Maggs

I attended a very good seminar yesterday focusing on Understanding Limits of Liability. It was very imformative especially for a 3PL company. The speaker was a very reputable transportation lawyer who deals in only these types of issues. It's simple really at the end of the day...cross all your "T" ' s. In this case the carrier from the information I received yesterday is this: the carrier was the "principle" holder - as it was in their custody and control. The 3PL (Truck Finder) made arrangements as an "agent" to the "shipper", therefore, the "carrier" is ultimately responsible to cover all costs whether the load was recovered or not.

Truck Finder

That's the way I understand it. We as a broker never took control of the goods and entered only into an arrangement with a carrier to p/u the goods and deliver them under their insurance and authorities. Having said this, our only recource is legal action and the amount owing would not be worth it. I will have to move a few loads to make the loss up. We have been in the broker business for 18 years now and our motto is: Treat the carriers fair first, customers second, and make a dollar in between and it all works out!!

Has been working for us. I feel we have been more than fair to the carrier here, the customer is happy and I will keep moving their freight to make that dollar!

chica123

I would like to pipe in and offer an alternative point of view. I might be way off here, but I'm sure you people will let me know if I am! The carrier, unless grossly negligent, could not have prevented the stealing of the goods. The customer ultimately accepted both loads although insisting they could not use the additional cargo? The shipper negotiated a great deal at 10% off the cost? So the shipper ultimately made an extra sale, because I am assuming that their mark up would be more than 10% on the cost of the product and labour. The receiver in the end got 2 loads for the price of 1 because now they are demanding someone else pay for the freight that went missing for 2-3 weeks. But why would they accept it if they were never going to use it? It seeems like at some point they think they will use it down the road and just got themselves a great deal by having someone else pay for the material. If they could not have used that second load, whoever ended up paying for it should in right, own that load and be able to sell the product/ scrap it to mitigate their losses. Please, go easy on me people for throwing this out there....

Maggs

CHICA123...I couldnt agree with you more!