this means that I think I deserve better service the more money I spend. If I'm paying some trucking company 400 bucks for a short haul with FCFS loading I'm definitely not mentally counting the profit from the load until it actually picks up. And if the customer wants to be snippy about their wait being 3x normal and my truck leaving I can find another customer. That customer pays for #### anyway. I'm a freight broker... For a short haul like that to be worth the effort of finding and booking a truck I'd need to make 33%... Which is super stupid for both the customer AND myself.

 

You didn't buy any time. You paid a linehaul rate. Time was wasted and part of a 14 hour clock was lost, produce or not. Yeah it doesn't really matter when most everyone can color in a logbook but those days are quickly coming to an end. I just wonder what makes produce so special that it deserves an exception for poor truck scheduling by customers?

 

I booked a load shipping as critical. With appointment time, and detention on load confirmation sheet. I arrived 30 min. Early. There were 4 trucks ahead of me. Asked shipper and they said these other trucks did not have appointments but they were gonna load them first. Stated it would take 1 to 1.5 to load each truck. I waited on one. It took two hours. Called and emailed broker all of this at every step. Fired truck up and headed home. Broker didnt even call till 945 pm. I was home by 3pm. I dont feel bad at all.

 

There will be a lot of pain. Disrespecting the 14hr clock will really hurt the shippers/recievers, IF & only IF, the carriers stand their ground.

How many will have balls to do so? That we wont know until a 6 month industry performance period.

I guess it could have started from the expectations of the driver/carrier to babysit the reefer unit, plus threat of big $$ damage if product is ruined.

Once these drivers caved, it was all downhill from there.

 

Produce has been this way for longer than anyone posting in this thread has been alive. That's what makes it different. What's fair and normal is determined by the expectations everyone goes in with.

And I beg to differ. If I book a load that is going 125 miles that delivers the next day at 0800 I've bought all that trucks time until roughly 1100 the next day. I'm sorry but I would be paying roughly half as much if all I was buying was the line haul and it was running straight through. 900 bucks was absolutely intended to be a daily rate that took the fact that it was produce into account.

 

You shouldn't. Sounds like the customer made their choice. You communicated what was going on. The customer told the broker it was critical and then loaded non critical trucks first and slowly? I'd be mad at the customer if it were me.

It's ALL about expectations and how they are set to begin with.