Everyone's Thoughts If You Have Had A Delivery From Roadrunner Trucking

So it sound like I should start my own freight company and delivery ourselves!
This is the problem, even the companies that charge higher rates (Ups, FedEx, R&L, Etc) have problems too.
If I could eliminate any problems, I would not mind paying a bit higher rates.
The good news is that most of the machines we ship seem to be delivered without any problem other than maybe a bit of a delay. But sometimes its not that easy.
 
It would take some time, but you perhaps could map out the normal shipping areas and create zones where there seems to be more problems using certain carriers and decide based on that who to use where. That is, if there is any consistency to it, and you had time to do the analysis.
 
i have rec'd freight from all of the big freighters before at one time or another.
I prefer Fed-EX freight when i have a choice, they aren't perfect -but i know exactly where my shipment is- they are more expensive.
one thing i learned about roadrunner is they are cheap for a reason,
no bells- no whistles- not 1 single on time delivery that i can recall, many damage claims on equipment that seem to get drawn out way too long before resolution.
I became so frustrated that i no longer take delivery from their trucks, i go straight to the depot for the best service and even then i'm not thrilled mostly,
it saves an average of 2 days delivery.

here's the kicker. the depot is less than 3 miles from the shop:mad:
 
We get shipments at work using just about every carrier. All of them come in occasionally banged up or with the pallets trashed. My 1340 came in ok. The boxes on top were a little torn up, and bottom pallet was so trashed the driver could barely get a pallet jack under it, but otherwise everything was in good shape. You probably won't gain much going to another carrier. My biggest gripe with freight I've had shipped to my house is dealing with a third-party local delivery after it hits town. Shipment to their dock is generally pretty quick, but then (as others have said) it sits locally for up to a week waiting for the local carrier to schedule delivery. Nothing that can be done about that on your end. I've found that if you call the main carrier, they are pretty good about lighting a fire under the subcontractor to get the shipment to your door. My two cents.
 
Coug67 said:
....My biggest gripe with freight I've had shipped to my house is dealing with a third-party local delivery after it hits town.
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Which is why I always pick up heavy shipments at the local freight terminal. Easier to fit into my schedule as well (instead of the "be home from 12:00 to 4:00" type of delivery).

Even with mainstream trucking firms, I think most of the damage occurs in the "last mile", when the trucks are almost empty, and driving here and there in stop and go traffic and on windy roads.
 
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( So it sound like I should start my own freight company and delivery ourselves!)

WELL you had be ready for more business !!!!

# 1 = customers will NOT have to guess when their machine will arrive or the condition it will be in.

2 = Because everyone is tired of the goons on the docks with the long forked lifts, and the hassle
of scheduling & rescheduling delivery's.

Tom
 
Mine was delivered in good shape. I did pick it up at the dock, they loaded it into my truck just fine.
Only issue I had is that they wanted me to pick it up wothin 24 hours of them receiving it, I asked them to wait a few more days as I had a rigging company set up to get it in place. They were willing to do that.
 
Size matters, if you are a Grizzly you can negotiate national contracts with the big carriers at reasonable rates. Most of Grizzly's machines ship anywhere in the US for a set flat fee that's about half what smaller machine companies charge. They use UPS and FedEx but stuff still arrives mangled, UPS is especially bad at delivering small heavy items. The least expensive method is to allow the trucking companies to do what they do best, hand off freight from carrier to carrier, it may sit on a doc or trailer at some hub for days at a time while they fill a trailer, they are not particularly good at communicating, some now do have tracking the customer can follow. I'd offer this as option A, the least expensive but set expectations with the customer that selecting that option may mean a 2-3 week delivery.

If the customer wants the machine quicker and is willing to pay for it then you could offer a premium shipping option via a larger carrier. I priced shipping a 900 pound machine coast to coast via UPS Freight's online tool, the crack smokers wanted $2,000 to ship it. The least expensive shipping option above was about $560. My guess is many customers will opt for the 2-3 week delivery once they know how much expedited shipping will cost them and so this really isn't about picking a carrier but setting expectations with the customer and letting them decide.
 
If you talk to 10 different agents at Freightquote, you get several different prices, once you find an agent that will look for a way to get you lowest price, you have an agent to use, forget their online crap, find an agent you can talk to who will work for you and use them. Like Coolidge pointed out you can get quotes all over the ball park. The stuff I have had sent using FQ has all been shipped Yellow/Roadway.

I am convinced the key to getting stuff there in one piece is to make sure it is on a healthy skid and crated with plywood, not the thin slat boards the Asians are so fond of using on their machines. It takes some effort to jam a fork thru plywood but they go thru slats like a hot knife thru butter. All accessory boxes should be wood and strapped to skid,not put on top of machine.

michael
 
Matt, my 1340GT was received without a single blemish to the crate. RoadRunner and the local freight company did an outstanding job.

The 935TV had tipped in the truck upon delivery, but that was the local freight company and it had nothing to do with Road Runner freight. I was quite pleased with RR's service, they were a bit slow on updating their website with the actual tracking but not by much and this is really not a big issue as the local freight company had called me to schedule my delivery before it even showed as being at the freight hub on RR's site.

Mike.
 
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