Missed Pickup

A missed pickup happens when a carrier that has accepted a tender doesn't show up to collect the freight within the agreed-upon time window. It's one of the most disruptive exceptions in outbound logistics because it immediately puts the entire downstream schedule at risk – the delivery appointment, the customer's receiving plan, and potentially the product's shelf life if you're shipping perishables. For shippers in cold chain and food and beverage, a missed pickup on a temperature-sensitive load can mean spoilage, waste, and a scramble to re-source product.

Missed pickups happen for several reasons: carrier capacity issues (the carrier overcommitted and can't cover the load), driver availability problems (hours-of-service limits, breakdowns, no-shows), communication failures (wrong address, wrong pickup number, facility was closed), or simply a carrier deciding to prioritize a higher-paying load. Whatever the cause, the shipper's response needs to be fast – identify that the pickup was missed, re-tender to a backup carrier (often at higher spot market rates), and notify the consignee of the delay.

The cost of a missed pickup extends well beyond the immediate re-tender premium. Late deliveries trigger retailer chargebacks and compliance penalties. Perishable goods may lose shelf life or require disposal. Customer relationships erode when delivery commitments slip. And the logistics team burns hours on emergency calls instead of planned work. This is why proactive alerting matters – a system that flags when a pickup confirmation hasn't been received within a defined window gives the team time to intervene before the window closes entirely, rather than discovering the miss hours later when the consignee calls asking where their freight is.