Opinion: Shippers Should Put Safety First

By Paul Landry
President
British Columbia Trucking Association

In trucking parlance, a “shipper” is anyone, be it a business or an individual, that hires a truck to transport goods. A shipper may hire a truck for any of a variety of reasons: Perhaps there is a long distance to cover or the load requires more space than available in the trunk of a car. Or perhaps the trucking company has expertise in shipping goods across the Canadian/U.S. border or the border between the United States and Mexico.

Once a shipper decides to hire a trucking company, however, the primary factor that closes the deal — indeed, sometimes the only factor — is price.

I come across this situation time and again, so the following anecdote is typical: A shipper once demanded that I do something about a truck driver in his yard who had failed to back a trailer up to the loading bay after umpteen tries and 45 long minutes. The deed eventually was done by a more skilled driver from a rival trucking company, but my response to his demand that I do something about the situation was that this type of problem can be solved only by the shippers themselves.

Consider what this shipper had or had not done as the situation evolved outside his window. Did he call the trucking company to find out why it had dispatched an unqualified driver? For that matter, had he even checked the qualifications of the trucking company before hiring it in the first place?