Uncovering the ELD Fraud Crisis (with Danielle Chaffin) | Episode 309

Speaker 1: 0:19

All right, welcome back for another episode of the Freight 360 podcast we're going to be this is actually going to be the first of a series we're going to do around some of the recent things that have been happening in our industry related to safety and ELDs and some of the dangers and things that we have to deal with on a daily basis as brokers. So we've got a guest we'll introduce here in just a second here. But first, if you're brand new, make sure to check out all of our other content. You can go through our YouTube library. There's a whole bunch of playlists on there of our short Q&A sessions called the Final Mile, our full-length podcast, which you're listening to or watching right now, and there's a whole bunch probably hundreds now of shorter educational videos. Educational videos too, on prospecting, on care, development, all kinds of different things. So make sure to check that out the website as well.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Freight360.net is a searchable library. So, depending on what you're looking to improve on or learn about, just type that keyword in the search bar and you'll get all of our blogs short videos, long form videos, et cetera, and share us with your friends. Hit the like button, subscribe all that good stuff. You can check out our Freight Broker Basics course that we did with DAT. If you're looking for educational options for yourself or for your team and leave a review. We haven't asked for many reviews in a while, but, without further ado, real quick intro. Here We've got Danielle. Is it Chaffin? Am I saying it right?

Speaker 2: 1:49

It is Chaffin. I should have asked you that off air before. You are like one of 10 people that say it the way I say it. Do you say Chaffin?

Speaker 1: 1:55

Mm-hmm. I would smack them for that, all right. So Danielle Chaffin, she's with Revenova. But real quick, danielle, for anyone who isn't familiar with you and doesn't see all of your content on X, formerly Twitter, real quick, just let the audience know who you are and we'll get more into your story and our whole series here in a bit.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Yeah, of course. Thank you guys for having me on today. I'm super excited to talk about the things that I post about on X. Danielle Chaffin. I am senior solutions engineer at Revenova. I've been here for six years. I grew up in the industry. My grandfather, father both truck drivers huge influence in my life. I did try to get out of it and go against my dad's advice that freight gets in your blood. So I went and got a master's degree in social work and I was a therapist for a short stint of time and then my dad was right and now I'm here.

Speaker 1: 2:49

You're back. It's somehow everybody. Ben, the same thing happened with you when you, when you got out of brokerage and tried to just do coaching, and here you are again. So anyway, danielle, good to have you on. We'll get more into your story and all that content shortly. But, ben, what's going on down in South Florida today to your story and all that?

Speaker 3: 3:04

content shortly. But, Ben, what's going on down in South Florida today? It's getting nice and cool down here. I mean cool was like low or high 80s, but like significantly different than 98. So like I'm optimistic for fall.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I've been wearing hoodies this week at night, so Buffalo gets cold much earlier than other places. But real quick, we're going to skip news because we're going to talk about a lot of that stuff in the episode today. But sports, the preseason of NFL is in the books. Not that any of those scores or records matter, but the reps and the plays and the roster cuts all do. So Pittsburgh, how do you feel about them going into week one?

Speaker 3: 3:41

I'm optimistic. We'll see. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 3:43

There's always optimism this time of year. Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 3: 3:46

Hopefully he doesn't get hurt in the first game like he did with the Jets. But I mean beyond that we'll see.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Yeah, that was against the Bills and it was like the fourth snap of the game. So rough start, steven 0-2. How are the Bengals going to start off this year?

Speaker 4: 4:05

Oh gosh, Probably 0-4,.

Speaker 1: 4:07

If we're being honest, Everyone's been talking about how optimistic they are in preseason, so that just means we'll lose Dude I just think about the amount of momentum that Joe Burrow had at the tail end of last season and literally could have been. He was an MVP candidate and was playing MVP caliber. Like literally could have been. He was an MVP candidate and was playing MVP caliber. But I feel like typically whoever wins the MVP has a winning team and wins their division, stuff like that. But if you guys can keep that momentum going, I mean that's a dangerous team to play.

Speaker 4: 4:37

I haven't looked at last year's stats but I do know like near the end of the year, like he had a ton of passing yards, a ton of like completion, like his stats were insane. But the record was terrible because typically in preseason we don't play any of our starters, they all sit. So then the first four weeks are garbage. But apparently they've changed it up this year, so I just feel like that's bs too.

Speaker 3: 4:58

Like I feel like if you are that outstanding in your numbers and you're playing with a terrible team, like to me that's a better case for MVP than somebody riding the wave and energy of their team. Like if you are playing for a terrible team and put up numbers like that.

Speaker 1: 5:14

That is way harder. I don't forget who won MVP last year. That's my boy, josh Allen. Fair enough.

Speaker 3: 5:19

Not saying he should have won. I just mean in generally in all sports that tends to hold true. That, like, if your team isn't making the playoffs, even if you have, like, outsized stats, you tend to not get MVP team and you're beating, like on a stat basis, the players that have all of the other things going for them the energy, the vibe, the culture, the wins and you're still able to get up and do that every day. Like to me, like that says more about a player's ability.

Speaker 1: 5:55

I agree it is performance. There's an argument to be made because MVP is most valuable player. It's not most valuable player of the most important dominating team. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3: 6:03

Yeah, of valuable player, it's not most valuable player of the most important dominating team. You know what I mean. Yeah, of the most successful team, exactly yeah, like it's an individual award, like it's exactly the guy in the hardest circumstance with the best results yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:13

So one of the uh, I've been following hard knocks and because it's been following bills through preseason, one of the guys that I was, I was really hoping that he was going to make the roster and they he didn't. Yesterday, when they did the 53 men um cut down, it was Jimmy Charlo. So this guy is, uh, he's a linebacker who went to West point, um. So what's interesting? I didn't, I didn't know how this worked out, but if you go to one of the service academies like um Annapolis or West point or Air Force Academy out in Colorado, when you, if you're playing a sport and you get drafted, you still have your military obligation to do and what they'll do is they'll defer it until your your sports career is done.

Speaker 1: 6:56

So like, basically in hard knocks, jimmy Charlo last year got, I think he was drafted by the Jets and he got hurt and before the season started, so he didn't play. Bill's picked him up, he's in training training camp, did very well in the preseason and basically in hard knocks they're like this guy um is either gonna make the roster or like go back in the army and go serve eight years or whatever it is um. So when he got cut yesterday I was joking with my brother, who's also in the army, and I was like I guess, uh, jimmy charles going put the uniform back on and it's not the Bills uniform, but he might get picked up by somebody else. I just thought that was interesting to. You know, you go through four years of an academy and all the guys and girls you went to school with are, all you know, lieutenants now in the Army. And he's, like you know, just getting the long hair. You know playing in the NFL, dreaming of making the big bucks, and it's like, nope, you're going to go be a second lieutenant.

Speaker 3: 7:47

Similar thing with South Korea. Like I had some friends in college that like I think it's mandatory Everyone has to spend two years in the military, similar to, I think, israel's similar to that too. There's only two that like I'm aware of, but this was in the news, I think, last year, because Tom Kim, the PGA golfer, was supposed to have to leave the PGA to go do his military service and I think he got an exemption because he's still playing. But it was like all over the PGA where, like all of the guys in the sport were basically petitioning the delay of him having to do that, cause he's like at the peak, 23 years old. Like you go and do that, like you're not coming back and going to compete at that level.

