How to Tell a Well-Run Trucking Company From a Cheap One

Most advice about trucking company management is written for the people running one. This is the other side of it: you are buying freight, and you want to know whether the company you are about to hand a pallet to is well run — before you find out the expensive way.

Here is what a well-run carrier does, and the question that tells you whether yours does it.

Somebody looks at your shipment when nothing is happening

Plenty of carriers will tell you when a truck is late. Fewer notice the problem the day before, when the commercial invoice has not arrived or the broker has not been appointed.

Ask: who reviews my file between pickup and delivery, and how often? A shrug is an answer.

The accessorial charges are published, with numbers

Accessorials are where a cheap quote turns into an expensive invoice: appointments, residential delivery, tailgates, waiting time, storage. A carrier that will not tell you what those cost until one appears on your bill has made a choice about that.

Ask: can I see your accessorial list with the amounts on it? Ours is published, which is the standard to hold anyone to.

They tell you what your freight is actually covered for

Carrier liability is not insurance, and most shippers find out the difference after something is damaged. A carrier that lets you assume your freight is insured for its value is not being straight with you.

Ask: what is your standard liability, how is it calculated, and what is excluded? The honest answer is a number per pound, not per dollar.

Customs is handled by people you can reach

On cross-border freight, most of the difficulty is paperwork. If customs is subcontracted two companies deep, every question becomes a game of telephone and nobody owns the answer.

Ask: who handles customs, and can I speak to them? Moto has its own customs department, which is the arrangement that makes that question easy to answer.

The claims process has a deadline and they say so upfront

Every carrier has a filing window. The well-run ones tell you what it is before you need it, because a claim that misses the window is a claim that never existed.

Ask: how long do I have to file, and what do you need from me? Ours is seven business days from delivery, and the answer should be that specific.

Equipment is matched to the load, not to what is free

A carrier that books whatever is available will eventually put your machine on the wrong deck. One that asks about dimensions, weight, how it loads and what the site is like is doing the job properly.

Ask: what do you need from me to pick the equipment? If the questions are thin, so is the planning.

The quote asks you enough questions to be real

A quote given from a postcode and a weight is a guess, and guesses get revised after the freight moves. The questions are not friction — they are the difference between a price and an estimate.

Ask: what could change this number after pickup?

The short version

You do not need to audit a carrier. You need five minutes and these questions, and the ones that cannot answer them tend to be the ones whose invoices surprise you.

Put a real shipment in front of us and judge the answers rather than the brochure.