Why you don't ship Common Carrier..

One of my customers who lives in North Dakota ordered several pieces of leather upholstery from me and because of her location, delivery options were limited. She elected to use Old Dominion Freight, a common LTL carrier for the shipping. I generally avoid using Common Carriers as they are simply too rough on the furniture and ALWAYS fight you on claims. All the pieces shipped fine except for the main item, a beautiful Hancock and Moore leather sofa. This is the story of that sofa....

Common carriers use transfer terminals to move loads around and they use forklifts to load the trucks within those terminals. They rarely load by hand. The problem is furniture is not packed for forklift use nor designed to ride next to the steel and bulk that Common Carriers haul. Lots of damage as a percentage of the load is the result. Sure enough, the freight company managed to shear the legs off the sofa, clearly from the forklifts. While Old Dominion acknowledged the damage, they refused to return the piece to Hancock and Moore for a proper restoration on this $ 6,000 sofa saying it was too costly to them to ship it back. Instead, they wanted to get a local North Dakota person to fix them, but this was a major repair on an expensive piece, outside the skill set of your local handyman woodworker. I advised against this and said they should demand a return to H&M, that's the only way to get it back to "as new" condition. Old Dominion stood firm so my advice was to sue in Small Claims Court for the full amount of the sofa, and they did file papers and serve them on the freight company. Once Old Dominion was served by the Sheriff, they quickly agreed to return the sofa to H&M and cover the cost of repairs. This took place over 6 to 8 weeks time, and both myself and the customer spent a lot of time on this, myself in an advisory role and eventually coordinating the return.

Hancock and Moore restored the sofa and I cautioned against a re-ship on Old Dominion, but it did go back to North Dakota on their truck and this time they really did a number on it, with both water damage from a leak in the roof of the trailer that ruined the leather and also some crush damage, again from the forklifts. This time the sofa beyond repair in my opinion and I advised my customer to demand full value reimbursement and let Old Dominion salvage the piece. O.D. balked but finally agreed to pay the day before the lawsuit was to take place, they were not going to prevail in Court and knew it. The customer elected not to reorder the sofa...

Any shipper I recommend will always be a fine furniture carrier, which doesn't mean they never damage a piece, but it will mean the don't use forklifts in loading and are always easier to work with in the event of a claim. Just say "no" to common carriers ships in furniture!