Speaker 1: 8:25

Yeah, it's crazy. Other NFL real quick the Bills signed Jordan Poyer as a free agent to safety, which I'm happy with that choice. He was with Miami for a year last year, but just one of our weak spots, man. When tomorrow Hamlin is starting, it's not exactly the best place to be. So what else we got in sports? Ben, you got anything? Us Open I was going to say that.

Speaker 3: 8:53

Serena Williams was playing? I think not last week.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Is it still going on right now?

Speaker 3: 8:57

Yeah, this is a very beginning. So, like the qualifiers, I think are almost all over or were over yesterday. So now we're getting to like some of the third round or second round. I watched the Serena Williams match Like she definitely held her own. But I mean, she's my age In fact she's only like a month older than me, so she's 43. And she was playing like an eighth ranked player, I think, out of like Czech Republic somewhere over there. She didn't win, but you could tell she seemed better than the girl she was playing. But when you're playing a 23-year-old, there's just a giant gap between being 33 and 20-something. I mean, when I looked at the match clock they were six and a half hours in. I play tennis for an hour and a half. I am sore for like a day and a half. I can't imagine playing a tennis match for seven and a half hours.

Speaker 3: 9:48

What's he saying so I mean kudos to her for still being in the open and playing. But yeah, we'll see how it plays out.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Local fan favorite, jessica Pagula is the daughter of Terry and Kim Pagula, who own the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, so she's been the last few years she's kind of been a rising name, at least from a Western New York perspective. But yeah, cool Good sports talk.

Speaker 3: 10:17

She's ranked fourth in the US. By the way, she won Sunday.

Speaker 1: 10:22

I saw a stat too.

Speaker 3: 10:22

that was like the amount of she plays today at 1 o'clock. Okay, I saw a stat too.

Speaker 1: 10:23

That was like the amount of it plays today at 1 o'clock. Okay, when you look at, like the women's tennis, like the I think the US has, like Is it like three of the top four ranked Players or like something Basically, like it's a.

Speaker 3: 10:39

It's a Big thing in the US, for us it is the two, one and two, that were insane the girl who's number one, I think, is Belarusian and like she's phenomenal, and the other girls from Poland, iga Słatek and she's like they're like you can just tell, like the more I watch tennis, like there is a world of difference between like number two and number 10 and number 10 and number 20, like just the speed, how fast they are, how quick they get to the ball, like it's just that margin of difference between a few numbers makes like a huge difference when you're like watching is the men's going on right now too yeah, both so I saw something yesterday was basically like with the men's it's basically like one of two guys is going to win it, whereas women's is way more of a playing field yeah, because the last I think seven majors were won by carlos alcarez or yannick center, like number one and number two.

Speaker 3: 11:36

Have won every one of the last like majors in the last three years, but the women's are way more, I think, spread out.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Gotcha. All right, cool, good sports talk. Let's get into our episode. Steven, why don't you paint us a little picture here? Because this was a little bit of your doing as our producer to get Danielle on here for the first discussion episode here on the drama with safety and ELDs, and all of this Give us a background on what you were seeing on social media and all that that led to this.

Speaker 4: 12:09

Yeah, so a little bit of backstory. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Garrett Allen at Load Partner. Me and him have been talking for probably two or three years and he's working on a website called Search Carriers. Three years and he's working on a website called search carriers, uh, which is kind of like a, a safer sis, uh replacement Um. It pulls all the FMCSA data out and it looks better, it's much easier to use Um.

Speaker 4: 12:33

And then, probably I'd say four or five months ago, a lot of people, daniel included, started posting about all these issues with ELDs and with safety and the American Truckers United we're talking about non-domicile CDLs and chameleon carriers and it was starting to gain a little more traction, but it wasn't quite there. And so then I reached out to Danielle and Garrett and Justin Martin, super trucker on X, and said you know, we need to put this all together and, like, figure out how to get this out to everybody on a much larger scale. And then, a month or so after that, an accident happened, and or it was a mother's day accident in chattanooga, and then it was hope trans in tarrell, texas, and then, most notably, was the accident in Mount Platt.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Florida.

Speaker 4: 13:27

Yeah, Fort Pierce, Florida, yeah, that made national attention because Gavin Newsom's involved, so you know. So it's gotten a lot more public attention. And that's kind of how we are here today is to kind of discuss the background and how the FMCSA and all those administrations that are responsible for governing these safety things are falling short of their responsibilities.

Speaker 1: 13:55

So, danielle, I'm curious, before we get into the specifics on those incidents with ELD, the mandate. What was it like eight years ago, 2017?

Speaker 3: 14:04

2017.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Okay. So I remember, like you know, they're like, yeah, it's going to improve safety, and there's been reports that people are like it hasn't.

Speaker 2: 14:13

No, it absolutely hasn't. It was about compliance. It was truly compliance. They threw safety in there, but it's not about safety.

Speaker 3: 14:24

I want to ask a question because this is going to segue right into this, because you talk about this in your article. That we're going to share within the links, and I've been sharing as well is can you take people just briefly through the history of how the ELDs came? Because, like you cite that this was supposed to be done in like 87, I think you cite that this was supposed to be done in like 87, I think. And then there was pushback, and then 2000s, and then it finally was approved in like 2010 or 12. And then the three-year wait for enforcement led to like 2000. So this was like almost 30 years in conversation before it actually rolled out. You want to go through some of the high points on how and why it took so long to even do this in the first place.

Speaker 2: 15:05

I don't know the why. I mean, I was very young in 1986 when all of this started, so I don't necessarily know the why. I know that with the paper logs, of course people could edit those or they would have two or three logs where they would put them together. I push back on that because I know factually that to falsify your paper logs or to redo them you had to have a brain, you had to have some sense of how this actually works. We don't have that with the ELDs, with the paper logs. I don't know the why. I have went back through the FMCSA um like notes from those meetings and it's there's really I don't know.

Speaker 3: 15:53

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety IIHS challenged the DOT and lobbied for this in 86.

Speaker 3: 16:10

And I'm like how the insurance companies with massive resources aren't able to lobby to get these things done sooner was the part that kind of surprised me and like to set the stage for everyone else listening to, like, if any of you were in the industry in 2017, when the enforcement went into place, it was like January, like literally the beginning of 17, where there was like a hard deadline for ELDs.

Speaker 3: 16:27

Capacity literally evaporated out of the market.

Speaker 3: 16:30

I mean, this was a time where I've never seen the market literally overnight shift to where you could not find trucks, like there were massive amounts of containers that were stuck in ports and rail yards, there were shipments not moving and rates immediately went up because drivers and at least this was the perception from the brokerage point of view like had to now legally drive 11 hours a day, when prior maybe they're driving 13 or 14 with two sets of log books, and the ELDs were supposed to mandate that drivers drove the legal amount of hours so that the roads are safe.

