What you brokers expecting with the elog mandate?

Yes, but how many of your customers will say 'yeah, yeah, we'll set the delivery time to 16:00, but when the truck arrives, the receiver's staff has gone home for the day? Can you bill for and collect detention to pay the carrier?

If that costs the carrier their next scheduled load, I'd bet my next paycheck that the detention won't even come close to compensating them enough to make them whole.

You brokers need to put the pressure on your customers.

 

Damages don't work that way thank god. You only get paid for the actual money you had to waste not your lost profit.

And I'll tell you why I say 'thank god'. This concept is what protects you and I from customers claiming that because our truck was late they lost 15 grand in sales and they would have turned x profit on that and we should pay them that.

There's a concept in transportation law called reasonable dispatch. It's the big reason why you have so much trouble collecting detention from the broker. In return it's the reason why late truck fines are so rare... and why most late fines won't stick if you really pursue them as far as necessary.

The reality is that in this business the actions of the shippers have huge impacts on the truckers, and the actions of the truckers make a huge impact on the business of the shippers/receivers. Each side gets a substantial amount of leeway for margin of error because historically both sides would never leave court if they sued each other every time someone screwed up.

All of that said I have exactly 0 customers who give me appointment times that don't hold up and then refuse to pay something for it. My big produce customer basically never pays for anything, but they are good at getting trucks loaded and scheduling delivery appointments so it doesn't really come up much unless the grocery store DC is feeling extra dickish.

EDIT: And yes 150 dollars is the standard amount for layover. Some customers pay more because it's the right thing to do. Some customers don't pay it at all. The important thing as a broker is to clearly communicate with the carrier what kind of customer they are dealing with so that they can price accordingly. Similarly the broker should inform the carrier of good aspects about the shipment as well. For instance it's reasonable for me to tell the carrier that it's averaging 2-3 hours to get loaded at my main produce shippers locations... Because it's true. I'll also be really clear about the fact that a certain DC sucks big hairy ones.

After all of that the carrier can decide on their own if they want the load or not. If they take the load they are accepting all the risks and consequences that come with that. You don't get to come to me demanding detention because you waited 5 hours at pickup and I said the average was 2-3 hours. Average means average and individual performance may vary. I don't get to ask for some of the money back from the guy who got loaded in 45 minutes.

I really see disclosure as the core part of dealing with trucks in an ethical way. I feel like if the risk wasn't disclosed at the VERY LEAST on the rate confirmation then it should get paid for. If a truck gets held up for an entire day obviously something should be paid, that's not normal and they weren't paid for that. So much of this stuff is just using common sense it's not even funny.

All of that being said I am constantly being bombarded by wildly unreasonable requests for money from carriers after they've already booked the load. If you guys spent a day on my side of the table you'd be humiliated by the shameless behavior of some trucking companies.

 

I know that there are many that would inflate their losses. But if a missed delivery appointment (due to deliberate deception on the part of the receiver) on Tuesday cascades into losing your scheduled loads for the rest of the week, then someone should be held financially accountable for the difference between what you would have earned and what you actually earned after scrambling to implement a damage control strategy.

 

You see how if that logic applies to you it also applies to them right?

Think about the ramifications of what happens when your hot load of coca cola misses an important delivery appointment and a grocery store runs out of the red 12 packs. That #### has insane margins. They could claim you for 40-50k without even blinking. Furthermore if this was how it worked they would operate on a much 'leaner' logistical setup because the carrier would be paying for it if it didn't show up.

You're responsible for how tight you run your schedule. If your week can't take a 12 hour delay anywhere in the chain you're going to lose your whole schedule a lot, and that isn't the fault of the people you're dealing with. Stretching yourself to the breaking point isn't a right, it's what happens when everything goes perfectly.

 

The difference is that Coca Cola's JIT schedule isn't government mandated. The carrier's schedule is.

The government mandated schedule carries more weight, legally speaking.

If the carrier hires a driver that can't keep the left door closed, then yes, they should pay the price.

But if the shipper / receiver insists on a JIT schedule that doesn't work for the carrier? They should cover the carrier's losses as a result.

Plus, Coca-Cola isn't willing to pay the rate that would allow for a 12 hour schedule delay.

 

Here is the question. What to do in this case?
Load is booked in Chicago and delivering to a food DC in Detroit.Fresh hours, only 300 miles to go, everything seems to go well.
Shipper ends up holding the truck for 7 hours, add Chicago traffic, driver is on ELD and makes it to delivery at 10am.
Receiver refuses the load and says next delivery appointment is available only in a two weeks.
The shipper does not want this load back either, saying that they already sold it and it's not their problem anymore.
How would you handle this situation as a broker?

 

You're trying to parse this too finely. The damages on their side are orders of magnitude greater than the damages on our side in $ terms. They screw you up it's a few hundred bucks. You screw them up it's thousands. You don't want there to be any legal argument where they get to hit you for lost profits rather than straight damages.

It's the lost profits part that is the problem. Obviously if they breach their contract they should pay something... But they can't be expected to make up the money you lost because you didn't get to scalp that broker at 5pm like you wanted.

Obviously fines on carriers being asked to violate HOS don't hold up. That's a whole separate thing. I'm talking about late fines for things like breakdowns, illness, stuff that technically the carrier is responsible for.

 

Look at it from the one truck O/O perspective:

We have 70 hours per week to sell. And we can only sell it in 14 hour increments, with a required 10 hours between those increments. So we schedule our days in 14 hour increments. When paper logs were able to be used, we could fudge things 15 minutes here or there, and we could make allowances to help you out. Now that e-logs are mandatory, we cannot. Now it's your turn to help us out. Like you should have been doing all along.

I'm truly sorry about that. I'm hoping that this e-log mandate will flush out those unprofessional carriers that make unreasonable demands.

 

First off me and this shipper are done so the gloves come off. I tell the shipper that the product is going to be dropped at a bonded warehouse and they can send someone in to retrieve it and redeliver(they get to pay the charges to get the freight back) at their own leisure.

The thing that REALLY makes this thing go sideways is the shipper holding the truck for 7 hours. You change the reason for that and the whole situation is different.

EDIT: Another thing that would be a deal breaker for me is the shipper saying they won't take the product back. With all of my produce customers worst case scenario here the truck sits a day and waits for receiving to open again. Then the load gets accepted or rejected and if it's rejected we pay to redeliver it back where it came from. And that's with it being 100% the carriers fault with no shipper holdup.

There's a right way to handle produce disputes. Produce customers who don't do it right aren't worth dealing with. And I'm speaking 100% as a broker here. If a customer sticks you with a claim that you can't make stick you'll usually end up eating it. That could easily be 10-30k. I have to run an awful lot of loads to make that much money. I want to be confident that 90% or more of gross profit from my loads is going to stick. Below that point the chances I'm still willing to move the freight drop pretty fast.

Soon I'll probably be adding slow loading produce shippers to my 'not worth it' list. I think the drama on those accounts is going to go up exponentially... And the main thing drama is is time consuming. My time is worth a decent amount of money, so listening to someone ##### about how unhappy they are for an hour isn't just a miserable experience... During the produce season it's super expensive too.

 

I'm willing to bet that if you look at it in terms of percentage of revenue, the carrier will be the one to come out on the losing end.