Some of you *really* give us a bad name
So my trucking company picked up a load of truck bodies in Rydal, GA for Bridge Logistics on Tuesday. We show up, there aren't holes in the bodies to run chains through, and it takes 4.5 hours to get loaded. All of this is pretty normal, shitty, but normal.
As soon as we started having problems we started sending emails. At the 3.5 hour mark I started making calls both to Bridge and the shipper (who aren't even aware my truck is still there), mostly to make absolutely sure we had it on paper for detention. When I got ahold of Bridge they claimed they weren't receiving my emails. This despite the fact that email was working fine while we were booking the load/getting setup. We transition to texting where they promise that they'll do right by me.
The following day we still haven't gotten a revised rate confirmation but they aren't answering the phone, replying to texts, or replying to emails. After it's delivered they tell me that they'll get with the customer to get detention approved and get it to me by end of day.
Fast forward to this morning and I still haven't gotten a word from them. I send one last text, my time is worth a good amount of money and I've already wasted enough of it at that point.
Then they send me 'detention' for 50 bucks. I tell them that I'd rather write a bunch of nasty reviews than accept that. They tell me I'm threatening them. I tell them I'm telling them what the consequences of screwing me over are. They say 'they are not the one'.
I've noticed a trend where my truck will have a problem and the broker will just vanish like a puff of smoke. I can honestly say that in 12 years of fairly successful freight brokering I've *never* done that. Some of you are not meant for this business and you should pack it in. A good way to test for that is if you've ever had a truck hit a problem at loading and gone incommunicado. That's bad for a multitude of reasons most of which are operational and not ethical/moral. Just a total lack of any sort of common sense or professionalism.
Anyway to any carriers reading this I wouldn't haul for Bridge and I wouldn't do truck bodies out of Rydal, GA. Very clear their business model is to be a condom for shippers who screw over trucks or they're skimming the accessorials incredibly hard. There's really no other explanation. The reason this post got made is that every single step of this rubbed me the wrong way.
Bridge if you're reading this no I *won't* take money to take it down. You were warned there would be reasonable consequences and here they are. This post will rank pretty far up Google anytime anyone searches you from here on out. Be smarter next time. Oh and in 18 months and one day I'll be calling your shipper. You'd better make what you can while you can because I am *much* better at this game than you are.
But hey you saved 125 dollars. Great work. Brian, I hope that extra margin helps you hit quota.