Speaker 3: 17:05

I mean, if you're driving a truck or any vehicle for 20 hours a day, like that's not a safe condition, especially if you're doing it five, six days a week, right. So that was the intent and it did have an impact in 2017, but it was very short lived, like I remember the capacity vividly, like starting to come back into the market like early summer. Like there was like three or four months where it was super tight rates went through the roof, everything was chaotic and then it just kind of went back to normal, right? Is that when some of these things started to happen and I'll let you kind of add your context from kind of that point?

Speaker 2: 18:32

I don't have a lot of context from then, I really just have the like facts and the timeline of it. I do know, speaking on the safety part of it, where I know much more drivers that were running the paper logs we had truly professional drivers. Of course there were still the exceptions, but when we had truly professional, safe drivers, they would drive until they were tired and when they were tired they would pull over, sleep, take a nap and they would keep going. With the ELDs they are forced to drive within that amount of time. They can't pull over and take a nap or pull over and go to sleep because they're still on the ELD and being forced for those hours. So if they're trying to make money, if they're trying to get those miles in, they have to keep going. And that's where I know through the reading of those documents, that no one truly did any testing for that piece. There were no case studies done and they will say it in the documents that I was reading through that they didn't actually look into that piece.

Speaker 1: 19:43

That's an interesting perspective. I didn't think about it like that, where, historically, yeah, when you're tired you pull over, whereas now the ELD like so Ben kind of back to what you said I agree. The eld like so ben kind of back to what you said I I agree. It's clearly the whole concept would be you want people not driving when they shouldn't be driving.

Speaker 1: 20:00

That's the goal right we take one federal standard and apply to everyone that's driving, and we're telling them specifically too that, hey, if you're driving for this long after that eighth hour, you have to take a 30 minute break right, and you have to take a 10 minute or break right, and you have to take a 10-minute or, I'm sorry, a 10-hour period of time to reset your daily clock, and you have to have a 34-hour to reset your week. So we're taking everybody, regardless of their bodies, circadian rhythm.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Yeah circadian rhythm and et cetera, right, and we're putting them all into one package there, a one-size-fits-all. So I didn't think about your perspective though, daniel. That's, that's interesting. So do you think because of that? Do you think any of the did we lose capacity of like good drivers? Because they're like I think I'm just done now I don't want to have to fall like I guess I think I think we did the mandate incorrectly.

Speaker 2: 20:52

I don't think that elds are bad. I'm not against eld. Some drivers that move from paper logs to ELDs they love them. It makes the job easier. They don't have to worry about the paper log, yeah, and so they love them. And then you have some drivers, like my grandpa, who would have never used an ELD. Thankfully he was retiring when all of this happened. He was in the exception group where he could still run paper logs for a long time. But I don't think they're necessarily bad. I do think that they have made the job too easy for some drivers, like the one we'll get into in a few minutes.

Speaker 2: 21:27

And talking about Hope Trans, I don't know that we lost capacity because of it. I don't know that we lost capacity because of it. If you're a professional driver and this is your career yes, being frustrated about it, yes, pushing back about it, but when you're forced to do something, you just have to do it, unfortunately. So I think we just did the mandate wrong. I think it should have been not mandated for everyone. More of an option. We have these.

Speaker 3: 22:00

The ELD. The difference that we're talking about between the paper logs of the ELD transition is like once they start their clock for that 11 hours, they have to drive until the 11 hours are done. They can't pause the clock and then restart it like they could with the paper log.

Speaker 1: 22:14

The hours of service didn't change what you. It's still the same. You can drive up to 11 hours within a 14 hour period and there's the exception for, you know, adverse weather and that 150 air mile radius, etc. Um, but it's just how they tracked it. So I think what danielle's point was is you might have had people that weren't complying to hours of the hours of safety standard, but were in fact safe drivers safer than those that are compliant under the ELD.

Speaker 1: 22:43

You know mandate now. But to her point, these, these, these guys and girls now that are driving, if they feel like I'm being, I have to do it within these standards because I'm going. If I get inspected, I will get dinged for it. They will force themselves to drive as long as they can unsafely, even though it's within the regulations boundaries, because they want to maximize their, their earnings for that day. Correct, that's a big, big point here, Whereas someone is a safe driver could you know?

Speaker 1: 23:12

they could f fudge their logs and look compliant, but they're actually driving safely. And I think because they didn't do a case study on it or any white papers or anything like that I think it was under MAP 21 when it was actually mandated, right, that was when it was initially said. Here's when it's you know, here's what's going to go forward. I think that's the big issue here. Ben, are you tracking that? Is that correct?

Speaker 4: 23:36

Okay. So the other thing to keep in mind with paper logs to ELD is your hours of service went from being in control of the driver in the cab to being in control of a dispatcher at an office that is not associated with your driving every truck's hours to the minutes, their drive time, all that stuff, which is something that you could kind of guess what it was.

Speaker 1: 24:03

but you were still relying on the driver to relay that information, because they're not sending you their logs until the week's over or they've hit their 70 so you're saying, now you've got dispatchers who aren't in that person's body feeling their you know tiredness, telling them no, you got to keep driving until whatever the expectation is, you will drive until you can't anymore.

Speaker 4: 24:24

Yeah, if they shut their truck down, I mean they can, it's not going to do anything to their, it's not illegal. But then you have a dispatcher saying this needs to deliver today and you have four hours of drive time left. So start driving or you're fired. And we've seen there's been screenshots shared on social media where, like, people have taken pictures of it and the dispatchers like it's messages through the ELD, where the dispatch saying, no, you need to drive, like you don't have a choice and yeah, so yeah, it removes that control of the driver and gives it to somebody in an office that maybe has never driven a truck.

Speaker 1: 24:59

Yeah, dispatcher is over promising to a shipper or a broker what their driver can safely do, and that isn't the reality. So well, danielle, let's get into the Hope Trans. For anyone that's not familiar with it, give us kind of a rundown on what happened and where ELD comes into all this.

Speaker 2: 25:21

There is a lot that happened, so when I'm going to get my article pulled up so I don't get out of order here, because I think at this point every detail of this one lives inside of my brain. So Hope Trans Terrell, texas, semi does not stop, runs into six vehicles, I think full speed. The police officers, or the investigators, determined that there was no sign that he even touched the brakes. Once they talked to him, they determined that he was asleep, he had fallen asleep and he woke up to a loud bang. He was asleep, he had fallen asleep and he woke up to a loud bang, and that bang was the five people that he killed, which is incredibly heartbreaking and tragic. One of the vehicles was a family of four, plus the grandfather, I believe, and it killed everyone in the vehicle except the 20-year-old daughter and she lost her foot because of it. So it is heartbreaking.

Speaker 2: 26:29

All of the details around the wreck, around the driver there's a lot of it that I would deem irrelevant why he came to America, what he was doing. The important pieces are that he was hauling a postal load for USPS and in the USPS, like contract or the rules per se, if a trip is over 500 miles. It has to be a team. There has to be two drivers in the truck Alexis I forget his full name, alexis Gonzalez Compagnoni. He was the only driver in this truck and so that told me immediately that there was something going on with his ELD. He was not going to make this trip. There were supposed to be two. The trip was going from Palmetto, georgia, to somewhere in Arizona. It was like 18, 1,850 miles or so, so he can't make it on his own legally because of the hours of service. He could not make that trip when it was supposed to deliver at the time. It was supposed to deliver.

