Inspections, Landstar, & Top Load Boards Explained | Final Mile 92

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome back the final mile. We are at 92 of these. That means that we've been doing this segment for almost two years now. I do remember it was a couple of years ago that we started to break out the Q&A, so we can have longer podcast discussions and longer Q&A stuff. So, but we got three good questions today, as always. Make sure to check out all the full library of content at our website, freight360.net. You'll also see the Freight Booker Basics course Great, great option there for education for you, for your team, depending on your setup. It kind of encompasses everything from starting your own brokerage to what your back office does accounting, you know, finding shippers, prospecting, winning new business, carrier development all of the above. And please take a moment to support the sponsors that are in our description box and on our website. That will greatly help support our channel.

Speaker 1: 1:19

First question and these all came from our Facebook group this week, so thank you guys for being engaged in there. That's the Freight Brokers and Carriers Network. Why do brokers request inspections from carriers? And they went on to say, like we haven't been inspected yet. This is a carrier that asked the question and if you're new, it's a valid question, right, like? What is the correlation between, like you considering working with me and me having a inspection history. Ok, so we'll try to explain it. And then, ben, I'm curious like how you personally handle it and what you look for.

Speaker 1: 1:54

But the reason primarily for inspection history, or at least looking for it, is with fraud. The last few years there's been a lot of pop-up MC numbers for carriers that don't actually have trucks. They paid 300 bucks, they got an authority, they claim to have equipment and they take a load from a broker off a load board and they either steal it or double broker it or you know anything along the lines of fraud, right? So one of the things we can do as brokers is look to see like, has this carrier been inspected? Meaning like, have they gone through a roadside inspection? Have they gotten hit on DOT Blitz Week? If so, you can see the date, the type of inspection, any deficiencies, the equipment, down to the VIN number, right? So we'll we now know and see these things, because if a carrier has been in business for two years, claims to have 20 trucks and has zero inspections, I'm not buying it.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Now there is the possibility, like what I personally do, if a carrier is newer or maybe it's an owner operator that's only been around for a year. It hasn't been inspected. Hey, that's possible, right? So let's do something else to make sure that you're legitimate. That could be a picture tracking, a picture showing that you're at the pickup with your MC on the side of the truck. Quickscope's a great tool for something like that. Trucker Tools has good options. Connect your ELD to something like a highway. Those are, for me, like workarounds. But, in a nutshell, that's my answer as to why us, as brokers, are asking for or I should say looking for and wanting to see inspection history. How do you guys handle it? Do you have like a kind of a rule?

Speaker 2: 3:45

of thumb.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah, what we'll do is, one see if the ELD is connected Again, because a lot of carriers haven't been inspected if they're newer.

Speaker 2: 3:52

So we want to still be able to use those folks and it's not their fault that criminals are exploiting this. So to give them the benefit of the doubt, we always ask the driver who has accepted tracking from that phone number, right? So if you're the driver one you've got to accept tracking so we know that phone number is tracking where you say you are. Then we need that phone number to text us a picture of the VIN, usually from the door, like the actual plate of the VIN, Because on the side of the truck could be a magnet, could be changed, could be painted on, but the actual VIN from the plate on the, usually on the door of the cab. And then we have the driver text, a picture of his license and his cab card and the insurance. So that way we know from that cell phone that driver took those documents out of their glove box and took a picture of the truck they're sitting in. And then we make sure that VIN is on the insurance matches the cab card and the driver's license.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Yep, yeah, good stuff. So, um, you know, if you're a carrier and you're wondering about this kind of stuff, um, have a conversation with the broker, like hey, I'm new, um, I haven't been inspected yet, uh, but I'm willing to do X, y and Z, so hopefully that kind of stuff helps out. And, um, you know, you can have those relationships work longterm right, cause there's the fraudsters out there. What's what sucks about it is like this the, the bucket of bad actors. It's kind of like you know, one student, one student gets, you know, messes up, the whole class gets punished. Like you get good carriers that are paying the price for the bad actors out there. So, um, but, yeah, all right.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Next question here we've got is landstar a good company for freight agents? Um, I will, I'll speak to this one that I'm curious if you have any any input on it. Um, so I've been, I've been around the agent model for quite some time. I've talked to folks from landstar. I've heard the good, the bad, the indifferent. Um, I've never been an agent for landstar. I know that you've worked. You work with a guy who's got an agency with Landstar, so maybe you can give some third party confident or not confident, generic, non-personal feedback or whatnot.

