I'm a Freight Finder struggling to find leads.

You have to have that phone glued to your ear all day. And get used to people telling you no but do not get discouraged. As mentioned above grab a phone book, Google, knock on doors. And if you procure customers that doesn't mean you stop prospecting.

 

My only goal in life is to live long enough to witness the death of the broker scenario as we know it.

My latest gripe with a broker; Last Monday, I book a load to be picked up at a certain equipment dealer in NH. Evidently, there was an onsite auction there and I was supposedly getting a Cat wheel loader from this site. After combing the grounds with the manager...we conclude the loader was gone. Called broker (of course she's in Iowa.) She calls her customer (giant equipment dealer in Danville, Virginia.) After 2 hours of waiting for return phone calls, I was informed the loader was relocated 60 miles up the road to another lot. Sooo, the female broker just says, "well, just go on up there and grab it honey, baby, darlin', sugarpie, sweetie..." Unfortunately I'm not that nice. I informed her there's gonna be a revised rate confirmation for the extra time/mileage to go get it. She says, "OK, how's a hundred bucks?" I chuckled and said, "not so good". Not wanting to be a jerk, or greedy, I said for the extra 120 miles it will take, I will be charging a modest $240.00 in addition to the original rate, and thought that was above and beyond fair given I was approaching 3 hours of waiting time. She said she had to confirm with her customer first.

Another two hours passes. I called her back, asking if the "customer" accepted the $240.00 additional charge yet. She stated "I can't get them on the phone, they're not answering"... but would $200.00 be acceptable?" Here we go...

I agreed to the stinking $200 bucks, and get the address for the "new" pickup location, now changed to another town just 40 miles east of my staging area I was at. OK...let's just get to work I tell myself.

I GP&S the "new location"...end up at the address she gave me, and it's a single wide mobile home without even a lawn mower, let alone a Caterpillar 930G wheel loader there. Now my blood pressure starts to rise, and my testicular color changes to a dark shade of blue after all this. I call her back and inform her this can't be right. She said, "I'm sorry sweetie, honey buns, sugar pie baby doll...I finally got ahold of someone, and it's another 40 miles north of where you're at...they took it from the auction to eliminate the storage fees last week". This started to bring my temper, blood pressure, and attitude to a complete breaking point, given the fact I arrived at 10:00 a.m. at the dealership where it was supposed to be, it's now 4 pm and I'm still 40 miles south of the thing. I calmly stated I'll be expecting another "new" rate confirmation, with that original extra $40.00 in it to make this happen, and if not, I'll just drive home, abort the mission and have my lawyer contact her in the morning for a TONU and some extra compensation. Not wanting to tick me off any further, she re-writes the rate con to reflect the extra $240.00 originally talked about in the beginning, 4 hours prior. But not without resistance and claiming now she's only making a lousy $10.00 off this load after this. My heart was bleeding for her. I was playing the world's smallest fiddle as I listened to her whining.

Finally.....45 minutes later, I find this loader hiding behind a line of other iron at another dealer that bought this old junk, and they were the ones that moved it from original point A to this location to avoid storage fees from auction.

OK...Load, secure, and roll like a madman to deliver in Danville, Va. Arriving at the dealership in Danville a couple days later, I discover the largest inventory of Caterpillar equipment I think I've ever seen in my life in one spot...and this is the customer that the broker said wouldn't answer the phone.Really? In this economy, with several million dollars worth of iron sitting there...they don't answer their phone? C'mon sugarpie, honey baby, sweet cheeks...puddin' pie...me thinks you were fibbin' just a little. Imagine that...a broker who fibs?

The brighter side of this was after I unloaded that loader, I drove up the road a mile to have a coffee and while sitting there, an old black fella walked over to me and asked if I could move a loader for him. Ended up helping him and his buddies out by moving their old John Deere 544A loader with forks from a logging job to another log job, about 15 miles away. I only charged him $75.00, because I could tell he wasn't a rich man with the dented up old Dodge Caravan he was driving. The loader seen better days too. He was really grateful, and I was feeling good that I could help.

Well hey, I don't mind helping out a working man if they're like yourself, if they're just trying to make an honest living...but when you have some broker blatantly lying to you and trying to cheat you out of every last dollar that's rightfully yours...I have a problem with that one. Especially when it happens pretty much 100% of the time with 'em.

 

Really chaps my ### when that happens. Whether they are being shady about it from the get go or if it was an honest mistake brokers act as if it is no big deal when you show up at the address on your rate confirmation to pick up or deliver only to be told by shipping/receiving "you have to go to this other address".

