💥 $2,000 Fuel Advance Lost — Here’s What Actually Happened | Episode 324

SPEAKER_00: 0:38

All right. Welcome back for another episode of Freight 360. Merry Christmas. We're coming up on the uh holiday week here. Uh make sure to check out all of our other content. We're probably going to take a slight break over the holidays. So you can you can definitely tune in to hundreds of other videos, hours and hours of Ben and I rambling on and on about freight brokering. So um check out the uh all the all the stuff on our website. Got downloadable content. You got the freight broker basics course for training options, which uh you can get started for less than 50 bucks with the payment options now. So um give that a give that a um a checkout and uh let us know what you think. Leave us questions, reviews, comments, all that good stuff. Ben, what's happening in uh Florida today?

SPEAKER_01: 1:21

Buddy, a little sleepy. Don't sleep sick all night. Uh yeah. Up just that sucks. Yeah, stomach flu. Up down, up down. So I ran to Target this morning at 8 o'clock when they opened and then made her chicken soup.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39

So there you go. The uh the time trusted uh chicken soup, always good for the soul, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:48

Dude, speaking of, hold on, completely random, but did you happen to hear the I guess it was a leaked audio of I don't know if it was Campbell Soup or another major soup company, but like like one of their executive VPs, this was like two or three weeks ago. Did you happen to catch that? No. So basically there was a leaked audio recording of one of the executives of like a major soup company dropping F-bombs and saying that like their product is terrible. He doesn't even know what it what it is. He's like, I don't even know what this is. He's like, is this like manufactured meat? He's like, this isn't even real food. I don't even know who eats this. And then he swears. And it was like leak, and it was like everywhere people were talking about it.

SPEAKER_00: 2:36

Campbell's uh soup executive goes on a rant.

SPEAKER_01: 2:39

Dude, it's wild. Like if you hear the audio, like it's both hysterical. Um and well, it's it's funny and it's definitely worth a listen.

SPEAKER_00: 2:49

But the reason I was saying that's Martin Bally, an executive who allegedly said the company's products are for poor people.

SPEAKER_01: 2:55

Yes. And he said I think it was allegedly called the company's food, highly processed food for poor people, and claimed its chicken was bioengineered meat. And I heard the audio because he's like, I don't even know what the this is. He's like, Who eats this? Oh my gosh. Well, I was laughing because I went to the store to buy chicken soup, and I literally had a can of Campbell's chicken soup, and I went, Well, if the guy that runs this company won't eat this shit, then I'm certainly not gonna buy it. And I just ended up making chicken soup from scratch, literally because that was leaked back two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

Soup from scratch is the best, yeah. Um, in sports, we're we're gearing up towards like, you know, playoff clinching scenarios in the NFL, or elimination for that matter. So the big shocker this year is the Chiefs obviously eliminated this past week. Patrick Mahomes is out for the season. ACL, he might not play next year. So who knows, man? I think that happened to Tom Brady in the uh middle of his career, too. But um you only got a couple teams that have clinched so far. My Bills had a nice uh ridiculous comeback win over the Patriots. They were down 21 points. I was I was fairly confident that that game was gonna be a big bust. And then Superman put his cape on, Josh Allen. Yeah, it was good. Your Steelers kind of ran away with it Monday night, too, over Miami. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:29

Um that's always nice, especially living in South Florida, because clearly all my friends and neighbors are mostly Dolphins fans. So like every group chat I'm in, I was just sending the message I sent to you of like the terrible towels, like the entire game.

SPEAKER_00: 4:44

Yeah, I think that game too, that was the one it that eliminated Miami, I think, from the playoffs. Because I think they had like a 1% chance. Like if they were to like win out and the other wildcard teams were to like basically if someone was to like lose out, right? There was that slim chance, but they're done.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

Um be surprised if Daniels is still the head coach there next year, but time will tell.

SPEAKER_00: 5:08

Yeah, I mean they they fired the GM, right? I think midseason, and then um they said he the coach was still gonna be there for the rest of the season, but yeah, I think you're gonna see some changes in uh in South Florida. Um yeah, we're uh we're you know, we're gearing up towards playoffs. I'm excited for it. Um anything else in the world of sports?

SPEAKER_01: 5:30

No, I played golf Friday. You and I touched you about it, but that's about it, man. First time I played in like a year.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

How your uh how your round went, and I was like, I was like, man, you haven't played in a while, and you pretty much played better, uh, better round than me who plays like every week.

SPEAKER_01: 5:44

So I haven't played since yeah, it's probably been a year. I was very, very happy with just how I played for not practicing, not hitting any balls. Yeah, it was a nice afternoon out. Weather's nice this time of year. It's definitely a great time to play golf if you're down in this neck of the woods.

SPEAKER_00: 6:01

Meanwhile, I've got uh lots of snow outside my house. So no no outdoor golf for us.

SPEAKER_01: 6:07

Yeah, but you have to ice skate and like I haven't been able to ski in like 15 years, and you can do both.

SPEAKER_00: 6:13

So I actually haven't hit the slopes since uh I I remember this because of what happened that day, but it was February of 2020, was the last time that I went um snowboarding.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

What's the place that's closest to you? Is it it's not it's not Wisp, is it um what's the one up there?