Speaker 2: 27:36

And then so that's the like federal mandates, regulations that they went against voluntarily. And then so that's the like, federal mandates, regulations that they went against voluntarily. And then you also have that USPS. If it's over 500 miles, then it has to be two. So that's really where I started digging into the ELDs. I did not realize how bad it was until the Hope Trans incident, and when we started digging into it and when this started to gain more traction, especially on X, that's when we started getting more screenshots, more feedback on some of the ELDs and what's possible with them. At this point it's my understanding that anything is possible.

Speaker 3: 28:18

To just pause there, right, like that's 18. Pause there, right, like that's 1,856 miles. Right, and in your article it shows exactly the time one day, one hour, right? If you drove 70 miles an hour from start to finish no traffic, no stops, right, no stop signs, nothing, right, it would still take you. If you theoretically were driving 70 miles an hour the moment you left, it would still take just under 13 hours of drive time each day with one driver, right, yeah, so like it isn't even theoretically possible to be able to get from there to there within legal drive time. And even if you average it like 55 miles an hour, with stops and starts and refueling, right, you're at 16 hours per day, right, like, it's not even remotely close to being doable within the legal framework.

Speaker 2: 29:05

Yeah, yeah, and they did. And I guess part of this that I try to stay away from is and even at the bottom of my article I put in like what the media gets wrong I try to be very careful about placing all of the blame on the driver, because a lot of the feedback, like Stephen was mentioning a few minutes ago, it's the dispatcher, dispatchers pushing the drivers past their limits, past federal limits, past USPS limits, and then the drivers I I think a lot of them that come to the United States from other countries. They don't understand or they don't think that they can push back on the dispatcher. If they do, they're going to lose their job. If they lose their job, then what? So I do have an ounce of empathy there, because I can't place all of this on the driver after all of the other details came out.

Speaker 1: 30:07

I mean, it's not like he wanted that to happen. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Yeah, yeah. But overall is that if we keep going after one driver, one carrier, it would take us the next 50 years to clean all of this up, and so Hope. Trans is an example of thousands of drivers and carriers doing this exact same thing.

Speaker 4: 31:52

And just I mean just for reference and there'll be a link to the article and the show notes. But Daniel put reviews from previous drivers at this company and like one of them, uh it, it says they they treat the jar, the driver, like garbage. Dispatchers are the worst I've ever worked with. They don't respect you in any way, you will just be a machine to them. I mean, that's that is a review, a Google review from somebody who drove at this company, um, and? And is a review, a google review from somebody who drove at this company, um, and, and that's how they treat. And this hope trans is not alone in how they treat drivers and this goes back to, you know, the eld, the paper log to the eld that transitioned from the driver being in control of their hours and how they drive to that dispatcher at an office controlling when and how they drive.

Speaker 2: 32:38

Yeah, so what I did there and what Stephen's referring to, I just started looking for everything on Hope Trans when I realized how every piece of public data that we had from the FMCSA was falsified. It had just something on it that was not accurate, and so I went and looked up the company and there were tons of reviews on the company, which almost all trucking companies have. These, but not to this extent and there were so many of them that the driver said that they will make you keep driving, like they reset clocks and ask you when you're going to start rolling. Every time you stop, no matter if you just drove 20 hours.

Speaker 3: 33:19

That's the thing that I really wanted to get to as well is right, like we ran the math on just this one load, but like that doesn't take into context what and how long he was driving prior to this Right. For all we know, he could have been driving 21 hours a day for the previous four days, then taken this load, and it only slept a total of a handful of hours over two or three days, then was forced to take this load right, and I think that is where I kind of wanted you to segue into what you were just about to talk about. It's like talk about the associations and what you found related to this company, from the forgery all the way to the connections with other carriers, the addresses, what the addresses are and just how egregious the entire situation is, even when you go deeper into the situation.

Speaker 2: 34:05

Yeah, I will say it is the most complex web that I have ever encountered. There are a lot of details. I received a couple of cease and desist letters on this one, so I had to take some details out just because I didn't feel like fighting it. There's quite a bit in this article that I did leave out because I didn't want to interfere, or I don't want to interfere with the investigation that's ongoing. I was faster than them, which I would like get myself a trophy for this but as soon as the wreck happened and I found the company, the company's owner I don't even know how to say her name, but she had a LinkedIn profile so I found her LinkedIn profile. It's in my article and she was the CEO of Fiorito Trucking. Fiorito Trucking has used the same trucks as Hope Trans and then also another company, and so I started putting more things together. Really, the timeline here was probably the hardest part to get everything together, because there was so much that was overlapping.

Speaker 2: 35:15

The initial address on Hope Trans went to a shared office space, which is not uncommon. There are hundreds of thousands of trucking companies in the office spaces and we will get pushback on that saying well, that's legal, that's where their agent is or whatever. That's fine. I will tell you, the majority of these are because they're doing fraudulent things. They're doing things they shouldn't be doing. So it was a co-working space.

Speaker 2: 35:45

Everything that I'm about to list out was changed on the day that this wreck happened, after the wreck, so they're originally listed in Washington at this co-working space. The same day the address was updated to a Florida address and it's an apartment. There's a huge pond, I think, behind the apartment, no place for truck parking. Obviously it's an apartment and so that was changed. They also decreased the truck count from 195 to 65 and the driver count from 195 to 80. Someone was working very, very hard after this wreck to get all of this changed. I think it was the same day as the wreck. It might have been the day after, but anyway.

Speaker 2: 36:28

Driver reviews Hope Trans. So when I started looking into Hope Trans and the names on there, I found Fiorito Trucking. Based on the contact that was on Hope Trans and from Fiorito Trucking, on each inspection that we have at the USDOT the VIN number is listed and so you can take that VIN from the truck and run it and match it up with any other company where that VIN has been inspected and so, yes, trucks can be sold, yes, drivers can go work at a different company. But when you have 65, even less than that, if you have 20 trucks that are using one USDOT number and then they move to another USDOT number and then the same ones move to another, that's not people selling the same 20.

Speaker 3: 37:19

Now there could be leased on driver situations, but that is a whole lot of assets to be moving under multiple agencies over a short period of time.

Speaker 2: 37:29

Yeah, and so the hard part with this is, and why there has been such a delay in reporting, is because none of the linked companies had anything that would have been a red flag that they were linked together, other than those VIN numbers. Contacts did not match, addresses did not match Phone numbers did not match Nothing.

Speaker 3: 37:53

And so Pause there for a second, because I think Garrett's tool right now is one of the only ones maybe the only one where you can search by VIN to see associations.

Speaker 2: 38:03

Yeah, and it's beautiful.

Speaker 3: 38:04

I've been digging into a lot of these for like other practical reasons, like trying to find specific equipment types, and like knowing these VINs that are associated with this equipment type helps you find which carriers have them, and you can only go in one direction. You can go from the MC down to the VIN levels and see which were have them, and you can only go in one direction. You can go from the MC down to the VIN levels and see which were inspected and then from there see which other carriers were pinged with that VIN. But you can't specifically take a VIN and I think any other system right now, put it in there and find which companies are associated with that VIN or have had inspections listed.

