Folks contact me about shipping parts and other items but I am not always available to transport what they need moved … I have heard good things about YRC Freight: @ https://yrc.com Jim
They are a merger of Yellow Freight and Roadway Freight - both companies have been in business a long time … Jim
I use YRC for big items. It must be on a pallet (forkliftable). Its best if you can drop it at the depot and the other end pick up at a depot. Thats the cheapest and easiest way. I use blue lane freight by fastenal for smaller items like transmissions and other oily stuff. Again it must be forkliftable and not leak. I drain out what oil I can get out then co**** it in plastic bags stuff it in a tote then strap it to half a pallet. With blue lane they only ship from their store to another fastenal any where in the country. Its a bit slow but its worth it. Both are real easy to work with. I buy stuff and have the seller package and drop it off with my name on it. I call them in advance and give them all the details except weight. They get it and finish up the shipping details call me and I CC it and wait for an email that its on the dock at my locale
Before YRC when it was Yellow they tried to destroy a 32 ch***is I shipped to a customer on the east coast and when everything shook out they basically said tough ****! Fortunately the customer was able to do the repairs himself.
I retired from there after 35 years, the new company after the merger of Y and R can screw up things twice as bad as either one ever did in the past...........................
I always get a kick out of people who blame the shipper for damage, sure things do indeed get damaged during transit but in 15 years running a warehouse what I see far more often than damaged freight is poorly shipped freight where you just scratch your head and wonder what the guy who shipped it was thinking. we don't deal with a guy shipping parts from his home, we deal with companies who ship every day and they still screw it up. just because it looks pretty at your location does not mean it will survive being loaded and unloaded several times between the origin and the delivery location. the trailer your pallet go in does not ride like a Cadillac, more like a horse drawn buckboard on an unpaved road. the same can be said for shipping packages with UPS, FED EX and USPS. damage is the exception rather than the rule.
... we use YRC at our place, but it is collect and the customer chose them. we never have issues with them.
You can defend the trucking companies but with 40+ years in the ch***is business I've seen damage that sure as hell wasn't my fault as the shipper. I've taken my freight to the terminal for many years and have witnessed the fork lift operator **** my pallet and frame right in front of me. The trucking company has never been at fault for any of the damage I've had over the years, just ask them.
Then stop shipping commercially. Leave it to the customer to pick up or make their own shipping arrangements. Problem solved. Most folks do not want to pay what it costs to have freight arrive in the condition that it leaves - that also applies to auto transport. Between January 2015 and the middle of 2021 the average retail price of #2 diesel stayed pretty consistent - that changed in the middle of 2021. January 2021 - $2.68 a gallon January 2023 - $4.57 a gallon Source @ https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG&f=M An increase of over 50%. OTR Drivers used to be respected & paid well. Now the hourly wage is less than the minimum wage in most states when all hours are accounted for in an average day. Just about everyone I knew when I started back in 2006 is no longer transporting. From my personal experience behind the wheel most freight damage occurs because of improper packing - crating - load securing. If you are going to ship LTL - make your packing - crating - load securing is bulletproof and insure the shipment at 200% minimum fair market replacement value (if insurance is available). Jim
I had a small pallet of parts shipped from San Jose to Milwaukee, depot to depot. Worked out great and was pretty reasonable, $215. Like mentioned above, a lot of savings if you can drop off at their local depot and pick up their local depot. I've also used Fastenal and their pricing is very good but again, it's dependent on their routing from one store to another. They also don't ship coast to coast. They website had the country divided into two and they don't go past the halfway point.
single pallet shipping costs have doubled in the 15 years I have been doing it, I remember when I started the cheapest rate was $77.00 a standard size 42 X 48 pallet, at least up to 1500 lbs as that was the heaviest thing we shipped. now the minimum we can get anything out the door is $150.00, and that is pretty much local only.
I worked as a casual dock worker part time for years. You would not beleave the way some traylors are loaded/packed..................
Roadway Express, On the Road and always in the Way! Just a little bit of fun! People don’t seem to understand why stuff costs so much today, but everything, literally, is delivered with diesel and look at the cost as noted above.
