by Pat Grant

Created on: August 27, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

Truckers are the victims of modern day, legal, piracy. No, not the kind who would pull a truck over and steal what they are hauling. No, I'm talking about lumpers. A lumper is a person who either works for, or is allowed to freelance at, a company where truckers go to unload their product. Lumpers can be a good thing. For drivers who only want to drive and not touch the product, they are usually happy to pay a few dollars to let someone else do the heavy work. So, what's the problem with this? Well, quite often truckers are forced to hire these lumpers, even when the driver WANTS to unload. This then takes money either out of the pocket of the driver or of the company for which he or she works. In essence, what is happening is that Company A will buy product from Company B, who ships the product to Company A. Company B is already paying to have the product shipped there, and now Company A makes them pay more money in order to unload the product. This is turn raises the costs of Company B, who then in turn ends up raising their prices.

What makes this even more unethical, is that in some, not all, but in a few cases, these lumpers turn out to be friends or relatives of people who work for Company A, or even some of the employees themselves, already being paid as dock workers by Company A, but looking for more money to do what they should be doing to begin with. Worse, there have been cases where the dock workers were being paid "under the table" by the lumpers for letting them in to do lumping work there. If a company does not want the driver to do the unloading, then that company should be responsible for the unloading, not the driver or the delivering company. If the driver does not want to unload, then of course, that is a different story.

The practice of using lumpers is a growing one, and desperately needs regulation. While some places charge around $100 to unload a truck, which is fairly reasonable, others have charged upwards of $400 or more - highway robbery! Like I said, modern day, legal, piracy. And nobody has any control over this. Why does the Department of Transportation not step in and look into this? They have stringent regulations over everything else.

Technically, it is illegal for a company to require a driver to hire a lumper. But they have ways of getting around this. There are any number of things the guys on the dock can, and will, do to harrass a driver who will not hire a lumper. I work for a company who has a "no lumpers" policy. We pay our drivers to do the unloading. We haul our own product and our drivers are familiar with it and good at what they do. Most companies beg us to use our own drivers and not hire outside carriers for their loads. However, some insist on the carriers, because they will hire their lumpers while our drivers will not. I get calls from my drivers almost every day with problems they are having at these companies. They won't give them room to unload, they won't move product away, they keep taking the equipment and giving it to the lumpers, etc. They figure you'll just give in and pay them and get it over with.

Enough is enough. It is time that someone looks into this. If no one else, I would think the IRS would be interested in knowing how much money is switching hands "under the table". And I, for one, am tired of this "hidden cost" in the trucking industry which is one thing helping to make prices on things go higher and higher every day.

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