Why do brokers not post appointment times, wasting our time?

You said you're new to this, right?

 

You are or good TROLL or need learn transportation basics at least.
How I can agree in money without knowing everything about load.
If you have load to move 1000 miles and offer $5000 to carrier -
Load will sit in my trailer 10 days - unacceptable
Load requires special endorsement I don't have - unacceptable
Load need to be delivered in 5 hours - unacceptable
Load weight will make truck over 80,000 - unacceptable

Please do not hesitate to post your company name and contact phone so we can save each other time.

 

Don't be surprised if loads you book on a carrier get given right back to you when they find out the firm appointment times after the fact in this day of EOBR.

I need appointment times on everything, always before I book the freight. You'll hear a click where I hang up if you tell me you can't give me that info. Booking "work in's" is a huge risk that's best avoided outright. I can't even book a Wal Mart load that will have a delivery time in the middle of a 10 hr rest break.

You're not allowed to park on site and when you do get there you have to drive all over creation signing in, dropping out, checking in, etc - which is a great way to trip that logging device into drive time in the middle of a 10 hour break.

Now how awesome would that be? For a shipper, receiver or broker its nothing, not a big deal and who cares, right? For a driver they potentially lost 20% of their weekly (5 work days) income when they interrupted that break.

 

About the only time I post a hit time for pick-up is if there is one. Otherwise, I put it up, and notify the carrier during our conversation on the pick-up situation. IE: If the product is ready for pick-up now, I'll let you know that. None of my customers have appointment requirements, and very few of their consignees do. One I've started doing a fair bit more work for does have "appointments" which basically just means call ahead, and let them know what day you're expecting to be there. There's no actual time on that.

Now, in @rollin coal's case (not sure what kind of equipment you run, or what kind of freight, so I'm using him as an example) since he's running reefer, and those distro centers suck, needing to confirm appointments makes all the sense. I think it's really going to be dependent on what you're hauling, an where it's going.

 

If I can tell you everything about the load EXCEPT whether or not there's an appointment required, then you should be able to agree on the money and give me a chance to call the receiver to find out. If you agree on the money, then tell me you'll wait a few minutes while I call the receiver, and I call you back and you blow me off and don't answer, we're done and you're going on an Excel spreadsheet as a blackball for future reference. Not that I really does any good considering the volume of carriers out there, but it makes me feel better. Any other information that you wanted to know on top of that, I could have always asked while I was on the phone. If you're just a company driver with a dispatch and accounting department dealing with all of the hassle, then ... Well ...

If I have 700 - 1000 loads in front of me to work with on a daily basis, and for some reason the appointment didn't work for you, I could probably find you another load that did work. But you ignored me. That says you don't want or need my business. The end. There's always another load I can work on and another carrier I can call.

There could be multiple agents working on a load. It's first come, first serve, especially with live loads. Loads lacking X information can be discouraging because the agent knows they'll have to obtain that information before they can make the sale, so they may just go for the easy loads, which gives me a better chance of making a sale and the carrier a better chance at landing the load before it gets snatched by someone else. (Most people just want easy money.) It would make sense if I only had access to a few loads per day, but that's not the case. I could have 700 to 1000 loads in front of me on any given day. Some brokerages might only have 5, 10, 20, 50 loads per day they can try and sale. I don't. --- This whole argument over appointments?

I'm still wet behind the ears, but I'm not stupid.

A load is never 'booked' until the load confirmation and agreement are signed and filed. And you wouldn't sign it unless you had all of the pertinent information, including whether or not and appointment was required, would you? (I hope not.) If you're just a driver and not an O/O self-dispatching, then you may not honestly have a clue what paperwork is required and the monotony of it all. I'm not a truck driver and I never was, so there's things that I don't know (yet). I was a hot-shot driver. That's as close as I ever got.

He who signs and returns the paperwork first so it can be filed gets the load. Many customers post their loads with multiple brokerages, else they'd never move their freight. We could come to an agreement, and between the time all of the correspondence and paperwork is exchanged, someone else could book the load with the customer and then we're both out of luck. Most companies don't work exclusively with one broker.

If we agree on the money then I'm going to bust my butt to figure out the rest of what's needed, and make the rest of the process happen as fast as possible in order to secure my sale. But if I made 10 cold calls and no one took a bite on the $$, including you, then the load probably isn't worth my time, nor is it worth the EXTRA time that it would take to call a receiver and find out if the delivery is by appointment or not. I'll just move on to the next load. If the load didn't work for you because of an appointment you didn't think you could make, but we agreed on the rates, then the chances of me calling another carrier and making the sale are most likely higher. I'll try to sell it to another carrier and offer to find you a load that does fit your criteria.

Appointments... Oh no!!!!!!

 

I think you're taking it too personally. If someone gets a better deal, you should expect them to take it. I'm actually inclined to think that you would accept a cheaper bid from someone else while the carrier is giving you a few minutes to call them back. You can pocket the difference and call the carrier back with any of the excuses that we've probably all heard before.

 

No one has mentioned anything about bids. The whole premise of this argument is that X carrier has turned down or ignores an offer completely because the agent doesn't know if the delivery is by appointment only, or isn't willing to wait and find out.

"We ain't talkin' bout no dern mun'eh 'til yoo figgur oot if der be 'n apperntment 'er nawt."

Well we ain't talkin' bout no dern appointment until you make a bid and we agree on a rate, cuz I gawtta call diz feller down at the dern shipp'n locayshun and ask 'em first, cuz dert gawsh dern cuss'omer din' put in that thar infermayshun when dey posted the load. Hurr-hurr-hurr... And it ain't my fawlt.

There are loads that the customer doesn't even give a price on, much less an appointment time.
You wanna talk about wasting time? I can show you how to waste time. Some of these guys expect me to negotiate a rate, and then call them with it for approval. Uhmm.... No? But that load can sit there for a week or two until the customer pulls their head out of their ***.

 

I'm assuming all of you that are commenting are independent O/O's that self-dispatch, or hire a dispatch company to find you loads? --- If you're a company driver then I wouldn't think this would be the forum for you? When was the last time you negotiated anything? Go take your 40 cents a mile, hush, and eat your Ramen noodles while you help fuel the corporate machine.

I'd rather have a dedicated list of independent operators with their own trailers on my call list than a large carrier. In the long run there's more potential since there isn't some major corporation's outrageous expectation of profit. Independents are just harder to work with. It's more work, but better money. If an agent strikes a good relationship with a carrier that has a large fleet, he can make steady income. Or you can go my route and target independents. It's just more BS you have to go through to build a client base.

 

"Break down the numbers... I say offer them $1.25 a mile. Keep the rest for yourself."

You're probably not going to get far operating like this. Good luck in the industry.