Oh boy, I just love this, maybe I should go back to contracting people out. Nah, too much trouble now a days.
OK, here is the deal; there is a huge difference between working as a contractor in a non-regulated industry and a regulated industry. We work in a regulated industry so we are bound to live by rules that are exempt from the 12 common rules – no way around this.
Many jump on this bandwagon of your not an independent contractor because;
They tell you, you must pick up a load
They tell you, you must deliver a load at a certain time
They tell you that you got to drive to make money (yes I am being sarcastic!)
The truth is there is a lot more to just being a contractor and being told what to do to have anything to be close to an employee. One company, I won’t mention it here, has hit the radar screen with crossing the line in their ‘benefits’ and been the subject of a couple newsletters on the subject of independent contractors. AND no it is not the CAT.
But I digress,
We must maintain insurance, both worker comp (here in lovely michicrap that is what it is called) and vehicle liability insurance for the vehicle and driver – no exceptions. But because we also have the fed DOT involved, I think we must carry liability insurance at different levels (Hazmat, no Hazmat), no exceptions and no choice. So, independent we still are.
Then we have the company requirements, they tell us before we accept their offer to be leased with them that we must have installed a Qualcomm or use X phone company in order to do business with them, and that does not affect the independence at all.
We then have their procedures, how to fill out the BOL, how we get paid and how we get dispatched, all alright and still does not affect the independence at all.
To sum this all up, we are contracted to do a job for the company and customer, which means that they are allowed to tell you certain things about the load offer, set limits like pick and delivery times and they can tell you to a point the manner in how to drive (federal safety laws trump the contractor thing at all times). They can force you to take a load by the way, because many companies have a quality of service requirement to be maintained; in service times and load acceptance is two important things for the company.
What they can’t tell you is how to drive, routes you take (unless it is a customer requirement or Hazmat), and really can’t hold it against you for hanging up on them after you refused to cross dock because you are able to take the load all the way through – amazing no one has caught on to this.
Just for the record, when you go from contracting to become a full independent owner operator by establishing your own operating authority, you are no longer a contractor.
When we placed people for disaster recovery work, we required them to purchase a laptop through the company that was used to meet the customer’s requirements. At times we required the contractor to get a certification or education for the contract we had and we could not pay a dime for any of it – it was their problem to pay for it, not ours. They were independent contractors and this was all legal.
