How To Handle Highway Insights Without Panicking | Final Mile 151

🛡️ Responding to Highway insights

⚖️ Is double brokering illegal and how to stop it

🚛 Older engines in newer trucks

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Transcript

Quick Welcome And Resources

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, welcome back for another QA session here on the final mile where we answer your questions. We pulled these today from our Facebook group and I snagged one from uh Reddit as well because I thought it was a good one. So if you're brand new, check out all the other content at freight360.net or the YouTube channel. You'll find the Freight Broker Basics course on our website as well. If you're looking for training options, um check out the sponsors in the description box, help support

Highway Insights And Contact Changes

SPEAKER_01 0:26

the channel. First question, Ben uh, what do you do when Highway gives you insights such as an address change or potentially uninsured vehicles? Um, so if you don't know what that means, Highway is a common carrier vetting platform, and an insight is a kind of like a oh hey, FYI. Uh, it's not necessarily like a negative report against somebody, it's just a little, a little uh data point that they're kind of waving at you saying, hey, just want to let you know, you know, this is you know, this is going on with this carrier. So you'll see, and this is, you know, this applies to other carrier vetting platforms as well. But basically, if you see, I kind of want to go broader, like if you see a um, you know, it's not I don't want to call it a warning, but if you see something like a, hey, their address was changed or their phone number was changed or whatever, um I usually, and I'm curious your thought on it, and then I'll talk the insurance piece, but like the the the contact info change has historically been one of the biggest uh correlating data points to fraud. Um I typically would uh make a phone call if I needed to, or take a look at who was when was it changed, what was it changed to, etc. Um, because you want to make sure that you're if a carrier looks legitimate and all of a sudden they have recently changed ownership, I want to make sure that someone then just buy that MC and now they're a scammer. What what has been your methodology when you see an address change or a phone number change on a carrier?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

It's what we were just talking about in the episode. I'm curious until I find out why it happened and then creative to determine whether or not I still can or not, the good versus the bad, right? Like, oh, there's an address change. How many questions can I ask? Why would that address have been changed? Why might it have been changed where it's shady and I wouldn't want to use them? Why might it have been changed legitimately and that's fine for me to use? Best way to answer that question, like you said, call the carrier, ask, call the old phone number, call the new phone number, ask a bunch of questions, see if that makes you feel a little more or a little less comfortable, and then go to the next step, right? Like, is there any other red flags? If there's another red flag, again, a bunch of questions. Why is that there? What are the reasons why it could be a good thing or why could it be a bad thing? Ask a bunch of questions. Do you feel more or less comfortable using them? And then you just literally go one by one until you work through all of the call them flags to determine, hey, is this still a good decision? Because we talked about that episode, like that is literally the guidance from the Supreme Court. It's like, you just need to be able to justify you did you need to risk the whole policy.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. And that's the procedure to defend something. I looked at these things, I asked these questions, I got this answer back. That made me more or less confident. If I use them, here's how I came to that conclusion. That is defensible, right? Just going no or yes is not defensible. That's under any scenario.

Uninsured VIN Alerts And COIs

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah. And the other, the other one in here was a potentially uninsured vehicle. So um this and I think you kind of follow the same process here. So like Highway, Highway will tell you if um, you know, a lot of carriers have a their auto liability policy is what's called a scheduled autos policy, which means um it's VIN specific. So like instead of all autos or any autos, it's like, hey, it's only gonna ensure the VIN numbers that are listed on this policy. So what highway, and I've seen it on um my carrier portal as well, is like if if a VIN number has been identified or seen or whatever associated with a carrier, but it's not on their current certificate of insurance, it's gonna warn you and say, hey, FYI, VIN number ending in blah, blah, blah, isn't we see it on their ELD connection right now, or we saw it inspected last week, but it's not currently on their certificate of insurance. Well, I'm gonna go through that same problem-solving mentality of, okay, well, is the is the certificate of insurance updated? And I looked at one yesterday and was like, the truck was seen, it was like the truck was seen two months ago, and the COI was from three months ago or something like that. And I was like, okay, I don't even know if this truck is active with them anymore, but I definitely know the COI is older than when that was seen. So I gotta get a new certificate of insurance. Um, or you might have the case of like they sold the truck or the truck is off their insurance because it's going through a major engine rebuild at a shop. Like you ask questions, like, hey, what's going on with FinEver, whatever, whatever, whatever. Like, oh yeah, we just sold that one. Okay, cool. Right? Like, if I can get you know verification that it was sold, or you know, take their word for it, or if it's been long enough that I'm just gonna assume it's not active anymore, um, that's gonna make me feel better. Because what you're trying to solve for there essentially is I want to make sure that if I hire this carrier, we don't have a potentially uninsured truck uh picking up my customer shipment and then getting in an accident and then huge, huge mess. So, but yeah, whenever you see those like insights or those flags or warnings, whatever you want to call them, ask questions, be curious, and figure out why. Um, because not everything that's being reported is necessarily bad. It's just a more of an FYI.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

