How students hiring broker led to cars being shipped to wrong state

CHARLOTTE — Let’s say you’re moving and you want to ship your car instead of driving.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Students hire company to ship cars from Seattle to Atlanta; cars end up in Charlotte

You go online and hire a company.

Well, sometimes, that company is a “broker” -- a middleman-- which matches you up with an actual shipping company.

And that’s what this is about, a broker.

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Rene and her roommate were in Seattle and headed to Atlanta for grad school. They shipped their cars. But the price ended up being more than they expected.

They refused to pay. So the company brought their cars to Charlotte.

“I am a little bit overwhelmed,” said Rene. “A lot overwhelmed.”

Turns out, they thought they hired a broker -- which hired a certain shipping company -- for a certain price.

But the company actually transported the cars -- Adult Trucking -- told me the students had hired a ‘different’ broker -- Major Auto Transport USA -- which hired ‘Adults Trucking’ -- for about double the price.

“This is one of those things where you kind of just don’t believe that you’re in this,” said Rene.

Another shipping company -- Kerri Ritter’s -- saw my report and told me they had problems with Major Auto as well.

“To be blunt, I’m pissed,” said Ritter.

She said they transported a pickup truck from Memphis to Oregon and that the customer paid Major Auto, but that Major Auto never paid them.

“$4,700,” Ritter said.

They filled a claim against Major Auto’s insurance, filed a complaint with the FMCSA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and reported Major Auto to Truckstop.com -- the website where Ritter said Major Auto posted the job in the first place.

“We had to eat the money that we were supposed to get paid plus our cost for driving from Memphis, Tennessee to Oregon,” said Ritter.

Adults Trucking said they found Rene’s job on Truckstop.com as well.

Truckstop.com emailed me they’ve “blocked” Major Auto from their site, saying three carriers filed non-payment complaints against the broker.

“We are not established enough in the business to say OK we can go without this for a while,” Ritter said.

Meanwhile, ‘another’ website -- Broker Snapshot -- which claims to help companies in the trucking world vet each other, emailed me someone sent them a complaint about Major Auto.

And more problems for Major Auto. The FMCSA posted this warning about the company: “Insurance cancelled -- NOT AUTHORIZED to operate as a PROPERTY BROKER.”

“Every other broker we’ve dealt with has been really polite. They’ve held up their ends of everything. They pay us when they say they’re going to pay us,” said Ritter.

So what does this mean for you?

Research the company you’re talking to. Check out Broker Snapshot and SAFER Web.
If something seems off: don’t sign anything until you feel comfortable.
Remember: brokers can be great. But you don’t need one. You can cut out the middleman -- work with a carrier you trust directly.

VIDEO: Students hire company to ship cars from Seattle to Atlanta; cars end up in Charlotte