Back when I was shipping out pieces of equipment to be rebuilt that had to go further than the company bobtail truck or pickup should go I'd have the guys load it in a reinforced apple bin with a plywood top held on with long sheet rock screws. That made it secure and the bins were already strong enough to stack several bins of apples on top of from the get go. Amazingly one of the few things any shipper lost in the 7 years that I worked there was a wood crate full of hammers for a hammer mill that we used to shread a paper like material that we filtered g**** juice just days before g**** harvest. I'm still thinking that that crate is being used as a step in the UPS terminal that it disappeared in. The contents were just s**** iron to anyone execpt the places that used that exact hammer mill. I'd say 90% of the freight damage is by fork lift drivers in terminals though. Just about anything that the plant I worked in that came in damaged had very obvious marks from being hit by a fork on a forklift. Quite often when the driver was picking up what ever in front of it and had the forks sticking out several inches past the pallet they were picking it up.
I am such a negative person on trucking. Forgot when YRC delivered a Winters Quick Change rear that was completely out of the shipping box which was virtually destroyed all they lost were the spur gears and lug bolts which I had to replace at my expense. The only damage the rearend suffered was the bells getting wet and starting to rust and a few scars on the case which I was able to clean up.
Twenty years in trucking led me to realize all ( by and large )job ***ignments are for one man. Driver, Loader, Router-dispatcher. Also in the case of product-mdse,, shippers, + order pickers. Success is laid on one pair of shoulders at a time. As a driver I had to check as much of the work as possible. When a problem would come on the dock ( twice ) and I had to choose going upstairs. I found a lack of awareness of down stairs performance. So any time a shipment is a success, it's cause everyone paid attention. When something goes wrong, the first one to know is usually the receiver.
Good post Jim. I trucked for 37 years, 26 as an owner operator. I never had a damage claim in all that time. I was right there when my trailer was being loaded, any damage was noted on the bills or the damaged product was taken off, no exception. More than once did I make a shipper unload an entire load because they didn’t want to take off damaged goods. When I went into business for myself as an owner operator, fuel was .85 a gallon. Yes, .85 a gallon. It was over $5 when I quit. My freight rates couldn’t keep up, even with a fuel surcharge. Between fuel, insurance, tires and general maintenance, there wasn’t much left on the table at the end of my career. The company I was leased to had around 350 trucks and 500 trailers, so it wasn’t like they didn’t have any bargaining power. The loads paid more, but the expenses cost a lot more now.
Thanks for posting Hopefully YRC can stay in business and provide a consistent quality of service that is acceptable. Jim
Back when they were yellow I shipped a ton of hot rod parts via them. Never had an issue. 99% of the problems DO come from the lackys running the fork lifts
Carriers don't give a pinch about your freight unless it a major account. As special as that '32 trunk lid is to you its just freight to the employees handling it. Pack/crate your goods as best you can. I haul for a huge LTL carrier and see **** tons of damaged freight done by the dock employees.
When did you retire from Holland, @bill gruendeman ? I left almost 6 years ago after 23.5 years and 2.75 million safe driving miles with Holland. First out of Holland, MI and then I transferred to Chattanooga, TN. When it was Holland, it was a good company with an 87% operating ratio while Yellow had a much worse operating ratio at 102%. Holland's damage claims were at .03 % while Yellow's were at 13%. Holland owned their own terminals and Yellow leased theirs from others. Yellow owed their creditors so much that they were only paying interest on their loans. In order to keep Yellow from defaulting on the loans, the creditors gave Yellow even more credit and they bought Holland, a company with an excellent record of on-time, virtually damage free deliveries. When Yellow's management came in, they ***ured the Holland employees that nothing was going to change and then tried to take all Holland's high dollar customers. Yellow's management practices lost them those customers and then Holland couldn't get them back since they were a subsidiary of a bad company. Yellow sold Holland's terminals and then leased them back from the buyers then rented the same terminals that Holland had owned back to Holland. Yellow has done that to every money making company they've bought using borrowed money. Yellow doesn't care about your freight, they only care about how much revenue they can get on one trailer. If you've had a satisfactory experience with Yellow, consider yourself lucky because there are a hell of a lot of unhappy Yellow customers.
I appreciate your post. I understand the history. What I shared now has just been posted by a customer. Jim
Yessir, I understand the other guy's comments. I don't understand why it was okay with him that someone had damaged his freight, even though the body needed work anyway.
Because that is usually what happens in the real world with multiple freight transfers between pick up & drop off that is required with indirect shipping. Folks who expect items to arrive in the condition they leave should utilize direct shipping. The same applies to vehicle transport. Jim
I started in 91 and retired October 2020, from what I understand things have gone down hill a lot more.
Last thing I shipped with YRC , rubber nose off a bandit car , they came back saying it was 150lbs more than I weighed it. Take pictures of scale on anything you ship, even UPS , they love to play that game too.
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