May 6, 2025 • 19 mins
Nate Cross & Ben Kowalski answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:
🔍 Why brokers request carrier inspections
🧑💼 Is Landstar a good choice for agents?
📦 Best load boards for freight brokers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back the final mile.
We are at 92 of these.
That means that we've beendoing this segment for almost
two years now.
I do remember it was a coupleof years ago that we started to
break out the Q&A, so we canhave longer podcast discussions
and longer Q&A stuff.
So, but we got three goodquestions today, as always.
(00:21):
Make sure to check out all thefull library of content at our
website, freight360.net.
You'll also see the FreightBooker Basics course Great,
great option there for educationfor you, for your team,
depending on your setup.
It kind of encompasseseverything from starting your
own brokerage to what your backoffice does accounting, you know
(00:46):
, finding shippers, prospecting,winning new business, carrier
development all of the above.
And please take a moment tosupport the sponsors that are in
our description box and on ourwebsite.
That will greatly help supportour channel.
First question and these allcame from our Facebook group
this week, so thank you guys forbeing engaged in there.
That's the Freight Brokers andCarriers Network.
(01:07):
Why do brokers requestinspections from carriers?
And they went on to say, likewe haven't been inspected yet.
This is a carrier that askedthe 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 ainspection history.
Ok, so we'll try to explain it.
(01:29):
And then, ben, I'm curious likehow you personally handle it
and what you look for.
But the reason primarily forinspection history, or at least
looking for it, is with fraud.
The last few years there's beena lot of pop-up MC numbers for
carriers that don't actuallyhave trucks.
(01:51):
They paid 300 bucks, they gotan authority, they claim to have
equipment and they take a loadfrom a broker off a load board
and they either steal it ordouble broker it or you know
anything along the lines offraud, right?
So one of the things we can doas brokers is look to see like,
(02:12):
has this carrier been inspected?
Meaning like, have they gonethrough a roadside inspection?
Have they gotten hit on DOTBlitz 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 seethese things, because if a
(02:32):
carrier has been in business fortwo years, claims to have 20
trucks and has zero inspections,I'm not buying it.
Now there is the possibility,like what I personally do, if a
carrier is newer or maybe it'san 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 tomake sure that you're legitimate
(02:54):
.
That could be a picturetracking, a picture showing that
you're at the pickup with yourMC on the side of the truck.
Quickscope's a great tool forsomething like that.
Trucker Tools has good options.
Connect your ELD to somethinglike a highway.
Those are, for me, likeworkarounds.
But, in a nutshell, that's myanswer as to why us, as brokers,
(03:16):
are asking for or I should saylooking for and wanting to see
inspection history.
How do you guys handle it?
Do you have like a kind of arule?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
of thumb.
Yeah, what we'll do is, one seeif the ELD is connected Again,
because a lot of carriershaven't been inspected if
they're newer.
So we want to still be able touse those folks and it's not
their fault that criminals areexploiting this.
So to give them the benefit ofthe doubt, we always ask the
driver who has accepted trackingfrom that phone number, right?
(03:46):
So if you're the driver oneyou've got to accept tracking so
we know that phone number istracking where you say you are.
Then we need that phone numberto text us a picture of the VIN,
usually from the door, like theactual plate of the VIN,
Because on the side of the truckcould be a magnet, could be
changed, could be painted on,but the actual VIN from the
plate on the, usually on thedoor of the cab.
(04:09):
And then we have the drivertext, a picture of his license
and his cab card and theinsurance.
So that way we know from thatcell phone that driver took
those documents out of theirglove box and took a picture of
the truck they're sitting in.
And then we make sure that VINis on the insurance matches the
cab card and the driver'slicense.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yep, yeah, good stuff .
So, um, you know, if you're acarrier and you're wondering
about this kind of stuff, um,have a conversation with the
broker, like hey, I'm new, um, Ihaven't been inspected yet, uh,
but I'm willing to do X, y andZ, so hopefully that kind of
(04:47):
stuff helps out.
And, um, you know, you can havethose relationships work
longterm right, cause there'sthe fraudsters out there.
What's what sucks about it islike this the, the bucket of bad
actors.
It's kind of like you know, onestudent, one student gets, you
know, messes up, the whole classgets punished.
Like you get good carriers thatare paying the price for the
(05:10):
bad actors out there.
So, um, but, yeah, all right.