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

Holiday Valley is the big one. Holiday Valley is like the southern tier of Western New York place. When I was there, it's right before like COVID, you know, shutdowns and whatnot, but it was when uh Kobe's helicopter crashed in California. And we were like, you know, we would do the thing of like me and a couple buddies from college, like we'd go go down the hill a couple times, go in, grab something to drink or beer, whatnot. And we were watching the TV and we're like, oh my god, Kobe Bryant's helicopter went down. And uh that's the last time I went. I you know, had kids that year. I started having kids, and like I just we haven't gone out in almost six years.

SPEAKER_01: 7:06

I I haven't been there. I was in Holiday Valley, it was probably 20-some years ago, but I I still remember there was a slope all the way on like the right side of the mountain if you're looking up at it. I think it was called Champagne, and it was like uh a mogul run, and it was off the back of the mountain, and you could go over there, and I remember because like I could just get on the lift, ski on, ski off. There was no line, and you could basically just keep coming back up and down the hill. And I'm like, I spent like an entire day just skiing that run over and over again.

SPEAKER_00: 7:34

Yeah, there's some fun stuff there. Good terrain parks, and yeah, a lot of fun, a lot of fun. News. So I don't know if you saw this. Uh this was from Craig Fuller on I think it was LinkedIn, I saw it today. For the first time since uh 2022, I think it is, tender rejections top percent. Yep, yeah. So, and it's coming not from a demand, it's coming from a supply side supply side of it. So it's kind of weird, right? Like you we think about like what's going to boost the freight market, um demand is the big one, right? When there's a lot of freight out there to move, there's more of those crumbs like we talked about um last week to you know to get your hands on and and you know do your business. Um, but shrinking capacity that supplies trucks, that will also impact um rates. So and again, you know, when you look at a when you look at a national average or you know uh just generalized data across the board for the industry, it's probably not gonna look the same way in your specific book of business per se, because you're gonna have a specific region you're operating in or a certain equipment type, etc. But that's definitely noteworthy that you know, for the first time since the the Great Freight Recession started, would that we've seen that over 10%. It got close to it last year around the holidays, but never crossed the 10% threshold.

SPEAKER_01: 9:04

But I mean, I think it very much lends itself to the fact that the government is actually doing something to resolve some of the inherent issues and safety. Like there was an article that came out the 12th, I pulled it up right here, where um the new head of the FMCSA, Derek Barr, who was, by the way, like the chief of Florida Highway Patrol for like 25 years, seems like not only a competent individual, but is actually trying to resolve some of the issues in our industry, um, is ending the self-certification of ELDs, which is a huge contributor to a lot of people. So, I mean, I wish them all the luck, and I am super excited to see what some of these enforcement and changes are gonna bring to both the rate side of our industry, the safety side of just our highways in general. But I think it is long overdue for them to start taking some of these actions.

SPEAKER_00: 10:02

Yeah, agreed. So today we're gonna talk. Um, you know, we we're talking about before we hopped on air, like what's been going on lately, you know, what should we discuss today? And um, there's a really good article that came out recently from Danielle, who's been on the show, and Ryan from Gen Logs shared it because you know he kind of gave his spin on um how the basically fraud happened and how it could have been prevented, right? And we've got some stories from 2025. This has literally been like the year from hell in my perspective of like brokerage. Like not only did rates not rebound, but like fraud just like we're just getting we're getting hit from like every angle. And I think I'm we're finally like at Pierce, we're finally going into 2026 with processes and technology in place that really make it difficult to get scammed now. Whereas like we had to rely heavily on compliance from our brokers to do the things we tell them to do, whereas now it's fairly automated and you don't have to think about it much. There's still you know, obviously you still want to be involved in the process and don't just rely all on technology, but um, it makes it really difficult to to screw up and have a load stolen or you know be scammed in one you know one fashion or another. But I wanted to um I wanted to kind of lead off with this scenario. Did you see the one with the the Idaho to Florida load?

SPEAKER_01: 11:27

Uh a little bit. You were telling me right before the show, I saw a couple of the posts related to it, but not super into the details. So kick it off.

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

Yeah, so and and this was shared in our Facebook group too, as well as some other social media platforms. But essentially in a nutshell, here's what happened is a is a broker booked a truck for a load going from Idaho to Florida. They put cell phone GPS tracking on the carrier, everything was looking good. The truck pinged in the right spots, and driver calls the broker and says, like, hey, I'm uh I'm loaded. Um, you know, can I get a fuel advance? They send over a BO they the broker requests a BOL to show it was loaded. They see a generic looking BOL, looks like it's loaded.

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

That's the part that kind of confuses me is like this is clearly your customer. Like, have you not seen a BOL from that shipper book? Oh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna break this whole scenario down here because that's no one to compare it to. Yeah, I'm like, that seems like a pretty easy thing to catch right there.

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

Yep. So they get a BOL.

SPEAKER_01: 12:34

Like the first thing I'm doing, if you want a fuel advance, is hey, send me a picture. And this we talk about this all the time. Like, at least just pick up the phone, call your customer. Hey, just wanted to confirm that that has been loaded, there were no issues, and can you confirm who loaded it or the MC to verify that before you're gonna cut a$2,000 fuel advance?