Speaker 1: 6:10

But here's what I've heard. It's good, ok, brand recognition is great. Right, people know Landstar. Landstar has trucks, so they've got the ability to sell as asset based the ability to sell as asset based. The downsides of a land star is potentially account saturation. So if you've got literally thousands of agents operating under the same company no-transcript, you've got more hands in the same pot. So let's say you want to work with a certain shipper, well, the chances of them being already protected or assigned to another agent or broker in the company is more likely than if you're with a smaller, midsize company. Commission, I have been told, is lower. Like, if you broker a load, you might only make 50 percent commission of the load profit. If you book it on a Landstar truck, it might be easier to cover that load, but you're getting paid a percentage of the line haul which is sometimes like 10 percent. So yeah, it's lower.

Speaker 2: 7:16

I had a meeting with that guy you're referencing yesterday and they get there's a higher commission when they book a brokerkered truck in network versus a Landstar truck. I think they said there's 14,000 or 15,000 Landstar trucks, so they have a pretty big network of their trucks. They have like 170,000 carriers inside their network. So it's a large network, much smaller of their own trucks.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I think they're arguably the largest agent-based model. So, yeah, their trucks, it's called, their BCOs, their business capacity operators, I think it's called. But yeah, so that's like some of the pros and cons, the, the, so Pierce Worldwide, where I work, right, we were agent based. We also have a trucking company. It's not massive and we treat them as separate organizations for the most part.

Speaker 1: 8:09

But one of the things that I think people enjoy about you know, because if you're thinking about building out an agent model in your brokerage, these are things that you'll run into if you try to do too much is if you get too big and you let's, you know, I would say it's arguably better to have um, 50 really good, strong agencies that are, you know, multi-person. So you, you could have 500 people, but it's, you know, 10 per team. Essentially, it's better to have that than to have 500 single agents, because then now you've got 500 people all competing against each other. So things like that, the commission to like these big companies. They have layers and layers of management and executive leadership that you have to pay, who don't directly produce revenue and profits. Therefore, there's less meat on the bone for them to be able to pay competitive commissions, whereas you can get a 70 percent at a company like Pierce.

Speaker 1: 9:08

So if you're ever interested in an agent role, reach out to myself, ben, I know you've, you've been. You know, reach out to myself or Ben. We can definitely get you guys in touch or kind of guide you through options if there's a good fit there. But anything else that you've heard on the Landstar side? I have literally heard of brokers that refuse to load Landstar trucks because they're worried about double brokering.

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah, Usually a lot of the brokerages like they'll have a blacklist of some Landstar agents that they won't work with because of that. Like they were told, hey, we'll put a Landstar truck on this and they brokered it out to another truck, right. So again, be careful, like who you're talking to and knowing who you're doing business with. Because, like, I've worked with a number of Landstar agents that were great and I've had great relationships where we've co-brokered projects together because their network in some ways didn't overlap with our network and they were able to find trucks in their network and out of their network that we didn't have to be able to get capacity we needed every day, right. I've had great working relationships with a number of them. In fact, the one you're referencing does a lot of international business. They also have a very large international program where they can do literally anything overseas, which we utilize a lot.

Speaker 2: 10:18

I've referred lots of folks to work with them and, again, it's like anything else, a very large company is going to have very good people in it and some portion that aren't necessarily ethical. I would use Walmart as an example. It's like everybody shops there. I can guarantee you there are bad reviews on Walmart's website, depending on which store you go into and what happened, at what time of day and where. Like any company that large is going to have some of these things. So just spending the time to get to know who you're doing business with is always just a good piece of advice, I think.

Speaker 1: 10:57

For sure, yeah. Last question what's the best load board for brokers? So DAT is a partner and sponsor of the show. I will name them first. It's the primary load board and, um, you know tool that. Yeah, there you go. Nice, uh, mug shot there. No, uh, no, no pun on the mug shot reference, um, what I did, notice too, my mug. That happened to yesterday. The the thing on the bottom came off, uh, and I love this mug I've had, you've had it for years and get some new swags.

