Tag: freight forwarder

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Business Lifestyle

What Is Contingent Cargo Insurance?

People ship cargo out to different regions on trucks, ships, trains, planes and other vehicles. This lets them do business with different people and companies even if they are far away. However, shipments don’t always reach their destination. This is where contingent cargo insurance can prove itself a true asset to a broker.

Contingent cargo insurance is a type of insurance that freight brokerages carry. It is a secondary insurance that covers some or all of the cost of handling, storing, getting rid of or replacing cargo that’s refused, damaged or lost. It pays only if primary insurance doesn’t pay out. It is called contingent cargo insurance because it covers unexpected expenses that aren’t covered in a primary insurance policy.

Significance

There is no law that requires a broker to cover contingent cargo insurance. However, carriers usually won’t work with brokers who don’t have this insurance. Brokers usually forward claims to their carriers if something happens to a shipment, but if the carrier’s policy won’t pay out, someone still has to pay expenses. If you don’t have contingent cargo insurance as a broker, your shippers — the people who hired you to find someone to ship their goods — can blame you for the loss even if you can’t be held liable. Your relationship with your shippers consequently can suffer. Carriers understand this and prefer not to work with brokers who are willing to take such risks.

Coverage

Coverage under a contingent cargo insurance policy will vary based on where you get the policy. However, some standard protections are for theft, vandalism and accidents.

Benefits

Having contingent cargo insurance lets you compete with other brokers and establish good relationships with carriers without paying for losses out of your own pocket. It also aids the consumer; if anything happens to a shipment, you still can get goods to others without too much disruption.
When It’s Needed

There are two instances when having contingent cargo insurance is imperative. The first is if you sign an agreement with a carrier that transfers liability to you. The second is if the carrier you select doesn’t have proper carrier’s insurance. Ideally, this shouldn’t happen, but carriers sometimes neglect premiums unintentionally or simply don’t have a policy that covers as much as you’d like.

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Trucker News

Diesel Drops

Since falling the week of Nov. 29, the price had increased 74.5 cents over 15 straight weeks of gains. The national average price is 96.1 cents higher than the same week last year. For the first time since late November, the national average retail price of diesel dipped 0.1-cent to $3.907 a gallon during the week ended March 21, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.Since falling the week of Nov. 29, the price had increased 74.5 cents over 15 straight weeks of gains. The national average price is 96.1 cents higher than the same week last year.

Diesel
Although the national price slipped a bit, prices in some regions continued to escalate. Prices increased 3.7 cents in the Rocky Mountain region, 1.3 cents on the West Coast (exclusive of California) and 2.9 cents in California, the most expensive area at $4.199. The New England price also gained 0.6-cent.Oil slipped under $100 a barrel last week for the first time since March 1, following demand downturns after Japan’s big earthquake on March 11.Crude rose $1.26 Monday to finish the New York Mercantile Exchange trading day at $102.33 a barrel — the highest closing price since March 10 — following U.S. and allied military strikes against Libya, an OPEC oil producer, over the weekend, Bloomberg reported.Each week, DOE surveys about 350 diesel filling stations to compile a national snapshot average price.For state-by-state diesel prices, updated daily, click here.

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Lifestyle

Touching Reality of a Trucker Driver

Truck drivers are a unique group of people, a group of men and women from all races and religions. The one thing that they have in common is that they spend their days and nights driving the highways of the world. There are drivers that only drive close to their home town, which allows them to be home with their families most nights. Truck drivers today have cell phones, computers, and nice sleeping quarters in their trucks. This makes their days a little more comfortable. The truth is they still spend the majority of their time alone.Unfortunately this technology does not make it possible for them to hug their spouse and kids before they lay down to sleep each night.

REALITY LIFE
Woman who is married to a truck driver doesn’t have the luxury of having her husband physically available to help with maintaining the household, and more important, he often isn’t available when needed in the most critical times.Loneliness is just one aspect of a truck driver’s life; they also deal with a heavy stress load. They pull large heavy trailers through bumper to bumper traffic, sitting for hours in traffic jams, as well as driving in terrible weather conditions in order to make a delivery deadline. They deal with irate customers because a load is an hour late due to a wreck that had the highway shut down. So the next time you are sitting at a traffic light grumbling about how slow the truck in front of you is moving, please remember that the driver of that truck makes it possible for you to have access to most of the things that you have around you. Remember that driver might have been away from his family for weeks or months, so instead of grumbling or making mean gestures, smile and wave. You might just make their day, and let them know that the unconventional and lonely life that they lead is appreciated.

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Lifestyle Newbies Trucker News

Changing Times for Trucking Transportation

Transportation via trucks in the United States is the primary source of goods and materials transportation means over land. This can be marked as the most interesting and revolutionary period for the trucking sector seen so far. Competition is tougher than ever, quality and services are better than ever. The benefits are equally reaped by big and small fishes in the business owing to the technology advancements and industry awareness. Truck driver employment requires a relatively higher qualification now. Regulations by the highway and other national authorities are getting harder to meet.

The business had very few competitors in the past. Now the things are changing and the trucking industry is facing increased challenges everyday. The train cargo services are expanding their network and reach. Trucking is also the obvious choice for medium to small businesses but some large chains and companies are shifting their trend toward the train cargo services due to decreased time of transportation. Innovative designs of carriages allow the shipping company to carry more loads in a single journey. However the trains have a drawback that they can never overcome, that is they need rail roads to carry goods around. So, quite simply trucks have access to some areas where trains cannot go, yet. To beat the competition the truckers have also implemented their market strategies and provide an easy and convenient option to haul available loads.

