GMR Transport, St. Romuald, PQ...

[F1 Freight]

Here is a piss off... Just thought people should be aware: Booked a shipment as LTL going down to Louisiana a couple days ago no stipulations on delivery whatsover (or mention of show freight). Get the order on Wednesday for pick up from a show in Toronto. Calls us at 1:30pm tracing the pick up, we tell him our eta is 2pm and he gives us the contact # for the person at the show to get loaded. We get there and we are told by the contact there that the show is not even done yet. We pull out and advise Mike at GMR of the situation and that the pick up is not ready untill Thursday. He calls today tracing the delivery that now has to be there by Tuesday morning, not anytime on Tuesday, we advised him this was not discussed and cannot commit to that and also reminded him that we would need the revised for the Wednesday mis-pic for the first attempt at pick up. He then says that it is our fault because we did not call the contact at the show until we got to the pick up (keeping in mind we were only given the contact # a 1/2 hour before pick up and it was only to help us get loaded. We were definitly not told that the show was not done yet, and GMR didnt confirm any of the information). He calls back a second time to confirm Tuesday AM delivery 10 minutes after our first converstion today (which we already told him we could not guarantee by Tuesday MORNING and we did not plan for it like that as it was simply booked as Monday/Tuesday LTL) So today he says its our fault for not calling ahead to the contact at the show, and that he will not pay for a mis-pic and continues to say "We are still good for Tuesday morning delivery?". I repeat myself again, and say Tuesday delivery, not Tuesday morning.
We have never dealt with GMR before and this first time move isnt going to well...Everything that was discussed at booking has changed, and Mike @ GMR is putting all the blame on us.
He then continues on about Tuesday morning delivery again and making sure we are on schedule. At this point this order isnt sitting very well with me, and I dont trust Mike and dont need the pressure if I'm not there Tuesday MORNING. At this point we are under the impression we may get burned on this one... as he is not listening to what we are telling him and really not getting a good feeling of trust with this guy.
I tell him to pay us for the mis-pic, to pick it up from our dock and we will cross dock it to another carrier. We tell him we need payment for the mis-pic and crossdock before we will release it and he agreed to this while saying "This will be reported on to the TIA Watchdog".... Are we in the wrong here?... And i would love to explain this situation to this TIA Watchdog myself if anyone has this persons contact info... My rant for the day... Chris @ F1

 

[loaders]

I am surprised that the broker didn't tell you that this was "show freight". Anyone that deals with this type of shipment only once or twice a year understands how difficult and different from regular freight it can be. That omission alone would make me nervous. It appears that the broker has not done his/her job very well in communicating what was required and expected on this move. In this case I believe you are right to decline the shipment and get it off your hands. Whatever you can do, within reason, to assist them in getting this shipment on it's way with someone else would also be the right thing to do... it displays a level of professional conduct.

 

[MikeJr]

Communication is Key

Chris,

Absolutely you should be advised in writing if it is not a standard LTL shipment (in this case show freight). I would also expect you to be advised of a delivery window (in this case Tuesday AM).

Good for you for being honest and not promising the world for the AM delivery when you were not sure how the other deliveries would be going today/tomorrow.

I've got a feeling that if you were not given transit time requirements and delivery details in full, that there is a strong possibility that you may have been given incorrect and incomplete pickup information also...

Misspick is not huge dollars and could have been avoided if they took the time to offer you complete order details at the time of booking... I hope they do the ethical thing and pay you for your work in this.

Regarding TIA, There is a section on their website to report unethical providers, it does allow for response by the 'accused' and of course in this case it's pretty clear what outsiders would conclude based on the details you have provided.

Note: TIAwebsite | HOME

Keep well Chris,

Mike

 

[martinwizz]

Just to put things into perspective - I am the manager here at GMR. I find this site pretty good at finding the bad apples. Although I cannot confirm 100% what infos were and were not given by my dispatchers (as it always will be word against word) I am agreeing with F1 here that we may have had some issues with relaying infos.

Although this customer of our always and almost only ships to tradeshows, I would find difficult to believe no mentions were made. We are not talking about a convention center here but rather an exposition with approximately 15 participants. Anyways, I still feel there are ways in which you can say no and refuse business and stay polite and I feel this is where this got out of proportions. We paid all our duties to F1 for the pick up and we had a pretty good service from Stage West Express. I took the time to inform F1 of our intents and I took the time to discuss with F1's President. I think we sorted out the problem with no hard feelings.

 

[martinwizz]

Also, one thing on this site that could be a major improvement: let the party you're about to bash or elevate know of your postings. The watchdog used by TIA members still lets the other party know of the situation so that if people think they've been misrepresented - they have a chance to respond to the comment - which I believe is totally sane. I had to stumble on this one here. That does not mean that if we post a comment on the watchdog that we are 100% right but we rather had a strong disagreement with the way things have been handled that day.

The well known affirmation that brokers know nothing about the costs involved in trucking has a downside in which trucking companies often will use this as a ultimate negation for problems they have created. That exact same day I found out about a trucking company who has been lying to our staff for a week pretending they were on their way to Vancouver from Montreal while the load was still sitting in Montreal. They ended up calling me 23h30 on Friday night on my cell telling me they cannot move our material from one local truck to highway truck and that they need help finding a warehouse that they can do the transfer at. Came into work Saturday morning to find some help - which I did find - but the truckers actually never showed up to the transloading meeting.

Called back Monday and their "driver" was already gone to BC. They ended up bringing back the goods to our customer after a week. So, this is to illustatrate that brokers aren't always the ones to blame.