Brokers are optimistic! That's according to the latest Truckstop/Bloomberg Intelligence survey of brokers, conducted to end last year. Bloomberg analyst Lee Klaskow put it this way: “Most brokers believe demand, rates and margins are poised to keep getting better” -- for them. We could see that as justified optimism for you, too, with a we're all in this together sentiment: Overdrive's audience of both leased and independent business owners is trending positive with their own outlook: 4 in every 10 expect greater net income this year.
Yet viewed another way, the optimism could just be a reflection of how bad it's been. Add to that a couple recent examples that came across the desk showing yet again the lengths to which brokers are going in contracts to hold fast to as much revenue as they can -- at the expense of carriers and, plenty owners say, bedrock safety, too.
Carriers United head and small fleet owner Leander Richmond reached out about a conversation he had with another independent, centered on the practice of assessing lump deductions from an agreed-to rate after delivery -- "fines," as he's heard so many brokers refer to them: for early arrival at the shipper, for late arrival at a receiver (or vice versa on both counts), for errors in load tracking technology ... Richmond's used another word for particular cases he's been party to, as regular readers may well recall: garden variety theft, as it were.
Invoking $250 earmarked in a broker's rate contract as a penalty for late arrival to be deducted, the independent offered Richmond this observation: "If I’m fatigued and I have something in my head telling me, 'well, you’re going to get charged $250'" if late, "guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to keep going."
California-headquartered owner-operator Paul Griffin, based in Squirrel Valley, has seen these sorts of broker practices up close and personal, having gotten the Christmas-season grinch treatment from one in early December with a whopping $600 penalty he's since refused to accept. The entire almost $2K he's still owed for a load hauled thus remains in limbo pending his pursuit through small claims court in his home state, he said.
The broker, one of the usual three-letter, large-company suspects, posted a Harlingen, Texas-to-Milwaukee, Wisconsin, run at just shy of 10 a.m., when Griffin happened to be unloading with his 2015 Kenworth W9 270-plus miles north of Harlingen near San Antonio. He agreed to an all-in rate of $3,225, with an advance of $1,290, he said.
The broker wanted to track his progress with Macropoint on his phone, so Griffin got that up and running. It was around 10:30 when he finally got the pickup address in Harlingen, roughly five hours' drive away. Yet: The appointment time for pickup was set for 1 p.m., no way he'd make 272 miles in time without driving at 100 mph basically the entire route. Griffin wasn't going to do that, of course, and communicated that fact to the broker. He also noted no notice in the rate contract of specific penalties for late arrival, so he continued on to the pickup, arriving around 3:30 p.m.
Loading proceeded smoothly. After he made the delivery in Wisconsin and was prepared to take a 3% fee for a quick pay on the remaining $1,935, the broker sprung the $600 deduction on him for late arrival at the shipper in Texas.
He wouldn't accept that.
Why, Griffin asks, should he be expected to take the hit for the broker's mistake? That is, clearly, he says now and he said then, the broker didn't have a carrier lined up for this load, and was having to settle on Griffin at the last minute. "I'm being blamed for their failure," he said.
"Demand appears to have rebounded for freight brokers," goes the press release sent with results of the Truckstop/Bloomberg survey. Brokered freight volumes were up for 55% of respondents to the survey, with 3 in 4 expecting it to continue to rise.
If brokers want to effectively capitalize on that increased demand, it's time to stop these kinds of chargeback practices and honor rates agreed to with carriers, without whom they're effectively dead in the water.
[Related: 'Stop dealing with brokers who treat you like garbage']
"I was told I wasn’t supposed to be charged for late fees," Griffin said, when he first got on the phone with a night manager at his broker's location after delivery. "All of a sudden one of the supervisors said they were charging for the late fees. The load was on the board at 10:30 when I got it, and they made a 1 o’clock appointment" knowing he was five hours out. Now "I’m the bad guy for doing what was right."
Owner-operator Paul Griffin's been trucking now for 43 years -- as an independent owner-operator he's been specialized with seafood brokers on both coasts for many years now, LTL across the country out his native California and back mostly out of Boston and Maine out east. This brokered load in Harlingen to Wisconsin was just a blip, what he thought was a decent find to keep him busy a couple days between other work on the way toward the Christmas holiday in early December.
Given his ongoing battle over the remaining $2,000 he's owed, "my son didn’t have the best Christmas," he said, "but he still had Christmas."
Meantime, Griffin's utilizing the self-help process in California's small claims courts, awaiting a process agent to serve the papers to the Ohio-based broker's accounting department. He's determined to keep at it, to go "all the way with it." he said. "That’s all I can do."
Settling with them for the reduced amount they want to pay him would be to condone the nickel-and-diming practice, he feels, to tell the broker "the coast is clear for them, and they won. ... I’m not going to settle for it. I just did what was right."
More brokers should do the same if they want reliable carriers to work with them.
[Related: What are your rights, recourse options when a broker doesn't pay?]
