Tracking, Check Calls, Sending Photos. Is It Too Much? | Final Mile 140

Nate Cross & Ben Kowalski answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:

🤝 Co-brokering with different factoring companies: possible?

⚠️ FreightGuard report removal help needed

📡 Carrier frustrated with tracking, communication overload

Support Our Sponsors:

Togo: Click Here

OperFi: Click Here

QuikSkope - Get a Free Trial: Click Here

DAT One - Brokers & Carriers: Click Here to get 10% off your first year!

DAT Outgo Factoring for Carriers: Click Here

AscendTMS: Click Here and use promo code RA-freight360! to get AscendTMS FREE for 90 days!

Recommended Products: Click Here
Freight Broker Basics Course: Click Here
Join Our Facebook Group: Click Here
Check out all of our content online: Click Here

Transcript

Co-Brokering With Different Factoring

SPEAKER_00 0:19

All right, welcome back for another edition of the final mile. We're up to 140, something like that. Um, this is all listener QA. So if you guys have a question, make sure to send us a message through our website or leave a comment on YouTube or um email us at info at freight360.net, and we take the best ones that we find can add the most value and share them each week on our QA session here. Um, if you're new to this, you can search on our website if you have a specific question. There's likely going to be um some kind of content related to it. Check out the sponsors in the description box to help support the channel. And let's get into it. Ben, our first one, we did a we had a discussion about co-brokering and factoring on, I believe, last week's QA. And someone had asked, How does co-brokering work if you both have different factoring companies? Is it even possible?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

You can't factor a load through two co-brokerages, maybe through LTL co-brokerage and maybe through intermodal.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Explain that to me because the anytime I uh but I also when I do co-brokerage, it's in a different way of the traditional and um never had an issue. But what is your explanation of it?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Because you guys don't factor.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

We don't specifically no, but other other folks that I've worked with and help set up co-brokerage, they do factor.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

So here's where the they won't factor. At least I've run into this probably at least a dozen times. So if Pierce and me at White Chark are co-brokering, you and I, right? So you're gonna book the loads, okay? And I'm dealing with a customer in this example, right? And say I factor. The reason I can't factor the invoices that I run with Pierce is because the factoring company now has a payment risk. The factoring company knows they paid Pierce, they can verify they paid Pierce.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Let's pretend me and you both own a brokerage, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

So we'll call it logistics innate logistics.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Okay, so talk me through in that scenario. Let's say I'm I'm broker A, and I'm going to co-broker to you, broker B, and then you're going to contract a truck.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So you have the scenario that I don't personally ever do, but let's go through the hypothetical of it.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

So you have the customer side, I have the carrier side. You're broker A, I'm broker B. Typically, like you can't factor the loads that I run for you. And here's why. Because the factoring company has a risk of payment issues, right? So what will happen is if you're factoring, if you factor and I run the load for you, your factoring company won't allow you to factor the invoice you booked with Ben's brokerage because they can't verify or prove or make sure that Ben's brokerage paid the right truck or any truck. They can prove that they paid me on your behalf.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

But if I can factor my invoice and get my money from No, because here's what happens. But just a customer, if I'm just doing just the uh the uh invoice side of it, not having the factory company pay my invoice to the because it's it's the it's the risk of double payment.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So what happens is let's say I'm a terrible broker, right? And one, I just don't pay the truck with the money your factoring gave me. Okay. That trucking company will come back to me in 45 days and be like, Ben's brokerage, you didn't pay me. I go, Yeah, I paid you, don't worry about it. They might file on my bond, but then they can now go to the shipper, which is your customer. They go to Nate's brokerage's customer, Acme Supply, and say, I ran this load for you and Ben's brokerage didn't pay me. Your customer, right, is still on the hook to pay that truck. They're gonna go to you and say, Nate, we paid you. And your factoring company is gonna be like, Yeah, we paid Ben's brokerage. And that truck's gonna go, I don't care who you paid, I still need paid. So I'm either gonna sue the shipper or I'm gonna come after Nate for my money. Then the factoring company is on the hook to pay it twice because your shipper won't pay your factoring company until that truck's paid the second time. Do you see what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Interesting. Have you I I've never been in that situation. Um it happens a lot. Have you have you seen that firsthand?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yes. Because when you talk to the factoring companies, they're like, listen, when we can't verify the company that actually performed the service, we don't know if the person we're paying is actually going to pay that carrier. And at the end of the day, like at an RR example, imagine if if your brokerage was co-brokering with R and you paid them 100 grand last year, then RR goes out of business and didn't pay any of those carriers. Every one of those carriers can come back at your customers and theoretically your factoring company and be like, you know, owe us 100 grand and your your customers owe it, but you're probably gonna end up paying some of it. And then the factoring company is definitely not getting any of that hundred grand or their shipper goes after them, and those get tied up in court. So, like, unless the factoring company can verify who ran the load and say, we know we paid the company that performed the service, they won't factor it because it's a risk for them.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

But LTL is a little different, right? And also, like, I've seen factored invoices like for like intermodal and LTL, because like those are technically also co-brokerages. Yeah. But they can verify who performed the work because like in intermodal, you have it's a train. So like it's not like oh the wrong train pricked it up, picked it up, right? Or didn't pick it up. Like, so those ones I haven't seen that issue with, and I haven't seen as many issues on like LTO because like it's pretty verifiable what network it went through.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yes, agreed. Okay, well, hey, I learned something new there. So all right, let's hop into our here's one other thing.

