Brisco,
Thank you for your comments. It's nice to have you on board as a blog reader, and, no, it does not come across like you are jumping on me.
Your post and others prompt the following responses:
- For those who have not seen it, the blog post in question can be read
here.
- Debris removal is a service our carrier offers at a price. I'm not one to give away our carrier's services or my labor for free. Customer service is always a first priority but it comes in the form of delivering full value in return for the agreed upon price. When additional services are requested, additional prices are charged. Dieseldiva put it very well. "My truck is not your trash receptacle."
- Others made the good point that one person's trash, especially large deposits, is not appropriately placed in someone else's dumpster without permission. Indeed, on some trash routes, putting pallets in or near a dumpster may put whoever rents the dumpster at risk of a special pick up charge imposed by the trash removal company. Especially on the East Coast, people sometimes put padlocks on their dumpsters...for good reason.
- There were no traditional dumpsters at this facility. The dumpsters in the area were delivered by roll-off trucks, attach to buildings and are loaded from inside the building. Key cards are needed to move through the building. You don't just lug pallets to dumpsters here. They would have to be hauled away in the truck. Other dumpsters were of the politically-correct type (cardboard only). I was not about to be the uniformed FedEx driver who shows up on tape when someone calls security and asks, "who left that pallet here?"
- It was not one skid in this case but two. I stated one in my blog because it was one piece but in fact it was two skids that were banded together, one on top of the other. The shipper did this to elevate the freight higher off the floor in the truck to enhance reefer air circulation around the boxes that were strapped to the pallet.
- It was not a nurse that met us but the director of the research project in which this critical-shipment freight was used. I know nothing about the project itself but quickly gathered that this was a precious shipment.
- The way it works with debris removal at our carrier is that dispatch finds a place to which the debris will be delivered and appropriately disposed of. For us it has been most often a dumpster at a FedEx terminal. We are paid for those miles and the extra stop.
* After the debris is placed in the pre-arranged dumpster, we wait for the garbage truck to arrive and get a signature on the bill of lading that was created special for the debris (liability and security issues are often associated with the debris). The garbage truck driver or his route supervisor is the one that signs. Garbage truck drivers generally don't show up until around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and over a weekend it may not be until Monday. Detention time is paid after the first two hours. Depending on the debris, we might be required to stay awake and remain within 25 feet of the dumpster and keep it under observation until the garbage truck arrives and accepts responsibility for the "load." This work is done in shifts. Only one co-driver needs to be awake at any one time. If it is a solo driver, a second truck will be brought in. We do not get paid extra to remain in full uniform when eyeballing a dumpster but our carrier appreciates it when we do.
- The above paragraph (marked with an asterisk) is a joke and should be disregarded.
- Dreamer explains very well some of the realities of White Glove work and he is spot on with this load. Notice that after this delivery, we proceeded immediately to our next pick up, which was in Kansas. No stops were made on the way because there was no time.
The Kansas shipper maintains a super-clean facility. The loading docks are indoors and the dumpsters there are also of the politically correct type (glass bottles, tin cans, office paper, etc.). There is no way that we will arrive at this customer with a load of debris of our own, asking permission to dump it off there. They are ordering our truck to ship their stuff, not to accept another customer's debris.
Given our schedule, had debris removal been requested, dispatch would have probably put another truck on that portion of the load while we proceeded to our pick up. Or, they may have had us take the pallets with us and had a truck meet us along the way to complete the debris removal part.
The Kansas pick up was also a reefer load. Fresh on our mind were the instructions from recently-completed TVAL (reefer) training at company headquqarters in Oho to not carry extra crap in the back of your truck. White Glove customers can get picky about that. They pay for exclusive use trucks for a reason and do not like to see other people's stuff mixed in with their freight.
- Our hospital customer was in no way inconvenienced by what I did with the pallets. After wheeling them to her area in the building, I placed the pallets exactly where she requested, which was near a service entrance. Hospital maintenance or custodial people would take them from there. My guess is these pallets ended up in someone's pick up truck or garage as they were really nice pallets (brand new, heat treated, certified bug free, imported from a foreign country...and that is not a joke).
