Terms of Use

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

NearLoad Connect is an online load board at nearloadconnect.ca, operated by NearLoad Connect ("NearLoad Connect", "we", "us"). Shippers post loads, carriers post availability, and the two find each other, agree terms and record the work.

These terms are an agreement between NearLoad Connect and the business you sign up ("your business", "you"). They include the Acceptable Use Policy and the Cancellation and Refund Terms. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information. When we say "member", we mean a business with an account on NearLoad Connect; the people who sign in act for it.

NearLoad Connect is released in stages. Where these terms describe a feature your business does not have yet, that part applies once it does.

2. Who may join

NearLoad Connect is for businesses only: organizations shipping or carrying freight in the course of their business, including sole proprietors. It is not for shipping personal goods. A shipper posts only freight its own business ships; freight brokers and freight forwarders may not post loads for others.

The person who signs up a business becomes its account owner. By accepting these terms they confirm that they are 19 or older and have authority to bind the business. We record that confirmation, with the version of these terms and the time.

Your business is responsible for everything done through its account, including by the people it invites. Invite only people who work for your business, and only with their agreement to be contacted about it. Each person signs in as themselves; do not share a sign-in.

3. Where NearLoad Connect works

NearLoad Connect serves Canada outside Quebec: every load and availability you post must start and end in a province or territory we serve. For now, your business address must be in British Columbia, and every load and availability you post must start or end there. We do not accept loads or availability that start or end in Quebec or outside Canada.

4. Freight we do not accept

We do not accept port container drayage: moving shipping containers to or from a port's container terminals. We do not accept freight that is illegal to ship or carry.

Dangerous goods are allowed when the load says so. The Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act puts its duties on whoever offers, handles or transports the goods, which means the members involved, never NearLoad Connect. Nothing NearLoad Connect records is a dangerous goods shipping document.

5. What NearLoad Connect is, and what it is not

NearLoad Connect is a place to find, agree and record freight work. It is not a freight broker, carrier, freight forwarder, shipping agent or party to any deal between members.

• We do not set or suggest prices. Members agree their own terms with each other.
• We do not receive, hold or pay money for freight, and we do not invoice for it.
• We do not book, award, dispatch or assign a vehicle or driver on anyone's behalf. The shipper awards; the carrier confirms and decides which vehicle and driver do the work.
• We do not issue bills of lading.
• We do not promise that a load or vehicle is available, that a member will do what it agreed, or that you will be paid. Membership includes no fraud protection and no assurance of payment.

When members agree, the agreement is between them. The booking record shows what they agreed and what happened, as each of them recorded it.

6. Checks and labels

Some members show labels such as a business identity, operating authority or insurance check. A label means only this: NearLoad Connect checked that item, against the source the label names, on the date it shows. It appears only while the check is current and disappears by itself when the evidence expires or is withdrawn.

A label is not a guarantee, an endorsement or a promise about how a member will behave. We check what the label says and nothing more, and a document can be forged or a situation can change after we check it. Do your own checks before you hand over freight or start work, especially for valuable freight. You decide whom to deal with and on what terms; a label is information for that decision, not a recommendation.

Holding the operating authority and insurance the law requires is the carrier's legal duty. Keep your evidence accurate and current, and tell us promptly when something changes.

7. Your account

Give accurate information about your business and keep it up to date. Keep your sign-in secure. Some roles must use a second sign-in factor. Tell us at once if you think someone else has used your account.

8. Listings, offers and bookings

Post only real freight and real capacity, described accurately: the vehicle, sizes, weights, dates and places. Mark a load covered, or withdraw it, as soon as it is no longer available. Listings expire by themselves.

An offer, counteroffer, award and confirmation are recorded as you make them and cannot be changed afterwards; a correction is a new entry. When a shipper awards an offer and the carrier confirms, the two of them have an agreement on the terms the booking shows. Until the freight is delivered, either party may cancel a booking in the app with a reason; what a cancellation costs, if anything, is for the two members to settle under their agreement.

9. Bills of lading, proof of delivery and electronic records

The bill of lading is the carrier's document. A carrier may upload or photograph its own on a booking; NearLoad Connect did not issue it and does not check what it says.

Proof of delivery on NearLoad Connect is the driver's photos, the name of the person who received the freight, typed in the app in place of a signature, either "received in good order" or the exceptions noted, and the time on the device and the time we received it. These electronic records are how NearLoad Connect records delivery, and either party to a booking may use them as evidence; what they prove between the two of you is for you and, if it comes to it, a court to decide. NearLoad Connect does not check who received the freight or whether they were entitled to.

Keep your own copies of the records you may need later: we anonymize them after the periods in our Privacy Policy.

10. Your content

What you post stays yours: listings, messages, photos, documents, reports and replies. It is your business's own statement, and your business is responsible for it. NearLoad Connect does not check or endorse it, except that we check the documents behind a check for what its label names. You give NearLoad Connect permission to store, copy, show and process it as needed to run NearLoad Connect and to keep the records our Privacy Policy describes. We publish counts and other statistics that identify no member or person.

