Broker Wants You To Pay $350 Before Loading? | Final Mile 121

All right. Welcome to another edition of the Final Mile. This is a QA session where we take your questions and answer them. I think most of these came actually they they all came from our Facebook group today. So thanks everyone that participates in there. Um I gotta go in and clean up some uh got some spammers every now and then. Actually, it's not really the spammers anymore. It's people just trying to like they're just trying to recruit and hire. And uh it's against the community guidelines. Maybe we'll have to change it. I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, the first first question um is there a way to get off of a broker's do not use list, or should I just create a new MC to try and work with them again? I like started dying laughing when I saw this because I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, this the girl that posted it, like, I think she said her authority was only two months old, so what's it matter? I'll just get a new authority. It's like, hey, you know, the company that has you on do not use probably knows your name. There's probably a reason why you're on do not use besides just you know the objective stats of your authority. You probab something bad probably happened, right? So what I'd recommend is if you're on someone's do not use list, um find out why. Like have a conversation. And like if you also, and this is you know just my opinion as a brokerage, the only reason I would put a carrier on do not use for the entire organization is if that carrier is truly a threat to doing business. If someone had a bad experience with one driver one time, annotate it, right? Maybe that individual broker is gonna say, Hey, I'm not gonna load these guys again. But I've had plenty of situations where we had carriers that we pulled off DNU because an agent's like, nah, I work with these guys like at a previous company and like they're great. Like, why are they on DNU here? And you quickly realize that you know it was an isolated incident, whatever. But it could also be a misunderstanding, right? Like you got put on do not use because somebody was pissed off about something one day, and then when the dust settles and you can actually talk through it, they just forgot to take you off DNU or whatever, right? Or the person that wanted you put on DNU doesn't even work there at the company anymore. And there's all kinds of things, but I would just have a conversation like what why won't why can't you guys load me? Is it something is it a personnel issue? Is it a a company issue, you know, etc. Um, some like some brokers are like we just won't load Landstar ever because you know they have a brokerage authority and their trucks and their trucks never show up, blah blah blah. And like I've had, you know, we've had Landstar drivers or dispatchers call and then we're like, yeah, we won't we won't load you. We'll tell them exactly why. And then when we tell them, like, oh, we could try to get an exception, but we're gonna do X, Y, and Z requirement-wise, and they know they're not gonna follow our protocol, so we just you know, we don't work with them anyway. But any thoughts on DNU or like, you know, to answer her question? I I wouldn't bug a new authority to try to work your way around it. I would figure out what's what the issue is.

Yeah, that's the thing. Like, fix whatever caused it, and then have some conversations to see if you can work through it. I mean, that would be the path that I would go, which is literally exactly what you said. Like, what caused this? Can you resolve it? And honestly, most companies will have like a plan where, like, if you like I've seen this where like a plan, yeah, like they're like, hey, I've had all these issues. They literally will put together like a memo, like a one-page document that says, like, here are this this is what occurred. We realize it, we've acknowledged it, learned from it. Here are the steps we're taking to make sure this never happens again. They send that to the brokerage, and a lot of times they'll put them on like a preliminary basis. A couple loads, see how they go, and they literally can work their way back into good graces, if you will.

Yeah. I think that's a good that's a good practice to have for care development in general, is like, you know, people can change, and like if you if somebody hasn't got a brand new authority and makes a mistake and you put them on do not use, and then they they develop and they grow, and next thing you know, they're like a small to medium-sized fleet that'd be great for your customers, but you got them on DNU. You have you know, you don't even know what you're missing. So, yeah, that's good. All right, next question. What steps do you take to verify a carrier before giving them freight? Well, I'll kind of like give you the summary. We want to verify like there, I want to make sure I have the right person in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. It's usually what it comes down to, and how you go about doing that is going to depend. And Ben, I think one of the things that you do that's great is you're a big advocate for like pick up the phone and call, right? That is one of the number one easiest ways to you know skip a lot of these steps. If a carrier sees your post up on a loadboard and emails you and you never speak to them, how do you know that you're talking to the right person? You don't they could have had their email hacked, right? They could, you know, there's all kinds of things that um scammers can do. And if you just pick up the phone, like, hey, just wanted to verify, you know, so and so over at, you know, called, and yeah, you get the yay or nay. And I I appreciate it when I get calls from carriers a lot that are like, hey, just wanted to make sure so and so is actually with your company. I'm like, yep, absolutely. Now, actual ways to go about verifying outside of making the phone call. So there's there's tools, right? You can do like, and again, not I don't think any one single tool is gonna solve it. I think the more you have in your arsenal, you kind of pick the the combination of all of it that you feel comfortable with. Um, but it's things like you know, the multi-factor authentication for um sending a rate confirmation or tracking, you know, through ELD if they have it. If they if they're ELD exempt, maybe you've you're gonna require pictures at a local, you know, at the location. Quickscope is a great tool that you can use like load level, right? Get a picture and they're gonna show the MC and the name on the side of the truck, verify it's within the radius of where you said it's supposed to be before they get pickup information. So I think it just depends. Like the higher the risk of that load or the more importance of it, if it's a new customer or high value, um, probably gonna take more steps. If it's more routine and it's a carry that you work with on a regular basis, probably gonna have a little bit of a looser but still effective method of of verifying them. But um, what are your thoughts? What what do you think about tracking every load versus tracking select loads? Do you have a an overall like opinion on it?

Now my opinion is pretty much like I want to track everything, mostly from like the fraud side and visibility.

And honestly, most customers, they're the they're the interested party anyway. They're like, Yeah, I need I want I want to be able to see where this is at all times because we've had two stolen earlier this year.

