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There is Not Enough Room on the Truck

ISSUE

The truck has arrived to pick up a shipment, but the truck does not enough room for the shipment.

This is because:

  • There is other freight already on the truck that uses up so much space that there is not enough room for your freight;
  • The truck is wanting to reserve too much space for a subsequent pick-up elsewhere;
  • The truck is too small for the freight: i.e.
    • you need a 53’ trailer and a 48’ trailer has arrived; or
    • you need barn doors and a truck with a roll-up door has arrived, or
    • you need a full height cargo van, and van with a lower height has arrived.
  • The shipment the truck has come to pick up is too large to fit on one truck.

NOTE: Size and Weight Limitations

Every truck is subject to weight limitations, so while it is most common that trucks that have insufficient “room” for a shipment are deficient in physical space, it can also happen that the truck is deficient in “room” in its weight allowance, i.e., the truck would be legally overweight if it accepted the shipment.

ACTION

  1. Do not load the truck.
  2. On rare occasions, it may be possible to shift freight that is already on the truck, in order to place it more efficiently to free up enough floor space, or weight distribution, to accommodate your freight.
    While this strategy might even be requested by the driver, and would result in your freight being able to be loaded on the truck, we recommend against doing so. We remind you that if you move someone else’s freight on a truck, you are potentially assuming liability for any damage that you do or might have done to that freight, including any undetected damage that was done to the freight when it was originally loaded before the truck ever got to you.
    And we ask, would you want someone else, unknown to you, moving your freight around on a truck after you had loaded it with care?
  3. In our view, you have 2 options:
    1. Reject the truck.
    2. Cut your shipment by enough size or weight, or both, so that it can physically and legally fit on the truck.
      We will ask you to choose between these 2 options. While in some circumstances the fairest resolution would be to send the truck back to a previous shipper to unload his shipment, this is not an option that is ever on the table in these situations.
  4. If you reject the truck, or require a second truck, we will source a truck for you, subject to action item 6 below.
  5. If you choose to cut your shipment, we will:
    1. Prepare a new price quotation for the smaller shipment;
    2. Ask that you re-issue the shipment paperwork to reflect the smaller shipment (e.g., Bill of Lading, Customs declarations)
    3. Ask whether you wish to ship the remaining ‘cut’ freight on another truck.
  6. We will determine the reason why your freight would not fit on the truck:
    • If the freight would not fit, by size or by weight, because the truck did not arrive with the requested space available for your freight as initially booked, then the total price we will charge you to move your entire shipment, whether split between two trucks or not, will be exactly the price we originally quoted to you to move your entire shipment on one truck, provided you elect to ship the cut freight on the next available truck. There will be no “missed-pick” fee.
    • If the freight would not fit because it is physically larger or heavier than what you told us, and what we in-turn passed on to the carrier, or for some reason your freight cannot be loaded into the space normally required for a shipment such as yours, then we will charge you our normal Fair Pricing for the shipment:
      1. Either as a single shipment at the Fair Price originally quoted, to move the shipment on a replacement truck, plus a “missed-pick” fee for the initial, rejected truck; or
      2. As two separate shipments, the first shipment being no larger or heavier than originally requested, unless agreed to by the carrier, each priced at our normal Fair Pricing levels, without a “missed-pick” fee.

EXPLANATION

One of five situations is almost always the cause the “insufficient room” problem:

  • A previous shipper’s shipment was larger than expected;
  • A previous shipper loaded his shipment inefficiently, taking up more space than necessary or expected, and the driver did not request that it be efficiently loaded;
  • There was a mis-understanding between the carrier and the driver regarding the amount of space remaining on the truck after its initial pick-up(s);
  • The carrier sent in a truck that was too small, either inadvertently, or because some other problem occurred someplace else in the carrier’s system, and your shipment got impacted;
  • The shipment grew, secretly.

We have even seen this “insufficient room” problem arise when a single customer is having freight shipped from two different shippers on the same truck destined to the same destination.

TYPICAL RESOLUTION

In most cases, a second truck is required, either as a replacement, or to take the ‘cut’ freight. This creates a pick-up delay for at least some of the freight, ranging of as little as an hour, to as much as a day. Depending on the time of day, the day of the week, and the destination of the freight, there could be no delivery delay, or a delivery delay of up to a day. However, Copper Run will arrange to move the originally-planned shipment for you at the original-quoted price, whether it takes one truck or two.

When the freight is required at it’s destination ASAP, then the shipment is cut to fit, and the remainder is shipped at a later date.

In cases when delivery time is not critical, the initial truck is usually rejected, and we source a replacement truck with sufficient room for the entire shipment.