Ugh. So There's these two freight lines, A&B Freight and ABF Freight. They're right next to each other on my list of freight line phone numbers, and I was supposed to ship a measly 1 pallet, 380 lbs. from Oak Creek, WI to Rochelle, IL.
No biggie right?
Well apparently I called ABF instead of A&B, didn't realize it even when the guy was here to pick it up, and sent this skid with the wrong trucking company. Ok, well that's alright, they'll still deliver it right?
Apparently neither us, nor the customer who is receiving this shipment have any professional relationship with ABF Freight. Makes sense to me though after talking with their representitives for 35 minutes. I get a call yesterday from a guy named 'Ray' he tells me that they wont ship this until it's paid for. Asks me to change it from collect to prepaid, so that we will be paying the freight charges. I do what he asks, he says he'll get an invoice written up for us, and it will be somewhere between $180-$200.
Cool. Well not really since I called A&B and they quoted me $77.69 for the shipment....
I get a call today from Karen, telling me she needs a credit card # to pay for this so they will release it and ship it. I give her the number and she tells me she's going to be running it for $406.
Hold your horses there Karen. NFH (Not Fucking Happening) I explained to her that 'Ray' had given me a guestimate between 180-200 and she's all "well I don't know anything about that, and we can't just verbally tell people what we think it will be." (I pictured here to be givin' me sass at this point too, and snapping her fingers in a Z shaped pattern).
So I called 'Ray', well apparently he's just a part-time wanna-be, but hey he gave me a price and I'll be damned if we don't get at least that price. I get a salesmen on the phone from this freight company....
You know in the old days people used to rob freight lines, I guess they learned from those robbers, because damn over $400 to ship less than 400# from oak creek to rochell....
Anyway I get this guy Phil, explain the situation and tell him there's no way we're paying $406 for this, when I've got a quote sitting here for $77.69, meanwhile my boss and the owner of the company is just about ready to junk the whole shipment and tell ABF to do some very unprofessional things with themselves. I bitch at Phil for a little while about this, and he tells me he can give me a 55% discount, which brings it down to around $185, which at least is what 'Ray' told me.
So now I've wasted over an hour and a half on this entire ordeal, and we're still losing over $100 on freight. Oh did I mention the entire order is only $337.08, which means we're making $60 at most off of this. So now we're losing money, and wasting time, the double whammy.
Lesson to be learned: Double check paper work before you let a sweaty truck driver sign it and take your shipment.
Oh and cross ABF off of my freight list. Done, Greg did that while I was on the phone with Phil. He also mentioned to not tell them that we will never be doing business with them, because then they wouldn't give us that discount. Such a smart business man....
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