🚚 No ELD, No Load? How ELD-Exempt Carriers Really Get Booked | Final Mile 124

Welcome back. It's another edition of the final mile where we answer your questions and respond to your comments from social media. Um and Merry Christmas. I know we're in the holiday season here. This will be dropping just before uh um Christmas. So hope everyone's enjoying some time off with their family and um having a good time. So make sure to leave us a review, comment, share with your friends, check out the Freeburger basics course if you're looking for some training options and support our channel by checking out the sponsors that are listed in the description box on YouTube or in the show notes via podcast. All right, Ben, we got these three came from our Facebook group. The first one we we did like a full breakdown on the most recent podcast episode. So if you want a full breakdown, check that one out. Um but they said I got scammed by a fake carrier, Scottway Logistics LLC. They showed legit tracking and communication, took a$2,000 fuel advance after quote unquote loading, but never actually picked up the freight. Macro point pings were fake and the driver ghosted. Lesson learned, no more fuel advances, even with an all-green RMS. So here's what um, and I know that's not really a question, it's more of a comment, but I wanted to bring it in here. And again, check out the full episode from last week if if you want our full breakdown on this one. But um at the end of the day, um uh Ben, I think you said it best on the podcast is like a phone call could prevent a lot of things, right? And when when it comes to fuel advances, one thing that um I've since I started that we've done is I need documentation that is from my customer. Like they, you know, they it could be an email or whatever, right? But I need I need verification from them that the load was picked up, and then I and I asked for a picture of the driver's uh CDL and their cab card registration, right? Um, those tie the driver to the carrier and the carrier to the um shipment and the customer approves all of it, and then maybe I'll give an advance out. I'm not a fan of advances in general, um, but I understand that they're required for certain things. And lumper, like, yeah, I'm gonna advance for lumper if my customer is requiring it. Um, but what's your take on um maybe procedurally or or or or whatnot as far as this scammer um you know, getting this broker for two grand on a fuel advance?

Well, one like we looked at this carrier. So the first thing was if this wasn't a box truckload, you could have prevented that with any tool, even I think Safer will show you their equipment. But for sure, search carriers, highway, RMIS will tell you the equipment they have listed. And if this wasn't a box truck load, that's your first red flag. The second is if you're ever gonna give a fuel advance, you need your customer to confirm it was loaded on the truck you're going to advance money to, right? So not just a bill of lading from the carrier, which is the third one, but like a phone call and an email from my customer from that shipper, hey, who did you guys load? Any issues there? Just want to confirm the truck. That would have prevented this. And then the third is if the carrier sends you a bill of lading and it's your customer, you should have another bill of lading in your TMS to compare it to to see if it is legit. Now that can still be faked or defrauded. However, when you do all four of those things, the likelihood that you wouldn't have caught this one is pretty slim. So again, like just like you said in our full length one is like you need both tools, processes, and knowledge to be able to protect yourself.

Agreed. Agreed. All right, next question. Um, how can ELD exempt carriers sign up on highway? It seems most brokers won't load you if you don't have an ELD connection. Um, this is an interesting question because this came up earlier this year in my company when you know we were looking at, you know, for example, like on highway, and this is what the question was about is like you can have a rule, like they have to have an ELD connection. Um, well, there are instances where carrier like a box truck that fits under, I think it's 10,000 pounds for the uh gross weight, um, they don't need to have an ELD. If they're a short haul, they don't need to have an ELD. If they're intrastate, they don't need to have an ELD. You have the ag exemption, you've got the 19th. Yeah. So there are exemptions, and if you just blatantly say we're not going to load anybody without ELDs, you're potentially giving up a big chunk of the market. And a lot of times it's a niche part of the market, like Sprinter Van business, for example. Like there's a lot of opportunity in um expedite, final mile, things like that for sprinter vans and and whatnot. Um, what you can do in highway to answer the question is if you are ELD exempt, there is a way to um prove that, and you'll be listed in highway as ELD exempt. So it kind of check it gives you like a little check mark basically that um, yes, I understand I don't have an ELD, but I have given the documents necessary, depending on the situation, to Highway to show that I'm ELD exempt. So glider kit is a great example. Like if they got the old the 1999 or older engine and they just upgraded their, you know, the the rest of the truck around it, um or if it's just an old truck for that matter, um, you can you can show that you're ELD exempt. So um there and again, outside of Highway, there are other ways to verify uh the quality of a carrier. Um so like if we're gonna talk gen logs for a quick second, if I know that the carrier is uh, you know, they're they're you know, they don't have an ELD according to Highway. Um I'm loading a sprinter van, right, and I can see on gen logs a picture of the trucks and I can see a footprint of where they operate and it all lines up, um, that's gonna be a good a good sign for this carrier versus um having to go through an exemption process with highway. So any other thoughts on uh exempt carriers?

Other than again, a phone call will probably get you approved to the broker's manager if they can't. Hey, is there anyone else I can speak to there? Anyone on your carrier team? And then just have a conversation as to why you're exempt and why you're not meeting the rule, and you could probably get it waived.

