Means something else in the trade · B
Backload, which is not a service
Also called a return load, a return journey or an empty leg. If you have been offered one for a date of your choosing, it is worth reading this entry before you accept it.
You cannot book a coincidence. A firm promising a backload on a chosen day is selling an ordinary job under a better-sounding word.
What a genuine backload is
Why the word is used dishonestly
Because it sounds like a discount and costs nothing to say. A firm can quote an entirely ordinary shared load, call it a backload, and give the impression you have been let in on spare capacity.
The test is simple and worth applying. Ask which job the vehicle is already doing and on what date it returns. A firm with a genuine backload can answer; a firm using the word as a price signal cannot.
When a real one is excellent value
When your dates are genuinely open and your load is modest. A vehicle returning empty from a long job has space that costs its operator nothing to fill, and the saving passed on can be substantial.
This is a real part of the trade and there is nothing wrong with it. The problem is the word being applied to things that are not one.
What you are accepting
A date that is not yours to choose. A load that may be transferred at a depot rather than delivered by the crew who collected it. And a plan that can evaporate if the original job moves, because the vehicle only exists because of that job.
For somebody with a flexible month and a modest load, all three are perfectly acceptable. For somebody completing on a fixed date, they are not, and no price makes them so.
What we do instead
We will tell you honestly when we have a vehicle returning in your direction and what space is on it. When we do not, we quote an ordinary shared load and call it that. What we will not do is use the word to make a standard quotation sound like a favour.
"Backload"
Questions about "backload"
- How do I know if a backload is real?
- Ask which job the vehicle is already doing and when it returns. A firm with a genuine one can tell you; a firm using the word as a price signal cannot.
- Can I book a backload for a specific date?
- No, and that is the whole point of this entry. It exists only when a vehicle happens to be going your way, so your dates have to fit the journey.
- Is it cheaper?
- A genuine one, yes, sometimes substantially — because the journey is already being paid for by somebody else. A quotation merely labelled backload is not cheaper by virtue of the label.
- Is my load handled differently?
- It is a share of a vehicle, so a depot transfer may be involved and the crew delivering may not be the crew who collected. Worth knowing before you accept.
- What if the original job moves?
- Then the vehicle moves with it, because that job is the reason the vehicle exists. A genuine backload carries that risk and an honest firm says so at the outset.
- What should I ask for instead?
- A part-load or shared-load quotation, which is the same economics without the mythology. Then ask what the departure depends on.
Not sure which word describes your move?
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and how firm the dates are. If you are unsure which service you actually need, say so — it is the commonest note we get and the easiest to answer.