And correct, like that's how you learn these things too, right? Like you don't need to know everything before you start. But if you ask questions and you get to the part of like auto, like you said, you might not know if that could be a good or a bad thing. Like, ask that question. Well, guess what you'll learn on the other end? Maybe they're leased on driver and they are covered, and that's why they're not showing up under the ELD because it's a leased on driver. They actually have the policies and they have the lease. They can send it to you, and that truck's fine. You might have just assumed it's not fine because of this. Ask no questions. I'll get that truck. You won't, I'll get your customers' load. That's how you end up doing better in the industry. It's just getting through there. And then the next time you see it, you know what specific question to ask. Now you know that. Now you can work through these quicker. You'll see more opportunities as you keep going through this process.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yep. Next question.

Double Brokering Legality And Prevention

SPEAKER_01 6:40

If double brokering is illegal, why is it so common? Is there no legal action to prevent this? Um, so this is a great question because there's actually, I think there's a lot of um the question itself, I think, is potentially incorrect. Um, so double brokering, um, depending on so double brokering is not a legal term, it's a commonly used term. Um it's a very yeah, it's a very misused term. So here's so here's what I would say, and I've kind of gone with this for for many years is that double brokering isn't necessarily necessarily illegal. If you are if you have a brokerage authority and you broker a load, um, it's not illegal. Um again, if you are a motor carrier that also has a brokerage authority and you take a load as a carrier and then broker it through your brokerage, is very frowned upon and it's a dishonest uh act, but it is not um illegal. What is illegal is brokering a load without the legal authority to do so, and that's called fraudulent brokerage activities, is how the TIA uh I thought it was unlicensed brokering. Well, yeah, you could call it unlicensed brokering unlicensed unlicensed brokering, but basically what we're talking about here is if a carrier, these are like the fraud ones, is when a carrier takes a load and then goes and sells that load to somebody else and they don't have the authority to do so, that is where it's actually illegal. And there is a $10,000 fine that has been on the books forever and ever and ever. And now the recently um the bill, what is it, the Household Goods Consumer Something Protection Act now grants the authority to impose civil penalties on these entities. That's like the most recent legislation because for years the there there is a legal action that exists, but no one was granted the um authority to actually impose it. So um, so that's the long and short of the legal side of it. Now, how do you prevent it? Good carrier selection processes. I would recommend consume some of our content around that. You want to make sure um that you have the right truck in the right place at the right time when you're booking somebody. So you want whatever steps you take or technology that you use to do that, whether it's through a tool like um highway or genlogs or um Quickscope or My Carrier Portal, whatever it is, right? People, I remember for years we were doing like you need to take a video of you know walking around your truck so I can see the VIN number and the MC number or whatever. Or I need people to like they want a picture of the driver inside the truck at the pickup or whatever. Whatever you gotta do, that's what's gonna help you. Because when you say, hey, I'm I'm you know booking MC blah blah blah to make sure you're not double broker, well, you need to make sure that MC blah blah blah is who's actually showing up. And this is where you could talk to your customer too and say, Hey, I booked you know Jim with Jim's trucking, MC number, whatever. That's who's gonna show up. He's got a red uh freight line uh freightliner. That's who you should load. If anyone else shows up, don't load them, right? That's how you prevent double brokering or theft or any kind of fraudulent activity like that. Any other thoughts or comments on double brokering?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Another great tool is Quickscope that Togo has. That is another great way to do this too, is like a secure way to verify that truck that you've sent is the truck that is actually the one picking it up. Like that's probably still one of my favorite tools for this. Genlog is another great tool to be able to see is the carrier who they say they are, are they operating the area that they're asking for the load in? Like, that's another great tool that's available out there. But even with all the tools, I still kind of always go back to like ask good questions. Like you will learn a lot talking to the dispatcher, the driver, whomever. And the more questions you ask, the more you see is does this add up? Does this make sense? Or is this truck just really cheap? Or is this load just paying really well if you're a carrier and just taking it without asking questions? Those are like 99% of where these all come from.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yep. All right.

