Taking delivery
Delivery sign-off checklist
Your floor arrives curbside on pallets, on a freight truck. Five minutes at the back of that truck decides whether a damage claim is straightforward or impossible — because the moment you sign a clean delivery receipt, the carrier's liability for what is on those pallets ends. Work through these five steps before the driver leaves.
Before the truck arrives
The carrier calls ahead to book a delivery window. An adult needs to be on site to count, inspect and sign — freight is not left at an empty house, and a note on the door does not count as a signature.
The driver brings the pallets to the tail of the truck at your curb. Moving them up the drive and into the garage is on you, and a pallet of LVP runs 1,500 to 2,200 lbs. Line up two people and a hand truck. If you need a liftgate or inside placement, say so before we book the freight — it cannot be added once the truck is outside.
On your phone is fine. Every step below is a comparison against it, and hunting for the email while a driver waits is how boxes go uncounted.
The five checks, at the truck
Count the boxes against the packing slip
Count the boxes on each pallet and check the total against your slip before you sign anything. Trim is packed in its own brown carton and can travel on a separate pallet or a later truck — planks complete and trim missing is normal, not a shortage. Note what actually arrived either way.
Walk all four sides of every pallet
Look at every box you can see: crushed corners, forklift punctures through the side, torn shrink wrap, boxes bulging out of square. Photograph anything that looks wrong while the truck is still there. If your pallets came double-stacked, write that on the receipt even when you can see no damage — it is the most common reason the boxes underneath turn out to be crushed.
Write the damage on the receipt before you sign
Be specific. “4 boxes crushed, right front corner” is a claim. “Possible damage” or “subject to inspection” is not — carriers reject that wording as a matter of routine. Sign it, then photograph the receipt with your phone before the driver takes their copy. A receipt signed clean ends the carrier's liability, and no photo taken afterwards brings it back.
Open the trim carton and spot-check the planks
Count the stair nose, quarter round, T-mold and reducer against the slip. Then open two or three plank boxes from different places on the pallet: check the click edges are intact and confirm the colour and SKU are what you ordered. Dye lots are consistent within an order, so a box that looks off is worth flagging now rather than on row forty.
Then you are done. Stack the boxes flat in the room where the floor is going and leave them 48 hours to acclimate before anyone opens a click edge. Check the floor is the one you wanted before the first plank goes down — installed flooring cannot be returned, for any reason. If something was damaged, keep going to step 5.
Damage? Email us within 48 hours
Photograph three things — the pallet, the strapping and the individual boxes — and send them with a photo of the signed delivery receipt and your order number to cdlvpflooring@gmail.com. We file the freight claim; you never deal with the carrier, and replacement boxes ship while the claim is still open. Concealed damage, meaning anything you find after the truck has gone, has to reach us within 48 hours of delivery, so open the boxes the day they arrive even if the install is weeks out.
Why the receipt is the whole thing
The delivery receipt is a legal record of the condition the freight was in when it changed hands. Signing it without an exception is a statement that everything arrived in good order, and it is the document a carrier reaches for first when a claim comes in. This is not a CDLVP policy — it is how LTL freight works everywhere, and it is why the two minutes before you sign are worth more than any amount of documentation afterwards.
You are not the only evidence. Every pallet is photographed in our warehouse before it goes on a truck, and that photo is what your delivery-day photos get compared against — which is why a picture of a crushed corner taken at the curb is worth so much more than a description of one a week later.
Once the damage is on the receipt, the rest is ours. Send us the photos and the order number and we handle the carrier, the claim and the replacement boxes.
Common questions
No — and this is the one item on this page we would call a rule rather than advice. Refusing voids most freight claims, sends the whole shipment back to the terminal and adds a week or more to your install. Accept it, write the damage on the receipt, photograph it and send it to us. We ship replacement boxes while the carrier claim is still open, so you are never waiting on a claim to get your floor.
Count the boxes anyway — that part is quick and it is the part that matters most. You are entitled to inspect before signing, and the driver's schedule does not change that. If you are genuinely rushed, write “driver refused inspection time” on the receipt next to your signature, photograph it, and call us the same day.
Damage you only find once the boxes are open — a cracked plank inside an outwardly fine carton, usually from an impact that did not mark the outside. It is a real and recognised claim type, but it carries a deadline: ours is 48 hours from delivery. That is the reason to open boxes on delivery day even when the install is scheduled for later in the month.
Three different clocks, measuring three different problems.
Freight damage — 48 hours. Anything that happened to your pallets between our warehouse and your curb. The window is short because the claim is against the carrier and their clock is short.
Wrong product shipped — 7 days. A different SKU or colour than you ordered.
Manufacturer defect — 6 months. A fault in the plank itself: warping, delamination, a print defect, a locking system that will not hold. Nothing to do with the truck, so it gets a long window.
A crushed box is freight damage. A bevel milled wrong is a defect. If you cannot tell which you are looking at, send the photos inside 48 hours and you are covered either way.
Not most of it. Orders of one to three boxes ship FedEx or UPS to your front door, no appointment and no signature, so there is no delivery receipt to annotate and no pallet to walk around. Open them the day they land and check the planks anyway — the 48-hour window and the same email address still apply.
A scuffed or dented carton on a pallet that has been across the country is common and usually cosmetic — the planks inside are typically fine. What matters is crushing through the corner of a box, punctures, or a pallet that has clearly been dropped. Photograph it, note it, open it. Buying 10% over your measured area exists partly for this.
Yes, along with the packaging, until the claim closes. Carriers can ask to inspect, and a claim on material that has already gone in a dumpster is a claim that gets denied. Set them aside somewhere dry and we will tell you when they can go.
Us, on (786) 723-7407, while the driver is still there. That is far more useful than working it out afterwards — most of what goes wrong at a delivery is fixable in the two minutes before a signature, and unfixable in the two minutes after.
Something not right?
Email cdlvpflooring@gmail.com with your order number and photos, or call (786) 723-7407. If the driver is still outside, call — it is almost always fixable at that point.