Speaker 1: 38:36

I'm pretty sure you can do it on highway, Cannot? I did it tried.

Speaker 3: 38:38

Can do it on highway, Cannot. I did it. Tried it again this morning. You can go one way, but you can't go the other way.

Speaker 2: 38:44

That's also behind a paywall. So what I think is very amazing about search carriers is that Garrett and what he has built he's truly trying to help the industry and also anyone outside of it. So someone that does not work in trucking has nothing to do with logistics. They don't have access to highway, they can't get in and see the things.

Speaker 2: 39:06

Right right, you have no access to that information. There's been people reached out from like Data Republican and her group and they wanted to look into some of this stuff. So they go into the data sets from the FMCSA. The company consensus file at the FMCSA is 2 million rows. I can't point someone to that and say, oh, it's all in here. And then there's like 12 other data sets that to truly get a picture of a carrier you have to pull those together. That's what Garrett has built and anyone has access to it.

Speaker 3: 39:41

Yeah, and now Genlogs has some of this too now in their UI, where you're able to see when those VINs have popped up, under which MCs for which time period, which is going to be really helpful for like getting this information out for people to be able to use it more. What I want to talk to and I want to make sure we get to this, is like talk a little bit about the ELDs and how and what they are, and I think we start with like a very simple explanation for anybody else out there. It's like the analogy I would use is like it's like a Fitbit for your truck. It tells you when you're driving and when you're resting, and it's supposed to be tied to when the truck is actually moving and when it's parked, based on the miles per hour it's driving Right. So theoretically it's supposed to be foolproof in a sense that like if the truck's moving, the clock's ticking, if the truck isn't, it isn't Right. That was, I believe, the intent of what this was supposed to do Right.

Speaker 1: 40:33

Ben, if I could hop in really quick before we do that To the point before about, like you know, vin level data and FMCSA data in general. I remember I think it was two years ago at the TI policy forum. I won't name the company that was there as a vendor, but one of the someone who works for a company that sells software that does carrier vetting, sells software that does carrier vetting. The argument was being made with folks on the Hill from us brokers saying we don't have the ability to easily get and extract inspection data and compliance data. We have to go pay for it through a third-party service in order to vet our carriers properly. And the person who worked for the company that sells it was like, yeah, I don't really want to lobby for this because this is the reason my company's in business, and I was like that's a terrible thing mentality to have, but anyway, I wanted to at least hit on that because that's been a thing for years that we lobby for. But back to Danielle Ben's ELD question on how it all works.

Speaker 3: 41:41

Ben, if you want to rephrase, that how it's supposed to work right, how it's supposed to work, and then segue into what you found on how it's actually working.

Speaker 2: 41:50

Because, yeah, so the way that it's supposed to work is that there is it's a piece of hardware that plugs into the truck to read the engine state if it's moving. If it's not moving, um, there's location data in there where the truck is. Really the only thing that it's supposed to do is track the number of hours the truck has been moving and the driver in that truck. However, technology is ever evolving. It is ever getting better based on what people want. So now we have the plug in that goes into the engine, of course, or I don't know where it plugs in exactly, I'm no mechanic it plugs into the truck and then you have the mobile app or the tablet app, which is phenomenal. It tells the driver how many, which is phenomenal. It tells the driver how many hours he has left. It tells him when he needs to take a break. I think that's phenomenal.

Speaker 2: 42:44

The problem with all of this is, I believe it was built for a very high trust, respected industry, very high trust companies and drivers. I do not think that any thought was put into this as to worst case scenario, what could possibly happen in the event that we have low trust people using this and so, with the ELDs, we don't have like five or seven companies just selling the ELDs. Samsara is phenomenal. Motive is phenomenal. There are a handful of others, probably 10 to 15, that are really great technologies, but there are 3000 ELDs certified with the FMCSA.

Speaker 3: 43:27

Those ELDs Define certified.

Speaker 2: 43:29

That's where I'm going. So those ELDs are self-certified. You buy the hardware, you create the app, you go on the FMCSA site and you put in your company information and say that you followed the rules to do this and it gets certified. So we're up to like 3000. No one is checking those, no one is reviewing the code or the information behind those. What data is getting pulled? What data is getting pushed? If you go on the App Store which is fascinating if you're interested, go on the app store and just search ELD.

Speaker 2: 44:03

I put a lot of screenshots in my article, but there are hundreds of apps. The UI is exactly the same, except there's different branding and different like color colorway on it. And so they have the hardware and then they're building the app to put on the app store. They, as in the people that are doing it as they should not be doing it, and because they are white labeled, they can do whatever they want. They have access on Samsara. I don't have access to Samsara's code base. I can't change what my dispatcher is allowed to do or what my driver is allowed to do With the white labels. They do whatever they want.

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah, you're getting to a point because I remember, ben, when we were putting together our content on the ELD portion of our broker training course with DAT and I was looking for examples. Every time I look for a screenshot of an ELD, the apps they all look the same Four circles showing how much time for, like you know, break, shift, et cetera, and I'm like which one is which so and I never thought about that vulnerability there were. You know. It's just all you know. That's a mess.

Speaker 3: 45:22

Here's what was even crazier about this, right, is that like, not only are they self-certified, nobody is looking at this, nobody's regulating them, right? But you had found evidence that a lot of them, right, are just absolutely taking every information they can out of a driver's cell phone. And some examples right, bols, pods, shipment details, load values, where the driver is, where he's going. So every piece of information that we put in a load tender that we're trying to protect, of getting it to that driver is literally open source in the back end from some country, nobody knows where, being leaked to whoever Criminals could be buying it, anybody could be getting access to this, and we're wondering why loads are getting stolen and we have no idea. Like you pointed out, yeah, maybe back in the day somebody waited at a warehouse and they knew a load was going, so they got a tip and they followed that truck. That could be happening. But what is more likely, that all of the data from all the high value loads, exactly where that driver is, exactly which truck, that is where they're located, not only where they're now, but where they're going, when they're going to be there to be able to rob them is just out the back end of these systems, going to God knows where, to God knows who, and we wonder why there's theft is a huge issue.

Speaker 3: 46:38

Not to mention and this is the one that scared the shit out of me was that like there were screenshots that you had where people were reporting that like these ELD companies are sending text messages and making phone calls from my driver's phone number on my behalf. So for every brokerage out there that goes well. I ran this load with that driver last week and the week before and nothing was wrong. And hey, the driver sent me a text from that phone number. You genuinely do not know if you're talking to that driver.

Speaker 3: 47:09

It absolutely could be somebody in some country. Nobody knows where that is actually texting that brokerage going. Yeah, my driver will pick up that load through the phone number you talked to the driver at last week and some other truck goes and picks it up with an MC with a magnet on the side. Shipper doesn't know any difference. And now all of a sudden, your load's gone and we're wondering why theft is in the billions of dollars. But the back end of the entire transportation system is wide open on the Internet to anybody that wants to go and pay for this information. Yep.

Speaker 3: 47:42

It's absolutely insane.