SPEAKER_00: 12:54

Yep. So we'll I'll tell you what happened and then we'll kind of reverse engineer and talk about multiple ways this could have been prevented. Okay. So the broker issues out a fuel advance for$2,000 after they got their, you know, quote unquote BOL proof that the the driver got loaded. And um shortly afterward, the customer calls and says, like, hey, like, when's the truck gonna be there? Truck never showed up. So totally got scammed. Um what the what the carrier did is it was a legitimate carrier who sold their MC, I believe, a couple months ago. And whoever bought it obviously spoofed the GPS tracking for the cell phone and created a fake BOL and played that broker. All right. So you're not gonna get your money back on that one. Um, but here's here's you know what Ryan was able to show with gen logs, and we'll talk about some other processes that you kind of alluded to that could have prevented this on the broker's perspective. So remember, this is a load going from Idaho to uh Florida, okay. If you pull this carrier up on Gen Logs, right, or for that matter, look at like any other platform that's gonna show like ELD history, etc. Right, but genlogs is is a great example here. Um, we're both big fans, we've we've got it. Um, this carrier in the last three years has only ever been spotted in the Carolinas, right? So their their actual physical footprint of where they operate does not correlate whatsoever with that lane. And Gen Logs, they have so many cameras up now you can see almost the entire United States. So if you got these long hauls like Idaho to Florida, you're gonna pass one of those cameras, okay? Um further, the carrier's equipment type that's been observed was all box trucks. They didn't have a single class eight truck that was a reefer like the load was requiring. Um you could see out even outside of gen logs, you can see this kind of stuff. What's that? One box truck.

SPEAKER_01: 15:03

I'm looking at it right now because I pulled them up as you were talking, and I'm like, they have one box truck.

SPEAKER_00: 15:07

Yeah, there it is. Instead, it it's listed just one box truck, no class 8 trucks. Um the carrier disappeared from the roads essentially two months ago, which is when um the last time they were seen on a gen logs camera. You'd have the same, so if you were um, you know, if this if there was inspection data or anything else, um, you would have had, you know, from other sources, right? You would have seen that. Um so ultimately it wasn't like a good carry that went bad, it was a legitimate care that that was sold, right? Um let's go back, because you kind of alluded to this. Is if you're gonna issue out a fuel advance, which first of all, I'm not a huge fan of fuel advances for many reasons. Um, but if that's even since I started, like the the requirement before fraud got big, the requirement to issue a fuel advance was to have a proof of delivery from your customer to get a picture of the driver's um license and their registration, right? Cab card. So I want to tie the identity of the driver to the carrier that I booked, and I want verification from my customer that this load was loaded before I issued advance out. And this is going back a dozen years ago before fraud became a huge thing. A decade ago.

SPEAKER_01: 16:30

A decade ago, like if I remember, like I at the very least needed an email from my customer in writing confirming that our truck was loaded for that MC. Hey, this carrier has been loaded, all good, right? Like anything, I don't think, I think again, this is 10 some years ago, but like I'm pretty sure that was at the very minimum, the requirement. If not, also calling the driver, getting a BOL. And and I would always just talk to my shipper, just call, hey, just wanted to make sure this is the guy that got loaded. Can you just shoot me a quick email to confirm that? I gotta give the guy a fuel advance. So you've got the document the carrier should have that you compare it to other bills of lading from that shipper to make sure they match. And then your shipper, either in writing or over the phone, or both confirms that that MC was loaded with their freight.

SPEAKER_00: 17:23

Yep. Yeah, so um here's what's crazy, right? Like they the broker used RMIS to vet the carrier. They were, you know, no red flags, good to go. Uh, macro point tracking, cell phone, we've talked about it. It can be vulnerable, right? Cell phone spoofing is like surprisingly easy in today's age. So they weren't tracking using ELD, and that would that would have been an ELD mandated truck. Um, and they said the dispatcher was super um communicative with with the broker. So like they played it off great. And you gotta think, like, obviously that carrier is flagged now, but they pro this is just one story. They probably did this to a bunch of brokers in a short amount of time. Because let's say they're like, oh, I'll buy the uh I'll buy the MC for five grand, scam for 10 grand worth of advances, and disappear, right? Or even if they bought it for a thousand from some carrier that just wanted to get out of the industry and they get two thousand dollars. Like that's a a 100% rate of return if you look at it that way. So but yeah, I mean that is like so. At the loading point, that is a a huge, a huge um preventative thing there is to make sure your your customer is verifying that it's been there. Um, we've gone as far now, like we we're using all the load lock products from highway, and you know, so if if a truck is is an ELD mandated truck, um, we're gonna expect along with the vast majority of brokers now that they've got an ELD integration. I can see on a map where that truck's been um, you know, where their ELD is pinged recently, I can see in gen logs where that truck or that carrier has been visible, or in this case, not visible, right? And cell phone tracking. I if you have to use cell phone tracking because they're ELD exempt for for whatever reason, there are still other methods to use in addition to that to verify the carrier's identity. Like Quickscope is a great example, right? You can get load level and they with their updates this year, it's not just MC number now. There's VIN, VIN level verification through these photos. So you, you know, before that driver gets a pickup number or you know, whatever the case might be, they've got to be within a two-mile geofence of the pickup. They've got to take the the pictures um through the Quickscope's page on their phone, and the information needs to match what you have told the system. And if they don't do all those steps, they don't get the pickup information. So what I mean, what else are you thinking at the at the pickup level to prevent this from happening?

