Post, Freight and Carriers

Why do trucking companies financially discourage their drivers from lumping freight.?

Ive been doing this job on and off since the early 90's, and it always bothered me that companies will pay drivers so much less than they will pay lumpers. I have my theories to explain this, but I have no way to prove or disprove them. I am looking for someone who has inside information, who may have worked within the infrastructure of a company and who has dealt with such decisions and the reasons for them. Please support your assertion as best you can. Thanx.

Public Comments

1. If you are a driver, an employee, and there is money to be made by lumping, the company sees that as their money to be made, not yours. It would be to their advantage to encourage drivers to propose lumping opportunities, where the driver would share in some mark up. But often lumping means cutting the cost to the customer rather than making more for the trucking firm. It can get the whole industry into cut-throat competition.
2. I work for a small 17 truck company. My husband and I are drivers. We haul a lot of refrigerated freight. When we started, we assumed we'd lump all our own loads especially when it was a straight pull-off. Our prior employer, a fly by night 2-truck operation, expected us to unload our own trailer unless the breakdown was just ridiculous (once in a while we'd have 17 pallets breaking down into 45, or something like that). We got yelled at the 2nd time we did it at the new company. Their main reason was safety concerns. Not so much because they "care" so much about our well being, but having drivers unload their own trucks DOES increase the risk of injury; strains and sprains and back injuries. This is especially true when you have drivers who are overweight and mostly sedentary. Driver injuries mean higher insurance and workers' compensation costs, and increased downtime when drivers get hurt and can't drive. It's cheaper overall for the company to pay the lumpers and cut out that risk of driver injury. ALSO- Many (but certainly not all) brokers will reimburse the company for the cost of a lumper, as long as the company provides a reciept. True, a driver could lump his/her own load and write out their own reciept out of a reciept book, but often time this raises questions among brokers and some will not honor it. Driver lumping hurts driver productivity at times. Drivers unloading trailers is hard work and takes a long time- virtually every grocery warehouse I've ever been to will NOT let you use their forklifts or motorized pallet jacks (even though my husband and I are certified on both). With the 2 of us helping each other unload with a manual pallet jack, and hand-unstacking pallets, if there is ANY breakdown to the load at all, it takes the 2 of us twice as long to unload as it takes the lumpers to do it. And then we still have to sit & wait for the quality control person to inspect the product (which is usually what takes so long when we're paying the lumper, anyway). And when a driver gets done unloading a trailer (especially if he/she is by themself) they're dog-tired! When the company pays the lumper, their driver is free to sleep or take a break, and therefore that driver will be able to go pick up another load. Therefore increasing productivity. Trucking companies hire people from all walks of life these days- a lot more females and older people are getting into this industry. If a company made it "financially appealing" for a driver to lump their own loads (paying the driver equal to what they'd pay a lumper).....you would have a lot of ambitious-yet-incapable 90 lb women, 65 year old retired people, people with back and knee problems, etc....thinking "Hey, that's a lot of money" and hurting themselves in the process. Companies set their "driver unload pay" limits low, for these reasons. However, it DOES cause a problem when the driver is EXPECTED to unload their own truck at a particular place (lumpers not available), and they go back and herniate something for a measly $75 dollars. The driver certainly recalls the company obligingly paying lumpers upwards of $150 dollars for an unload- and that does cause a problem. My company does not have driver unloading pay limits for this reason- if we do go somewhere where it's either expected or it happens to be more time-effective to unload our own truck, we speak with the company and we all agree upon a fair compensation for us. They typically pay us what they'd have to pay a lumper for the same type of load. Maybe more companies ought to adopt this policy??
3. I heard from my old Fleet Manager when I was at SNI the reason is drivers get hurt they go on workers comp claims and the company's rates go up. He said that a lot of drivers would purposely hurt themselves or fake injuries to go on the dole, so now theres no excuse for a driver to be injured and if he is his claim won't go through.