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Welcome back for another edition of the final mile. This is our all QA session. Questions that come from you guys out there in the uh the freight community. Um, if you're brand new, check out everything else we've got in the freight 360 library on our website and on YouTube, and check out the sponsors down below, help support
the channel. All right, our first question uh this this was actually a comment on one of our YouTube videos that we had recently, and it was um about I think it was like fraudulent, it was something about fraudulent bad actors from foreign countries in our industry. And someone asked, why are people that are not even in this country allowed to open a trucking company or start a brokerage? Um so there's kind of like two parts that I want to hit on here, and it's like I don't think it's necessarily all bad having any kind of offshore help. I think you just need to be aware of who you're working with. And that goes for whether they're in the country or not in the country, but there is no regulation or rule that to do business in the United States, that you have to be American or live in the United States.
SPEAKER_00
I it's not where you live, but you definitely have to be a resident to start a company. Because even for like the MC level, I think somebody has to physically be in the United States, right? Now, that person could be a minority owner, I think maybe, but like you do need to have legally somebody in the United States that has whatever the citizenship status is, because I none of that stuff makes sense and we have no idea which it is, but like you do need somebody. You aren't actually able to just start a business in another country, like that's not really a thing. Well, you can't. What happens is I can start it and somebody else overseas runs it, and then they buy my share, so I own a little bit of it, and it transitions, so it looks like somebody overseas started a business here, but you start with the person in the US.
SPEAKER_01
So you can you can get a um an You could be a foreigner and get an LLC established in the United States, but as far as registering a a motor carrier authority or brokerage authority, there's additional layers to it.
SPEAKER_00
But back to the to open a bank account, you still also need to have a social security number.
SPEAKER_01
You can you can have an EIN. So I I've I've literally I know folks that have so I'll give you an example. Like um, you can I've had people do this that lived, I'll give you an example of one. So a guy that lived in Colombia, South America, um, not a US citizen, and established a LLC in the United States, and then once he had his tax ID number, he was able to open a bank account in the United States and get a P.O. boxed in the United States. And there's there's firms that actually will you can pay them like 500 bucks and they'll help walk you through all the steps to establish a business as a non um non-resident, as an you know without having a social security number. So you can you can do that and you can contract as like an agent for a company, things like that. Um but to your point, very often, if you're gonna have a brokerage, um, oftentimes if you find foreigners that are running them, somebody that lives in the US and has a social security number is the one that actually started the business and they're kind of like the the silent, uninvolved owner of the business. I've seen that a lot too. Um, but back to the question at hand, like the I think there's a lot of value and benefit to having folks that are not in your time zone or not in your country. So a lot of the use cases that we've seen is for like operations support or administrative tasks, like having um like a company that I used to work at, we had a guy that he I think he was in, he was somewhere in like Eastern Europe, but it was perfect because the the time that he worked was perfect for him versus when our office wasn't fully staffed and and fully open. So like you'd have a guy who would work like the early hours of the day covering any like you know emergency early morning support because it's the daytime for him, you know, when he's working. So, or you've see you see people that um are literally on the other side of the planet, like in the Philippines, and they're your after-hour support team. So they can answer the phones and it's daytime for them. There's also the cost of labor, things like that that can be more um more affordable
for you. I think the point of the question or the comment is like these scammers that are you know have been poisoning our industry, like why are they even allowed to do what they're doing? And I say the the bigger takeaway there is that like bad vetting on the part of the broker. So like if a br if let's say this scammer is, you know, someone that's overseas and is using a stolen identity and trying to, you know, attempt to have cargo stolen or double broker and basically steal money. Um, there are processes and tools to help you prevent those bad actors. And again, those people can be in the United States as well and be Americans. Like I I've seen of all the scams I've seen, I would say 90% or more of them are people inside the United States that just they know our industry and they know the vulnerabilities, and they um, you know, they had they attacked where they knew the vulnerabilities existed.
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, most of them like worked and broke like were brokers, like we're legitimate brokers, own trucking companies, know how it works, and then just decided they can make more money illegally. Yep. Exactly.