SPEAKER_01: 20:49

I think that's pretty much all of it. And also like most of what would have prevented this hasn't changed in 40 years, right? I mean, yeah, an email, if you go back 40 years, but even if you go back 30, you still had an email in the 90s, and a phone call would have prevented most of this. Which we say all the time. It's like, yeah, there's all these expensive, fancy ways to do this, but at the end of the day, it's like a phone call honestly prevents most of this. Talk to the guy at the loading dock or your customer and verify.

SPEAKER_00: 21:23

Yeah. Precisely. Um, here's the hot take too. This came up yesterday is we've had a few drivers that are saying, like, you know, you can like they have ELDs, right? They're required to. So you can track me any way you want to, but I'm not doing ELD tracking. Like, I'm not integrating my ELD to highway. It feels like an invasion of privacy. Track my cell phone, you know, I'll you know, I'll send you my my company's tracking link, but I'm not, I'm not doing the ELD into highway. So I'm curious your thoughts, because my personal thoughts are with the way most brokers and shippers are treating fraud and verification now and moving towards the telematics ELD, um, like essentially live tracking versus cell phone that can be spoofed. If you're not willing to do it, you may be in the wrong industry at this point because it's kind of becoming an expectation that you provide in transit visibility of where you're at because you're hauling somebody's freight that's valued at upwards of a hundred thousand dollars or more. What is your take on those that are like I'm not doing because we used to have it where they wouldn't do cell phone tracking, but what's your take on I'm not sharing my ELB data?

SPEAKER_01: 22:39

There's two things, right? The first is I get why carriers don't want to cooperate with tools like highway and any of the vetting tools, because almost every single one doesn't provide any benefit back to the carriers. And that has been my biggest gripe in the entire industry since any of these vetting tools existed. They all operate and only protect or try to protect brokers and shippers, mostly brokers, and just alienate carriers. They don't give any benefit back to them, they don't do any revenue sharing, they don't try to help them in any way, they get penalized when they are a victim of fraud, when somebody hacks their system, when somebody steals something and pretends to be them, they not only are a victim for that instance, but then all these tools just alienate that company for the next 45 to 90 days, and then they get penalized again. So I think the way they've approached the market in general is just absolutely selfish and one-sided. So I get why there's contempt.

SPEAKER_00: 23:49

I do too. So let me, I'm gonna try to like give a comparison, right? Because you mentioned, you made a good point. It doesn't add any benefit to them. My argument is it's the norm and it's the expectation moving into the future. Here's an example, right? I live in New York State, I'm required to have my car registered and I have to renew that, right? I have to pay money to renew that registration every two years. Provides zero benefit to me. And if I don't renew my registration and it's expired and I get pulled over, I get a fine. Right? Like that's but it is the expectation that this is the way that operating a motor vehicle in New York State is. Not every state has state required registrations that you have to renew every single year or two years. In New York, we have to. And if you don't, you get fined. No benefit to us, we just have to pay it, and that's it. So and there's plenty of other examples of stuff like that. Like, for example, like why do I have to argue with you here?

SPEAKER_01: 24:46

Here's the reason I would argue with that point. That is a government regulation. That is not a third-party or privately owned company that is benefiting from the information they get from trucking companies. So they are gonna aggregate all that data from all these carriers and all these drivers, of which they're gonna sell or monetize to raise more money, and they provide no benefit back to the majority of the market that everybody needs to actually move freight. So not only do they alienate them and then penalize them further, but in addition to that, they don't help them in any way at all. And they're not staffed well enough when a carrier calls them and says, hey, this isn't me. I want to report this, help me. They just flag the carrier and then they get screwed and can't do business for two or three months. So, like if I'm a trucking company, like I would be furious. And there's no way I would want to share my information with them. I would say the irony in that is that the ELD they do not want to connect is already stealing their information and just selling it to criminals, which is why they're likely vulnerable anyway. So it's not like they're protecting anything. I think to me, it's more of just like the personal opinion or feeling slighted of why they don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:58

Let me give you another one. This is gonna be, I'll try to make it close related. Okay. If I go online and I order, let's say I order something really expensive, like a$5,000, you know, TV kit to restore a classic car, right? I'm just making this up. And I'm going to expect that I've got a way to track it, right? I'm gonna have a tracking link that's gonna give me um updates on where that is. It like that's it's just kind of a customer expectation, right? And that's a$5,000 example. If you're talking about a um$100,000 worth of electronics or, you know, time-sensitive fresh fruit, et cetera. And again, I'm kind of stretching it here, but there's kind of an expectation in in the current day and age that we should be able to see where our goods are in transit. And that, you know, that spills over. If if the if the government is mandating ELDs, right? And and that ELD tracks location and what they're doing, um, and the the way that our industry is going is is towards using that data for you know to protect our customers.