Next question here we've got islandstar a good company for
freight agents?
Um, I will, I'll speak to thisone that I'm curious if you have
any any input on it.
Um, so I've been, I've beenaround the agent model for quite
some time.
(05:30):
I've talked to folks fromlandstar.
I've heard the good, the bad,the indifferent.
Um, I've never been an agentfor landstar.
I know that you've worked.
You work with a guy who's gotan agency with Landstar, so
maybe you can give some thirdparty confident or not confident
, generic, non-personal feedbackor whatnot.
(05:50):
But here's what I've heard.
It's good, ok, brandrecognition is great.
Right, people know Landstar.
Landstar has trucks, so they'vegot the ability to sell as
asset based the ability to sellas asset based.
The downsides of a land star ispotentially account saturation.
So if you've got literallythousands of agents operating
(06:13):
under the same companyno-transcript, you've got more
hands in the same pot.
So let's say you want to workwith a certain shipper, well,
the chances of them beingalready protected or assigned to
another agent or broker in thecompany is more likely than if
(06:35):
you're with a smaller, midsizecompany.
Commission, I have been told,is lower.
Like, if you broker a load, youmight only make 50 percent
commission of the load profit.
If you book it on a Landstartruck, it might be easier to
cover that load, but you'regetting paid a percentage of the
line haul which is sometimeslike 10 percent.
(06:55):
So yeah, it's lower.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I had a meeting with that guy you're referencing
yesterday and they get there's ahigher commission when they
book a brokerkered truck innetwork versus a Landstar truck.
I think they said there's14,000 or 15,000 Landstar trucks
, so they have a pretty bignetwork of their trucks.
They have like 170,000 carriersinside their network.
So it's a large network, muchsmaller of their own trucks.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I think they're arguably the largest agent-based
model.
So, yeah, their trucks, it'scalled, their BCOs, their
business capacity operators, Ithink it's called.
But yeah, so that's like someof the pros and cons, the, the,
so Pierce Worldwide, where Iwork, right, we were agent based
(07:43):
.
We also have a trucking company.
It's not massive and we treatthem as separate organizations
for the most part.
But one of the things that Ithink people enjoy about you
know, because if you're thinkingabout building out an agent
model in your brokerage, theseare things that you'll run into
if you try to do too much is ifyou get too big and you let's,
(08:06):
you know, I would say it'sarguably better to have um, 50
really good, strong agenciesthat are, you know, multi-person
.
So you, you could have 500people, but it's, you know, 10
per team.
Essentially, it's better tohave that than to have 500
single agents, because then nowyou've got 500 people all
competing against each other.
(08:27):
So things like that, thecommission to like these big
companies.
They have layers and layers ofmanagement and executive
leadership that you have to pay,who don't directly produce
revenue and profits.
Therefore, there's less meat onthe bone for them to be able to
pay competitive commissions,whereas you can get a 70 percent
(08:47):
at a company like Pierce.
So if you're ever interested inan agent role, reach out to
myself, ben, I know you've,you've been.
You know, reach out to myselfor Ben.
We can definitely get you guysin touch or kind of guide you
through options if there's agood fit there.
But anything else that you'veheard on the Landstar side?
I have literally heard ofbrokers that refuse to load
Landstar trucks because they'reworried about double brokering.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, Usually a lot of the brokerages like they'll
have a blacklist of someLandstar agents that they won't
work with because of that.
Like they were told, hey, we'llput a Landstar truck on this
and they brokered it out toanother truck, right.
So again, be careful, like whoyou're talking to and knowing
who you're doing business with.
Because, like, I've worked witha number of Landstar agents
(09:29):
that were great and I've hadgreat relationships where we've
co-brokered projects togetherbecause their network in some
ways didn't overlap with ournetwork and they were able to
find trucks in their network andout of their network that we
didn't have to be able to getcapacity we needed every day,
right.
I've had great workingrelationships with a number of
them.
In fact, the one you'rereferencing does a lot of
(09:49):
international business.
They also have a very largeinternational program where they
can do literally anythingoverseas, which we utilize a lot
.
I've referred lots of folks towork with them and, again, it's
like anything else, a very largecompany is going to have very
good people in it and someportion that aren't necessarily
ethical.
I would use Walmart as anexample.
It's like everybody shops there.
(10:11):
I can guarantee you there arebad reviews on Walmart's website
, depending on which store yougo into and what happened, at
what time of day and where.
