Freight shippers need to be aware of what obligations they are assuming when they move freight using a freight bill of lading. Today, hundreds of shippers enter into contracts where they do not know the responsibilities and obligations they are taking on.

The main reason for this is because most of these loads involve only a bill of lading. Many times, this bill of lading comes from the carrier and the shipper just pulls one out and uses it when it comes time to ship. The freight shippers signs the bill of lading and the carrier hauls the freight.

Beware of these bills of ladings, because many times freight shippers can be caught agreeing to terms they don’t know about. For example, on freight shipping manager used a carriers bill of lading that referenced terms in another agreement which stated that, if freight bills were not paid in a timely manner, all the discounts would be waived for ALL SHIPMENTS with freight bills outstanding. This resulted in the shipper being charged an extra $26,000 for their shipments!

After deregulation, there is no government agency watching LTL and full truckload freight shipping. So make sure you know what you are agreeing to when you sign your carrier’s bill of lading.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Freight-USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.