Speaker 2: 47:43

It is. Yeah, it's absurd. There's not enough people talking about this. When you dig into it and put everything together that you just said, this is truly a national security risk. Yes, it's not just a broker problem. I moved DLD freight.

Speaker 3: 48:00

For like three years. We moved secure loads, we moved things that nobody was supposed to know when and where they were moving, and all that stuff is just filtering out the back end. Because, guess what and you're going to point this out in a minute, I think but like nobody knows which ELD provider any truck has, and when they get inspected, nobody's even asking law enforcement hey, can you write down the ELD that was used when they got a violation? So there isn't anybody even recording who's using what to be able to connect the dots to find which of these companies are fraudulent. So not only are they just wide open to create whoever they want with self-certification, nobody is even writing down which ones are being used when there's a violation.

Speaker 3: 48:40

So literally nobody's doing it to prevent it or to fix it.

Speaker 1: 48:43

So, danielle, in a couple of weeks TIA, a lot of the members, myself included, we do our annual blitz on Capitol Hill to lobby for the things that we say are the issues and we have our asks. What are the asks based on? We've clearly identified the issues here, but what are potential solutions? Before we get to a solution hold on.

Speaker 3: 49:05

I want to put a pin in that for one more second because I want to draw a connection with something that is like the biggest point of contention in our industry why are rates so low?

Speaker 3: 49:14

Here's the thing that I think is even worse in some ways and is a bigger disservice to the trucking companies and to the lobbying efforts of truckers like legitimate people that are doing this job the right way, and they want to yell at brokers about rates or shippers Right, but at the end of the day, why trucks are running at a buck fifty five a mile and eight hundred miles a day is because the people breaking the regulations and the laws are driving rates down.

Speaker 3: 49:42

So the criminals are literally driving out legitimate, ethical businesses. They're going bankrupt because they're following the rules and then the people literally in violation of all the regulations and all the safety standards, are literally pushing the companies we want to stay in business in favor of criminals that are either the trucking companies, the trucking company owners and honestly, like I agree with you that I think the drivers are almost as close to innocent as you could make in that scenario, Right To your point, like if you got to feed your family every day and you got to pay for your rent and you don't have any other way to get a job. You're probably going to listen to your boss when he yells at you and tells you to go to work right, Otherwise you can't feed your family. So there's no way to fix this downstream with the drivers.

Speaker 2: 50:27

At the end of the day.

Speaker 3: 50:28

guess what? The company's just going to hire another driver, like, even if these people go to jail and even if they make an example out of individual drivers, that company is going to hire five more people next week that need money, that are going to go and violate these regulations, while legitimate trucking companies are just closing their doors and going I can't operate at a buck 55 a mile because I can't pay my bills. Well, they're like. Well, shit, I can operate at a buck 55 a mile. I'm not paying my driver and he's driving 20 miles a day. Until he can't, then we'll find another one. Right Like this is like the equivalent of almost like sharecropping in the early 1900s, of like literally just forcing human beings to work under crazy conditions that have no choice.

Speaker 2: 51:09

Yeah, and I keep saying and I I get frustrated about it at times this can not be fixed downstream. There is nothing. I mean, once that carrier is approved to haul freight at the FMCSA, everything that is done from the brokerage, from the shippers, every technology that we have. None of it is proactive. We are fighting a broken system and we are trying to react to how broken it is. Until it is fixed at the FMCSA, we will continue to react.

Speaker 1: 51:46

So what are the asks then? To make it clear and as basic as possible what's the fix here?

Speaker 2: 51:54

So I think, on this ELD issue it is very important to reference, in February 2020, the FBI did I don't know if it was an investigation or just like a quick look at the risk of these ELDs they warned the FMCSA that this is a huge security risk and incredibly vulnerable to cyber criminals. We did nothing about it. We, as in the trucking, the FMCSA DOT. Nothing came of this, and so the FBI pointed out that this is a terrible, terrible idea. Can I ask you something about that?

Speaker 3: 52:33

Because you talked about that in your article and the one thing, that I was curious is like we talked about this off air too. Is that, like some of the trucking lobbies are fighting these regulations? But the trucking lobbies you would think are representing legitimate companies that are all suffering at this issue. Why do you think maybe even just as like a guess why they would oppose something that creates safety and keeps legitimate businesses operating and forcing illegitimate businesses to play by the same rules? What is the opposition to that?

Speaker 2: 53:05

I think and I haven't gotten as far down this rabbit hole as I need to get yet, because it is so, so deep I think that the more drivers that we pump into this industry, this industry, the financial kickbacks from that, are incredibly high. The more drivers that we get in, the more money that they make. So everything from CDL schools to new companies spinning up new drivers being hired as long as there are new drivers coming in, there's more money being made.

Speaker 4: 53:47

I think the lobbies I mean. So if you look at the ATA right, they represent mainly mega carriers, your larger carriers with a bunch of trucks, and they would say they have a shortage, but that's because they have a retention problem. They don't have a driver shortage problem. I mean I can write an ad for drivers. I've got I think the last time we looked we've got a backlog of like 10 or 15 drivers that when we have business we will be looking to bring them on Question Stephen, about that point right.

Speaker 3: 54:15

there isn't retention related to pay, Like if the rates were higher, wouldn't they not have a retention problem? And aren't the reason rates are low because they're not addressing this issue? Isn't that literally downstream from fixing the thing that would ultimately solve the retention issue? If drivers made more money, they wouldn't be turning over so often.

Speaker 4: 54:34

Right, exactly. And the other point to that is and the thing I like to say all the time is your lowest common denominator and your shareholder for the trucking industry is the blue collar boys and their diesel toys, right, and they don't know tech all that well. So their blind spot is going to be this backdoor to our industry. And when you start talking to them I mean I'm a third generation, my grandfather, my dad they're 20 years behind when it comes to tech. And anytime I bring this stuff up, I mean they can barely operate an Excel sheet, they have no idea what the backdoor to an ELD is. And when you bring it up.

Speaker 2: 55:12

I don't know it's the same thing.

Speaker 4: 55:15

Yeah, yeah, this is nonsense. So that's the issue. So you got large corporations, carriers that have a retention problem because of pay lifestyle, whatever Large corporations, carriers that have a retention problem because of pay lifestyle, whatever. Or the drivers. Or the drivers get in because they pay for their CDL school and then they leave and go do their own thing or they go to another smaller carrier that will pay them better, or they have a better lifestyle, and then, on top of it, they just don't understand tech.

Speaker 2: 55:43

But why do you need to understand tech to understand that, hey dad— Because no one talks about it in the manner that we're talking about it right now Because I'm like it doesn't have anything to do with tech.

Speaker 3: 55:49

It's like, hey, guess what? You're competing driving 11 hours a day. They're competing with you driving 15 to 20 hours a day. Do you think you could make as much money in 11 hours as the guy that's able to work 15 to 20? No, I wouldn't Well guess what. They're doing that? Because whatever black box is tied to their truck doesn't do what yours does, so we need to make sure theirs does the same thing as yours, because you're playing on an unlevel playing field and you're going to lose and they're going to beat you on rate every day because they can work twice as long for the same amount of money. It doesn't need to be about tech.

Speaker 4: 56:22

The common response, but that's illegal.