Right. I mean, again, like I go, is their authority active? Then I go, how long have they been in business? Right now, I also don't draw a hard line at a year. I know lots of large companies will, but like I would rather have a conversation. So maybe they're 10 or 11 months. I'm gonna speak to them because that might be a driver who just became an owner op that has 25 years experience and has a brand new truck and is absolutely the kind of business you want to work with. They're just starting their company. That doesn't mean they're not experienced, and it doesn't mean their equipment isn't super reliable. So once I go from there, then I'm gonna go and look at usually what equipment they have registered, how many power units, what trailers do they have the trailer they say they have, which is the next thing I usually look at. Then I go and look at, okay, do they have the insurance for said power units and trailers? And is it the correct amount for the load? And I mean, that's most of what I'm looking at. I usually also glance at like the driver out of service percentage, the vehicle out of service percentage, because that tells you a little bit on like reliability of the driver and the equipment. And just because to your point, like the vehicle might have a super high out of service percentage, like national average right now is 20%, which is not great. But like I'm literally looking at one right now is 31%. All right, it depends on what I'm moving. If my customer doesn't have like a must-move load that is like refrigerated that has a claim risk if it breaks down, that's not that important to me. If it's a lumber load, I don't care if the guy breaks down on the way and has to get fixed and it gets there a day later if my customer doesn't care. So I'll probably use that company. Again, what I'm moving has a lot to do with how I'm choosing that. And to be honest, like that is the job of a freight broker. All we are are basically like a staffing company for shipping. Hey, we're hiring the right person with the right equipment for the right job with the right insurance. And that changes based on the types of jobs you're hiring for. Is it an over-dimensional, overweight, oversized load going coast to coast? Okay, I'm gonna look for some different things. Is it super high value? I'm gonna look for a different quality of driver and equipment, right? If it's low value, low risk, like those things are less important. And there's always a trade-off of cost versus what you're verifying or vetting, I would say.

Yeah, I mean, I think every well, my camera kind of moved over here a little bit. That's weird. Um, I think one of the things when you're working at a brokerage, you have to go through and decide what makes the most sense for you and your company as far as what those requirements are when it comes to carrier vetting. So and again, like you said, customer specific stuff too can can make the difference. Um, our last question here. I gotta I gotta chuckle out of this one because uh our boy Cameron Pisha hopped in to answer it. So basically, somebody was like calling a brokerage a scam, was like, yeah, they want me to pay for insurance before I get loaded. They're trying to scam me. It's 350 bucks, blah blah blah blah. Basically saying, like, you know, the discussion was is it a scam, right? And Cameron, who we've had on to talk about insurance before, hopped in and was like, it well, it really depends. So I wanted to explain why a um why a broker might be asking a carrier to pay for something before the load picks up. So let's say a broker has a load that has a value of$500,000, right? And the carrier that they're talking with that's interesting the load doesn't have$500,000 worth of coverage, right? The discussion might be, hey, can you go get insurance for this load and then I'll give it to you, right? And the broker and the carrier might be like, well, I'm at risk here. Like, what if I go get insurance for this load and then you bail on me and you book somebody else? So that is, I think, where some of the risk comes from the carrier's perspective on this, but it is a real thing, right? Um, but brokers or the shipper themselves can purchase the insurance if they want to. Um, oftentimes it's just cheaper if the carrier who already has a primary policy can buy, you know, that that gap insurance or spike coverage for that specific load. That's why you might see that. And I think if you've never worked with a carrier before, and the first time you're gonna load them, you're gonna ask them to spend money to go get a certain insurance policy. Yeah, they're probably gonna be like, huh? I'm not doing that. Um, that's just the reality of it. I've always found it's a little easier if um you either A, find a carrier that already has that insurance coverage and it's just gonna be part of their all-in-rate that they're gonna want to get paid, or B, until you have a relationship with them, you or your customer can either get a um single load all risk policy, or you can get a single load spike policy that just is the or the gap, whatever the difference is, if you have the right insurance agent that can then uh accommodate all that for you. But um, any thoughts on this one, Ben?

The only thing I would have to add is like as a scam, like I don't even know how that scam would work. If you're the trucking company and I go, hey, it's probably cheaper if you just up your policy. If you do that and I don't give you the load or the load gets canceled, like I didn't get the money. So, like, why would I try to scam you? Like, why would I just waste my time trying to convince you to pay your insurance company to move the load? So I think it's pretty unlikely in any scenario, a broker's doing this with ill intentions because one, it would just be a waste of time. Two, they wouldn't be having the conversation if they didn't need the load moved. And even if you did get the insurance and the load got moved to another day or got canceled, the broker didn't keep the money you paid your insurance company. And furthermore, you could probably go back to your insurance company and they would probably refund it if you actually didn't move the load anyway.

Yeah, so here's the actual post. It said, Um, they are scammers, they want me to pay$350 for insurance before getting loaded. Once I had told them I'm not paying for the insurance, which I don't need, they disappeared. So don't fall on this scam. Um, and then Cameron hopped in and gave a really good response about it depends on what kind of freight you're hauling. Insurance policies are not all created equal. Um, coverage, uh basically, like, yeah, like some policies exclude certain things and others don't. So um, what I will say is they shouldn't be asking you to pay them, right?

So let's say it could be that the carrier's like you shouldn't be paying the broker, the broker's paying you anyway.

You're gonna have like, let's say it's a$350 like single load policy that you're buying as a broker, you should be paying for it. Not telling the carrier to pay for it that you'll reimburse them. Like, that's not how that works. So, all right, good stuff, good discussion, good questions, keep them coming our way, and we'll continue to answer them. Final thoughts, Ben.

You believe you can or believe you can't. You're right.

And until next time, go bills.