Most Imaginative Excuses

hauling_ass

hauling_ass

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Mar 15, 2010
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Okay everyone. Time to put 'em out there. Maybe we could number them? And, excuses from both sides of the fence - not just the carrier who can't pick up the load. Don't forget the guys that are offering the load and then bail.

I'll start:

"Sorry to cancel the load on you (even though your driver is just around the corner). My customer got it done cheaper."

The sad part is...the excuse could be true!!
 
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hauling_ass said:
"Sorry to cancel the load on you (even though your driver is just around the corner). My customer got it done cheaper."
Click to expand...

I've had this too many times...it hurts when you drove 150 miles out of route on a Friday afternoon to help someone out and it gets cancelled.....

Then you get the excuse....
'I'm very sorry but I'm not getting anything for this mess up but I'll make it up to you on the next one..' HAHAHAHAHA....lol - never see it.
 
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Here's mine. "Sorry you drove 60 miles empty to pick up this load, but your truck is the third truck _._.S. has sent here today to pick up the same load". Ok that was not really an imaginative excuse, it was the truth...lol
 
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How about.....
'Thanks for getting time in and out like on the bills I told you to but I told you it was first come first served...how was I supposed to know that there was going to be 15 trucks ahead of you and only one door....who does that???? Sorry, they won't pay me anything so I can't pay you anything. I'll make it up to you on the next one.....'
 
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"We can't make it to your pick-up, we've had a mechanical breakdown. The driver was driving through a thunderstorm and the truck was hit by lightning". Still one of my all time favourites! To add insult to injury, I remember it was a Friday afternoon as well.
 
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Those are my favorites from carriers :

''Driver has another pickup to do at the same shipper as you, was supposed to have 5 skids for the other customer and 4 skids for you, when he got the 8 skids he thought he had your order also ( 5 + 4 = 9 on my calculator ) he's long gone and don't answer, cannot pickup your load sorry! ''

When calling to do a pickup tracing, on a load booked 2 days before '' oh sorry, truck didn't go out for the delivery, it was cancelled but I forgot to call you to cancel your backhaul ''

'' driver been stuck at the border for 4 h, cannot make the delivery today'' they don't think we can call at the border directly to verify I guess...

I can go on and on and on....

Will post more later when I'll have more time! :)

Enjoy!
 
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in a previous job I had to be the guy who made up the excuses (aka lied)...to entertain myself I used to tell all of our Southern US customers that the truck hit a moose...some of these poor people must've thought Canada was just dripping in moose roadkill

I once had a carrier tell me my load would be late due to an act of God...when I asked them to be more specific the reply was "that's all I can tell you"
 
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I love this one:
Driver did not see the lights flashing at the scale and was arrested for running the scales and a few other things. Truck and trailer impounded cannot make delivery.
This was true so I tried to get the trailer out on impound and I was told no not until everything is settled. 4 days later when the reefer was out of fuel and the fish went bad I received a call to please come and get the trailer.
My excuss, no truck, I will get it in 2 days received countless of calls and picked the trailer up 3 days later
 
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"I blew a turbo" I'm not a mechanic and I am sure trucks blow turbo's but for the number of times I have heard this you would think they were made of glass... The kicker the dispatch/driver never seems upset, is this not a costly repair?
 
Funny how turbos, computers and other critical components always seem to fail as far away from a well equipped repair facility as possible. Or the parts warehouse can't seem to find and ship out the new part in any kind of timely fashion. Honestly, I know and can appreciate how expensive and frustrating repairs of any kind can be when they have to be completed on the road. However, the mechanical breakdown excuse is just too simple and easy to use when the cause of the delay is most probably poor scheduling.
 
Turbo's I have done.

Idaho blew on the Saturday of a long weekend

Louisville KY Sunday of a long weekend.

Brantford Friday night at 7pm

We have done a couple more but those ones stand out.

As far as parts no one stocks anything any more. It sucks breaking down but the fact you cannot get any parts or shops to fix it is worse.

I am just going to tell everyone our company pet rock died and we are in mourning that is why we are giving the load back..
 
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Turbo's actually do go more often than they should in my opinion. And especially with these newer trucks, I think they build them to break down. I honestly do. We replaced one on a Pete, and 1 year and 1 month to the day, it blew again. The long and the short of it is though, if you know the carrier, you know if it's true or not.
 
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The sad thing is that all of these excuses are based on truths ... they may just not be true at the time they are telling you so. The truth is, trucks are just not built that well and certain components are just failure prone. There are a lot of truck parts that are common between the different manufacturers ... it's not as simple as buying a Paccar brand truck instead of a Freightliner or something.

But the broker excuses ... usually it comes down to customers who call multiple brokers to cover the same load and whoever covers first gets the shipment. I hate dealing with those types of customers and generally avoid it.
 
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We compiled a list of all of the excuses from our drivers over the course of a year why they are late for delivery or pick up or cannot come into work, We actually announced the list at our Christmas party and turned out to be quite humorous and it actually turned into an annual part of our Christmas part since we had such good feed back

DWC
 
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OK so the Raccoon story actually happened to us but it wasn't poop it had climbed into the back of the trailer at pickup in Ontario and we got to Chicago the receiver saw it freaked of course so we went to a cross dock to get rid of it. They unloaded the trailer did not find it so figured it climbed out, went back to the receiver who freaked again because the cross dock actually unknowingly killed the raccoon when unloading and it was jammed under one of the skids.............I can't make something like this up.
 
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