Why Factoring Blocks Double Payment Risk

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, this is another thing that I've worked through, and this is something that comes up a lot. Like, if a company, right, a manufacturer shipper opens a brokerage, right, they typically can't factor the loads at the brokerage that the company gives them because even though technically they're two different legal entities, they're so closely related that there's such a potential for like cash flow fraud. Yeah that typically factoring companies won't allow you to factor loads to the other company you own, even if it's like a manufacturer or a shipper, even like larger ones.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

So these shippers that have in-house brokerages, that's where or I've seen it with like um farms that have all three parts of the equation. They're a shipper, they have an in-house brokerage, and they've got some trucks too. So interesting. Cool. All right, our next question. Um, this is from a carrier. A freight guard report has been placed on our company. Is there any any way or anyone who can help us get it removed? Um, so I want to kind of expand this out to not just freight guards, but any kinds of negative reports. So if you have a bad rating on DAT or Google's like a very common one, like leave them a one-star review on Google. My best practice on this, and it's been kind of like a company philosophy that we've run with at Pierce, is to respond to 100% of reports, um, good or bad, right? If somebody leaves a negative report and oftentimes they're gonna leave a negative review more often than they leave a positive review on our industry, um, that's just kind of a common thing that we see. If there's a if I look at a a negative report on somebody and there's no response to it, just kind of like make it leads me to believe that they're just accepting responsibility or guilt for whatever was accused of them. If I see a response to something, now I've got the other side of the story. So like oftentimes we'll have like someone reviews like, oh, so-and-so shorted us money, blah, blah, blah. And then you see the response of like, um, actually, in this situation, the the carrier was late to pick up or delivery, whatever, and the customer, you know, has had a um, you know, a documented$100 fine, which resulted in that, you know, fine being passed through uh in agreements with our terms to the carrier. Like you kind of see both sides to it. Um with carrier 411 specifically, uh, I don't really use it a whole lot. Uh do you know if there's a way to get them removed?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I I would imagine that I don't think there is, but there might be.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I would imagine that it's they're usually not intended to let someone have something removed because you want to have that history. But if there's something egregious or profane or factually incorrect, um you might have an argument. Like I was able to have reviews pulled down. I think it was from like Glassdoor, like the employment website. There was like these negative reviews on a company I used to work for, and they're like, they're like, Yeah, we we don't we don't remove reports, we want them to be there, you can respond to them. And then we actually were able to give like, hey, this is not a real this person did not work for us. Like this is not there, they got the wrong company or something, and we were able to prove it, and they did pull it down. So I would say you may have a chance, a long shot, but more importantly, I would say if you've got a negative thing reported on you, um, respond to it, right? Because we don't want to be in the business of letting people that do bad work just have reports removed so they don't look as bad, right? But if someone is being only provided one side of the story, give them the other side of that story, give them perspective as to what actually happened in that situation. So that's my best bet or my best advice. Respond to everything, good and bad.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

I think that's a really good just overall business advice, too. It's interesting because like I get a new roof put on our house. I'm looking at reviews, and the first thing I look at when anybody is giving me quotes, when I go and look at reviews, I always sort by the negative ones first, right, to see how many and are they legit. And then I always look for what you just said. I'm like, how did the company address it? And if I see that the company has just not responded at all, like to me, that is far different than when the company at least puts something there. Even if it's not perfect, even if it's still a mistake, the fact that they care enough to address customer concerns to me tells me so much more than nothing. Because I'm like, oh, like clearly somebody was upset, and you didn't even care enough to just write a response to them or for anyone else to see this. And to me, like that's like your best option.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yep. All right, our next one. This was a bit of a rant that came.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, wait, one last thing. I think you can get freight cards in these removed if you go to the company that put it in, they can actually pull it down. I'm pretty sure like that is one way to get them resolved.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yes, and you can, you know what? I think you're right, because I believe we we have done that with certain carriers. Yeah, and when we were able to get a response or whatever, if something worked out, we were able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah, right. And if you can't get the broker to do it, what I always suggest when a carrier is asked me this, I'm like, ask for a manager or somebody above them and be like, hey, like clearly this is a disagreement. We've resolved it. Can you please pull it down? So, like, if you're not getting help from the person that put it there, see if there's somebody above their head that you can reach out to at the company, the owner, somewhere up the line.

