Don't ship with these guys
Gernot Guenther
Submitted this review about
AVG Trucking LLC
Review made Live: 3/7/2012 5:29:00 PM
This is about my experience with AVG Trucking LLC, located in Goshen, NY. They use two facebook pages where they go by AVG Horse Transport (http://www.facebook.com/pages/AVG-Horse-Transport/127993930609341 and http://www.facebook.com/AVGHorseTransport), which still say that they are located in Strousburg, PA, but that is no longer the case. Their phone numbers are Jeanne @ (845) 294-6254 and Angel (not sure about the spelling) @ (845) 270-8196.
We found them through the uship website, looking for a shipper for our horse Rosie from NY to TX. Luckily, our horse was not in transit at the time when they had their two truck breakdowns in January, but our pickup got delayed by almost two weeks. This was a huge inconvenience as my wife had flown back from TX to NY specifically to be there when they picked up the horse. In the end, due to the continued pushing out of the pickup time, she was not even able to be there and we had to inconvenience the owner of the farm where she was boarded with helping during pickup.
Their communication was really bad throughout the whole affair. We only found out that they were delayed when we called them the day before the scheduled pick-up to find out when they would be there, and we had to keep calling before pickup and during transit to get any information at all. Also, they flat-out lied about the transit time. Originally we were told that they would drive all day with breaks every three hours and a layover at a vet facility in Kentucky. We asked them how many days worth of grain and supplements we should provide and the answer was three, so we assumed a transit time of two or three days. In the end, we had provided grain and supplements for five days, and they ran out because they were on the road for an entire week! Pickup was Wednesday morning, and she arrived Tuesday night.
We had debated between using shippers and buying a truck and trailer and moving Rosie ourselves, and one of the reasons we chose the shippers was that we were told it would be a lot less stressful for Rosie to be shipped together with other horses rather than being alone in the trailer. However, shipping with AVG, she was alone on their trailer for three days before they picked up more horses on the way.
AVG has a big seven horse trailer, but it's not very horse friendly. There are seven little compartments for the horses which don't allow any room to move or even lower their heads (there's a hay feeder installed in such a way as to prevent that). When Rosie arrived, there were less than 7 horses on the trailer, but still all of them were in their little compartments, rather than opening it up at least a little and letting one or two of them have more room. Also, while Rosie was unloaded, the other horses stayed in the trailer and like I said, weren't even able to lower their heads. Not much of a break for them, and I can only assume that that would have been the same throughout the trip.
The strain of the trip on Rosie was clearly visible. She was very anxious and took days to settle down a little bit, and her flanks were deeply sunken in from dehydration. I am completely convinced that we could have done a lot better if we had transported her ourselves.
She would have been alone on the trailer, but the trip would have been shorter, and she would have had some room to move around and lower her head.
Due to the delayed pick-up and the unexpected length of the trip, Rosie's health papers expired during the transportation, and AVG agreed to get her a new health certificate at no extra charge at a vet facility on the way. However, they "forgot" to get this health certificate, and also forgot (and I forgot to ask for it) to leave her paperwork with us when they dropped her off. I called the same night and Angel promised he would immediately mail it to me, but it's been a month and I haven't received anything.
To top it all off, they lost an expensive saddle pad which they had agreed to bring. We had asked them, and they had agreed to take a saddle, since we figured it would be better for the saddle to be on a saddle stand than bunched together and end up in a weird shape on the back seat of our car, and they also took a bag of feed, some tack, and a saddle pad. The saddle pad never made it, and while Angel originally said they would of course reimburse me if they couldn't find the saddle pad and ship it to me, after a long time of not answering my emails and phone calls, they refused to reimburse me and even questioned whether they had received the saddle pad at all (and we unfortunately hadn't made them sign a list of received items).
Angel seems to be reasonably horse-savvy, but overall, their rig is not horse-friendly, and they are completely unprofessional and untrustworthy. Save yourself the headache and stay away from them.
