The Autohauler Shopper Forums

If you are using Central Dispatch for your loads, this is something that you might not be aware of. There have been several conversations with brokers & carriers that suggest that there is a little more than dispatching going on here.

When speaking with a broker, it has become a suspicion that Central Dispatch it soliciting the customers. Maybe this has happened on one of your loads and you noticed something fishy about it.

When you ask a broker on CD to dispatch the load to you on Central, the information on the dispatch gets filled in by the broker, with Origination and Destination information. It is obvious that the information is sitting within Centrals database. Now realize that Central now has direct access to the customer information. Here is the suspicion...

Central now solicits the customer(typically a dealership) for an account on CD thereby bypassing the broker completely. What this is now doing is flooding Central with dealers that have less of a clue than brokers of what it takes to get these cars moved. Here come the lowest rates ever seen.

How does Central benefit? Simple, their subscriber base has now grown.
How does this hurt us, since now there is no middle-man? The rates are all over the place now, mostly in the trash. Also, this drives the other brokers that are not yet affected to reduce their rates to the truck and try to increase their fees to compensate for their lost potential revenue.

If you think about this for a minute... what has prevented Central from doing this? Nothing. There are no "non-compete" clauses in any of the terms on their site. Brokers and you(as you requested) are offering direct customer contact information to Central freely. Thereby giving them the information needed to take the customer away. Consider a brokers fees that the dealership is saving by posting the load themselves. Also the carrier rate they are saving by posting the rate themselves much lower than any rates available. Eventually the "cheap freight" gets taken by someone trying to fill out a load. Teh same "cheap freight" mentality hits home. We don't want to take the "cheap freight", but when you need it to get home/next load/etc.... it gets taken anyway... even by the guys who claim to refuse it.

So heres what I'm saying.

Stop giving your money away! Stop asking to be dispatched the load on Central, and take the little extra time it may take to get a fax from a broker. All brokers have a fax machine. As far as the dealerships that aare already on there, same thing goes. Don't think that because they are already on there that it can't hurt. They are typically the buyer of the vehicle being posted, and now they are giving the selling/storage dealers information to Central.

I have more to say on this, and could possibly go into more detail. But for now, you should be able to get an idea of whats going on here. We'll never be able to get away from Central just due to the number of carriers and brokers that use it. They won't give up a venue for posting or finding a load for another site. Typically the biggest stays the biggest due to being first and largest in the market. Other load boards typically can't survive just due to existing customers not wanting to spend extra $ and risking less exposure on another load board.

Comments?

Tony, this is a well thought out and to the point post, I brought this post to the attention of one of our Transportation Coordinators, who said that you are very correct in your thoughts.....

We (here where I work) WILL NOT HAUL CHEAP CARS!!!! I have been here a long time and will testify to this as fact. We have min's for diffrent reigons throughout the country and Internationally as well.

the best thing that we as an industry can do is STOP HAULING CHEAP CARS!! I have heard my TC say many times NO, thats below our rate!, she usually gets the response well someone will take it, especially the 3 car haulers???? OR "this is just meant for a backHaul"....THERE IS NOT SUCH THING AS A BACKHAUL! It is a load!!! it is our bread & butter, how we feed our familys and well you get the point...........

Take note fellow car haulers.......STOP HAULING CHEAP CARS, lets take an example from those in the Freight hauling industry.....you know what it did to them!

Happy Holidays

I think they will more likely deny it. The information on dealers is public and so they would have a legal access to the information and therefore it will be impossible to prove that the info was not obtained legally.

Sounds to me like the days of brokers doing dealer freight are coming to an end. There will still be a need for brokers to do POV freight though. Unless a broker decides he is going out of business he won't fight Central. With a tap of a keyboard Central can shut down a broker. This industry sorely needs some healthy competition in that area.

Someone needs to file a case against them for operating a monoply and open it up for some of those that want to launch posting-boards. It might just force them off-shore but right now they are right there in Calif. under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Well here we go again with another aspect of this issue...

Now that we're buried in all of these Dealers on CD, another issue has come up. As we know, when we don't get paid through a broker we have a shot at getting paid from their bind or trust. What do you think happens when these dealers stiff us? You got it, nothing.
So much for CD being on the cautious side of things. I remember when getting my CD account setup for the first time. They called all of my references and checked my insurance. What exactly are they doing when signing up a dealer? My guess is maybe a telephone call to that particular dealers licensing agency just to verify the dealer exists. But there is really nothing to check from the standpoint of protection from fraud, etc. Again, the almighty dollar has CD leaving what would be considered good business practice in its wake.

