Back Up Plans
On my trip back from the Michigan's upper peninsula, I had planned on stopping for some cross country 
skiing. There are a couple of great parks that have several trails. The problem is that there just was not enough snow. They do not want runners on the CC ski trails because they do not want what little groomed snow there is “ungroomed” by runners' footsteps. My back up plan was to run the snow shoe trails. That back up plan did not work so well. The trails go over an undeveloped marsh and were simply to rough to run on. That back up plan led to walking on the snow shoe trails. I did not get the effectiveness of skiing or running. I did get to walk about 4 miles through the woods and marshes of the forest preserve. The back up to my back up plan mitigated the conditioning loss of not being able to ski as I had originally planned, but at least I got in that nice walk.
To quote Steinbeck – The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. - Then what? What do you do when
a load cancels? Do you have a policy in place? Is your customer liable. If you hold your customer liable will they remain your customer? Can you mitigate the damages done by late by loads that cancel, after you have traveled for hours to get there?
Prevention would have been ideal. It always is. I could have checked the website. That would have told me that the trails were poor to closed. The Fox River Trail in downtown Green Bay would have been a good alternative to run on. The same thing can happen with customers. I recently showed up at a scrap paper yard in the Milwaukee area. I was there to pick up a load to Green Bay. It should have taken less than an hour for me to get on my way. In reality the consignee on that load is our customer and the scrap paper yard's customer. They pay for the freight.
On this particular day the machine had broken down. They had called for the truck assuming that they would have a load ready. They told me (accidentally) as soon as I arrived that they were having a problem with the machine and the load was not ready. I informed my carrier immediately that there was a problem. We were powerless for the first 2 hours. After that the shipper must pay a detention rate, or declare that there was a truck ordered and not used. That is the back up plan. For a load that is less than 150 miles often times the cost of a truck ordered and not used is limited to the cost of the load itself. The cost of paying detention plus the fee for the truck ordered not used should prevent these shippers from ordering a truck before they have the freight ready. Some day I hope that it will.