We are seeing and talking to a lot of shippers that would like to ship direct with carriers. The challenge shipper say is that not a lot of truckload carriers are ready for them. Shippers post loads directly to the Trulos Load board and get a few calls from carriers but the carries don’t have a contract or know really how to vet the shipper for credit and payment terms.
A few things that can help make this easier is to have shipper carrier agreement. There is one provided by Transportation Law site www.transportationlaw.net .
Shippers Agreement – This is a link to a simple one page agreement that is posted online. We took a look at it and it is pretty easy to understand and is very clear. It reviews truck liability.
It does not show a rate on this one so you will need to make sure that you fill out a rate confirmation also.
For a longer agreement that covers really just about everything you should check out the ATA one. It has comments on it to explain all the different parts. A little heads up it is about 30 pages so lot of reading.
ATA Carrier Agreement – Here is a link the ATA Motor Carrier Agreement
There is another link to this shipper motor carrier agreement on the Transportation Law site also. The link is http://www.transportationlaw.net/pdf/ATA-NITLAgreement.pdf
The rate sheet is a pretty simple document – We have a blank one here . This one is really very simple – PDF Rate Confirmation for carrier and shipper direct .
To check out loads on the load board you can visit the free load board
To see a video on how to use the free load board check this one out.