Speaker 2: 56:25

Yeah, need to be about tech, the common response, but that's illegal yeah. Oh my gosh If I hear that one more time it's illegal. Okay, people do illegal things.

Speaker 3: 56:31

Correct. So is robbing a bank, but that shit still happens All right.

Speaker 1: 56:35

So do we want to get into what the what, the ask, or the fix is here? I know you outlined it in some of your in your article and we'll share that link, like Steven mentioned. But what's the in your own words, right, because this is essentially what I would call a project of yours that you're continuing to go down the rabbit hole on. But what's the? What do we ask? Or, you know, what do we want to see changed?

Speaker 2: 56:55

Yeah, two things and we could clear, clean this well. One thing to clean it up, one thing to prevent it from happening in the future. The first thing is when a DOT inspector or an officer determines that logs have been falsified, if they record the ELD being used and we get that on the inspection record, we could clean up probably 1,500 of these ELDs that are being manipulated and illegal.

Speaker 1: 57:29

So tie the device to the violation.

Speaker 2: 57:32

Yes, yes, because we have the violation codes that say the logs have been falsified, they're not being reported correctly, but we don't have which ELDs being used.

Speaker 3: 57:42

Correct. But that only is going to work if the second thing happens, because if they're all white labeled and they can just pop up under another brand, you also need the other thing to occur.

Speaker 2: 57:52

Correct. So the second thing is self-certification is fine. I am not against that. I am against no one checking what that ELD is doing. No one there's. There is no review of it, so there has to be. I don't know if it's reviewing the code, I don't know if it is using a tool to review. I don't know what that part is in detail, but there has to be. The barrier to entry on the ELD has to be much higher.

Speaker 1: 58:25

I mean, I would even I might have a different opinion and say that I wouldn't want self-certification. If all we're trying to do is certify that it's tracking just the things you want it to track and nothing else, that shouldn't be that hard for a company that wants to get in the business. If we have to go through a process to get our license as a freight broker and you've got to go through a process to get our license as a freight broker and you've got to go through a process to get your your authority as a motor carrier, um, if you want to play in our space, that's regulated by the under the dot. You know, like I would imagine, like a, a flight recorder in an aircraft probably doesn't have self-certification right and what's what's interesting on that piece is most of the self-certified ELDs are owned by a trucking company.

Speaker 2: 59:09

So when you trace the LLC through, like open corporates, and you find the officer on that corporation filing, you open it and they're linked to one or 17 different trucking companies.

Speaker 3: 59:26

You know why I feel like this is just like absolutely hard for me to comprehend. Like I came from finance and everything is regulated. Like you can't have a bank that lends money, that also is involved in trading, that does investing right. There are all these regulations because when people lose money, people give a shit and all of a sudden we need regulation.

Speaker 3: 59:44

You do not have drug companies and this for sure isn't foolproof self-certifying medications and going take this because we think it'll be okay for you and like would be okay with that. But for some reason, the roads we drive on every day drive to work, go to get groceries, take our families on have 85,000 pound vehicles driving with people that are falling asleep because nobody is paying attention to the regulation for safety, when that is literally the mandate of that government agency. I think it is absolutely asinine that self-certification ever existed in the first place and that they can't do that now. Like there for sure are ways to regulate ELDs if it is a mandate in this country for roads that are paid for with our tax dollars are dragging their feet on to deal with, while they're talking about every other issue that has nothing to do with why these these crashes are taking place in the first place.

Speaker 1: 1:00:53

Yeah, you could have. You could have a government entity do a symbol certification or, even simpler, with an annual, have third party independent folks that are certified by the government to give a stamp of approval, folks that are certified by the government to give a stamp of approval. And I'm like, I'm not all, I'm not huge on government regulation, but if we're already playing in a regulated arena, the tools inside of that arena should be regulated.

Speaker 2: 1:01:17

You regulated the ELDs, which opened a door for all of this mess.

Speaker 3: 1:01:24

Yeah, you're requiring companies to use a technology that we know is fraudulent, has a backdoor that is allowing all of the sensitive information on everything that is transported. And, by the way, like everybody lost their shit when we felt like, oh, during COVID, we had to bring all this stuff in from overseas and we don't make it here, who cares if you make it here, if anybody can steal it? This is medication, this is drugs, these are chemicals, these are things that can be used in explosives. Literally every single thing in our country is on a truck at some point in time, and where they are and who's moving it and where it's going to, is just off into the web, where anybody can go and pay for this information, steal it and do whatever you want with it.

Speaker 2: 1:02:06

All the talk about the like freight freight theft not freight fraud, because that's too broad the freight theft about how strategic and how intelligent these bad actors are. I think that that is an exaggeration. You're overestimating their intelligence. They have all of the data that they need and where that truck is. All they have to do is tell someone where it is and what's on it.

Speaker 3: 1:02:33

Yeah, and they don't even need to steal it themselves. They just book a legitimate carrier to go and steal the load and send it to a warehouse where the thieves are waiting to pick it up, like they don't even have to put themselves at risk. Once you have the information, you don't even theoretically need to steal it. You can agree to pay a legitimate carrier to pick it up and deliver it to an illegitimate location.

Speaker 1: 1:02:52

I had that last year Legitimately. Some poor owner operator had no idea that the BOL he was given was falsified and he ended up basically helping someone steal $300,000 worth of Adidas apparel and had no idea, thought he was just doing his job.

Speaker 3: 1:03:07

It's happening every day, multiple times every day.

Speaker 1: 1:03:09

Tie the device to the violation. And the second part because we kind of went all the way up here Certification process. The certification process Okay.

Speaker 4: 1:03:18

All right, I think. The other thing I would add, and I don't think I'm incorrect, but I'm pretty sure the FMCA does have a new entrant audit, correct?

Speaker 1: 1:03:29

As a new carrier.

Speaker 4: 1:03:30

So why not do that? I mean, they don't do it anyways, or there'd be more people auditing carriers but why not audit the ELD that they're supposedly using and do it on site, don't do it from a computer? Like you know, the whole Pink Cheetah issue the FMCSA audited their claim, but they did it from DC instead of actually going to TQL. That's. The other issue with our industry is the lack of enforcement mechanisms. It's just a bunch of rules in a book that you know. I mean. It's a $10,000 fine, civil fine, right for double work rate. Have we ever seen that applied?

Speaker 2: 1:04:09

I don't know.

Speaker 4: 1:04:10

Probably not. No the answer is no. The answer is no.

Speaker 1: 1:04:15

Well, I mean literally the Household Goods Consumer Protection Act, or I probably botched that one. That was the big thing we lobbied for last year, that and which did get sponsored and pushed through. That is the one that gives the FMCSA the ability to impose fines that they didn't previously have. So they, they, the fine existed, but the ability to enforce the fine was not there. I don't know if that, if that bill became a law yet or what, but that was like it just takes forever to get anything done in government.

Speaker 1: 1:04:48

Like four years ago I sat in DC my first time and they didn't understand what a freight broker was. The next year they knew what we were, but they didn't understand what double brokering was by the third year. They're helping us figure out. You know what direction do we go. You know how do we get all this stuff done. They're helping us figure out. You know what direction do we go. You know how do we get all this stuff done. And you know it's just you have to slow and then these people turn over because there's elections and all that stuff. So it's just a mess.

