If you’ve ever worked with an agent from one of those mega-freight brokerages, at one time or another, you’ve been asked to pay a TONU for cancelling a shipment at the last minute. In the world of transportation, loads are cancelled all the time for various reasons beyond your control (a.k.a. s*** happens).

Most of the time the freight broker does not charge the shipper a TONU for cancelling a shipment with plenty of notice, because with appropriate notice it’s still too soon for the broker or the trucker to have committed time and resources to pick up your load, so in these cases a TONU isn’t called for.

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During times when a freight broker does ask that you pay a TONU, shippers often wonder why now and not before? What makes some cancelled shipments call for a TONU while others don’t? To understand this clearly you first need to know exactly what a TONU is.

What is a TONU?

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A ‘Truck Order Not Used’ (TONU) is basically a cancellation fee paid directly to a truck driver when their load has been cancelled at the last minute. There are a variety of reasons why this can happen. However, a TONU is called for when the driver has already committed the necessary time and resources to pick up your load, such as they’ve already driven a significant amount of miles or have already shown up at the shipping location before finding out their load has been cancelled. In situations like these, the driver should obviously be paid for their time.

A TONU is typically negotiated by your freight broker directly with the cancelled trucker or their dispatcher, and the fee can range, on average anywhere between $100 and $250 depending on the circumstances. When it’s called for, a bottom-line obsessed mega-freight brokerage will expect their agent to call and ask the shipper pay them the TONU directly. These agents will lose their jobs if certain margins aren’t met, so they can be very persuasive when asking you for cancellation fees.

Often shippers comply because most shippers are good people and they feel it’s the right thing to do because they’ve likely had to deal with the cancelled trucker face-to-face earlier in the day, so the shipper agrees to pay whatever TONU fee the freight broker has negotiated on their behalf. As the shipper, you leave the situation feeling like you did the right thing for the trucker because of course you care.

What happens after the TONU has been paid?

One thing that shippers don’t know is that 80% of the time the mega-freight brokerage either pockets the entire TONU or only pays the carrier a portion of that fee (profit margins first). This practice makes a truck driver feel like they’re getting screwed because they are, and while using a freight broker is supposed to increase the shipper’s access to carrier capacity, in this case, it cuts capacity because that burned carrier will probably refuse to pick up at your location in the future, and just like someone having a bad experience at a restaurant, when a driver feels like they’ve been ripped off they will tell 10-20 other drivers about the bad experience they had picking up at your location and with getting worked over by your freight broker.

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At CargoMatchMaker we operate differently, we pay detention and TONU’s 100% of the time when deserved, and we pay it out of our own pocket, not yours. You read that correctly. We pay TONUs and detention and don’t ask shippers to reimburse us for that. Are we nuts? No. Do we like hemorrhaging money? No.

We do this for a few reasons. We’re not mega in size, so we value our carrier relationships too much to pay drivers less than they deserve. Without the truckers, we’d have nothing. Also, our shipper’s reputations are extremely important to us. It can be very difficult to find a safe and qualified truck driver to pick up your freight at a reasonable price. The last thing any of us need is for a driver to refuse your load based on a negative past experience, over something silly at that. We never want a driver to leave your facility feeling like they got worked over and weren’t paid the TONU they deserved. That’s a lose/lose situation.

Next time you send out a shipping project to freight brokers for bid, be sure to add [email protected] to your list. We shoulder the responsibility for anything that might interrupt your goal of a smooth, seamless shipment, including picking up the tab for TONU’s and detention. For projects that require the TLC and expertise of a professional freight broker, consider CargomatchMaker.

When a fake truck won’t do, we’ll get you loaded.

CargoMatchMaker is an agent for Guided Logistics (MC 741361).

Source: https://t-tees.com
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