Yep. And we've done the same thing too. Like, um if if in your vetting software, like highway or whatnot, if you're getting a flag that the carriers got trucks that are not on their insurance policy. I I've had instances where like the truck went in the shop and it's gonna be a a pretty long time. Um, and they're they just took it off their insurance to save money. And we'll take it, but you know, it still shows connected to their ELD because they it's still on their account. Um, we'll take like a shop quote or you know, whatever that just it's a show of good faith, like, yeah, like this truck's in the shop, it's why it's off my insurance. I'm trying to save money while I'm having to spend money to get it fixed. I just didn't take it off my ELD account, um, or whatever. So there's there's ways to just pick up the phone, have a conversation, and figure out what what you need to do to all feel comfortable. Um, our last question what CRM is good for a freight broker? So um there are a lot of CRMs that are out there, and we've seen and used a whole bunch of them. Um specific to freight, the only one that I'm aware of that's like freight specific is shipper CRM. Um but here's what I'll tell you with CRM. I was helping somebody last week get get their CRM set up. Is if you get like a generic CRM, like a um pipe drive, um HubSpot, Salesforce. And when I say generic, I mean it's it's meant to be applied to a variety of different industries. It's gonna come out of the box with a lot of stuff that you probably don't want to see or need to see, and it's gonna come with a lot of things that you're probably gonna want to build, add, and customize to make it a good freight-specific um tool. So the ones I just mentioned are all ones that I've heard uh and used and seen good feedback on. Um but things like, you know, I was helping somebody clean theirs up last week, like I said, and taking out like certain, like if you got a prospect, right, and a lot of the generic stuff in there is like, you know, you know, deal, like there's a lot of deal-related stages and estimated order value and things like that. It's like, well, this is kind of different. What I want to see is I want to see like their name, their company, the commodity that they're shipping, the mode of transportation. Is it FTL, LTL, Expedite, um, the volume of loads per week, for example, right? Um, their decision maker level, like, are they tendering freight? Are they handling onboarding? Like all those things. So when I when I open up my CRM to make all my calls, I can quickly see on one screen all the things that are important to me. And if you don't take the time to customize your CRM in that fashion, you're gonna find yourself clicking through a bunch of different screens trying to get all this information when you could have it right in front of you. Another thing I thought was cool too, and I do this in HubSpot, you can pin a comment to the top of like your feed for a for a prospect. So, like if you know that the next time I call this person, I want to ask them how their kid's birthday party went, boom, pin that right to the top. So as soon as you pick up the phone, you got a reminder right in front of you. You don't have to scroll through and look at your notes. So, what are your thoughts on CRM?

Uh, I mean, everything you said, the thing I would say is like I used HubSpot for years, you and I both have. Um, I really started using a TO about a year ago, ATTIO, because one, it was a little cheaper than HubSpot, but it's it's very easy to change. Meaning, like, I was able to configure a TO in like two hours to be exactly what fields I want. I was able to make it say and do everything I needed to with very little effort. Where I found that the larger or the older CRMs that have been available are far less configurable unless you really spend top tier. And like I've even worked with like HubSpot consultants to try to get it to do what you just said of like commodity, what type of equipment, what's the seasonality? Are they a decision maker? Are they the tenderer? Like, are they in procurement? And like all of those things I've been trying to do for years in every other CRM I was able to do in a TO in like an hour. And it is like custom, bespoke, super easy to use, way lower cost than most of the other ones. So for me, that's the one I've been using mostly in the past, probably year, year and a half. And like I kind of recommend it to everybody because I haven't found any functionality version to it looks like, or you can start off that I can't do with it. Like it literally does everything I've ever found in any other CRM. And I've really gotten like way down in the rabbit hole of like building like sequences where like I've set it up so like it will email the decision maker quarterly for a brokerage and say, hey, wanted to catch up with you on uh a quarterly review, because you just kind of forget to do that. I have it set up so like if you have an inactive customer, it will send them out an email to connect with them. So like you don't run into the, oh, I did all this work to bring on this customer and then just forgot about them because they just didn't have any loads the past month. So there was a lot of functionality and things that I've been able to do with that that literally took me almost no effort, where all of the other ones that have been around, they're just to your point, like they're very good, but they're mostly built for other types of sales. Our industry is a very unique type of sale because like you need to first close the company to do business. Yep. But then in addition, you need to penetrate it and keep working it to be able to actually do business with them. There's not really like a deal number or like, hey, this is what the value is kind of thing.

You literally like it, we it's very transactional, right? Um, we operate a lot in the spot market, so that's a that's a very good point there.

Well, and here's the other thing I was able to do with it. I was able to make those required fields under like a contact and a company record. So like if you're a salesperson at a brokerage, I set this up for a client, like it literally is the first thing you see. It says, How many truckloads do they move per week? And there's a drop down where it's like zero to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, right? So like you kind of it helps the salespeople not forget to ask those questions, right? Yep. And then it'll say, like, do they have an RFP? And then there's another drop down. What time of year is their RFP? Right. So like I was able to design it in a way that like you can't forget to ask those questions because they're like literally right next to that person's name when you call them.

That's yeah, that's great. I I love having the required fields too in the CRM for that exact reason. So all right, good, good stuff, good questions. Keep sending them our way. We'll keep answering them. Final thoughts.

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

And until next time, go bills.