Carrier Vetting And The Highway Debate | Final Mile 152

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Transcript

Q And A Kickoff And How To Ask

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back for another QA session here. It's the final mile, and we are answering your questions. If you want to send us a question, you can go to freight360.net and hit the contact us uh button there to send us an email. You can email us at info at freight360.net. You can leave a comment on our YouTube channel. You can get involved in the Facebook group if you're not in that group. Join the a hundred and some thousand other people that are in there. Thanks to all the moderators because we have definitely drastically reduced the amount of junk in there. Check out the sponsors, help support the channel. It's in the description box down below. All right, Ben, our first question.

Why Brokers Use Highway

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I was reading this one and then I just laughed because it's just such a large disconnect between brokers and carriers, as there always has been. But this this is from a I would presume it's a driver or dispatcher or a carrier. Why do brokers use highway? They know nothing about trucks, trailers, or freight. So I get it, right? Like highway has definitely disrupted the it has not necessarily like in a bad way, but it's definitely disrupted the way that brokers and carriers do business and interact in the recent years. But I will say on a larger scale, let's not isolate highway by itself, but carrier vetting and onboarding platforms, right? Why do brokers use them? Well, I would say most recently, um, when there's a Supreme Court case that says brokers can be deemed liable in a you know a crash, if a carrier crashes and hurts somebody or kills somebody. And we've seen this, you know, as recently as the uh the Texas case from 2021 that just came out last week or went out well, this month. But I think it's really like we want to know as as brokers, we want to know everything we can about a carrier to make the right decision, right? It's not like we're doing it to blacklist certain carriers. We just we want to know what the the things are that we can't see or find out publicly easily, right? We want to know, you know, things as as simply as like, do you have a legal operating authority? And do you have the right insurance? And do you have the right equipment? And then more so we can look at safety scores and how they compare or compare against their peers. And then you can get really granular and say, like, you know, how you know, you can put some crazy rules in there now. Like you can you can have a rule that says, like, all right, the carrier to pass my standards needs to have an insurance company that has an AM best rating of A minus or better, or is not using a factoring company known to uh you know do business with double brokerage activities. Things like you can get really granular based on the data. And then they have, you know, it's sourcing too. Like we want to know like where do these guys normally operate? Because I want to work with carriers that it's not just because I need to truck, but I want to know where they operate so I can help, you know, take care of them. Like if I've got a load that's moving every Tuesday out of this area and this carrier, this is a good backhaul candidate for them, like that's a win-win. So that's I think the the big reason, but I get it, right? As a carrier, people are being told I can't work with you because you fail in highway. And I think actually I'm curious, what what's your mentality on like if a carrier doesn't meet your criteria, do you do you think you should explain to them why? Or do you draw a line somewhere and just say, like, yeah, you don't meet our standards? What's what's kind of your take on

Victims Of Fraud Get Flagged

SPEAKER_00 3:28

that? Because that is what I think what frustrates a lot of carriers is they're just being told, like, oh, highway said no. It's like, no, highway didn't say no. Highway was used to make a decision by the brokerage to say no, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, I think where it's justifiable from the carrier side is that like they get unfairly marginalized and penalized when they're a victim. So here's an example. I'm a motor carrier, and one of my dispatchers accidentally clicked a phishing email, and somebody in Uzbekistan hacks my email, and some broker realizes or calls and finds out, like, oh, they just got an offer for a truck and that's not an employee, and that's like fraud signal, right? Well, now Highway will tell the entire industry you can't work with Ben's trucking because I was a victim of cyber theft attack and identity theft. And to me, like that is the part that is like kind of inexcusable that you just marginalize half of the industry, the people moving the freight when they're victims, instead of finding a way to help them. Like, to me, that's the justifiable

Matching Freight Risk To Equipment

SPEAKER_01 4:34

part. On the other part of it, is like we need something to be able to determine like the quality of work we're paying for, which is like vehicle maintenance and driver fitness, right? Like and out-of-service things. And like safer in the FMCSA is just like abysmal and has no information. And like there's no way to tell anything from that system. So, like, that's not super helpful. Like, you need something. Yeah. I mean, like, you don't want to put $500,000 worth of whatever cargo in a truck that is breaking down like a couple of times a month just because it's older, but you might be happy to put lumber in it because, like, all right, it'll get there when it gets there. So, like, there's a there's the right cargo for the right fit of equipment and driver. It doesn't mean like everything needs to be perfect, but like you want to match up what you're moving with the quality of the person driving the vehicle and the vehicle they're driving. And there's no way to determine that out of any government system. You need a third party to be able to do that, right? Yeah. And obviously, like the fraud one, which is a huge one, which is like, uh am I getting robbed? Did my customer get robbed? Like any or all of the above. Like, there has to be something there. Clearly, the government is trying to come in and to start doing these things. We'll see how that plays out, but like forever, it's just never been done, right? Like, you even said this. Well, here's another example.

