A Factoring Company Can Help Truckers Avoid Bad Debts

It’s hard enough these days for owner operators and trucking companies to find good paying loads, let alone worrying about getting paid after they deliver. In these tough economic times, many shippers and freight brokers are in trouble. The payment flows in most sectors are slowing down, and in many cases brokers and shippers pass that on to the truckers by changing their payment terms from 30 to 60 days in their contracts. You need to keep running, so what can you do to avoid getting stiffed?  Here are some tips…..

If you are watching “load boards” to find freight, they often include some credit indications for the broker that has posted the load. It’s not a coincidence that loads that pay decent may have less than perfect credit indicators. Despite the temptation to take those loads, ask yourself if you can afford to wait 60 – 90 days to get paid, and if you have the time and patience to call every week to check on your payment.

If you use a factoring company, most will check credit on the brokers and shippers you are planning to run for. There is usually no charge for that information. But unless your agreement with your factoring company is a “non-recourse” relationship, a broker/shipper’s failure to pay may still come back on you. Check the fine print in your factoring agreement…  If the words “with recourse” appear, you still have all the bad debt risk.

At W W Payment Systems we are truly a “no-recourse” factor. Because we take all the credit risk when we buy a load from a trucker, we check credit on brokers and shippers constantly.  We have a decade of our own payment experience with thousands of broker/shippers. We use four different credit reporting organizations to quadruple check payment trends. To keep our trucking customers focused on loads for credit-worthy broker/shippers, we maintain a list of “Approved Broker/Shippers” on our website that we monitor every day. Our truckers can check credit for their loads on-line, and if the name is on our list, we guaranty to buy that load after delivery and the trucker has no further payment risk… period. They get their no-risk payment for that load the next business day.

If you have had to swallow load “charge backs”, or direct billing bad debts, check out our approved broker/shipper list at www.wwpaysys.com/brokers-shippers/, then give us a call. You can solve the risk of bad debts… and we can help you do it.