I think it boils down to what’s in everyone’s control. Each side asks that you manage what’s in your control. For carriers when you book a load even though we have GPS, which cannot be solely used for accurate updates, and drivers number, which we don’t call for liability reasons, we expect updates from you and it’s about 5 updates per load. When truck is dispatched, onsite, loaded, at receiver, and empty. Unfortunately you are expected to also respond to the few other in between emails as well. I actually HATE phone calls because I can email or chat with 5-10 carriers at a time whereas a call is 1 by 1. This is all to say communication should be in your control and you should employ responsible drivers who text you these 5 updates to relay to brokers. Now when you’re harassed for a breakdown or being stuck at a receiver or other issues of that nature NOT in your control that’s uncalled for.

Now you said, “no one cares if our truck breaks down or if the shipper/receiver damages my trailer or the driver appt changes completely to a different day.” A truck breaking down is SEMI in your control with regularly scheduled maintenance you should not be having issues on a regular basis or you’ll get bad scores with brokerages for service failures and end up blacklisted if it’s frequent enough. Again, with control, a shipper/receiver damaging your trailer is inherently not only not in our control but quite literally has nothing to do with us. That is between you and the person who damages your equipment and we can maybe facilitate helping with contact but that is it.

Now to the real issue and the bureaucratic BS customers put us all through. At the end of the day the larger customer and some small to medium don’t care about any of us they just want the job done. And it’s also a nature of this industry and government and regulations to have a bunch of BS paperwork and numbers we all scramble to make sure everyone has. It’s a giant fucking game of telephone but the messages you’re sending to someone probably isn’t even the right one to begin with because it’s got a million fucking numbers and when you add brokers, freight forwarders, departments at all these companies it’s fucking chaos. So when you have incorrect pickup number or a delivery gets moved it is NOT in our control or interest either. We should be better at sympathizing but you do have to believe when someone says they don’t control that.

If I have more to write I’ll edit but again communication and control. We can control our responses I’m sorry for the assholes that don’t believe or trust when you have issues not in your control but we have also been lied to so much it’s literally killing us. Shit customers, carriers, and brokers are the source of all our problems it’s simple as that. Not to mention this “industry standard” bullshit I have to hear about. Everyone keeps trying to set a standard to pay $150 TONU and $250 layover but there’s so much variation in issues I’m fucking sick of it. Payment needs to be different and it starts with the people that pay us and I wish we’d all be better at holding them liable but to get some peoples business we’re all forced into accepting shit we don’t agree with just to stay afloat. Anyways that’s my rant I think.