Perhaps destined to show up as a non-transparent Shipping Overcharge Adjustment in Transaction View?
ETA:
I must admit that I like this response better:
"Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink…"
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Central Transport… say your prayers.
They damage everything. They have a terrible reputation for destroying stuff. They stack everything so expect your shipment to end up having a 3000lb metal coil sitting on top of it or a leaky liquid tote.
We refuse to ship with them.
Guess we’ve been sitting in the first pew at church then. They have handled lots and lots of pallets for us without a single issue over the last couple years.
All of our pallets are 6 feet tall, marked non-stackable (yea know that doesn’t mean much) and get put into Amazon’s 53 foot trailers. From there, they roll out into Amazon’s DC’s and get checked in within 48 hours so IDK where the time would be to stack them multiple times on top of these springs you speak of.
Have you tried? Nice and cheap and fast…
If you’re willing to split your pallets in 3, you’ll actually be paid back a lot more than you paid for the freight with rebates.
We just tested that new program with an SPD shipment we sent last week. Paid $50 for the freight and will be getting back $90 in rebates. +$40. I was concerned that it would take longer to check in and receive because of the 3 DC split. Shipment created on Friday. UPS picked up on Monday. 2 of the 3 were checked in on Tues. The last, yesterday.
Others here have reported LTL shipments they paid ~$300 for and got back ~$600.
There will always be horror stories about just about everything Amazon. Most of them are probably true. Your odds of being one of them if you do everything right / professionally when it comes to prepping your pallets are low IMO / In my experience.
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Sounds like they have a different program worked out where you’re at (I assume it has to do with everything being closer together on the East Coast), all of our stuff goes down to California from our warehouse just outside Seattle, Central would be handling it all the way down to the destination so they’d have plenty of opportunities to destroy our stuff.
Not with inbound shipments but we’ve had plenty of experience with them to know we want to have nothing to do with them.
Not for us… for example, 3 pallets that I sent last week cost me $240 (1500LBS each) and if I had gone with the split it would’ve been $550 and a $100 rebate. This shipment in particular only took 2 days from pickup to being checked in, one of the fastest shipments we’ve had. Shipped with Amazon themselves, driver even called the night before to ask when we opened.
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Wait, so just to clarify, Central picks up and then they load your freight into Amazon trailers instead of completing delivery themselves?
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Totally my bad… Note to self - get more sleep.
I was referring to Amazon Freight, not CTII!
Now you’ve got me worried… Amazon switched these shipments on us from Amz Logistics to CTII.
3 shipments this week. First time we’ve been exposed to them.
Sometimes it makes a lot of sense, sometimes not (like this example)
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Oh yeah Amazon Freight is great, CTII (Central Transport) is the problem.
Amazon tried to do the same thing with us 2 weeks ago.
If they haven’t picked up yet don’t let them take it, in our experience you’d be better off just burning your inventory.
We told Amazon to retender and that we wouldn’t ship with Central, they responded with some stupid policy stating I had to ship with them so we just locked all the doors and didn’t answer the phone on the day Central was supposed to pickup. Amazon retendered the next day to Maersk and everything worked out perfectly.
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Be careful, Amazon may retender further down to someone like Roadrunner.
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My experience is the complete opposite, CTII / Tforce always pick up same day or next day while Amazon Freight always gives me headaches. I got a call from dispatch this morning that the warehouse was too small for a 53’ truck and the driver can’t back up. Looked outside no trucks in sight… 
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I actually don’t mind Roadrunner, they’ve moved a few things for me over the years and I’ve never had anything come damaged. I’ve seen some bad stuff about them but I think just about everyone is in agreement that Central is by far the worst.
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I put my phone number on address line 2 so the driver can call ahead, they always do too. Driver said that’s the only place they can see our phone number until we’re the next stop.
Tforce, formerly UPS Freight is good and I’ll ship with them. It’s Central I refuse to ship with.
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That’s a bit extreme. You could just tell the driver there’s nothing to pick up when they show up. Either way the shipment gets marked as not picked up. Doubt Amazon cares about the reason why it wasn’t picked up, they need to reschedule it either way.
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This happened to us once. Sent over an aerial shot of the facility, with the 4 bays, and told them to come back.
They picked up the next day.
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I’m confused as to why Amazon would still partner with them if they are as bad as you say?
I’m confused as to why they would still be in business as well?
We’ll see what happens because they have our pallets.
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Because not all Central Transport hubs or drivers are the same. We have one in Omaha and it is far superior in performance to the one in Atlanta. Just because it sucks for one location does not mean they don’t perform at the core destinations.
Also Amazon hogs trailers so there is slim pickings as to what carriers will deal with Amazons delays and logistics demands.
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I must be lucky.
Our Atlanta CTII, Central Transport, is wonderful.
Last one CTII was shipped 9/12/2023 : delivered 9/14 : checked in 9/18 : receiving 9/18.
No issues.
I like all of these below.
These are the most recent LTL carriers that have not had any issues:
TFroce Freight, TFIN
ESTES, EXLA
Roadway Express, RDWY
Amazon Freight, AMZX
AAA Cooper, AACT
I have not had RoadRunner for Amazon in a long time but use them for our non-Amazon freight if they win the bid.
True.
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Amazon Logistics has been amazing for us and this is the first time in a long time we didn’t get them.
We had one instance where the driver said our dock wasn’t big enough (which was total BS) and refused to pick up. Other than that - issue free and very fast end to end.
First time for CTII. Only other carrier that’s ever handled our LTL was ESTES which was also pretty good.
CTII picked up 3 separate times this week which seemed really foolish considering the 4 pallets (separate shipping plans due to when the batches were finished) were all going to the same Amazon DC.
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I don’t think they’re exactly Amazon’s top pick based on how infrequently they’ve been assigned to us. Seems they only tender out to carriers like them when they’re getting desperate, hence the first time in years they tried to get me to ship with them was right before Prime Day. Heck they assigned Schneider National for a shipment I created over the weekend. I have never even heard of them getting assigned to inbound LTL shipments.
I do agree though that not every terminal is the same and you’ll have your good ones that do a decent job. From what I’ve heard from former drivers each location is run almost like an entirely different company with the majority trending towards subpar performance and rolling with the “no ***** given” attitude.
Who knows, maybe Amazon has figured out they’re more reliable on the East Coast and assigns more shipments to them over there accordingly.
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