Just because you turn down a load doesn't make you unreliable.
No, it doesn't. But a historical track record of turning them down might.
The Fed is a high volume business, from the time they took over Roberts,they have tried to bully the contractor into submission.
That's because the Fed is the personification of pure evil and it isn't surprising that that evil began to manifest itself with former Roberts contractors.
When someone contract's anyone to do anything they don't get to set the price, the contractor sets the price.
Well, the market and competition sets the price. The contractor can accept or refuse the job based on price, though, but the contractor cannot demand a certain price and expect to get it just because they demanded it.
I respect your opinion, I just believe an Independent should be allowed to remain Independent, a company's greed should not dictate how you are treated or how much work you get.
The only way to remain truly independent is to not sign a contract lease with a carrier. By signing a lease you are giving up some of your autonomy, though not necessarily your independent contractor status.
I think FedEx uses the wrong approach when trying to cover short or lower paying runs. Rewarding someone for doing something is more productive than punishing someone for not doing something. Like the less than 75 status for instance,but you can't cheapen the reward buy not standing by it,like they have done.
On that one I agree completely. The Fed knows to how pressure and bully, and that's their go-to tactic for getting their way. Not being with FedEx I don't know the details, but from comments I've read and from those I have talked to, it appears that FECC is implementing the acceptance rate in gross stumbling (and pressure and bully) fashion. Granted, the customer is looking to move freight from A-to-B and could care less how much deadhead the truck has to get there, but FECC should be mindful of turndowns which incur excessive deadhead.
A recently posted example: 198 mi DH, 97 mi LD, 295 mi TL, $160.30. (54 cts PM).
Well, it's $.54 per mile from the driver's perspective, but the load is 97 miles and it pays $160.30. That's $1.65 per mile, a decent load. That's what the customer cares about, and it is apparently what FECC cares about. Even Panther doesn't hit you with a refusal if the deadhead is more than 40% of the line haul. But it appears that FECC will. But it's a load that never should have been offered to a truck 200 miles away. It should have been offered to a truck sitting much closer, or FECC never should have accepted the load. If they want to get it covered they'll either have to pony up enough money to do so, or broker it out to a closer truck. But to hit a truck 200 miles away with a refusal is patently unfair. It certainly illuminates the arrogance of FedEx if that's indeed the case.
They will have to create parameters within which they and the contractors can equitably operate. Parameters like deadhead percent of line haul, less than 100 miles, dispatched more than 8 hours in advance, etc. Otherwise they could offer a Baltimore, MD to Reston, VA load to a truck sitting in Wyoming solely for the purpose of giving a retaliatory refusal. The reason for factoring in the acceptance rate is to track who is and is not reliable to FECC, and to weed out the cherry pickers. The load offers have to be reasonable, however, otherwise the acceptance rate is meaningless. But I'm not sure they even want to be reasonable. Their history doesn't exactly indicate that's what they are after.
The use of acceptance isn't in and of itself a problem, nor does it cross any line. But if they implement it as a bludgeoning tool for coercion with no parameters, that's a problem. At the very least someone there needs to make a call to Panther to find out what parameters they have in place for acceptance rates, rather than trying to forge anew the wheel with their own dominant will.
