Copper Run has multiple layered practices and procedures, designed to protect our customers’ interests, their money, and their freight. We offer:
CARGO INSURANCE – Your Shipments Are Protected
CARRIER’S CARGO INSURANCE
Copper Run uses only fully insured carriers, and only when we they have provided us an insurer-issued Certificate of Insurance proving current cargo insurance.
We will provide these certificates to our customers when and as often as they are requested.
To ensure that we, and our customers, can continue to rely on a Certificate of Insurance we have been given, Copper Run requires that we be granted “certificate holder” status on our carriers’ insurance policies. This status obligates the insurer to provide us written notice in the event of changes or cancellations to previously-issued cargo insurance policies and certificates.
COPPER RUN’S CONTINGENT INSURANCE
As an additional layer of protection for our customers’ shipments, Copper Run carries its own $500,000 contingent cargo insurance. Contingent insurance is designed to INSURANCE ‘backstop’ the carriers’ primary cargo insurance in the event it does not perform. And just as with the primary cargo insurance, if there is a pay-out from the contingent cargo insurer, it is goes immediately from the insurance company to the claimant / owner of the freight.
TRUST ACCOUNTS – Your Funds Are Protected
We process your payments to us, and our payments to the carriers that we source to move your freight, through a separate Trust Accounts. The funds in these Trust Account are at all times separate from company funds, and are governed by legal constraints and protections.
Your money never touches our money. The money you give us to pay the carriers we source for you passes through the Trust Accounts and goes straight to the carriers.
By law, we have to pay the carriers before we can transfer any residual funds into our company operating account to be used for our salaries and expenses.
SURETY BOND – Your Carriers Are Protected
The United States government has improved and strengthened the Surety Bond process, which is a qualifying legal requirement for brokers who arrange U.S. shipments. The stated purpose of the Surety Bond program is to provide a direct financial remedy for carriers who are unable to receive payment from a freight broker for services provided.
As a result, a carrier who can obtain relief from a bonding company has no need to pursue its right in law to obtain payment from shippers and/or receivers for unpaid freight bills.
Quite apart from the intent of the Surety Bond, and applicable to both U.S. and Canadian shipments, the fact that Copper Run has been judged by our insurer to be bondable is at least as strong an indicator of carrier protection, and by extension customer protection, as the Surety Bond itself. We pay our carriers.