Damage to tailer - just some ideas on how to proceed.

It was on private prop so i'm guessing the police will tell you its a civil matter. I would of stayed parked in there door until they called the Police or coughed up some info.

 

Call the corporate office, if they stonewall you, it's lawyer / small claims time.

Most companies hate small claims much worse than lawyers.

 

I've been through this so many times.... Do you have pics of the damage you can post? It's even more aggravating with a new trailer which seems to be a magnet for damages. Last week a loader knocked a hole in the roof on my trailer. The receiver pointed it out to me before they would even unload the truck.

Broker stood up and made it right on that one. Added $75 on the rate con. So $20 worth of materials and an hour of my time I had it patched. This week some numb skull bent up 4 logistics posts at the shipper. I didn't catch that until I got to the receiver.

Nothing I could really do about that one. If you don't catch it when it happens you are basically screwed. This one won't cost me anything other than time knocking things back flush with a sledge. Hopefully it won't buck out the walls and make my new trailer look like hell. Last year I had a guy knock a hole in my other trailer's roof.

His company gave me the run around. As did the broker. That one also cost about $20 plus time to fix but I got nothing on it. Someone cut a logistic post clear in half last year in my other trailer also.

I sold it like that but Utility gave me an estimate of $400 parts and labor to fix it. The customer who shipped the load, cutting that post in half, made that one right and cut me a check for $500. The broker also padded another load with an extra $200 because of the troubles.

These things are hit and miss. I will say if I had been more insistent and caught these incidents as they all happened I probably could have gotten compensated for each one. As it was I have a mixed bag and consider myself lucky to get anything from any of them. It really sucks when it happens especially when you have nice equipment. I'll be vigilant for the next few weeks then let my guard down and it will happen again.

 

The best advice I can offer is: don't make a mountain out of a molehill. If I had a $1 for every bent load lock, torn chute, and kemlite tear (reefers), I could retire. As far as the OP damage description, who's to say that panel didn't get knocked loose or torn a little on some earlier load, and the last one was the unlucky lift operator to snag it? As @rollin coal mentions, most damage is an easy fix and more or less a routine cost. It sucks, but no point in making it suck more by trying to make a big legal case out of it. Unless it's gonna cost over a few hundred dollars or require a tow, you're better off just getting it fixed and moving on.

Another tactic is prevention. I had a run of torn up kemlite a while back. Mainly from pallets getting dug into the walls, either lifted too high or in a double stack. The guy that does most of my repair work came up with some long sheets of 1/2" thick, slick surface nylon, about 3' wide and told me he had it in his own trailers with good results. I had it installed above the aluminum kick plates and have had zero kemlite repairs since.

 

Yeah I saw an Averritt trailer at a plant and they had put 1/4" thick wood about 10" wide down the 53' length of the trailer about half way up the wall kind of like runners to keep forks and freight off logistics posts.

 

Today after unloading an occ load I found a hole in the roof of my trailer real close to the edge the hole is about 12 inches long and cameras from the reciver show me arriving with the damage, so it was done at the time of loading but to late I'm screw have to pay for the repair any one can tell me around how much is going to cost me........thanks in advance

 

Shouldn't be too much. Just a tear in the sheet metal roof? Or fiberglass translucent roof? You could patch it yourself for less that $50 materials and tools if you had to buy everything. Pop rivets, metal patch, etc.

 

Yeppers, we have to do it all the time and it's just tapping the bent metal down and temporarily using something like this... http://www.homedepot.com/p/USEAL-US...l-Self-Adhesive-Repair-Tape-8872AF6/202086180

To fix it right though is simply cut a piece of sheet metal bigger and use pop rivets to attach the patch. Don't be stingy on the rivets either. Our shop uses some pink stuff they spread on to do the actual weatherproofing but I can't remember what it's called and my Googlefu is failing me.

-Steven

 

Some kind of caulking made for trailer repair. I forget what it's called. You can buy it by the tube at any trailer repair shop.