Content about another member must be factual and about your own dealings with them. A carrier's report of how a shipper paid covers only a booking the two of them completed, and the shipper may reply. A report must be true to the best of your knowledge; you are responsible for it and for correcting it if it stops being true. Do not post anything unlawful, misleading or defamatory, or anyone's personal information beyond what the work needs.

We do not review content before it appears. We review content that is reported to us and may hide or remove content that breaks these terms.

11. Reports, disputes and cases

You can report a listing, member, message or booking. A party to a booking can open a case about it, with evidence. NearLoad Connect staff review cases about conduct on NearLoad Connect, such as false listings, abuse or breaking these terms, and may hide content, suspend a member or close an account.

Disputes about the deal itself, such as payment, rates, loss, damage or delay, are between the members involved. NearLoad Connect is not a party to them. NearLoad Connect does not decide who owes whom. Each party keeps access to the records of its own booking and may use them as evidence. Members may agree between themselves where such a dispute is decided; otherwise either may pursue it before any court or tribunal that has jurisdiction over the other.

12. Copyright notices

If we receive a notice claiming that content you posted infringes copyright, and the notice meets the Copyright Act's requirements, we forward it to you electronically, tell the claimant we did, and keep the records the Act requires for the time it requires. We do not judge the claim. You are responsible for the content you post and for answering the claimant; we may hide content that is the subject of a credible notice while you do.

13. Notifications

We send account and security messages, such as email confirmation, sign-in and security alerts, and changes to these terms, as long as you have an account. We also send the alerts you choose: new offers, bookings and messages, matches for your saved searches, news of the reports and cases your business is part of, and the results of your checks, with reminders before your evidence expires. You can turn each alert on or off, by channel, in your account settings. Every email from us names the operator, and every alert email also links to those settings.

An alert carries only a listing's public details, or says who a message is from; it never contains the message itself.

We do not send marketing messages unless you agree to receive them, and each one would let you unsubscribe.

14. Membership, billing and cancellation

The Cancellation and Refund Terms explain what membership costs, how it is billed, and how to cancel. If you ever pay for membership, you pay only through our payment processor's pages; card details never reach NearLoad Connect.

15. Suspension and closing an account

Unless your business is suspended, the account owner can close your business's account in the app at any time, after withdrawing its open listings and finishing or cancelling the offers and bookings under way.

We may suspend or close an account, or hide a listing, if a member breaks these terms or the law, gives false information, or puts other members at risk. Where fraud or someone's safety is involved, we may act at once and give our reasons afterwards. We tell the account owner what we decided and why, unless the law or someone's safety prevents it. The account owner may ask us to review the decision by replying with any information we should consider; where we can, someone who did not make the first decision reviews it. We keep a record of each decision.

16. Our service

We provide NearLoad Connect as it is and as available, and we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or free of errors. We may change or remove features. Listings and other members' information come from members, and we are not responsible for their accuracy.

Maps, address search and routes use Amazon Location Service and its data providers. Their data sources and attributions are listed at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/location/latest/developerguide/data-attribution.html.

17. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

NearLoad Connect is not liable for what members do or fail to do, for freight or its loss, damage, theft or delay, for payment between members, or for decisions you make on the strength of a listing, a label or a check we made or did not make. A label describes a document or registry entry on a date, and our only responsibility for a wrong label is to correct it. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profit, revenue or business.

Otherwise, our total liability to your business for all claims together is limited to the greater of the membership fees your business paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose and 100 Canadian dollars.

These limits apply however a claim arises, including in contract, negligence or other tort, or under a statute, and whether or not we were told the loss was possible. They do not apply to our own fraud or deliberate wrongdoing.

18. Indemnity

Your business will compensate NearLoad Connect for claims by others, and the reasonable costs of answering them, that arise from your business's freight dealings, its listings and other content, or its breach of these terms or the law, except to the extent a claim is caused by NearLoad Connect's own breach of these terms. We will tell the account owner about such a claim promptly and will not settle it in your business's name without its agreement.

19. Law and disputes with NearLoad Connect

These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. If your business has a dispute with NearLoad Connect, we ask that you tell us first at info@nearloadconnect.ca so we can try to resolve it within 30 days. The courts of British Columbia and, for claims within its jurisdiction, the Civil Resolution Tribunal have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim against NearLoad Connect; NearLoad Connect may bring a claim against your business there or where your business is located. There is no arbitration clause and no waiver of class proceedings.

20. Changes to these terms

Each version of these terms has a date. When we change them, we tell the account owner by email, and the account owner is asked to accept the new version for your business the next time they use the app. Changes take effect when accepted. If your business does not accept a change, it may close its account.

21. Notices

We send notices to the account owner's email address. Send notices to NearLoad Connect at info@nearloadconnect.ca.

22. General

These terms, with the documents they include, are the whole agreement between your business and NearLoad Connect about using NearLoad Connect. Our public pages and help describe NearLoad Connect generally; what we promise is in these terms. If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term at once, we can still enforce it later. Your business may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to whoever operates NearLoad Connect after us, and we will tell the account owner if we do.