Freight Claims

[ZooCity]

I saw that Gerry recently went through this.  What's everyone's experience, can you ever get repaid for damage done during a truckload or LTL shipment?

Our Sportsman arrived today, (a '13 we purchased used) and the pallet with the print heads has severe damage.  The front heads of a few print heads are shattered.   It looks like someone forked it with short forks even though "6' forks minimum" is spray painted in blaze orange all over the sides. 

Estes allows accepting the delivery and notating a damaged pallet for claims which is what we're doing now.  Dismantling the damaged crate, no way was I going to try and move it again, and documenting.

[bimmridder]

I'm sure you did, but get pictures. Have the driver sin off on the damage

[Prosperi-Tees]

Did you purchase insurance? My claim was with them. The trucking companies are not liable for anything. The law is they are directly responsible for, if I remember correctly 10 cents a pound. So please tell me you purchased insurance.

[tancehughes]

I was just thinking about this today. We are about to purchase another press and I'm making sure that we get insurance and everything before the guy we're buying it from ships it out. Can't risk losing the money.

[jsheridan]

bill of lading..

at the first sign of damage refuse the shipment, get in touch with who sent it and then the trucking company.

It's a binding contract that as soon as you sign it, you release them of damages.

[bulldog]

You can go back on the trucking company. You'll have to file a cargo claim with them. Most likely it's their fault anyway. They unloaded it somewhere to consolidate the shipments and damaged it would be my guess. Or it wasn't secured properly in the trailer and the guy went off roading.

[mimosatexas]

This is my nightmare and why I always transport stuff myself.  I know eventually I will have to have something crated and shipped, but after seeing the condition the pallets regularly arrived in at my old job it's terrifying.  We used probably a dozen different carriers over the 5 years I worked there, shipping 2 pallets of equipment about 50 times a year, and I would say a good 25% of the time it had some kind of damage and a handful of times had been completely broken apart and shittily put back together, with something important broken or missing almost every time that happened.  Filing claims is worthless and they max out at like $5k in liability typically and will fight you for years on paying even that.  We had our own rider on our insurance policy just for traveling equipment as a result.

Everything was packed in pelican cases, then stacked, wrapped and reinforced with an exterior frame.  I don't even know how you crush a pelican case inside a pallet like that, but it happened...

[mk162]

i used craters and freighters...holy crap it was expensive, but honestly, they had their crap together and did a great job.  i have never seen crating like this.

they did all the work from picking it up, crating, shipping, and delivery to the back door.

[Prosperi-Tees]

The $5k in liability you referenced is for new freight, other than new freight it is ten cents per pound

[ZooCity]

I thought I was doing everything right on this...may be totally screwed in the end.

I hired GSG to do the inspection of the equipment, teardown and palletizing.  It looks like they did that correctly from what we could see.  However, the bill for this was north of $2600 because the carrier, Estes, kept refusing the shipment and not being very specific with what they wanted added to the pallets.  It added over a day of tech time at over $100/hr.  I guess they wanted 3/4" sheeting all around even though it was a palletized shipment, not crated.   The GSG tech really made it clear where to put the forks and spray painted, in blaze orange, "minimum 6 foot forks".  His packing looked fine to me.

One of my guys here is like a freight forensics expert or something and deduced what happened pretty well.  Looks like it was forked with short forks and it just ripped all the studs out that the print heads were clamped to.  Probably happened in the air, though we're not sure on that.

I added insurance.  I called my rep at freightquote today and he says he's not sure he added the insurance when I said to do so....

He also booked it as used equipment which is true, but all of the equip is 2013. 

Estes policy is that you can accept a whole shipment and fail claim on one pallet.  I had them email me this to have in writing.  I packed as much information on the damage, in 8pt type, into the description box on the BR as a I could and signed it. 

We had to uncrate this on the truck, no way to move it without further damage.  We have about 5000 photos of it. 

We need to purchase a minimum 6, possibly 8 complete print head assys.  Getting cost on that from M&R presently. 

Gerry, did the insurance take care of you 100%?  Not sure why I'm asking though since it appears my rep never put the insurance on.

[mimosatexas]

Did they charge you or quote you for the insurance?  Is there any record anywhere of you requesting it?

[Prosperi-Tees]

Hopefully there is record of some sort like an email or something of your request for insurance although I am not sure if that would really help or not. The insurance company did make me whole after a deductible and freight costs, so sort of. I ended up keeping the press and selling which ended up with us making a small profit but it wasn't worth all the headache. you will have to negotiate that as well because if they pay out, the damaged equipment is theirs. So you have to negotiate whether you want to keep it or not.

[KevWilso]

If you have the driver sign the BOL when it shows up stating that it is damaged it can help your case.  They will probably end up sending a claims adjuster out who will look it over and try to figure out what is damaged/ owed.  Once the claim is received from them the freight company will drag their feet on payment, and low ball you on the amount.  Sorry to hear about this, that is a tough spot to be in; especially without that insurance.

[ZooCity]

Did they charge you or quote you for the insurance?  Is there any record anywhere of you requesting it?

Phone call.

Complete print head assys for this press are $4618/per +crate/ship.  We could be out 30 grand to replace 6 heads, about 7k shy of what we paid for the whole press.

I need to get my rep to stick to his word on the insurance somehow.  If he didn't put it on there then I have no idea if anything could be done.  We have yet to receive invoicing for the shipment.

That's best case.  Worst case is we're given $500 back while 30 grand was taken from our pocket. 

Driver was very helpful and did sign the BOL stating all the damage. 

Had to reschedule our M&R tech who was coming Monday morning too....not the best day I've had in a while.

[GraphicDisorder]

That really sucks and I really hope you come up with something that helps you out and they don't stick you.

Freight is a rough deal. We just got our 6 head in yesterday with the pallet slightly destroyed on the corner and I had a sinking feeling right away.  But no damage thankfully. 

Best wishes.