I spoke this morning with Hallahan Transport owner-operator Rob Hallahan, based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. While the reason I was calling initially had to do with a few questions about his move beginning this past Spring toward building up his previously one-truck business with other owner-operators leased on (he’s sitting at 4 owner-ops in addition to himself at this point, but more on that later), Hallahan dropped another little nugget on me from his location in Morris, Ill., at A&R Packaging, where the temps stood at a balmy …
That was up from overnight lows of -21, he said, as Hallahan and two owner-ops waited for the location to open at 10 a.m.
“I got to this place yesterday to deliver at 1 p.m.,” he said, on what’s been something of a regular run through a somewhat regular broker of late. Not regular enough, apparently, for anyone to care enough to let him know that the facility was closing due to the weather. Hallahan and company were only greeted by signs at the facility saying that “they’d closed for the weather” and would reopen at the aforementioned time, he said. “We’ve been sitting here since yesterday. It’s really set us back for the week — we were all supposed to unload last night,” and hauls already booked back toward the La Crosse area had to be canceled. “If we’d have know they were going to close we would have just stayed home.”
If anyone out there not in trucking continues to wonder over the angst that exists among truckers around the subject of brokers/shippers/receivers and detention, here’s a clear example. If those parties — regular customers of this operation, mind you — are doing their jobs, Hallahan knows at least about the possibility of closure at the other end before he even picks in Minnesota, just north of his home location, or if not by then certainly before three truckloads get so far into the run that they learn of it via signs posted on the premises.
He’s not the only trucker who dealt with similar closures yesterday — take note of small fleet owner-op Daniel Davidson’s experience yesterday morning in Northern Ohio, as detailed in this story. Davidson was close enough when he got a load cancellation to bring it all back to the house, at least. As for Hallahan and company, as we spoke he checked in for delivery, some time went by as we talked, and then he was informed: “She just told me they’re not taking any deliveries today. I’m taking it back to Minnesota.” And to recap: “We loaded yesterday morning at 7 a.m., got here at 1 p.m., and sat here till today,” only to be told” “‘Sorry, we’re not taking those today.'”
Hallahan had a planned bit of R&R with his wife starting tomorrow and running through the weekend. “I’ll have to call these brokers and work this out,” likely to be an all-day affair, he added, though he suspected he’d get offered no more than $100-$150 for detention, whatever rate he worked out for the wasted trips to Morris and back.