SPEAKER_01: 27:11

But those are very different things. And here, I'll steel man the other side of your argument. One, that expectation to me is bullshit because you send into an LTL network, you have no idea where that is, whether it's a$5,000 or$25,000 purchase. You get a maybe it's here from the Shopify app or any of those, of like maybe it's in this warehouse, it's expected to be here, or it's sitting there.

SPEAKER_00: 27:34

Every LTL shipment gets scanned every time it it switches truck.

SPEAKER_01: 27:39

Yeah. And again, like that expectation, I think, is there, but I think the reality when because you know this, when you and I get into like how things are actually moving and tracked, like most of that is bullshit. Like most of the time it's an expected to leave here, it's expected to be here, it should be there. Like, even when I'm delivering, getting groceries delivered from Costco, like it's uh maybe the guy's gonna leave soon, maybe the guy's gonna be here, right?

SPEAKER_00: 28:08

Like well, on Instacart, Amazon, uh Uber Eats, you can see where your driver is. Like when my Amazon, right? Hey, your driver's 10 stops away, and I could see that dot moving, right? If I'm doing an Instacart for food delivery or groceries or Uber Eats, whatever, yes, Grubhub, you can see where that driver is.

SPEAKER_01: 28:27

Two things. This happened yesterday. I ordered food from Costco, right? We have that expectation as a consumer, but the driver that went to deliver our groceries yesterday could not find my house and literally left. You can see where they were groceries. Correct. But I can't. And if they all want to be tracked, they shouldn't be working for the phone. And I messaged them and said, hey, like this is where my house is. If you need directions, let me know. They were like, I didn't get the message through the app. I couldn't find your house because the Instacart app, from the driver's point of view, kept taking them to the wrong house. And it didn't give them the address, so they could use Google Maps or another app to just find my house. So they literally went, drove to the store, brought groceries here, couldn't find my house because the app didn't work right on their end, and then left. And then another guy had to bring it back three hours later. So, like the the point I guess I'm making is like we have these expectations, but when you really start to work or get into the details or the weeds of these tools, most of them aren't even close to being able to provide the thing that they say they are, which is the first issue. The other is you said ELDs are mandated by the government. That is true, but they're mandated for hours of service. They are not mandated for location tracking, which are two very different things. And if I am a professional truck driver, I want you to trust me and my ability to do what I tell you, right? To do business with me, not have to stare over my shoulder while I'm driving my truck to get where I need to be. Now, I think that does change when you get into higher value and there's a set expectation. Most drivers don't push back when you're like, hey, my customer needs to know where the shipment is, to your point. But I do think they are very different in how and what is regulated, how and what these softwares actually can provide versus what people think they can. Because to me, that was my biggest frustration the past two years is like really getting into the weeds of like how these systems do what they do. And I'm like, none of this shit works the way they tell you to. Like you and I talk about this all the time. I'm like, half the things that these salespeople will tell you are unequivocally not true. I'm like, I don't know that they're a lie or just told to tell you this, but this shit just doesn't work anywhere close to what it says. Whether it's a TMS or a carrier vetting software or a tracking tool, almost none of them do what the salespeople will lead you to believe they do.

SPEAKER_00: 30:45

I'll give you another another story here, right? Um, and I I I'm gonna preface this with I am a fan of any company that's trying to arm brokers and shippers and carriers alike um to protect themselves from fraud, identity theft, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01: 31:05

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00: 31:05

Um we had we had a load earlier this week that we've added the carrier on highway, good to go. Uh we sent the rate confirmation through highway, meaning, you know, unless they're a verified highway contact, they can't view it, they can't accept it, they can't see the pickup information. Carrier verified their identity, um, good to go. Um tracking was sent out through trucker tools.

SPEAKER_01: 31:32

That one right there. That step before you go past that, right? Is the way they explain the way MFA works and how someone can accept the Raycon versus what actually happens are two very different things. And is a very good example of exactly what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00: 31:49

This is the legitimate, the the the legitimate care the right person did accept it and view it.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

Correct. But the thing that I'm saying is, and like I we were talking about stories and things that happened this year. So I pulled up the one where we had a whole truckload of golf carts stolen by MTC cargo, which by the way, we were able to track fine through gen logs and they actually arrested that crime ring. So, like not only did it come full circle, but like there was literally a prosecution where these people were they're either indicted or they're in jail. Like it's literally gone all the way around, right? But when I went back in highway and sent them this, and I'm like, you guys said that if they accept the ratecon, they go through your MFA, which was supposedly like a video and a license to make sure the person logging in was that person. And then they went, oh no, we do that at account initiation. We don't do that every time someone accepts a rate con. So as a dispatcher, you could give me your login and I could literally just log in through a VPN with your credentials and grab any ratecon I want without going through like their full stack MFA. And I went back to them, I'm like, well, you guys told me it worked this way, but now you're telling me it works completely different. Like if everybody's cell phone and phone number is vulnerable, then they can get the MFA through their cell phone and their email, which to me didn't really protect us at all. And that happened twice this year with the same customer. Two loads of golf carts, 100 grand or 120 grand a piece.

SPEAKER_00: 34:05

Yeah. So I mean, this goes to show that technology has its vulnerabilities and its and its loopholes, right? So back what do you got?