Glider Kits ELD Exemptions And Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Um, last question here. Why does anyone who get why does anyone who gets a new truck, let's say a 2024 and puts an older engine to be ELD exempt, is it cheaper to get a rebuild engine or are they really trying to get around the ELD? I don't drive trucks, but I always wonder why are older engines getting installed to a newer body model. So the bigger picture here is the uh I don't even think it's an older engine. They usually do they usually have an older truck that gets a the glider kit. So like they'll upgrade. They basically do like they keep the old engine and they get a new everything else. Because if your engine is a 1999 or older, um, it is exempt from ELD having to run an ELD in their truck. Um, my personal opinion, whenever I see that, is like, yeah, it's probably just to get around the ELD for whatever reason. It could be someone that's just old school and they don't want to be tracked and they want to run paper logs and do things the way they've done it for years, or it could be someone that's you know not running their business legitimately and is um, you know, doesn't you know they they want to be able to skirt their um hours of service, or it could it could be because they want to fraud somebody. I mean, there's there's a wide spectrum of why someone would want to avoid having an ELD. Um, because I don't think that keeping an older engine is gonna help you um in the long run as far as like you know fuel efficiency and like maintenance costs and things like that. Um I think it's just really the ELD is like the main reason people would want to keep that older engine. Any thoughts on that one?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah, I mean, I do I've and again, I'm definitely not a mechanic and not I don't drive a truck. These are just things that I've heard. Is it like some of them are like preferences where like some of the newer trucks, right? Like like some of the drivers that liked older manual transmissions do not like driving the newer trucks, and it's kind of like a preference where they would rather have the rebuild. I remember Dean was telling us the one time, like, because a rebuild is very expensive. Like it's like a few hundred thousand dollars. Like it was not cheap to do like a full overhaul. But I I've talked to other folks. This is more on I think like the big trucks that aren't tractor trailers that I've read articles on where like a lot of the like EPA restrictions and things that they've put on over the past five to ten years have like throttled the horsepower, throttled the torque, and like the performance is way down. And even though you might get better fuel efficiency, like they just kind of don't have the power that they used to have. Because there was an article I read a while back that, like I forget what year it was. It was like the big dually trucks, you really pretty much see more of like hot shots. Like after a certain year, there's just tons of complaints. And also the maintenance costs can go up because like when you have all these computers and things, it makes it easier to drive and sometimes fuel efficient, but there are more things that actually break, and those things aren't cheap either, right? So sometimes like newer doesn't actually mean less maintenance because a lot of newer things are built with planned obsolescence, they're literally built so that they only last a few years. Like we talk about this all the time. I was talking to a guy that works for me the other day. He's like, dude, every time I pay off a car, something expensive breaks in it, like almost within the next three to six months. A computer, a this, a that, they're three, four grand. And he's like, I feel like these things just like literally break right when you get them paid off. And I'm like, well, there was a lawsuit for Apple where they definitely lost because they planned their phones to break. Refrigerators are built to my refrigerators are my favorite ones because refrigerators now, I think average life is like four to six years. But if you ask anybody born in the 70s or 80s, almost every one of their older family members has a fridge in their garage today that they bought in the 70s or the 60s. And like this is like pretty well known. So like it wouldn't surprise me if that's made its way into tractor trailers as well. Companies want to keep selling more stuff. If they make something last forever, you're not buying anymore. And if you want a really interesting article on this, look up the light bulb. What do they call it? Like the light bulb um cabal or um in the 1920s or 30s, they invented a light bulb basically that could last 100 years, and they realized, oh my gosh, like we're not gonna sell any more light bulbs. So they basically all got together and conspired to put a usable life on light bulbs. And to this day, they still have a usable life. But if you actually look this up, like it's documented actually happened. And like that was when this started. It was when companies kept making things better and they realized, like, oh, we're like actually gonna sell less things. So it's been around a long time, and it wouldn't shock me if that's a part of this.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the frit refrigerator one. Like the house I live in now, um, we had to replace our main refrigerator. Um, and it was like, I don't know, it was probably 20 years old. But in our basement, we have an even older refrigerator that was a hand-me-down from my in-laws, and that thing's probably 40 years old. They don't make them like they used to. But back to um, so I actually looked it up while you were talking there. Glider kits. Um, here's the main reasons why people are preferring them is it having the older. So basically, you're buying a new cab and chassis without the drivetrain, is what it comes down to. So the engine still maintains its older engine. But by doing this, they go back to the pre-emissions rule. So you don't have um the emission systems, DEF, DPF. You have less sensors, so now you're dealing with less sensor breakdowns and repairs and replacements, things like that. And then lastly, the ELD mandate. So there you go. There is some actual maintenance and um uh emissions benefits there to the older uh engine. So

Final Takeaway And Sign Off

SPEAKER_01 17:04

good questions. Keep sending them our way and we'll keep answering them. Final thoughts, Ben.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right. And until next time, go bills.