How Freight Brokers Choose Insurance, TMS, And Compliance Tools | Final Mile 119

Welcome back. It's another edition of the Final Mile QA, all from you guys every Tuesday. So make sure to check out all of our other content at freight360.net, including the Freight Broker Basics course, and check out the sponsors in the description to help support this channel. All right, Ben. Our first question this came from our Facebook group. Someone asked, What is a good insurance company or broker for cargo insurance per load? So I picked this one because I've dealt with it quite a bit lately within uh Pierce Worldwide. We've had let's say uh the broker has a shipment for their customer that it either has a commodity that's commonly excluded, or maybe it's a high value, or for whatever reason, they're looking to purchase an insurance policy specifically to cover cargo on this load and this load only. So we call these all-risk policies. I will tell you that we've had loadsure on the show before, and they're integrated right into your DAT account. So if you go under tools and then insurance, you'll see perload insurance through loadsure. You can very quickly, in less than a minute, up to$2 million in coverage, um, get a quote, and it covers from dollar one. So this is not gap insurance, this is not spike insurance, this is a full first position all risk policy. Um, other companies that I've seen offer it, you have um truck stop has one, I think. Cargo shield, uh logistic with a Q on the end offers it. Um more you know, more importantly, if you already have an insurance agent or insurance uh company that you're a rep that you're working with on all your policies, ask them because they very very often will have some sort of ability to underwrite a single load policy for you or at least point you in the right direction. So um what what's interesting is like as the hate to use the word inflation, but as inflation has happened over the years, a lot of shipments that have you know been under that 100k of standard insurance, like are now valued at over that. So and since I've been in the industry, the 100k has just been right. I mean, that's always been like the standard uh limit, right?

Yeah, I one everything you just said, like is pretty much what I would have said. Also, like I think it is helpful, like go to your insurance company, like that's the one I think people do the least because there's at least two or three clients that I have where like their insurance company was able to give them a portal just like a third party to do it with them. And again, there's usually a lower rate because they're insuring the rest of what you do. So, like I've seen it be a little cheaper in that way, but you really want to look at two things, I think, when you're doing any of this. What are the exclusions? Because I am still kind of astounded at how much freight is moving that is underinsured or uninsured, but people believe are insured. In fact, I was talking with um Ed and Mike the other day over at Quickscope, and they were telling me about like one of the somebody they knew, like a colleague or something, was moving like hundreds of thousands of dollars in pharmaceuticals. And I think it was Ed was like, dude, like those aren't insured. And the guy's like, oh no, it is. He's like, look at your policy. He's like, I am like 99% certain that the policy you're using has an exclusion for that commodity. Yep. Sure enough, literally had moved millions of dollars worth of like thankfully, nothing happened. But you for sure don't want to assume when you are dealing with insurance, because it's one of these things that I think gives you a false sense of security. Because if you don't have a claim, like you don't really know. You're like, oh, everything's fine. So like I've always had this. There's never been anything wrong. But like as soon as the claim happens, right? Like all of a sudden those details become super important, right? You're like, oh my God. So the 20 grand in insurance I've been paying every year doesn't cover any of the thing that I thought it was covering. And now I'm in a completely different scenario. And like that's just not brokers. Like, again, we were talking about this on the episode. I am still kind of shocked at how many large shippers, I mean like Fortune 200 companies, like very, very big companies, where like we've worked with them as like consultants. I've talked to their legal team and their insurance teams and their risk teams, where they genuinely think they have insurance coverage for situations that they absolutely do not have. Right. And like again, just because someone says like that it does cover this, like you really want to ask some follow-up questions. You definitely want to look at exclusions. And you for sure want to ask the insurance person, not anybody else involved, if it actually covers the thing you think it does, because they're the ones that are going to be able to tell you whether it actually will, should something go wrong.

Yeah. And great, great discussion point to have with a customer. If, you know, like you know, when you're prospecting, you talk pain points, um, cargo theft is a big one, but also like denied claims, right? And um, understanding that when there's uh a niche, a niche product or a high value load, um, you know, there there could be the chance that they've had um, you know, a claim denied or or whatnot. And you know, you can you can value add sell that, like, hey, I've got the ability to get these policies when needed on a single load. We'll just build everything right into the rate. There's no um, you know, no additional side invoice or anything like that.

So the other thing, too, that I think not many brokers do, or shippers, and everybody should be doing more of, is verifying load value. Okay. Like there was a situation literally, like a couple weeks ago, like very recent. I was on the phone with this broker's client, the shipper, and I asked them, this is months ago, what's your load value? Are any of the shipments this company's moving with you over 100K? They're director of transportation. Absolutely not. Everything's below 100. You guys are good. Because I cared about verifying the carrier's insurance, not the contingent, obviously. And then there was a claim last week, truck caught on fire, burned to the ground, and then the ship was like, Oh, that load was$190,000. And I'm like, that's really interesting. Because I'm like, I literally have in writing my notes from the call that we had three months ago where you explicitly said you don't ship anything over 100 grand. And not only that, but when you tendered this load, certainly didn't tell anybody that you were shipping twice the load value that everybody believed you were.