This is a breach of contract. Most carriers have it in the contracts with customers if a load is reconsigned a fee of a few hundred dollars plus the extra mileage rate. Brokers are like "just go there" as if it is no big deal to just drive another 20 or 50 or 100 miles hoping you will comply with their demand, without extra compensation of course.

They are too lazy or embarrassed to go to the customer and get extra money authorized. Or if they do they just keep it and lie how they only made $10 or some other ridiculous amount.

First off it is not your problem that someone else did or didn't make money on a load. And second if they are that stupid then they deserve to lose.

 

What pisses me off is all they have to do is the JOB you are paying them for and this never happens! They are to #### lazy to follow the leads to make sure said piece of equipment, freight, vehicle is where it is suppose to be and ready to go.

This happens so much we now have a guy dedicated to calling ALL shippers and following the trail WITH names and numbers of every one that was talked to and verifying that EVERYTHING is a go, and in auto haul that is almost impossible for a driver to do, some of these large dealerships it may be a full day until you can get the right person on the line!

 

Exactly. It's more common than not presently that this stuff happens unfortunately.

I started really reading the fine print on these rate con's (CON's is a good term too, BTW,) and as it's been said here before...these things are drafted up by lawyers and thieves and they are 100% to the brokers advantage, and ZERO % to the carriers' advantage. We actually are liable for every single thing. I started rebelling and crossing out stuff I think is absurd, and writing in what I think is fair and initialing the change. Not that it's worth my effort to do so, but I just felt it was time to start showing these jerks that some of us actually have a clue as to what's going on.

That one I just wrote about above; I guarantee as sure as I'm sitting here writing this now, that they'll retaliate by waiting until the last possible moment to pay that settlement on that load, or go past 90 days to boot. That's another issue that blows the top of my head off my shoulders. Screw around with them for a few lousy extra bucks to compensate your time/mileage, absorb the extra time spent at shippers and customers that you can't reclaim...then they turn around and hold your payment back until it's almost time to call another crooked lawyer to collect it.

Mark my words...I am working on eliminating them ASAP. Just a matter of time. I won't continue to deal with these morons thinking they are the ones with the cookie.

Some people are probably still asking the question, "why do you use them in the first place then"? Well, if I had a magic wand that I could wave in front of every single dealer, auction, buyer & seller, exporter of equipment that I would consider hauling for and could shoot fairy dust out the end of it that instantly makes them run to the phone and call ME to haul their iron...I'd have me one of them things. Unfortunately, I haven't seen one advertised on late night TV yet...just the Shark Vacuum and the Magic Bullet juicer so far. Maybe Ron Popeil will come out with one soon, who knows.

 

Why should my customers call you when they can call me directly?

 

As a load finder your customer is the Motor Carrier. go to safersys.org and look for motor carriers with 1-5 trucks. Most with less then a year or 2 in business have trouble finding competitive loads. You essentially provide them dispatch services. As you make contact with shippers and receivers on their behalf you may look at being a broker and provide services to the shipper. This requires a certificate and bond... However load finding and brokering must be separate cash flows to avoid the double broker fines. You may only legally charge one commission for each load.

 

He is not a broker he is a load finder... Big difference

 

Not to the end user, the trucker, in that regard he is just another expense in the overhead column

 

Load Finders. Really just a truck driver's wife, an unemployed person, a former "logistics company" employee that figured out how they can work from their coffee table at home and pull anywhere from 5% or better off a guy (or gal,) for finding loads. Granted...it's not my cup of tea to do it anymore myself, as I'm way too busy with the other things, and way too impatient to deal with these jokers. Trying to squeeze another lousy $200.00 out of them for what's rightfully mine in the first place, being ripped off right off the bat for 100-150 miles from what they claim the distance is to what my odometer said it WAS...that all just frosts my ###.

It's true it's not all the brokers greed, it's a lot to do with greedy shippers and customers too, but this part of the equation just hits closer to home than the other.

As someone else just mentioned...it's just another added expense to the bottom line. But in mine and many cases, who really has the time and patience to book a load, work on getting it there, and be setting up the next one back to back, and having to email carrier packets, insurance cert.'s and W-9's while steering with your knee? Tough deal to accomplish and be productive at the same time, by yourself anyways. So sometimes the 5-8% you'd give one of these load finders does make sense compared to the couple of thousand bucks (or more) you could potentially lose if you don't synchronize loads consecutively. What's the answer here? Permanent lease? Marry a former logistics expert? That would cost waaaaay more than 8% over the long run, lol.