Speaker 1: 11:21

I know it's one, one of my favorite ones we like, so I love the. Like the load posting, truck searching, really the analytics tools are great though, like rate view, rate cap, that iq market conditions, lane makers, like there's just so much in there. Um, I would argue that dat is probably the um more popular of the load boards that's out there. Now, if you're looking at other boards, truck stop is a another one like our. A lot of our agents use truck stop as well. I have heard feedback that they have better, better luck with owner operators and with open deck on truck stop and the kind of like the. I try to think of the reasoning behind it, and it's like you got to think these things cost money, right? Truckstop has historically been a cheaper option of DAT and a small owner operator. If they're going to pick one, sometimes they're like all right, what's the cheaper one, right? So if you're a growing broker, though, and you're doing a decent amount of business, I would argue that both is, you know, probably a good mix to have. Now you've got some niche boards too, like we actually had a bulk loads actually reached out to Pierce last week, because we've got a few folks using like their free version. And we're talking about. You know, if we, if we do get into more bulk business, you gotta be on that board, like you got, and you got to have the paid version. Great program on, like a year or so ago, right, talking through the bulk industry and bulk loads dot com. So bulk loads Right.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Central dispatch auto hauling Right, that's a. They kind of own the market there. Central dispatch um, auto hauling right, that's a. They kind of own the market there. Um, a lot of like Dude, I'm not a fan of the auto hauling market. I'm not saying it's bad because it has to happen, but the amount of double brokering that I've just experienced in it is wild. I've almost never had the right MC number show up. When you're doing an auto haul Then you've got to end up recontracting the correct carrier. But this stuff was never caught four or five years ago.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Selectus, really good for that smaller truckload If you're going to go direct to these carriers. So that's like your, your box truck, straight truck. Sprinter, hotshot, expedite All, expedite All. So they're a co-broker but they operate like a load board and I love them. So, like Alex Winston good, I've known him for a couple years now. Probably see him in dc again, this fall for the, the policy forum for tia, um, but yeah, they, they, um. They actually just launched a mobile app too, so it's no longer just desktop, uh, or web browser version, but you can source. They got like 7 think um smaller truck load type trucks in their network, um some other random ones that I've used, unless you got we, just we are all boarding with them.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Now we're doing more Mexican stuff, and um what?

Speaker 1: 14:29

is it called?

Speaker 2: 14:31

Cargado.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Matt Silver um, the son of the guy who started Coyote. Um, it is primarily a load board for carriers that have been vetted that will run Mexico and back into the United States I can't remember how many carriers. Really good load board. It's got some really cool features to be able to book loads in and out of Mexico. If you've got customers that are shipping international and I believe they're going to be releasing a side of it for Canada as well it's really cool Load board. Little pricier than some, but if you've got the business on there it's definitely worth considering.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Speaking of Canada, load link is the basically the Canadian cousin of DAT. I believe they're both in a previous lifetime owned under Transcore. I used one in the past called Post Everywhere, which was like an aggregator of like 50 smaller boards and it was like pretty cheap. It was like $10 a month but it just kind of helped you fill the gap on any of those like really little ones. 1-2-3 Load Board, I believe, was one of the more popular ones. That was on post everywhere.

Speaker 1: 15:40

These are marketplaces, right. This is where brokers and carriers come together to find freight, find trucking capacity and yeah, so DAT gets my number one ranking. For sure you also get like larger brokerages will have either proprietary or using popular third-party plugins. They'll have like their own internal load board that carriers can get things sent out to. Like I was talking to steven, our producer, a couple weeks ago. We both use mcleod as our primary uh tms and mcleod has the ability to, um, basically act as a load board for your carrier network and send out you know, here's our available loads today or this week. So there's, there's, there's lots of ways to do it, but yeah, I think truck stop has that feature too.

Speaker 2: 16:27

I think you can build a private load board out on truck stop. I haven't gone into it, but someone mentioned that to me recently.

Speaker 1: 16:33

Yeah, you can so that as well.

Speaker 1: 16:38

That to me recently. Yeah, you can so that as well. So dat has the um, the, the my network or in network tool where you can, um, you can identify carriers that are in your network and and, uh, do that. Um, I haven't played around too much with that part of it, but, um, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, like load boards are like a, they're a necessary I don't want to call them a potential risk, right, but they're like it's kind of like first time meeting, right. It's like a dating app, like it's. You know, you don't know, you don't know if someone's like being honest with you or they're going to scam you. But their whole purpose is to just give you access to the market and I think they do a great job at it.

Speaker 1: 17:18

The goal is to obviously increase your carrier utilization so you don't have to go to load boards for every load, but the reality is you are going to have new lanes. You're going to have a go to carry that may not be available from time to time. It influx in business. Carry goes out of business not be available from time to time. It influx in business. Carry goes out of business any any factor that's going to basically require you to find new capacity. Um, your load board is typically the primary tool for that, so definitely need to have at least one. If you're a new broker, so check out the link in our description. You can get 10 off your full year your full first year. It used to just be one free month and now you get 10% off the first 12 months, so you actually get an extra little discount there. So check it out, save some money and it'll help support us. Anything else on load boards Not really.

Speaker 2: 18:13

I mean other than the fact that, like it's a great marketplace, but the thing I use most in VAT view, I use a lot of their features, rate cast, the predictive side, to run bids. I mean it's a great way to be able to price loads other than just posting and talking to carriers.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Absolutely. I'm in DAT usually daily, so good stuff.

Speaker 2: 18:39

All right.

Speaker 1: 18:40

Final thoughts.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't.

Speaker 1: 18:45

You're right, and until next time, go Bills.