What's your story about your worst brokered load (as a 3pl) or worst broker story (as a carrier)?

martinwizz

martinwizz

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Mar 3, 2010
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This might get interesting.

Mine was personally a load from Quebec to Tennesse on a dry van 53' given to me by Landstar agent somewhere. Received load details and accepted the terms and realized i knew the shipper. I had driver going on a better pace than i tought and was able to manage an a late pm pick up rather than early next day pick up. Called the shipper all was ready, told us to come in. Got it all loaded on the truck, got customs paperwork. The next morning early, got a call from Landstar agent telling me to cancel the load because it wasnt ready. I started laughing cause i knew i had it in my yard. Told him i went earlier and he got pissed off and asked me to go back and offload it otherwise, wouldnt get paid. What do you think!
 
Had a driver load for me late one night at a mill in GA. He mentioned he wasn't feeling well and asked if I could push his delivery out a day. I said no problem. The following morning the shipper called to tell me the truck was still in his yard and wanted to know what was going on. I tried to reach the driver to no avail. The shipper's security contacted police who entered the truck and found the driver deceased.. .he had had a heart attack.
 
I think I've seen it all through the years ... drivers dropping dead on a trip, 2 of our drivers in Laredo having a fistfight and being thrown into jail, freight getting double and triple brokered without us knowing about it, taking a light load to California and having the trailer come around and smack into the cab (was on the way in I believe Utah when a tornado hit, leaving the trailer ripped open and freight all over the highway, driver circling a Houston suburb for 10 hours trying to find a shipper).

Worst customer experience was a kitty litter company, stiffed the company I was at for like $190K. I had a few loads on board and sold them to a jobber to recoup something like $7-8K. Wonderful investment.
 
My fumiest one is that we handled a shipment from Los Angeles, CA into Ontario as a consolidated truckload to distribute security machines to CBSA offices throughout eastern Canada. It was government work and all the machines had to be delivered by year end or there would be fines. The CBSA pulled it for inspection. I had to call my contact who called Ottawa, the inspection got cancelled and the freight got released awfully fast after that.
 
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As for funny.. I had a carrier call on a load I had posted one time.. only thing was the carrier in question was OWNED by the receiver of the product. I asked the driver (who booked the load with me) if that was ok, and he said he didn't care. So we went ahead with it. The following day the shipper calls to tell me the receiver had a complaint about the driver. So I called the receiver and he asked me "Do you not check the drivers you hire to move your loads?" .. "that guy you sent in here this morning was full of ATTITUDE".. I replied.."well.. actually.. he's YOUR employee.. do you not check who you hire?" He couldn't say too much to that..
 
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theman said:
I think I've seen it all through the years ... drivers dropping dead on a trip, 2 of our drivers in Laredo having a fistfight and being thrown into jail, freight getting double and triple brokered without us knowing about it, taking a light load to California and having the trailer come around and smack into the cab (was on the way in I believe Utah when a tornado hit, leaving the trailer ripped open and freight all over the highway, driver circling a Houston suburb for 10 hours trying to find a shipper).

Worst customer experience was a kitty litter company, stiffed the company I was at for like $190K. I had a few loads on board and sold them to a jobber to recoup something like $7-8K. Wonderful investment.
Click to expand...

@theman- was that litter company located in Brantford by Chance?
 
Several years ago we brokered 2 skids from GTA to Saskatoon for delivery to a "horse show" We had a week to get it there. The product was all the registration forms for the 1000 entries into the show.
Shipment picked up no problem on a truck that was preloaded west, we loaded it on the tail end since it was his first delivery in Saskatoon.
4 days later the truck is still east of Thunder Bay with no chance of making the delivery.
If the shipment doesn't get there the day before the show, we have 1000 horses sitting outside the venue who cannot register and the show is unable to open.
Apparently, the driver stopped in Barrie, Orillia, Bracebridge and North Bay and had job interviews putting him 3 days behind schedule. When the carrier finally tracked him down in Thunder Bay he quit and left the trailer at a truck stop.
With about 12 hours to work with, we hired a local Thunder Bay company to take the trailer to the Thunder Bay airport, we chartered a plane, flew it to Saskatoon and hired a local cartage company to make the delivery. Cost was about $9000.00 for a shipment that paid about $1000.00.
Only good news is that 10 years later we still have customer.
 
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About 10 years ago we hired Beacon Hill out of Milton area to take 6 skids from the GTA. to southern Mississippi. They loaded on Friday with no issues for delivery by the following Wednesday> Called on Monday to check on them and was told Tuesday morning delivery on schedule,. Ended up tracing them all week and on Friday morning come to find out the freight never left Canada until Wednesday night and they would be on a dock at AAA Cooper Transport in Pensacola FL as the driver would not have time to deliver this week???? I ended up hiring Fed Ex critical to grab and go with them. Lost a fortune on that one and the customer.

Beacon Hill went broke about a year later. I guess they just could not keep customers for some reason.

On the carrier side. I could start a book.
 
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I have another one that has made the books here. We had hired a trucking company on a regular lane we had from Montreal to Texas. High Value goods. Our customer decided to test our tracing and without informing anyone, had put a GPS chip inside on of its skid. On this particular shipment, it was pickup on a friday. delivery no later than wednesday. We made daily calls to report the location, without knowing our customer had his own valid information. Now on wednesday, customer stopped us while doing our verbal update and started yelling that he was sitting right in front of the material, door of the trailer open in a parking lot in Montreal. Trucking company was just giving us the info the trailer was in Arkansas.... They were looking to fill up the rest of the rest and had never left!!!! We lost the customer for a while and while punishing us, the actual carrier got the job from another broker! After coming in person to the office to apologize for being such liars and jerks, he informed us he was still picking up from a trucking company warehouse the same material. We were able to recover the account from this point because the new broker lied about it operations as they were picking up locally, pretending they would go all the way to Texas while in fact they were picking up and transfer the material in their warehouse.
 
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