Belt Auction

I recently joined an industry that I think is practicing unfair business?

I am working in the auto transport business as an auto transporter, picking up reposessed and lease returns and delivering them to the local auto auction house for a fee. About 5 months ago the auction began taking a 15% "Discount" off of our fee if they pay our invoices within 2 weeks. My company has paid roughly $35,000 in "discounts". Talking to auction employees and other transporters, the 15% is not applied to all transporters. The biggest transporter company objected to the fee and the auction stopped charging them. My company is small and because we are afraid of losing our entire business if "blacklisted" by the auction we have bitten our lips and paid the fee, or rather have allowed to have it removed from our payment checks with only mild protest. My questions are first, the transportation fees are paid by finance companys that own the cars, not by the auction. Do they know the auction is taking a 15%? Second since it is not uniformly applied, is it not an unfair practice? The 15% fee could not hit at a worse time, with fuel at all time highs and already bare bones payment rates, we are in definite danger of going out of business. What can we do? I thought of going to management, but again if we make them angry they simply wont consign any cars for us to move and we're done. Ay advice? Is what they are doing illegal? (we're in CA). The crazy way the industry works, we have no contract - none of the transporters is on contract that I know of. We are considered "vendors" independent of the auction house. Thats why it is so easy for them to cast us adrift without any regard for my people or how they support their families. Sorry, Link answer didnt work... Foucs?????

Public Comments

1. Get a lawyer to go over your contract with them.
2. Welcome to the auto transport industry. I hope you have enough other experiences in our industry to stay. Some of the auctions are actually requiring a kickback after the bills are paid in order to receive continued assignments. If the resulting rate is no longer profitable then you may need to search out other sources of work while you survive on the %85 that is left. No matter what, it is important that no one customer is more than %20 of your overall revenue. I think it is imperative that your little company diversify.