Good Fortune comes at a Price

I was doing a friend a personal favor. He is building a very large fence for his wife's horses and had ordered a bunch of boards and posts and wire. It was more than a tractor trailer load so I went and picked up the left-overs - which was still almost 20,000# - slightly more than my legal limit (but we won't talk about that part).

I was pulling my new (to me) trailer but was cautious to make sure it had been properly serviced. If I'm going to max this thing out on it's first trip (with me pulling) I wanted to be sure it was capable. I had replaced several of the 8 tires but soon discovered that two of them, although 'looking' okay, were going to be a problem. I made it about half way back on my 370 mile trip and two tires failed.

I hadn't been stopped on the shoulder of the interstate for five minutes when a 'good Samaritan' pulled up behind me to offer assistance (I assumed). Turns out he works for a nearby tire shop. I think I used up a ton of my Good Karma on that deal.

It took about an hour but he had a service truck to my rescue with one new tire (I had a spare) and I was back on the road. It came at a price of course but that is the nature of roadside breakdowns. I don't mean to imply that I was taken advantage of -- NO! I understand the service guy was working O/T and had to drive to my aid and this all happened about 6:00 in the evening. But I will say that I could have saved about $100 had I gone to the store during regular business hours and got the same thing done.

I was debating whether to make my lead to this post my "Good Fortune" story or my DEADBEAT BROKER UPDATE. As you see I chose the good news.

I have two more DEADBEAT BROKERS to gripe about today. Armstrong Transport - a North Carolina company agreed to pay us within 30-days. According to their A/P person, their checking account was hacked and they had to open a new account, and by our good fortune, the new checks came in today. Their freight was delivered on Sep 22 and the Invoice and Proof of Delivery emailed to them on the same day. As of this writing, they are almost 2 weeks late.

DEADBEAT BROKER #2 for the day is United Intermodal of The Colony, TX. Their excuse was they received only the invoice and not the Proof of Delivery. Ahhh, the 'missing paperwork' excuse. Not very original. And unless I take the expense to mail stuff for delivery confirmation, I have no way to challenge their tale.

Now, I have to admit, the person I am dealing with there seems to be helpful rather than arrogant (like Armstrong Yuck-a-deenies). When I re-sent my original email showing when and to whom it went, they agreed to next-day-air our check. And they were apologetic. We shall see.

Interestingly, the load board that I got the United Intercoastal load off of has a rating system. I promptly went online and gave them a 'negative' rating for non-payment. I don't doubt that is some incentive for them to 'do the right thing' and get our money to us. They don't have such a pretty rating even with-out my negative mark. In the past 6 months 16 other companies have rated them negative or neutral (the only other option is positive).