Trucking: Trucking Fees, midwest truck, northwest truck

Question
Tony -

I work for a company in Southern California and we manufacture furniture.  Each week, we send a full truck to the Pacific Northwest AND to the Midwest.  Currently our Midwest truck costs us $1.30/mile and our Pacific Northwest truck is closer to $2.00/mile.  Are these rates good?

We also use LTL on occasion to send our finished goods, but use LTL frequently to receive our raw materials (fabrics, leather, frames, etc).  It seems whenever we get our invoices for the incoming shipments the class codes and rates are all over the place.  We could receive the same exact order 2 weeks apart and be charged significantly different for the freight.  Who's responsible for having the proper class on the bill?  Our trucking company is always blaming our vendor for not entering it right, but it seems to me the trucking company should correct this.  Should we be able to negotiate a flat rate per lb?  It would sure simplify things.  If so, what is a good rate?  I

I've done a little homework on freight audits and understand we can look back 6 months to get these fixed, but it seems like a mountain of work.

We spend about $350k per year on the outbound full trucks, and about $200k on the LTL incoming.

Any advice you could give me regarding our account would be much appreciated.

Thanks for volunteering your time to AllExperts (I do too, in a computer category).

Bill

Answer
Bill,
Your TL rates do seem a little on the high side. I have ask several of my sources to give me ball park milage rates from Scal to Pac NW & other areas and will get back to you as soon they get back to me.

Your trucking comapny is correct in that it is your vendors responsibility to properly describe the commodities on the bill of lading. If you or your vendor are unsure of the proper class and description to use you should consider having a professional freight management & audit service conduct at least a post audit of your paid freight bills.

You may be able to negotiate a per pallet rate with some carrier or maybe even a class exception or FAK that groups all of your products under one class. The carriers will use a weight class average to determine what class to use.

Post audits can be a mountain of work but that is the beauty of the service. All you have to do is send those freight bill to the freight audit service and you only pay a fee if they find errors and recover overcharges for you. They do all the work and take the risk. The reason these companies are in business is because they do find a substantial amount of errors. Your reference to the 6 month only applies to the LTL carrier, TL carriers are not subject to the 6 month statue of limitation. Your only limit to a TL audit is if you signed a contract that has an overcharge refund clause. If it doesn't you can audit and claim as far back as your State contract laws allow.(normally 3 to 5 years)

My advise is that it would be worth you time to audit your paid freight bills. You can learn alot from that audit. If the audit results in a large recovery for you you may consider contacting with the audit firm and have you bills pre-audit (before payment) and let the firm negotiate the rates for you.Most audit firms control large amounts of freight dollars and therefore have the clout to negotiate great deals for their clients. Normally the savings you gain from the audit and the rates pays for the fee and then some.

My company does provide this service and if you have continued interest feel free to contact me directly or visit our web site @ www.sappersteinlogistics.com.

My email is tony@sappersteinlogistics.com

send me an email and I will get back to you on the the TL rates from your area.

It has been a pleasure answering your questions and I wish you the very best. Even if you are not interested in our service feel fee to contact me directly for advise.

Tony Gonzalez
Sapperstein Logistics.