Hopefully this is in the right place.
After looking around locally for a "deal" on a BX since the latter part of summer, I had to broaden my search area. Frankly the local dealers and individual sellers in the NoVA/DC area are very proud of their machines, especially the individual sellers. I found an excellent deal on a humble BX1880 "rental" unit with a whopping 2 hours on it via Tractorhouse at Green and Sons in Ohio. The deal was the easy part, then I had to arrange shipping. I've never shipped anything LTL, closest was shipping a car over a decade ago, but I decided to use Tractorhouse partner Fr8star.
Fr8stars's website is nice and modern, in fact from the Tractorhouse ad you can click through and get a ballpark of shipping cost before you get actual quotes. You enter what you "expect" to pay and it tells you if you are in the range, all without registering or giving your contact info. in my case it was within about $50 of what the quote I chose was. Of note for later, I selected my tractor was running and I selected it would need ramps. I got 5 or 6 quotes, pretty close to each other, interestingly the lowest bidder had the most loads experience and highest rating so I went with them, though the prices were all within 15%, it was a tight market I guess. I booked the pickup with a small portion of the total, the rest is due upon delivery. The chosen shipper contacted me very quickly and promised my load would be picked up that day or at the latest the next day. I mentioned my road and the fact that I was expecting we'd drive the BX off. He said it would be no problem as it would be picked up by a hotshot.
That's when things took a bit of a turn for the worse. The actual shipper was not able to fulfill that portion of the deal and ended up picking up the load 3 days after booking, still fine as I was not in a rush. Then things got a little more challenging. After the load was picked up, via a full size truck and lowboy, I got a call from the "driver" who later admitted he was not the actual driver but a dispatcher. He said they would not be able to deliver to my house and wanted to meet me 7 miles away. They also told me I needed to hire a tow truck to remove the BX as they did not have ramps. Even after multiple attempts to tell him that the country road that was a cross street had plenty of room to unload and almost no traffic, he would not agree to anywhere near my home, the closest they would drop it off was a parking lot 2 miles away and I was to hire a tow truck to get it off the low boy, which btw this dispatcher didn't even know what a low boy was...
The truck did arrive at the agreed upon time and the BX was in great shape. I hired a local tow company that I've worked with before and they showed up at the agreed upon time as well, and even went the extra mile to drive me the 2 miles since they felt it was a bad idea for me to drive my BX down a highway (duh!).
I reached out to Fr8star support after everything was home. They made it clear they understood the issue and would make it right. They followed up with the shipper and got them to agree to pay the undecking fee. It would have been nice for Fr8start to directly credit me, the credit from the shipper is still pending....
A- for Fr8star, C- for the actual shipping company which isn't really worth mentioning.
After looking around locally for a "deal" on a BX since the latter part of summer, I had to broaden my search area. Frankly the local dealers and individual sellers in the NoVA/DC area are very proud of their machines, especially the individual sellers. I found an excellent deal on a humble BX1880 "rental" unit with a whopping 2 hours on it via Tractorhouse at Green and Sons in Ohio. The deal was the easy part, then I had to arrange shipping. I've never shipped anything LTL, closest was shipping a car over a decade ago, but I decided to use Tractorhouse partner Fr8star.
Fr8stars's website is nice and modern, in fact from the Tractorhouse ad you can click through and get a ballpark of shipping cost before you get actual quotes. You enter what you "expect" to pay and it tells you if you are in the range, all without registering or giving your contact info. in my case it was within about $50 of what the quote I chose was. Of note for later, I selected my tractor was running and I selected it would need ramps. I got 5 or 6 quotes, pretty close to each other, interestingly the lowest bidder had the most loads experience and highest rating so I went with them, though the prices were all within 15%, it was a tight market I guess. I booked the pickup with a small portion of the total, the rest is due upon delivery. The chosen shipper contacted me very quickly and promised my load would be picked up that day or at the latest the next day. I mentioned my road and the fact that I was expecting we'd drive the BX off. He said it would be no problem as it would be picked up by a hotshot.
That's when things took a bit of a turn for the worse. The actual shipper was not able to fulfill that portion of the deal and ended up picking up the load 3 days after booking, still fine as I was not in a rush. Then things got a little more challenging. After the load was picked up, via a full size truck and lowboy, I got a call from the "driver" who later admitted he was not the actual driver but a dispatcher. He said they would not be able to deliver to my house and wanted to meet me 7 miles away. They also told me I needed to hire a tow truck to remove the BX as they did not have ramps. Even after multiple attempts to tell him that the country road that was a cross street had plenty of room to unload and almost no traffic, he would not agree to anywhere near my home, the closest they would drop it off was a parking lot 2 miles away and I was to hire a tow truck to get it off the low boy, which btw this dispatcher didn't even know what a low boy was...
The truck did arrive at the agreed upon time and the BX was in great shape. I hired a local tow company that I've worked with before and they showed up at the agreed upon time as well, and even went the extra mile to drive me the 2 miles since they felt it was a bad idea for me to drive my BX down a highway (duh!).
I reached out to Fr8star support after everything was home. They made it clear they understood the issue and would make it right. They followed up with the shipper and got them to agree to pay the undecking fee. It would have been nice for Fr8start to directly credit me, the credit from the shipper is still pending....
A- for Fr8star, C- for the actual shipping company which isn't really worth mentioning.
