Every Copper Run Fair Price quotation is subject to truck availability. What does that mean in practical terms?
Except in infrequent circumstances that impact large sections of the continent (e.g., a major tropical storm or a severe winter storm) there will usually be a truck available to move your freight. But there will be some occasions when there is not a truck available to move your freight at the Fair Price we have quoted to you.
These occasions may be infrequent, but they are real – situations in which normal truck availability is reduced, either by operational considerations such as weather or holidays, or by the sheer volume of freight competing for the same limited truck capacity, or, as in the aftermath of the introduction of electronic logs (ELD’s), the unintended consequences of regulatory initiatives.
And there will be other times when there is good operational truck availability, but mostly of it is consumed by early bookings in the preferred 72 – 12 hour booking window, leaving little remaining capacity for late-breaking orders and shipments.
In both of these situations, the forces of supply and demand will cause the price of the limited remaining available capacity to rise, and our normally valid quoted Fair Price will not be sufficient to compete with elevated spot rates.
And you can trust us: if we do not have a truck booked on your shipment, we will not tell you that we do, in a risky attempt to retain the assignment in hopes of, by sheer luck, finding a truck later.
But since available highway truck capacity is a traded commodity, the real question in times of limited capacity usually comes down to whether there is a truck available to move your freight at the time you want it moved, for a price you find acceptable, or even palatable.
In these low-availability situations, it is Copper Run’s job to source trucks that will reliably provide the desired service, for the most reasonable market price, to present the service and price options to you.