Page 33 - ATR 3 2014 web

getting your money’s worth

Tips and cautionary tales from the trenches of contract negotiation

By Jennifer Barnett reed they should push for. Like other industries, transporta-
Contributing Writer “We’ve been deregulated since tion is influenced by macroeconomic
1985, and as a consequence trans- cycles, Zalud said. These cycles mean
The devil is in the details, as the portation contracts are much more that power shifts gradually but regularly
saying goes — and that’s nowhere more prevalent than they used to be and are from shippers to carriers. When cycles
true than in contract negotiation. much more important to the industry,” favor shippers — generally in less pros-
It can be tempting for motor said Zalud, a partner with Benesch perous economic times — they may use
carriers and brokers to breeze past the Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff in that leverage to negotiate contract terms
fine print in the contracts they sign Cleveland, Ohio, and a past president of that favor them.
with shippers, but it isn’t smart. In a the Transportation Lawyers Association. “They can be 800-pound gorillas,”
presentation to the Arkansas Trucking “Contracts really are assets,” Zalud Zalud said. “And a lot of motor car-
Association’s annual conference in said. “This industry more so than many riers will say ‘I want the business, so
May, transportation and logistics others is very relationship-based. It’s what the heck, I’ll sign it,’ and they can
attorney Eric Zalud outlined some of important in the industry to treat all be haunted by what they undertake in
the common mistakes carriers and those contracts as assets — to maintain these contracts.”
brokers make in contract negotiations them and carefully negotiate them, to
and the most important protections carefully draft them.” 

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