I mean, REALITY is, Expediters ARE just a bunch of delivery drivers, business owner or not, Period.
I agree. While many of our deliveries can get quite involved, we remain, after all is said and done, delivery drivers. But that does not mean we should not get paid for the value-added services we provide and the work we do.
Are all these extra charges something the "Driver" himself has to be well versed in to get the extra revenue brought into the company from the customer, or should these charges be a discussion between the customer and dispatch?? I mean, when a new driver goes through orientation, is there a class on "upselling" extra services to bring in more money to the driver as he is standing there in front of the customer.
I first learned about the debris removal service our carrier offers customers when Diane and I found ourselves on a load that had a debris removal stop. Knowing nothing about it then, I asked dispatch to explain it and they did. There are no classes on upselling extra services, but if a service is requested and provided, you can be sure that I'm going to get paid for it.
White Glove loads include for the customer free liftgate services. If a liftgate is needed at the pick up or delivery, there is no extra charge. On non-White Glove loads (Surface Expedite as they are known at FDCC), there is an extra charge for liftgate use. If a surface expedite load is booked without liftgate and the liftgate is later needed, I don't give away the service. As with debris removal, I call dispatch and get approval before the service is provided. That's how I get paid. Our carrier has a menu of services from which our customers order. I have learned that menu and deliver the services accordingly.
...But, in referrence to what Geo mentoned above, shouldn't all these extra charges already be outlined within the BOL as driver is in transit to pick up delivery or outlined in BOL as driver is at pick up location? Will driver know in advance as he is leaving Kentucky with those 37 boxes of idgets heading to Iowa that he may have to be lugging those 37 boxes up 3 flight of stairs? ...If so, how many drivers be turning down that load knowing there may be physical labor involved at the delivery end??
When customers are fully aware of what is required and fully honest, that is exactly how it works. When the load offer is made, we know what the services, pieces and weight are. However, it sometimes happens that things change because dishonest customers try to sneak extra weight onto a truck or under-report their needs in hopes of talking or intimidating the driver into giving the services away for free once he or she is on the load.
More often, things change for legitimate reasons, including the fact that the person booking and paying for the load may be a third party. The freight may pick up from company A in New Jersey and deliver to company B in Florida but the person booking the load may be with company C in California or even in another country. The paying party may assume that company A has loading docks and may even tell the agent exactly that when booking the load. But we may find out different upon arrival. That's when calls get made and charges get changed as appropriate to the services provided.
Also betting the guys who know the "extra charges" involved by heart and go after those extra charges are the same guys that sit for days on end waiting for those 600-800-2000 mile runs.
Am I right................
No, you are not right. Diane and I know our carrier's service menu but we do not sit and wait to cherry pick long runs (if I get your meaning correctly). If the load pays enough to make a profit, we generally take it.
Regarding upselling, that is not something we generally do at the driver level. We excel by delivering the services in ways that wow the customers.
In the hopsital delivery you mentioned, I was not upselling. I simply informed the customer that she was requesting an additional service for which there would be a charge. Remember, she was not a professional shipper or consignee. She was the director of a medical research project. She knew nothing about how freight is booked or charged. Until I explained it to her, she did not even know she was requesting an additional service. She was simply and innocently looking for a way to have the pallets removed.
The shipper booked and paid for the load in this case. For debris removal to be added to tote away the shipper's pallet, dispatch would have called the shipper to get the additional charge approved.
Upselling is done by the sales people who create customer relationships and the agents who book the loads. It's no different than fast food business that ask "Would you like fries with that?" or "Do you want to supersize your order?"
- Finally, I am delighted, Brisco, to read your response to my blog post. Blogs did not exist when Diane and I began researching the industry. I write my daily blog in part to give readers an idea of what it is like out here day-by-day. Naturally, experiences vary among expediters because we run with different carriers in different kinds of trucks, for different reasons. Still, an expediter wannabee can learn a lot from a seemingly mundane pallet story and be that much more prepared when he or she jumps in.
Your post, Brisco, and those made by others in this thread further serve that end.
