How I Managed To Get An Extra 535 Miles On A Load

This week I got dispatched on a 2,500 mile load, and I managed to turn it into an over 3,000 mile run. It was a crazy flat-bed load from Delhi, Louisiana that had nine stops on it winding up through Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Here's what happened at my first stop: The product for this first stop was loaded by itself in a group up near the center of my trailer. When I get to the receiver and check in they tell me which door to back into. After I remind them that I'm driving a flat-bed and they are going to have to off-load me from the side with a fork lift, the receiving clerk goes ballistic and says he told them explicitly that their product had to be loaded on the rear of the truck because they cannot get their fork lifts out of the building. Their facility is elevated above the parking lot and there is no ramp for their fork lifts to go down. After getting this crazy dude calmed down a bit, I suggested that if they weren't hard pressed to have the material immediately I could go ahead and run through my route which finals in Grand Rapids, Michigan, then have that final customer move their product to the back of my trailer, and I would stop back by Columbia, Missouri on my way back to Delhi. We had to get a supervisor involved, but in the end they determined that it would work for them.

I called my dispatcher to confirm that this would all work because I had not heard anything about a back-haul load yet, and I didn't want to mess that up. He said that he didn't know of a back-haul load yet, and due to this dedicated account I'm on I usually will know if I'm getting a back-haul load before I set out, or else they just dead head us back so that we can grab another load for our dedicated customer. It was our customer's fault that this wan't loaded the way their customer had requested and therefore they approved my plan for "gittin 'er done."

There you have it - I gave the customer some help in getting things worked out - my dedicated customer that I drive for appreciated the extra effort - and I made an extra 250 dollars on top of all that! "Customer Service," it will go along way toward your success!

Thanks! A win, win, win. For shipper , for receiver, and for you.

Awesome story OS! I don't know if I would have thought of something like that, so thanks for sharing and broadening my thinking!

Definitely a good story. "P&D Flatbed Driver"...an interesting concept.

Patience and understanding go a long. Some of the greatest advice was "Calm Wins". Always. s You should change your to title to "Old Wise One". Your posts are so valuable.

Thanks.