Explaining Failures And Remediation Plans

SPEAKER_01 5:48

We talked about this on the episode of like safety ratings. Like, I remembered when we got I onboarded TQL with Maersk, they wouldn't use any drayage carriers that were conditionally safety rated. And like I literally spent like a month or two going through their risk department with our legal department to get that waived because most of the capacity I needed was not satisfactory rated, but it wasn't because there was anything wrong with the trucks or the drivers or the carrier, it was just the FMCSA was just so behind in auditing any of them that like there was just a huge amount of the market they couldn't access because of that one criteria that hadn't been relevant in 30 years when the FMCSA actually audited a significant amount of the carriers.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yep. Yeah, I usually uh I know highway, for example, you know, you're like, don't take screenshots of our platform and send it to carriers. But I I I've given like honest feedback to a carrier before, like, hey, or or you know, even just told we had a broker a couple weeks ago that was like, hey, like what I don't understand what happened with this guy. He used to pass and now he fails. And it was because every month is when safety data is updated from FMCSA. Okay. And it just happened to be that as we rolled into July, this guy had violations that put him over a you know, a second intervention threshold from his five CSA categories. And the guy's like, well, what do I tell this guy? Like, I've been working with him for so long. And I'm like, Well, I would explain exactly to him that he's got, you know, you can show him the violations, they're public, and just let him know, like, these will lose. I think one of them, yeah, one of them was just about to hit three months. So his new ones are what tipped him over, but he, like, moving into August, I believe, was going to then be under threshold on one of the ones that he was over on. And just explain, like, hey, you know, based on what's happened with Supreme Court rulings, like a lot of brokers are moving to a, you know, don't be over threshold in two or more categories. That's kind of like the industry standard that's being set. So be cognizant of like, you know, who you're hiring, if you're, you know, leasing on owner operators and who's representing your company and all that, because you guys, it was like very there was a big trend of like their issues were like, I think it was vehicle maintenance. It was all like preventable stuff, like brakes, tire tread, things like that. Um, but I think once it went beyond three months, the time weight was gonna drop from a 3x to a 2x. But yeah, I usually like give you know feedback on like the uh the objective stuff, but not really, hey, here's what our rules set is specifically in our carrier vetting platform, and here's what they're telling us about you, blah, blah, blah. Because you obviously want to be like productive and you know, give them a give them a guidance and advice on how you know what they can do. They can remedy it too.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Like how they can fix it. Like, because even with some of the stuff, like what do they have, like an action plan that you you do to like fix this? I can't remember what it is. I think it's something with the FMCSA where like if you had like a safety rating that was like um unsatisfactory or whatever, that like you could put a plan together and submit it, and then you could get approved again. I know other brokers do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Like a remediation plan or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, because I know there was a carrier I had as a client, this was years ago, but I definitely remember this was like they fell below the brokerage's standards, and the brokerage was like, it was like a large client customer of theirs, right? They did a lot of work with this broker, and they're like, Well, hey, you're below this because of these things. And they said, however, like if you want to keep running freight, I need you to put together a plan for how you'll be working to remedy the maintenance, doing these things regularly, whatever it was. They literally submitted it, got it approved, they updated it like once a month. This is what we're doing now that we weren't doing before, and then they got them to be able to work with them.

Prospecting Shippers With Data Tools

SPEAKER_00 9:42

All right, next question What software should I use to prospect shippers? I'll rattle through through a few here and see what else you got. But kind of your big lead gen. You've got Zoom info, Apollo, which I have come to really like, seamless.ai is a one that a lot of our folks have been using lately. Blue Book, if you're a produce person, if you're a member of Blue Book, you can get there's like 25,000 grower shippers of uh produce on there. What else you got? What am I missing here?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

I mean, there's so much. Yeah, I would definitely be using AI at this point. Like the shortlist things, like I would be using it so much for prospecting, right? Like, I would be using it to like, hey, seasonally, what are um a really good commodity to ship now? And I would say, what season is expected to start 60 days from now? What ships a lot this that time of the year? Then I would probably ask after that give me a list of a hundred companies. I want, you know, a third's very small, a third medium to middle market, and a third very large. And like that would be a really good starting point to just find like a hundred leads, is probably

Sourcing Box Trucks And Cargo Vans

SPEAKER_01 10:51

yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Last question How do I source box trucks and cargo vans? Well, I'll tell you what what we do. Select us is a loadboard that is very good for that kind of commodity, or not commodity, equipment type. So you get like your sprinters, box trucks, hot shots, et cetera. I think you need to have an I think you need to, yeah, you have to have an asset authority as well. So they don't care if you're a broker, but they limit their brokers to only brokers that also have a carrier company because it's meant to be like a uh it's like they call it the Selectus Alliance, is it? But it's basically like they want to, it they want it to be shared capacity and not just, you know, swamped with people that are only a brokerage. And the other one, too, is uh shout out to my boy Alex Winston over at Expedite All. He has created a really good brokerage network of smaller truckload capacity like that. We've had him on the show before, and we we just do a co-brokerage with his company. So like they've got a really good quoting tool and a great team. So like if we need you know something crazily specialized, like a refrigerated cargo van, he's got them in his network. So can't always guarantee availability or price, but it's a really great way to just kind of fast track it. And so co-brokerage or you know, a good load board, you can use dat. I've seen people use dat to get you know sprinters or straight trucks or whatnot. But yeah, you I mean any of your sourcing tools too, like if you want to use gen logs, right? You can they their stuff their images can identify what type of equipment is in the picture and it drove past the the camera sensor. So um we gotta have Ryan Joyce back on too, man. I want to see what's new with with gen logs and all their stuff. But what else you got for sort just sourcing in general based on the equipment type.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I mean, you kind of named all the ones I use, like to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Very good. Highway too, like highway. You can do their lane intelligence or their carrier search tool based on uh equipment type. But yeah, good stuff. The DAT directory, you might be able to check my equipment type. Lane makers. Lane makers, there you go. Yep. All right, good questions, keep sending them our way, and we'll keep

Final Thoughts And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 13:06

answering them. Ben, final thoughts. What do you got?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

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

SPEAKER_00 13:12

And until next time, go bills.