Originally published at: Will Jenkins' Journey to grow freight brokerages - FreightWaves
Journey offers freight brokerages recruiting, consulting, and training.
I am ever amazed at the arrogance of celebrating this success. Why? I will explain.
- Freight brokers agree to abide by all applicable laws via the OP1 “PRIOR” to and as a condition of being granted their authority.
- Immediately thereafter, they begin an illegal operation by insisting that carriers waive their rights in order to work with them.
- There are no conditions that exist in law or the regulations that permit this sort of operation or that carriers can waive their rights when doing business with a freight broker. There are several regulations that allow for waivers between carriers and shippers but not brokers.
So, if this is true, then they have grown to this massive sive partially because they are operating to the disadvantage of carriers who are not able to offer 100 services. If a carrier has one or two trailer types then that carrier can only honestly offer to service the segment to which they can service. Brokers USE carrier capacity to cover the spectrum. This is an unfair and should be illegal but coupled with their illegal waivers, has been devastating to carriers. Shippers now choose to work with brokers instead of carriers because they are too lazy to do their own vetting and handling of carriers. When carriers stick together, this will be reigned in but I prey that carriers aren’t so unhappy that they just sit for a week. That would devastate the us economy. YES, carriers are that powerful and yet brokerage is celebrated and bragging about their success. Interesting.
Shippers use brokers for many reasons. The most important in my opinion is, because carriers are overwhelmingly unreliable. This isn’t always the case, nor is it always the carriers fault because unless your shipper that has steady, consistent lanes, ill be honest, how can a carrier be reliable when they have to keep the trucks moving so they need other customers in the in-between periods-brokers always have access to trucks. Another problem for carriers is finding backhauls, so would you admit you need brokers then? Yes, you would as much as it pains you. Why is this? Well many of you are too unresourceful to find customers on the other end, or sadly the customers just don’t exist. In a perfect scenario, you’re covered on both ends but not is perfect in trucking.
Shippers aren’t lazy, actually they are pretty smart. Who is lazy? Carriers, are lazy and prove it daily. You cry about some made up system designed to only aid brokers, yet in the real world, the carrier has all the power in the world. Want to cancel a load as as a broker, say when the driver has never called in, “We need a Tonu.” “Can we get proof he was on the way,” “No, we don’t have to show any, send the $250.” “Sorry, driver will be late…” whether it be for a set appointment, or the next afternoon, 30 minutes before the receiver closes, “Can they wait?” “No they have to pay overtime,” “Oh, well we’ll need a layover,” “For your driver being 8 hours late?” “Absolutely.” “Sorry your freight was 4 days late, he was broke down.” “Can we get something off the rate, or proof he was out of service?” “No buddy, sorry he not get receipt.” And WHAT does not paying a carrier something many times they don’t deserve, “We’ll just file on your bond!” What can a broker get? Hopefully a new customer to replace the one you lost for us. So spare us the crying-Lazy is not being smart enough to get the extra 15-20% brokers get for shipments, by going in and taking all the freight by accepting 10% AND having assets to back up the business. Lastly, freight brokers “abide by all applicable laws,” sure but when you work in an industry, that requires a contract for every single transaction, which is only really applicable to the carrier side, you would think you’d all be “that powerful,” but you’re collectively stupid.