SPEAKER_01: 34:13

I don't think it's technology. I think it's the people that built the technology didn't understand what they were building and didn't build it correctly because it's solvable through technology, just not the technology that people already built.

SPEAKER_00: 34:26

That's fair. That's fair. So back to this story, the carrier verifies our identity using the uh multi-factor authentication for the ray confirmation. And tracking was we were using tracking through trucker tools. We we because we had j we're just rolling out the ELD tracking through highway this week. So this was prior to that. And trucker tools link gets sent out. And um we requested, we told the driver, like, hey, um, before you get loaded, we need um we need you to connect the trucker tools to your ELD and send us photos showing the um side of your truck. We want to see the MC number, the name, we want to see the the uh plate number and the VIN number on the inside of the door, right? Because I've we have seen some elaborate professional spoofing on the side of a truck, like$1,500 cost, right? To make it look like you're somebody else. So just the name and MC and VIN on the side of the door doesn't exactly always do it, right? When but when you can get the etched VIN on the on the door frame and the driver or the license plate, you know, it's an extra step. Again, nothing's foolproof, but we're taking extra steps. Anyway, driver never sends that information over. They already have the um the rate confirmation information, so the pickup address. Um, luckily, the customer, um also, because we have a good report with them, the customer knows don't load anybody unless it matches what I've told you I'm sending in. And before the driver verified them themselves through trucker tools with the photos and whatnot and connected to their ELDs, the customer sent a picture and was like, this is who just showed up. They had their doors open, backed up to the dock and everything because they already knew the address, and they just rolled in and backed up to a door. We caught it, but this was an example of a carrier that had not previously been flagged for double brokering and broke bad for the first time. So they passed the sniff test on highway, they passed the rate confirmation verification, and then they just double brokered the load and forwarded the the tracking link to whoever they wanted to, who was gonna try and get loaded real quick without having to verify who they were. Luckily, customer caught it, we would have caught it um ourselves at the pickup as well when we were.

SPEAKER_01: 36:50

Quickscope would have too.

SPEAKER_00: 36:51

Quickscope would have done the exact same thing. Yeah. For sure. So all these all these options are out there. Um, but you, in my opinion, you you've got to. I'm gonna go back to one thing that I heard at TIA's policy forum, I think is golden, right? The three things that you've got to do to prevent fraud are have to, you know, good education. So the knowledge of what's going on and you know the cur the current trends, you gotta have that in your brokerage. The technology to um enable yourself to protect yourself and prevent fraud, you gotta have good technology. And three, the processes. And I think this goes back to what you said before procedurally. A phone call can save so many bad situations from happening. But you can't just have a process or just have technology or just have knowledge. You've got to have an entire system in place that is going to leverage all three of those. Otherwise, you you leave yourself vulnerable. And again, I don't think anything's gonna be 100% um, you know, foolproof because as we evolve our processes and our technology, the bad guys figure out ways to, you know, find vulnerabilities and they just kind of adjust course. We've seen this over the last three years or so, and and how they've gone from GPS spoofing. I've even heard I've even heard of ELD spoofing, right? And you'll see you're seeing more and more ELDs that are getting under um revoked and no longer certified by FMCSA. But yeah, I think you got to layer all those together because you know, it's just if you only rely just on technology and you never make that phone call to your customer or to the carrier, you're just hoping that like a computer that you did you didn't design the system yourself, but you're like you said, like technology can do the job, but the people that designed it, you know, it's it's not perfect. None of these are perfect systems. So agreed.

SPEAKER_01: 38:39

But I don't I don't think it's an unachievable objective. I think it was poorly executed by most, if not the majority, of the companies that are providing these softwares to us. The sad part is they're necessary to your point. I think you need to use them because it's the best tools that we have. But I think to me, your category three is the most important. Training your human beings to look at what the tool is telling them and doing the things in addition to the tools. Because if any of these tools were actually that good, because guess what? Every major freight brokerage is using one, if not many, of these right now. So if they were that effective, you wouldn't have seen fraud increase 25% this year to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, right? So if they were any good at actually doing what they said they would, we wouldn't have lost more money to criminals this year than we lost last year, right? And if you remember, three years ago, these tools sold all of us as brokerages on this replaces a human being. Give us seven grand a month, and now that justifies you paying somebody 65 grand a year to do this job. And then two years later, you now need three human beings to do what the tool was supposed to do, to read what the tool is telling them because the tool didn't ever do what they said it was gonna do, right?

SPEAKER_00: 40:00

I think you're seeing a lot of brokerages now that are compartmentalizing certain tasks for the reasons that we just kind of outlined here.

SPEAKER_01: 40:07

Like if someone's a really good, so like like let's be honest, like they're shit.

SPEAKER_00: 40:13

Yeah. So and the cradle to grave model is where there's a lot of vulnerabilities, right? Because if someone's really good at closing new customers, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're really good at vetting carriers. And and you know, even more so, and I see this in the agent model, is that if if you have an agent who is getting commissioned on this load, they are heavily um what's the word I'm looking for? Like they have an interest in getting a load booked at a high margin, right? Or finding the cheapest truck available. Exactly. That's the incentive. And I'm I'm overgeneralizing that because it I don't want it to sound like anyone's ripping anybody off or we're just getting cracked.