As a carrier, if I connect my ELD to highway to take a load, can I disconnect it again after we complete the load, or does it always stay connected once it's linked? So, yes, you can disconnect your ELD. So, like if you're a if you're a carrier, um, carriers have their own login to highway that's different from a brokerage. Um, so as brokers, we can see, you know, information about carriers. We can see maybe if you're depending on what uh version you're using, you can see any of your um loads that are connected through their tracking or rate confirmations that were sent using highway service, um, loads that might be posted, trucks that might be posted from carriers. But if you're a carrier, you can see all your relevant stuff too. So you can see rate confirmations that you've received and accepted from brokers using highway service. And part of your login is going to be the ELD connection if you choose to do that. And I will tell you this that if you're not comfortable with having your ELD always connected for whatever reason, yes, you can disconnect it. But keep in mind if a brokerage has a requirement that you must have an active ELD connection in highway, that could potentially um, you know, take you off of the table of uh, you know, for opportunities from some of these larger brokerages that have those requirements. I've seen a lot of a lot of brokers lately going towards that as one of the requirements is they they want to see an active ELD connection for multiple reasons. Um it could just it could be they want to be able to verify what the fleet looks like, where the vehicles are located, so they know they got the right carrier and they're not getting double brokered. And it could be for tracking purposes. If they're using highway for um for load tracking through an ELD connection, they might you know want to say this is a requirement. So that way, if if I'm like for TFX, for example, if I'm posting a load on Highway's load board and my requirements are that the carrier has to have an ELD connection, well, that carrier, if they're using TFX, which is free for carriers to use, um, they're not gonna see my loads. They're not gonna see them at all. So um just caution there. If if you're not wanting to connect your ELD or keep it actively connected, um you might be missing out on opportunities. So I know I get it, like there's like a kind of like the privacy thing, right? Back in the day, a lot of old school truckers didn't even want to be tracked at all. Like, I'm not I'm not putting that thing on my phone, right? Um, the reality is that's where a lot of the industry is moving to these days. So, any other thoughts on the ELD connection?
Um recently got my own authorities. What accounting software do you recommend for a small transportation company? So curious what your thoughts are on the accounting suite side of it. Um, because you've helped a bunch of different companies get started and and kind of evolve. Um I mean, QuickBooks is really the only one that I know for small businesses. Is you have any take on what to look for in an accounting system?
SPEAKER_00
So I kind of just always recommend QuickBooks, mostly because like I'm familiar with it, so it's easier for me to help somebody set it up.
SPEAKER_01
Um it's pretty easy to use, and the cost efficiency is like it does a lot of the basics at a pretty low cost.
SPEAKER_00
It's been years because like well, I went to school for accounting, so like I knew and have run the bigger ones, but it was so long ago and they're so expensive, and rarely does that come up with like new companies. So like I just kind of always use QuickBooks. The questions are the things I really look at is like how you want to do this, and I'll give you some examples. Some TMSs have one-way integrations with QuickBooks. Okay. Some have two-way, meaning they talk to each other. Some have two-way where they'll send the information to QuickBooks, but not the PODs, which then you manually have to download and upload back into QuickBooks. That becomes like the most time-consuming part. It's like literally just taking things out of one system and putting them in the other, right? So, well, the last one I set up, I like specifically wanted the TMS to be able to send the paperwork along with the details into QuickBooks. Because for this client, they invoice and have a preference to invoice out of QuickBooks. Okay, well, if you invoice out of QuickBooks, that means QuickBooks, right, when the customer pays the bill, will show the payment was received. So if it doesn't talk back to your TMS, you have to manually then go and reduce the amount that you see in your TMS, otherwise they don't match, right? Yeah. The other thing is very important for credit lines and things like that. Very, very important, right? And like some TMSs give you both options where you invoice out of the TMS with the paperwork and then it updates QuickBooks, which is fine because now you don't need the paperwork moved over. That's more of a preference that the owner has than how you have to do it, right? Um and how and if you factor matters because like some of that is integrated very well, some of that isn't, and manually. So those are just like the basics that you want to kind of like look through on how you set it up and make sure that that like makes sense.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the last thing I'll add in too, and I'm not very big on the accounting side of things, but looking at accounting software options um as we've gone through a uh tech stack evolution, is that I was kind of surprised at how many accounting suites that you think you're buying, you're actually buying through a third-party reseller who has an implementation fee and all of that. So, like one of them was uh I think it was Net Suite and Yeah, it was Net Suite, and it was like um I want to say they had like a $40,000 implementation fee. And I was like, what? And then we found out it was because it wasn't actually from Net Suite, it was a third party that was reselling their software and charging that money to set up all the ledger accounts and things like that. Whereas like if you just go to if you get QuickBooks from QuickBooks and you set everything up yourself, you're just paying QuickBooks for each month that you're using their their platform, right? Versus paying someone else to manage a system and process for you. So just things to look out for someone.
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