Yep. Yeah, good point, man. All right. Next question. I'm setting up a brokerage and just wondering what is the best app I can use to do up rate cons. I have so I guess we're talking about a TMS here. I've heard of Alvis. Also, is highway or IR RMIS the best way to go to find out if carriers are compliant. All right, so we're talking of basically your your software tech stack for a new brokerage. Um, what I would recommend, I mean, they brought up two points here that basically the TMS, which is going to be your operational system, and then your your carrier vetting platform, which there's more than just high highway and RMIS. Um, what I would recommend when you're new is look for the ones that get the job done, are not high priced, but allow you to scale, right? So it has what you need when you're brand new, but you can also scale it and add-on, and it'll help you grow. Because what you don't want to do is overpay for a TMS, and then your company doesn't work out and you just waste a lot of money. You also don't want to buy some cheap, chintzy TMS that um, let's say things go great, and now it doesn't have everything that you need now that you developed your brokerage and you have to switch, right? No one likes to have to switch. So um that's my recommendation there. And there's a whole bunch that are out there, and there's a lot of new ones that are popping up. Um, I will say the ones that will price you based on um your revenue or your load count, things like that, um, or maybe a uh seat per month per user cost, um, those are very price efficient when you're starting off and and growing. Um, so check a bunch of them out. Like Alvis, like they mentioned here, that that's one of them. Um Ascend TMS Um has a free. Do they still have the free version to try out? I think they do.

I believe so. Maybe not.

I think someone actually they went away from the free version, but it's still it's still very, you know, pretty good product for a decent price. Um yeah.

I was on a call with him yesterday, actually. They have three versions with a lot of added features that are for sure useful and not a bunch of fluff. And like I still talk to Tim every once in a while and like in the weeds on what they're doing, how it's working, and like I've always really thought Ascend is very good from a functionality standpoint, I think from a cost standpoint, and allows you to start and grow without having to switch.

Yeah, yep. And then as far as your carrier compliance, so RMS, highway, my carrier portal, and carrier share. What are there any other ones? I mean, you could do it the manual process. I would highly recommend, you know, at a minimum, like you know, highway, you can get like their base level where it's not integrated in, but you can still do all the all the searching and MCP, same thing. Um RMIS, I I haven't worked with personally, so I I can't speak to it. I don't know. I know that the a lot of the big brokerages use it. Um so I don't know. Any experience with RMIS?

Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, we can go down into the weeds of the specific things I think I don't like about any and all of them, but that's like a whole episode we could do at some point.

Yeah, you have to, I mean, we always say, like, you know, software's great, but if you don't have a process, um, because data, you know, you might you might think that what you're seeing from a certain carrier vetting platform means one thing, and the reality is um it's not always exactly what you think it is. And you and I have both, without uh without blowing anybody up on air here, we we've both, you know, been misled on certain things.

So yeah. Like again.

We digress. All right. Last question trying to help out a regular carrier that I worked with that is currently flagged on highway for potential fraud. Last week she was notified that there were three ELDs connected from Samsara, but they use infinity ELD. She has corrected the issue on Highway and connected seven infinity ELDs, but the account is still under review by Highway. Um, well, here's the deal. Like, if you anyone who's who's operated in Highway, um, this is gonna make sense to you, but if you haven't, I'll explain it. So, one of the options in highway is for a carrier to connect their ELD to highway. And what that does is it allows the vetting process to basically skip a bunch of steps, right? The broker knows that they have assets because they can see where they're located. Um, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff with like, you know, tracking and how close are they and what kind of equipment, etc. Right? You can do it, you there's all this stuff, and it it just helps, you know, it shorten the trust process. So what they're saying here is that someone logged in to the wrong ELD provider, which is only possible if legitimately a user for that carrier on highway logged into the wrong ELD provider. My guess is they might have had a dispatcher that logged in and maybe connected to the wrong um provider for the wrong carrier. And yeah, that's going to flag a carrier on highway. So if you're a carrier, you want to make sure that anyone logging into any of your any of these carrier uh vetting platforms, including your ELD information, right? Make sure that that person's trustworthy and is doing the right, the right stuff. Same thing with brokers. Like brokers will get flagged or have their account flagged if they try to log in as the wrong entity as well. So um this is not like it was a you know a highway screwed up. This is someone on the carrier's login tried to connect the wrong ELD account, which is it could be for it could be fraudulent, it could be an inside job, or it could just be that like most likely a dispatcher that's representing more than one carrier, right? That's that's what my guess would be. So have you ever have you ever seen that one before?

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's most likely that, but I wouldn't be I wouldn't say with 100% certainty. I think that's the only way you could recur.

But yeah, I mean what I would do is I would uh I would try to reach out to uh highway, like the support at highway.com, um or call them and just say, hey, I'm trying to get my account um fixed here. I think someone will my dispatcher logged in with someone else's ELD. So yeah. But anyway, good questions, keep them coming our way, and we'll keep answering them. Final thoughts, man.

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