SPEAKER_01: 40:52

Well, it's not even just margin. Go on the opposite side. My customer needs a load moved, and the only truck I can find that can get this load picked up today is this one. But these systems are telling me this carrier's right on the line of being approved, either right below it or right above it. So you have to make a decision, like a subjective decision based on the information the tool is telling you. So, even regardless of margin, like we all have to do that as brokers to go like, this is our only option. Are we willing to take this risk because our customer needs that load to be picked up, right?

SPEAKER_00: 41:22

Precisely. So that's why you see the the different team models where you've got a sales team and an operations team or a carrier compliance team. Either way, in those models, what's good is that the person that's vested in the customer's interest is not the same person that's making the decision on the carrier selection. Um if you have a cradle-to-grave model or an agent model, what you can do at a company level is put in procedural and software requirements. That's where your rules in your carrier betting system. So whether you use MCP or highway or RMIS, whatever it is, you can set those rules. And if it's gonna exceed that threshold, then you have a like we have a manual override process at Pierce. So, like if carriers don't meet X, Y, and Z, um, you've got to request an override, and then we have a compliance person review them.

SPEAKER_01: 42:10

And I think that is the biggest takeaway, right? Because you and I talked about this like a week or two ago, right? What percentage of loads are needing a human being to actually review if you had to ballpark that number?

SPEAKER_00: 42:21

We're we're about half. About half the well, this is one of two loads. I look at carriers. So carry new carriers to get onboarded. Yep. Um about half of them pass all of our rules. So the the agent can onboard them themselves, and then the technology will kick in for tracking and whatnot. Um, the other half is gonna require a compliance review, and luckily we can do it quickly. Um, we've got redundancy in our staff to be able to do that. So I've seen I've seen response times in in on average of less than two minutes of um good to go or not good to go. And here's why. Um so but if you're gonna have a process like that with a manual review, you can't have it take 30 minutes, right? Correct. You get you get like, hey, this if this driver's gotta wait 30 minutes, they're gonna hop on another load, right? Yep. Um so just I would say keep that in mind that for you know, but that's speaks setting.

SPEAKER_01: 43:13

But that speaks to Pierce, right, as a place for agents to go to, is it like you guys are paying for these human beings and enough of them to do that fast enough that the broker that needs that approved or denied is getting that response fast enough, right?

SPEAKER_02: 43:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 43:27

And then that's the difference. When people always ask us, like, well, where would I what's the difference in agents, right? Or agencies that you're gonna go work at, right? Like this is a very good example of a well-run agency versus, oh, I'm gonna get an extra couple percentage points on my commission, but yet nobody's there to support me or help me when I actually need an approval. And it takes three hours and my loads gone before I even get it approved, right?

SPEAKER_00: 43:51

Yeah. Yeah, it's uh um it's a really good point. I I had a conversation with somebody recently about, you know, every agent program is essentially the same. Um, and I kind of broke it down. I was like, it's that's not really the case. I'm like, there's the two the two big differentiators, and not to go down a rabbit hole here, is what is their tech stack? So what what do you have access to? Like, can you use gen logs? Do you have all the highway tools? Do you have you know X, Y, and Z software and whatnot? Um, and then the other thing is like, how do they operate? Like, what is the flow of work look like? In this case, a a carrier um, you know, override or or escalation approval, things like that. So I mean, and then yeah, there's commission too, right? Like it, what do you what are you getting paid? What do you have to pay for, etc.? Um, but I really think having those having those approvals separated when needed is is a good safeguard. And here's like if you're a if you're a solo broker, right? We get a lot of people that come to us because they're a new broker or just getting started and they use our material to help them learn. I'm gonna caution you because you be you can become your own worst enemy when there's not a third party in place um or another person there to be a second set of eyes on a carrier. You you've got, like you said before, Ben, this customer um is relying on you to get this load moved, and you can only find one truck that's out there and they're not passing the sniff test. Well, you might be thinking to yourself, like, hey, I could be the hero and save my customer, and if I'm not, I look, I look bad. Um, because then some other broker ends up booking that same truck that I'm, you know, it's not passing my sniff test, but it passes their sniff test and all goes well. And so there's there's situations like that, but I think you've got to find like the back to the process thing too, like it's gonna be a different for everybody. So, like some people they have that intuition and they can tell when they talk to a carrier on the phone, like, you might pass X, Y, and Z in my system, but like I just don't trust this situation right now for whatever reason. Don't book that carrier. If you don't have that intuition, you're gonna want to have more safeguards in place. Because if you just don't have it, you gotta have something else that's gonna back you up.

