This isn't the first time I've started a Channel 19 post this way, but given the similarities of the circumstances of this particular case (and the one I last wrote about, at this link), it all bears repeating pretty much verbatim:
I’ve written numerous times about avoid-like-the-plague “right of offset,” or set-off, language in contracts between carriers and partner brokers. Such language allows a broker the right to offset carriers' freight payments to recoup the value of cargo claims that arise and aren’t covered by the carrier's cargo insurance. The broker at least believes itself then free to deduct the cost of that claim from future loads hauled, to the benefit of the customer making the claim, and the broker's benefit in that customer relationship.
Except it doesn't always work. Take a small fleet associate who will remain unnamed in this story and his large-broker customer who began withholding $18,000 worth in load payments for well upward of 100 days, claiming a right to do so given cargo damage incurred on a prior load that was being valued at that level. What the trucker had been hauling when said damage occurred was a piece of expensive robotics that had been internally secured to a custom-built pallet -- the trucker was instructed by both the broker and the broker's customer to not secure the approximately five-feet-tall piece by sending straps over the top of it, but only to secure the pallet itself to the flatbed on which it was loaded.
The carrier's driver did just that. "The pallet we were securing was a cushioned pallet, specially made" for the cargo, the small-fleet owner said, "and they strapped their cargo to that. We strapped only through the pallet."
End result? The shipper's internal strapping broke in transit and the cargo "fell forward against the bulkhead of the truck," the carrier said. "There was apparently damage we couldn’t see – everything was boxed."
Given the carrier had followed the shipper's instructions to a tee, he told the broker neither he nor his cargo insurance would be held responsible for the load. "We did exactly what they wanted," he added, yet the broker "kept insisting we had to pay and, soon after, began withholding load payments" due to the carrier on continuing business with the broker.
They got paid for that load, but four others went unpaid for months to come.