In the present tough and turbulent economic times when clients demand more loads to be transferred in less time and with cheaper price, trucking sector is experiencing some down trends. Individuals and their families associated with the business are also affected. Truck driving jobs get reduced when there is comparatively low freight and cargo to be carried.
Many reasons are behind the scene to the present day situation of the trucking section in United States. Cost of fuel in local and international market is attributed as the main cause of the problem. The uncertainty in the fuel pricing makes the business somewhat more risky than usual overall.

Truck driving jobs have become more and more demanding. Authorities and individual carrier companies of goods transportation are imposing tougher regulations and rules for their drivers. In this situation the freight forwarding companies and the freight broker wants to survive and thus their demands for load transporters are getting higher and higher every day. Even if the owner operator uses the truck load boards, the one who bids lowest gets the deal

The most important change in the truck load carrying sector is that now the loads are available online. All truckers are free to bid on their desired load. The competition in the Industry is causing lower transportation rates and also choice to truckers whenever and whatever load they want to transport.

With access to internet in their vehicles the truckers are now available to plan their route to maximize the loads. They have also increased their capacity of load per truck; this affects cost of transportation and gives truckers an edge. Some larger trucking companies have online load tracking facility for their clients. This increases confidence and reliability of the trucking company and of the sector overall.

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Trucker News

CSA 2010: Resentment by the Trucking Associations

The United States three main Trucking Association: the Expedited Alliance of North America (TEANA), the National Association of Small Trucking Companies (NASTC) and the Air and Expedited Motor Carrier Association (AEMCA), who own fleets more than 3,000 in number has filed a lawsuit in the court to review the rules and regulations as imposed and stated in the FMCSA’s CSA2010 legislation. The suit has been filed in the United States Court of Appeals. The association wants that the FMCSA release of these safety regulations should be permanently rejected by the court as they do not approve of the safety methods laid down by the FMCSA’s CSA 2010 release.
The court has previously rejected the Trucking Association’s plea to release a temporary hold order so that they could avoid the release of the CSA2010 safety regulations before time. This injunction was filed by the association earlier this month. Due to the fast movement of actions the Federal Court has agreed to hear both parties on the issue to release an order against FMCSA’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis initiatives. In their appeal the trucking associations emphasized that the FMCSA fails to understand the impact that this legislation will have on the small trucking companies and owner operator jobs.
The monitoring and the records will be open to public on the CSA website. This will enable all the reports for any carrier or truck driver available for the public to ponder on it. All warnings, accidents, safety implications and others will be updated online for every incident. This measure is beneficial for shipping company as they can use the data to judge on who should be employed to carry their available loads. The FMCSA and other government authorities would work in close compliance to report the statistics on Behavioral Analysis and the Safety Improvement Categories.
The trucking companies who are renting over their trucks to other carries and freight brokers were worrying on the issue of the secondary liability for past so many years The FMCSA regulates the actions of the logistics and trucking company’s so as to check their vicarious liability and the rules are set so that the freight brokers and the shippers do correct hiring of the truck driver or the freight carrier company. Now the selection of the service provider will have to be very accurate. This is one of the major causes of resentment among the Trucking association as they will be obligated to select the freight brokers, intermodal drivers, logistics and trucking companies with a high score on CSA safety rules. They are bound to implement this measure as they would not want any extra liability on them because of the poor scores of the service providers. To avoid the liability as a third party logistics the rules set by the FMCSA has to be taken into consideration. You can obviously find a pool of competent truck drivers and related companies on the load boards meant for finding the perfect load and driver match.
For the meantime the court has overruled the trucking association plea as being ‘forecasted’ and ‘predicted’ damages by the CSA 2010 legislation by FMCSA.

Categories
Newbies

Choosing The Right Load Board

There are many load boards to choose from so when making the hard decision if a load board is good or not, an owner operator can evaluate how long the load board keeps expired loads in its system to start with. Knowing this information will really allow you to gauge whether or not the board is one that they should frequent or not. Most load boards will have its inventory of loads daily meaning no load stays on the board for more than 24 hours. When the load board has a good relationship with its customers, a customer will find that the shippers and brokers will actively manage the loads they have posted not only daily but throughout the day. This works both ways, because the load board owners should also work actively to manage the board to keep all of the data as fresh as possible. The more recent the information the better because if it is recent that means that it is good for the taking…and that a deal can be made!


Owner Operators search for Freight loads placed on the load board, shippers or brokers typically post loads that are meant for full size trailers. However, there should be no surprise that on load boards a customer will find partial or Less Than Truck Load (LTL) loads posted by shippers or freight brokers. a driver can definitely expect to see posted load sizes to vary from very small up to full loads with many different trailer types such as flatbed, dry van, reefer, box truck, straight truck and bobtails. This allows for each trucking company to pick and choose the loads that fit their needs or capabilities best and it is all done quickly and accurately because it is done through the internet.

load boards or good for both owner operators finding jobs and shippers or brokers finding drivers and will help get more truck loads. Not only will it help get more truck loads, it will help to streamline the process of getting more truck loads. In the past trucking companies and those companies that had the loads that needed hauling were paying fees that were making it difficult to stay afloat. Today, with an ever changing economy, it is nice that everyone is able to access the information in an affordable way.

Today those who take the loads and those who need the loads taken from point A to point B can easily meet up and decide for themselves if theirs is a business deal that they would like to enter into. Who would have ever guessed that getting loads from one area to the next would really would be this easy? Load boards really have revolutionized the trucking business and there is no doubt that the load board technology will continue to grow and expand with technology, making it easier than ever as time goes along.