I see no real way for them to stop what they have already allowed to happen to the industry. For those that rely upon CD for fillers and sometimes our complete loads, this is very painful. I am starting to see them head down the uShip path albeit somewhat limited to brokers, carriers and now dealers. Who's to say that they won't again change and begin offering listing services on the front page of their site for the average Joe? There really is no protection from that happening since they will make the same claim as uShip by saying that they are not directly brokering the loads. They are instead offering a venue for a shipper to post a load directly. All the while, we as carriers suffer the fallout starting immediately afterwords. They won't feel the pain of their mistake until much later once a majority of the smaller carriers without a steady customer base have collapsed. Could it be possible that is what they are after? I doubt it. I cannot see them attempting to do something to eventually reduce their potential income. But in reality, this will be the case.

In time, smaller and less stable carriers will begin to fold from the low rates started from the influx of dealers. Once their revenue decreases from the smaller carriers dropping, the next is inevitable. Once the carriers start to drop off, so will the dealers since there will be less activity on their postings. There goes that revenue too. Now they are back to square one, but worse than they started since they have lost the carriers already. If the smaller carriers haven't completely collapsed, i foresee them finding an alternative load board. At that point, the replacement load board will start to gain interest losing more activity on CD. I'm starting to see a vicious cycle about to begin.

I apologize for rambling a bit, but I had to vent a little. Being very tired, I may have typed in circles and may have to try posting again after coffee in the morning. But then again I may have gotten my point out.

I hope at some point someone over at CD gets their fingers out of their wallets and checks a few forums. They might take note long enough to realize what they are facing along with what we are facing.

(I typed a bit more, but let my emotions get a hold of me... maybe I'll finish in the morning)

g'night.

davecampbell wrote:Someone needs to file a case against them for operating a monoply and open it up for some of those that want to launch posting-boards. It might just force them off-shore but right now they are right there in Calif. under the jurisdiction of the United States.

I wish it were the case of a monopoly so their could be some sort of lawsuit, etc. But that isn't really the case here. The monopoly is only perceived and not actual. Brokers do not want to double their work in posting on another board due to lack of carriers. Carriers do not want to search another board due to lack of postings. Someone capable and willing to build a load board site would not really want to make the attempt due to lack of both carriers and brokers. Since there would have to be some sort of staff for verifications of brokers and carriers, there would be an incurred cost from the beginning.

I do not see a real monopoly since they are not truly preventing competition. But it is more of a perception of a monopoly due to the lack of cooperation in the industry. As long as there is a lack of cooperation, communication and understanding between carriers and between brokers, there can be no movement toward another solution. Also, there can be no pressure placed on the 'Monopoly' to mend their ways.

heh, I did it again and started rambling.

Dave, we should talk.

TonyUFN wrote:
I am starting to see them head down the uShip path albeit somewhat limited to brokers, carriers and now dealers. Who's to say that they won't again change and begin offering listing services on the front page of their site for the average Joe?

Could this be solved by just making the "average joe" be required to post only cod loads?

CentralDispatch understands central-dispatch-logothe need to keep your data secure and private. Recently, we have received questions about whether or not we use dispatch sheet data to market CentralDispatch to your customers. We take your questions seriously and want you to know unequivocally that we have never used contact information on dispatch sheets to contact or market to anyone.

If you have any information to the contrary, please bring it to our attention and we will follow-up immediately. To date, we have not been able to independently verify a single instance of a customer being contacted by CentralDispatch or its agents using the dispatch sheet data.

We provide the online dispatch feature to simplify the dispatching process for you and create a standard communications format between our subscribers. Thousands of subscribers use it every day. We want you to know that you can use it freely without concern that we would ever use your dispatch data to contact your customers.

Wayne Harris
President
CentralDispatch.com

Operating a monopoly is not illegal. Using your position as a monopoly to stifle competition is is what's illegal.

Can someone tell me why it's better to deal with a broker than directly with a customer? If I don't like a rate, regardless of who is offering it, I don't take it. That simple. Add to this the fact that dealing directly with the customer allows me to negotiate for a portion of the fee that would have gone to the broker and it seems like a good thing to me. Unless you're scared to tell a potential customer what you really want to haul the load, and willing to pass if it's not met, there seems to be no reason to deal with a broker.

Maybe some of you think that the broker is getting rates UP on your behalf, but I can guarantee you that they will pay you the least amount possible in order to meet their time and service requirements and the only reason that they want rates up is so that they can add more to their OWN bottom line.