Rejected Load - No Room

Michael got home yesterday, was a bit of a crazy day for him, everything seemed normal, a busy day scheduled for his last day before scheduled home time. He was bringing a load from Pasco, WA to Fremont, CA and then was supposed to pick up another loaded trailer at the Stockton Marten yard and deliver to Tracy. He asked me to ask if others have had such a rejection before. This is a first for him after a little more than 2 years of driving. He got to his first customer, Sysco, and after a bit they said they had to reject the load, they did not have room for it at their facility. They had room for most of the product but not one particular item. In an industry which requires great logistic planning this seems like a big failure on their part. By the time they got the details worked out on what to do, Michael could no longer make the delivery time for the second load he was to haul so that got assigned to someone else so he got home early. That load is now rescheduled for Monday and that is when Michael is getting back on duty so he may be delivering it, again.

I've had loads rejected for other reasons, like wrong product, but for being too full??! That is a new one on me.

Laura

I have encountered something like this. I had a two-stop load going to Stuart's Draft, VA and Mt. Crawford, VA. At the first stop, part of the load was rejected and put back on the trailer. I get to the second stop and they refuse to remove the rejected product to then unload their product. They said that they didn't have room to store the product at temperature while unloading their product. I was supposed to return the rejected product to the shipper when empty. Well, this issue required returning to the shipper in Oberlin, OH to return the rejected product and then make the second delivery. That load took 3 days to complete. It didn't affect home time for me.

I had 1/2 of a load rejected once. It was disinfectant wipes, about two months before the pandemic. I bet that they regretted that. It was a bit of a hassle. I had to take photos and count the rejected portion.

I had 1 pallet of oats rejected in my short OTR stent, it didn't have an expiration date stamped on it.

I hear our P&D guys talking about similar problems, but they always say how fast a place will find room when they are told they will be charged a missed appointment fee, a redelivery fee and that it will be a week before they can come back.

Yep. It happens.

4 pallets of tomatoes rejected, was resold by the shipper , so I delivered it to the new location.

12 cases giant chicken breast portions rejected because the box corners collapsed. "Discard" and it went to a firehall.

1 pallet of frozen pizzas, rejected as wrong product. Drug back to the shipper.

1 case ribeye steaks. Rejected as overage. Claims said discard, so again, into my fridge a lot went, and pawned off on other drivers.

1 case mixed recees PB mini cups/mini kit Kats. "Discard" and right into my truck. I was popular for a minute 🤣

I know that there is a lot more rejects that I have dealt with, but those are just off the top of my head

Michael has had other rejected loads, usually damaged or not ordered. Several cases of Hot Pockets were given away to a charity once. He just never had a customer not have room for something they had ordered before. I'm sure they will get charged quite a bit for that missed appointment. Sysco is a big company and surely has to have some sophisticated logistics procedures but they messed up on this somehow.

Yep. It happens.

1 case ribeye steaks. Rejected as overage. Claims said discard, so again, into my fridge a lot went, and pawned off on other drivers.

And you never called me!

This is a first for me too. When I did reefer back in the day I had a few rejectiins cause of damaged boxes. Never anything good.

I ran 4 loads with a reefer last week. 3000 miles in 7 days. I’m not used to working that hard. No issues with any of it and didn’t even have to pay lumper fees. I’m going to run a granite load this week, I need the rest, lol.

This is actually pretty common for the inedible tanker division at Prime. Not necessarily that the load was rejected outright, but that you have to wait a day for the customer to have room in their storage tank.

Many of our customers have one or two storage tanks for products such as sunflower oil, canola oil, beef fat, or chicken fat. And they go through the product in the storage tanks in matters of days. Thus, they have to schedule loads so that they 1) don't run out of product and 2) have capacity for the product in their storage tanks when we arrive. I had to wait the next day at one delivery because they had to use what they had in their storage tanks before they could off load me. And even then, we split the sunflower oil load between their two tanks.

In addition, most of our customers take samples of the product and we have to wait for the "lab" to test it before we offload. I've never had a load rejected on that basis. However, I did haul a "courtesy load" for a customer in Iowa. The customer had rejected a load of eggs that was in of our tankers. They made arrangements with a local farmer to off load the eggs into a broadcast spreader that the farmer would use to fertilize alfalfa. I hauled the rejected egg load, which had been sitting in the tank for more than 40 days, to the farm where they pumped the eggs into a broadcast spreader.