Lorry hire

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Annieryan

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23 September 2016
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I hired a 3.5 ton last week with a driver for a half hour drive each way and a two hour wait. horse would not load. He is a tricky loader at the best of times but goes on after 15 mins or so normally. How long would you say a reasonable time to wait? Driver was getting annoyed after an hour and left after an hour and a half. Bearing in mind I assumed I had 3 hours in total would you expect any sort of refund?
 
I'd have said you hired the box for 3 hours, regardless of whether you actually went anywhere or not. If the driver left after an hour and half then I would be looking for half the cost refunded. Maybe check their terms and conditions of hire to make sure there's not get-out clause in there for them.
From the drivers perspective, he could be worrying that it'll take another hour and half to re-load on the way home, but surely they would just charge you extra for that. Unless they were booked out again straight after, which would be a daft thing to do as you just never know with transporting horses.
Tricky one, but hope you get some money back as I think the driver should have at least hung around for 3 hours, even if you hadn't actually left the yard.
 
Did the driver not have a rational conversation with you about what their timing looked like for the day and therefore what that would mean for your trip? I agree that you should be entitled to your allocated three hours (and should pay for that whether you use it or not), but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect that the driver could overrun that time by a significant amount on no notice even if you were willing to pay for the extra time. They may have other things to do afterwards. I would expect them to discuss it with you though.
 
It sounds like the driver assumed once the horse had loaded, you'd still want to box up and go to the destination. Which could have meant the horse would be a bugger to load on the way back, and mess up his day.

Most drivers I know have a clause to say that if the horse hasn't loaded after X amount of time, they will leave.

In your situation I would have made it clear that we wouldn't need to go over the allotted time of three hours, but you want to get the horse on the lorry regardless. Sounds like there was some miscommunication all round.
 
If he'd been there for 90 minutes and horse then loaded, he potentially had another 3 hours+++ if horse doesn't load on return journey on top according to your original plan so I can understand why he left (although doesn't sound as he was very pleasant).

As he was only there for 90 minutes, you should be refunded the other 90 minutes in this case.
 
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