FreightGuard And Negative Reports Strategy

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yep. All right, our next one, this was in our, I believe in our Facebook group. Um, it's a bit long, so I'll read through it. He said, This jumping through hoops is getting ridiculous. Why do brokers even bother with their with trackers when the largest majority of them are too lazy to look at them? Truck loaded yesterday, driver did not stop until he reached the destination city, four miles from the receiver with a five o'clock AM appointment. When parked last evening, the broker wanted to know why the truck had been stopped for 20 minutes. Really? What would you like for him to do? Loop 295 until his appointment? Reloads this morning. Broker asked for a picture of the BOL. Not a problem. Sent 30 minutes into his drive. Now they want a picture of the freight. Well, it should have requested that before the trailer had a seal put on it, and he started down the road. Clean MC, six digits, been in business since 1999. Same address, phone number, email address, phone calls at three in the morning, missed emails, all hours of the night. It's just getting to be too much. At least, or at the very least, you could take the time to decipher your no-risk carriers versus your at-risk carriers and give us old timers a break, a break, rant over. I actually agree with this guy a hundred. All of it. Because this is why I I wanted to share this is like with brokers that are out there, there is a wide spectrum of quality of carriers that are out there in the market. And I actually had a conversation with one of my guys like two weeks ago, and one of the guys on his team basically like went off on a carrier and was accusing them of stuff that like appeared on one of the vetting sites to be a certain way, but actually wasn't legitimate. And um, the guy his boss goes, dude, like look at their MC number. It's 30 years old. Like all of their drivers are named like Jim and Dave and John, right? They they don't come across as your stereotypical, like associated with fraud type of carriers. And this this carrier's been in business for a super long amount of time. I think if you can this is why I usually say, like, can you have a little common sense goes a long way. And it, but it takes you have to like learn that when you're getting into brokerage. But if you can find a way in your TMS and different platforms have different ways of doing this, but to have a way to identify a carrier as like a preferred carrier or a legacy carrier, or basically one that puts them in a different bucket than someone that's brand new. Because you're right. I mean, when you're when you're doing all this, like the guy back to what you said, it's common sense. Like the guy got there early, he's gonna stop and park, and he, you know, he's not just gonna keep driving. So, yeah, they probably got an alert from like highway that says the carrier has not moved in the direction of the delivery for more than three hours or whatever it was. Um, look at the map, have some common sense, understand that like this is why we say like automation is great as long as you don't just set it and forget it, because you still need to understand what it's telling you, what it means, and um how to decipher what's coming out on their side. It's not all like if you have alerts set up, they're not always bad. Um, it's just a hey FYI, and you should typically be able to look at it and see, like, oh, well, yeah, that's why, because they're early, they're gonna stop and park. What are your what are your thoughts here?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

It's like everything that he said and you said, right? Which is like, one, like automation is helpful, but like it is not a replacement for picking up the phone to know who you're working with, right? I'm not saying you've got to call a driver three times a day, every day of the week, if you have tracking. But to me, like you at least should call them once before they pick up your load and talk to them and have like a short conversation to confirm some things, right? Because that at least gives you some other data set to compare to what any of these systems show you, right? Like you said. Because to me, like for the first couple of years in the industry, I did all flatbed stuff, which were all old timers, which everybody in that industry in the South were all just like this carrier, and you get to know all of them. And like, one, it makes the job more enjoyable when you are talking and know the people you're working with every day. Like, so like there's one benefit. The second is like it allows you to compare that to these things because now when you do that, even if this is a trusted legacy carrier and they get hacked and somebody impersonates them, like in the situation we talked about on the podcast, you brought up and somebody pretends to be them. When you call that driver, you can see like, does this make sense? Does this match up? Right. Like the person I've talked to, does that seem like the person and company that is doing business here, right? Whether it's the equipment type or it's the human being. I'm not saying use your gut to make all of these decisions, but like, don't lean so much in automation, like you said, in systems, that you've just taken the people aspect completely out of the business. Cause to me, that's silly. And also, like, this car's probably not going to want to work with that broker ever again. And this might be the best fit for your customer, for that lane, with the best service, with the most reliable situation. This person absolutely knows what they're doing, and you just irritated them for absolutely no upside and no reason, other than you were just didn't look and pay attention enough to like see what was happening.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yep. If you, I mean, if you hang out in Facebook, our Facebook community, um, there's over 100,000 of you in there, or if you're on the the Freight Brokers subreddit, um, you'll see there's certain brokerages that some carriers are like, I'm just never, never gonna take a load from them, and they'll give their reasons. And a lot of time it's like just the the lack of training, the quality of their of their staff is subpar. And the reason I bring that up is because you don't want to get into a place where you know this guy called himself an old timer, he's probably got multi-million miles of safe driving. Like, those are the carriers you want to be able to work with, yeah. Not and not have them black ball you and Sam never. Ostracize them. Yeah. So good questions, keep them coming our way, and we'll keep answering them. Ben, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

And until next time, go bills.