SPEAKER_01: 46:02

I wholeheartedly agree, right? And I think to me, well, we've been working with the guys like Gen Logs since it was an idea before it was a company, right? So, like for sure I'm biased in relation to like its ability to do what they say it can. But like over the years, like to me, it's almost like it's almost the only one that I trust, to be honest. Because it's like if you saw that truck operating where they said they're supposed to, to me, that's my highest trust, right? Because we know that ELDs are not reliable. We know that phone tracking can be hacked, we know that almost every single thing that we had relied on is vulnerable to criminals, right? The only thing that isn't is did this truck drive past that camera on the road and shows you where he was when he was there and him telling you that, right? Because beyond that, you're basically guessing. Unless to your point, like you're using something like Quickscope, so you can at the very least verify that like at pickup, this truck that was supposed to be there was the one that was there when they got loaded. And if you go all the way to the VIN level and you because we do this at TLX too, which is like a photo of the actual plate on the door to verify that truck is the one that you think you are. Because even beyond fraud, there's really no way to know that like that truck is actually insured if there's a scheduled auto policy, right? Like just because the MC's on the side does not mean that VIN is actually insured. So, like, even in the scenario where you're not talking about fraud or theft, like you still have the risk that if there's a claim, that truck just isn't even insured and you just don't know that, right? Unless you go all the way to that level of detail.

SPEAKER_00: 47:42

Yeah. So I'll I'll kind of I'll wrap it up with my thoughts on best practices like this. And then I'm curious if you have anything to add. But um I love gen logs as well, just to piggyback off that. Um, I think if you can find a way to ideally take the technology that you have available, um, and the more the better, right? We're not telling you to go waste money on five redundant systems, but if you've got like gen logs, right? Gen logs is great for pre-vetting a carrier. Very good at it. You can see all those pictures, you can see on a heat map where they've been. It's it's amazing for that.

SPEAKER_01: 48:20

And sourcing if you find the right carrier to call in the first place, like knowing this carrier and sourcing that carrier in the first place, knowing that carrier is actually running that lane or the other end of it means like it's less time to reach out to them.

SPEAKER_00: 48:34

The four things I would would recommend you address is how do you source them with the best tools, how do you vet them with the best tools, how do you monitor them and compliance checks ongoing with the right tools, and how do you track them throughout that load? And that could be a mix of maybe you're using RMIS to um pre-vet, and I'll kind of toss out the different tools that are out there, right? You could pre-vet with gen logs, RMIS, highway, mcp, uh search carriers. There's a whole bunch of them out there, right? You can source them through a lot of those tools in addition to like uh load board directory. Um for compliance, right? You can use a lot of those tools to check your rule sets. For tracking, it could be Quickscope, it could be ELD tracking through uh trucker tools, it could be MacroPoint, it could be um highways load lock. I mean, there's there it could be you know a whole variety of tools that are out there, but if you don't take the various softwares that are out there, because I I still believe if you put all your faith in just one um and you don't put a process in place to offset its its shortcomings um or redundancy with other software plus processes, I think you leave yourself somewhat vulnerable. And I I would love to see if uh if um genlogs ends up with some kind of way to tie in load level visibility down the road or even carrier onboarding. Because I think that I think that what they're building is um one of the best that I've have seen. And I'm I am uh I remember when we talked to those guys years ago, when you like you said, when it was just an idea and they wanted to learn about freight brokerage um to kind of bring it all to to the market, um I was like, this is genius. Um and it's come so far and they've gotten so much data over the years, and I think they're just gonna keep rolling the ball and having more and more of what it can do because it's still a young, you know, in you know relatively it's a young product, but it's grown so fast. So, but again, having you know the technology capabilities and the knowledge of what to look out for and the processes in place, that's how you gotta, that's what you gotta do, and you gotta find the sweet spot for your specific company. Because again, if you've got agents, it's a whole nother you know, bucket of risk. If you have cradle to grave W-2 brokers, it's a whole nother bucket of risk. If you've got um high turnover, right, you're leaving yourself vulnerable when you've got a bunch of new carrier reps coming in. So um that's my take on it. Um, and I think it's gonna continue to evolve with time as you knew, you know, next thing you know, they're gonna be able to like hack ELDs really easily, or you know, who knows? There's just they're gonna find another way to scam us. What do you got?

SPEAKER_01: 51:19

I agree. I think the biggest takeaway is you need some tools, but the very least, you need to train your people to know what to look for, right? Basic understanding of insurance, Venn levels, inspection to understand what you're actually sourcing, to your point. Like, who am I working with? Are they the type of company, both equipment, driver reliability, and insurance that my customer expects for the shipment, right? At the end of the day, like that's our job. We get so lost in like profit and moving loads that like we kind of forget the basics of like, okay, what are you supposed to know about the company you're hiring to work for your customer? Because at the end of the day, like that is literally our job, right? We are hiring companies to do work on behalf of our customers. You should know what to look for when you're doing that job.

SPEAKER_00: 52:09

And if you're a new broker who maybe you don't have the budget to pay for a lot of this stuff, um, shameless plug. If you are looking for a TMS, we were talking with Tim from Ascend TMS. We have a referral code. Um please use that. But if you it's a very affordable TMS for new folks, and you're gonna have access to a lot of the tools that you wouldn't necessarily be able to afford on your own. They've they've got a really good deal with a lot of the plugins. Um, I think we're gonna have Tim on the show probably early next year to talk about some stuff. But um there's options out there, whether you're a billion-dollar brokerage or you haven't moved your first load yet. So definitely make sure you find what's best for you and and use it with the right processes. So anything else on this note? So 2026 is uh brings us some more some positive, some positive news and and good things for everybody out there. All right, man. Final thoughts.

SPEAKER_01: 53:07

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

SPEAKER_00: 53:11

And until next time, go bills.