Resources / What Happens If We Can’t Complete Your Delivery
Delivery Policy
What Happens If We Can’t Complete Your Delivery
How the failed-delivery fee works, what causes it, and the three scenarios that decide what a missed delivery actually costs you.
The short version
If our truck arrives and we can’t complete your delivery — locked gate, no clear dump location, no one reachable on site — three things happen:
- The original material and delivery you’ve already paid for don’t come back to you. We’ve already paid the quarry, we’ve already run the truck.
- A $250 failed-delivery fee is charged to cover what we lose: disposal of the material if we can’t keep it, and the disruption to the rest of the day’s runs.
- To get the order delivered, you’ll be charged for new material and a new delivery — unless we can recover the load (more on that below).
Real cost on a typical $700 order is closer to $1,400 if everything goes the worst way. We don’t want that any more than you do. Below is exactly how it works and how we work with you when we can.
Why every delivery already has a fee built in
The moment our truck rolls toward your site, we’ve committed to a list of fixed costs: fuel, equipment depreciation, the driver, dispatch coordination, and a slot on the day’s schedule that no one else can have. That’s what your delivery fee covers. It’s not a “shipping fee” — it’s the operating cost of getting one specific truck to one specific site at one specific window.
Once that truck has rolled, those costs are gone whether or not the load drops. That’s the part most contractors don’t think about until something goes wrong.
What counts as a failed delivery
A failed delivery happens when we arrive ready to dump but can’t:
- Site access blocked — locked gate, no code, vehicle in the way, no one to let us in
- No safe dump location — soft ground, overhead obstructions, unclear staging, structures in the path
- No reachable contact — driver can’t reach anyone to confirm where the load goes
- Site conditions unsafe — anything that puts equipment, the driver, or your property at risk
What does not count:
- Extreme weather causes cancellation, our equipment fails, or our scheduling error
- We arrived outside the window without giving you reasonable notice
- Anything that’s our problem, not yours
The $250 fee — what it actually covers
When a delivery fails, the load doesn’t disappear. We have to do something with it, and that something has a cost:
- Disposal. If we can’t return the material to the quarry (most quarries don’t take loads back), we pay a disposal site to take it. Sometimes we have to pay someone else to take it off our hands. The $250 covers that.
- Schedule disruption. Our trucks run tight routes — every failed delivery pushes the rest of the day’s stops back, sometimes triggering its own cascade of late arrivals. Other contractors get worse service because of one site that wasn’t ready.
- The aborted run. Driver hours, fuel, and the empty leg back to the yard.
The fee isn’t profit. It’s roughly what we’re out of pocket on an average failed run, and it’s intentionally simple — one number, no haggling.
Three ways a failed delivery actually plays out
| Scenario | What happens | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Worst case | Material has been disposed of. Original material + delivery: gone. $250 fee. To deliver, you need new material and a new delivery. | Roughly 2× the original total |
| Salvageable | We found another contractor who can use it, or we can hold it on a future run. Original delivery: gone. Fee may be reduced. New delivery at a discounted rate (no return trip to the quarry). New material may be waived. | Significantly less — depends on what we recover |
| Quick recall | You call dispatch before we leave the area. Truck turns around, load delivers as planned. Fee may be reduced or waived. | Close to the original order — minimal extra |
The takeaway: we don’t operate on “$250 fixes everything.” We operate on “minimize the loss for both of us.” If you call dispatch the second you realize there’s a problem, your costs go down dramatically.
How to avoid it (the 30-second version)
Three things prevent almost every failed delivery:
- Gate code or keypad — write it in the delivery instructions field at checkout
- Exact dump location — driveway, lot corner, behind the garage — be specific
- Reachable phone — make sure the contact you list will actually pick up during your delivery window
If you’re not sure about access, send dispatch a photo of the site before delivery day. Five minutes upfront saves the whole headache.
A word on fairness
We don’t want to charge anyone $250. We also don’t want to spread the cost of one job site that wasn’t ready across every other contractor’s pricing — that’s how delivery prices creep up over time, and that’s not the business we’re trying to run.
When you do everything right and we still can’t deliver because of something on our end — extreme weather causes cancellation, our equipment fails, our scheduling miss — the fee doesn’t apply and we make it right. When the issue is on the site side, the fee applies. That’s the deal, and it keeps prices low for everyone who shows up ready.
If we can find a way to reduce the impact on you — material recovered, trip salvaged — we will, every time.