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Tim received an inbound lead from a new customer for an FTL load of mattresses headed from Cincinnati to Chicago. The customer prepaid for the load with a credit card.
In the spirit of Halloween, we’re kicking off a new segment featuring some of the craziest, funniest, and most haunted loads.
Today's newsletter is brought to you by Trucker Tools:
Trucker Tools has always been committed to identifying fraud, with its platform natively designed with fraud identification measures. But today’s fraudsters are more sophisticated than ever. In their continued commitment to helping broker partners fight fraud in the industry, they have taken a deep dive into fraud in the industry and developed a fraud tool kit to help your brokerage proactively identify fraud.
Fraud Toolkit Features:
Today’s two crazy freight stories come from an anonymous freight broker. We’ll call him Tim.
Tim received an inbound lead from a new customer for an FTL load of mattresses headed from Cincinnati to Chicago. The customer prepaid for the load with a credit card.
“When I look back, there were some red flags," Tim recalled, "but I was eager to land a new customer and move the freight.”
When the driver arrived at the Cincinnati warehouse, he was handed a BOL with a different Chicago address. The driver called after-hours dispatch, and they advised him to follow the BOL.
Upon arrival, he was met by five armed men who held him hostage, removed the mattresses, and sliced them open. When they finished, they released the driver and disappeared into the night. The police later determined that the mattresses contained several kilos of cocaine.
The “customer” vanished, the gunmen were never found, and the card used to pay for the load was prepaid and untraceable. Ultimately, they paid the driver for the load, but the perpetrators were never caught.
Takeaway: If there’s one lesson here, it’s to vet your customers carefully! Unknown shippers calling in to book a load? Big red flag.
In another wild experience, Tim was moving a load of frozen bread from Bolingbrook, IL, to Laredo, TX. When the load was scheduled for delivery, the driver no-showed, leaving the bread stranded.
After multiple attempts to reach the driver, dispatch finally tracked the truck to a stop just outside of Laredo.
When they arrived, they found the truck abandoned, the reefer out of fuel, and the Texas heat had melted the frozen bread all over the trailer and parking lot, resulting in a $50,000 claim.
Later, it was discovered that the driver had parked at the truck stop, crossed the border, and went on a multi-day meth binge. Couldn’t he have waited until after delivery?
Also, check out this wild freight story contributed by Joseph Daniel last year:
Joseph Daniel
🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER
FREIGHT MEME OF THE DAY
Plus, a carrier pleading guilty to mob money laundering while still FMCSA-active, Iran's first post-ceasefire attack and what it means for diesel surcharges, FedEx Freight's first earnings as a standalone company, and more in today's newsletter.
Bad carriers are gaming the weigh station system. Plus, C.H. Robinson's own engineer goes scorched earth on Reddit, the Ghost Truck Act gets roasted, and more in today's newsletter.
Plus, overseas ELD tampering, 100 pallets of stolen womenswear, 20,000 Mexican truckers losing US visas, and more in today's newsletter.
While everyone in trucking is watching rates, capacity, and fraud, a much bigger shift may be happening quietly in the background: the future of rail.
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