Speaker 2: 1:05:14

And that's in my writing. So I started this about six months ago, really writing and going into these issues, what I the majority of what I post, 100 percent of what I write. My audience is not the transportation industry. Most people here know what's going on, maybe not all of the details of it, but I intentionally want to explain it in a way that anyone can read it and realize that this is truly an issue. Because the problem we have is most of especially the ones lobbying against the big lobbyist is they're talking in a way that's so specific to our industry that no one understands. They're throwing out, like the FMCSA regulation, codes and just industry specific words, jargon that no one understands and they just look over it like it's not an issue. And so when we frame the issues, it has to make sense to someone outside of the industry and our politicians are outside of the industry.

Speaker 1: 1:06:18

That's a good point, and I remember I sat with Tim Burchett last year. He's from Tennessee. And he literally I used the. I think I said FMCSA and he's like I'm going to stop you last year. He's from Tennessee and he literally I used the. I think I said FMCSA and he's like I'm going to stop you right there. He's like there's two things you don't do in my office Talk about the Holocaust and use acronyms that I don't understand.

Speaker 1: 1:06:35

All right noted, and I also see that .50 cal sniper rifle right behind you. Yeah, so, and I really appreciate that you like the way that you're writing this is digestible and understandable by people that aren't us, and I Ben you and I probably, like this is a fault of ours is that we talk to certain people, assuming that they understand exactly what we're referring to. Danielle, the way that you put it out there, I think, is super helpful. I'm definitely going to be able to use what you've written down and even talked about today to help have this conversation in a few weeks here. So I appreciate that.

Speaker 3: 1:07:09

Do you know what this reminds me of? Like, as far as an analogy like this reminds me of exactly the way the US economy worked before. We had like work standards and minimum wage. Like if I own a company and all four of you own a company, I pay my guys four bucks an hour and make them work 18 hours a day. You pay your guys $8 an hour and make them work eight hours a day. Who's going to make more money? Me?

Speaker 3: 1:07:32

So what did the government do when you had child labor and five-year-olds and six-year-olds working in steel mills for 18 hours a day? They came in and regulated why? Because it wasn't safe. Literally the exact same thing is happening with truck drivers. Like this is no different than 1920s steel mills, oil companies and railroads that literally did this a hundred years ago. The exact same thing is happening in trucking. We're just a hundred years behind the curve on every other industry in the United States. We've regulated hours of service, what people can get paid to work, how long they can work and who can work, but in trucking, for some reason, they're like oh, we'll regulate this and you just tell us if you're doing it, okay, and we'll just take your word for it. But meanwhile, hey, you know we did our job, check that box right. It's insane.

Speaker 2: 1:08:18

All of this is fixable. Like I keep saying it, we could fix this and I know that there's enforcement Probably 90% of it. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be hard. I mean, I have documents of carriers that should not be on the road today Clear, convincing evidence of why HOPE Trans should not be on the roads.

Speaker 3: 1:08:42

They're probably pulling loads right now.

Speaker 2: 1:08:44

Well they are. They just got a freight guard Someone mess they are. They just got a freight guard. Someone messaged me. They just got a freight guard because of a stolen load. They're on their third that I can clearly prove USDOT, which brings them to like. I forget how many wrecks that they've had and how many people have been killed because of these drivers. They have new USDOTs ready to go a freight brokerage.

Speaker 3: 1:09:07

On the shelf.

Speaker 2: 1:09:10

And at some point someone's going to listen, I don't know when.

Speaker 3: 1:09:14

Yeah, think about that when you're taking your families on road trips for Labor Day, like these people are on the road right now driving next to you, and when you're going 65 miles an hour down a highway and the only only thing between you and that 85,000 pound truck is a painted yellow line and three feet from somebody driving in the opposite direction that has slept three hours in the past three days. Realize that's the risk you're taking every time you drive down a highway because they're doing nothing about this Nothing.

Speaker 1: 1:09:40

I just randomly pulled up Hope Trans on a specific carrier vetting site.

Speaker 2: 1:09:44

I won't say who they're approved in all of them.

Speaker 1: 1:09:47

I grabbed, like I just pulled one of their VINs and it's like seen with three other, three other DOT numbers, let me name them B-Zone. Nope.

Speaker 3: 1:09:58

Oh, I don't know then I know that they were B-Zone Well, Cardin Trucking. Cardin Trucking.

Speaker 2: 1:10:04

Cardan had a huge crash. I put it in my article.

Speaker 1: 1:10:07

They were card and trucking or fear radio there's one b zone card and go, go billions. Yep, I pulled the second vin number because the first one didn't match those.

Speaker 2: 1:10:18

But yeah, some of them don't overlap as much, but there's cardan f-Zone and then a couple of random ones in there. I'm not really sure where those came from, but Crazy yeah, they should be on the list. I need to mark them as do not use in my software right now. Yeah, every freight broker. Actually, I can't say that I'll get sued, never mind.

Speaker 1: 1:10:40

Scratch that, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:10:54

Well, this is a good first discussion on this whole topic here. Danielle, anything that you want to wrap up with or kind of booking on your loads will do more than something giving you a green checkbox or a red X not to use the carrier. There are so many ways that these carriers are breaking an already broken system and so, just like we talked about with Hope Trans, they're still verified, confirmed in every vetting platform that I know. No one is picking up on a lot of these things that are broken. Just pick up the phone five minutes and it'll do a lot more than a red X or a green check.

Speaker 1: 1:11:38

Yeah, we kind of I mean, ben, that kind of echoes. What we say in general is like you know, when people are just trying to book via email, it's so scary. Yeah, you're literally. I've had it four times this year. We've had cargo theft in our company and three out of those four were carriers that had their email hacked.

Speaker 2: 1:12:02

And we're trying to automate.

Speaker 1: 1:12:03

We thought we were talking to Everything we're trying to automate Any automation.

Speaker 2: 1:12:05

We were talking to Everything. We're trying to automate Any automation that takes the relationship out of trucking. I don't like it.

Speaker 1: 1:12:12

Yep so but yeah, the phone call that's a good. It'll go a long way. It will To build rapport too with these carriers, so you're not just some person on the other keyboard. So but yeah, well, danielle, appreciate you hopping on here today we're going to put links to. You've got an ELD article that we referenced a lot, and then the Hope Trans one. We'll put those both in there. If people want to reach out to you, what's your handle on X? How do they reach you, how do they follow you, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 1:12:41

Yeah, my handle on all social media, the one I'm really only on, is X and LinkedIn, but it's at maybe Danielle with three E's at the end of my name.

Speaker 1: 1:12:50

We'll throw it in the show notes as well, so make sure you give her a follow. Steven, thanks for putting this together. You got any final thoughts off episode one of this series?

Speaker 4: 1:12:58

I mean I can't wait for the rest of them to come out. I mean, this is just a drop in the bucket and what's going on in the trucking industry and you know, a big shout out to Garrett and Search Carriers and the information that he's making available to the public, not just our industry, absolutely. And yeah, I look forward to the rest of the episode. It's going to be great, awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:13:22

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