Like any company that large isgoing to have some of these
things.
So just spending the time toget to know who you're doing
business with is always just agood piece of advice, I think.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
For sure, yeah.
Last question what's the bestload board for brokers?
So DAT is a partner and sponsorof 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 mugshot reference, um, what I did,
notice too, my mug.
That happened to yesterday.
The the thing on the bottomcame off, uh, and I love this
(10:59):
mug I've had, you've had it foryears and get some new swags.
I know it's one, one of myfavorite ones we like, so I love
the.
Like the load posting, trucksearching, really the analytics
tools are great though, likerate view, rate cap, that iq
market conditions, lane makers,like there's just so much in
there.
Um, I would argue that dat isprobably the um more popular of
(11:24):
the load boards that's out there.
Now, if you're looking at otherboards, truck stop is a another
one like our.
A lot of our agents use truckstop as well.
I have heard feedback that theyhave better, better luck with
owner operators and with opendeck on truck stop and the kind
(11:45):
of like the.
I try to think of the reasoningbehind it, and it's like you
got to think these things costmoney, right?
Truckstop has historically beena 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, Iwould argue that both is, you
(12:09):
know, probably a good mix tohave.
Now you've got some nicheboards too, like we actually had
a bulk loads actually reachedout to Pierce last week, because
we've got a few folks usinglike their free version.
And we're talking about.
You know, if we, if we do getinto more bulk business, you
gotta be on that board, like yougot, and you got to have the
paid version.
Great program on, like a yearor so ago, right, talking
(12:34):
through the bulk industry andbulk loads dot com.
So bulk loads Right.
Central dispatch auto haulingRight, that's a.
They kind of own the marketthere.
Central dispatch um, autohauling right, that's a.
They kind of own the marketthere.
Um, a lot of like Dude, I'm nota fan of the auto hauling
(12:55):
market.
I'm not saying it's bad becauseit has to happen, but the
amount of double brokering thatI've just experienced in it is
wild.
I've almost never had the rightMC number show up.
When you're doing an auto haulThen you've got to end up
recontracting the correctcarrier.
But this stuff was never caughtfour or five years ago.
(13:18):
Selectus, really good for thatsmaller truckload If you're
going to go direct to thesecarriers.
So that's like your, your boxtruck, straight truck.
Sprinter, hotshot, expedite All, expedite All.
So they're a co-broker but theyoperate like a load board and I
love them.
So, like Alex Winston good,I've known him for a couple
(13:39):
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 amobile app too, so it's no
longer just desktop, uh, or webbrowser version, but you can
source.
They got like 7 think umsmaller truck load type trucks
in their network, um some otherrandom ones that I've used,
(14:03):
unless you got we, just we areall boarding with them.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Now we're doing more Mexican stuff, and um what?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
is it called?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Cargado.
Matt Silver um, the son of theguy who started Coyote.
Um, it is primarily a loadboard for carriers that have
been vetted that will run Mexicoand back into the United States
I can't remember how manycarriers.
Really good load board.
It's got some really coolfeatures to be able to book
(14:32):
loads in and out of Mexico.
If you've got customers thatare shipping international and I
believe they're going to bereleasing a side of it for
Canada as well it's really coolLoad board.
Little pricier than some, butif you've got the business on
there it's definitely worthconsidering.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Speaking of Canada, load link is the basically the
Canadian cousin of DAT.
I believe they're both in aprevious lifetime owned under
Transcore.
I used one in the past calledPost Everywhere, which was like
an aggregator of like 50 smallerboards and it was like pretty
(15:08):
cheap.
It was like $10 a month but itjust kind of helped you fill the
gap on any of those like reallylittle ones.
1-2-3 Load Board, I believe,was one of the more popular ones
.
That was on post everywhere.
These are marketplaces, right.
This is where brokers andcarriers come together to find
freight, find trucking capacityand yeah, so DAT gets my number
(15:32):
one ranking.
For sure you also get likelarger brokerages will have
either proprietary or usingpopular third-party plugins.
They'll have like their owninternal load board that
carriers can get things sent outto.
Like I was talking to steven,our producer, a couple weeks ago
.
We both use mcleod as ourprimary uh tms and mcleod has
(15:53):
the ability to, um, basicallyact as a load board for your
carrier network and send out youknow, here's our available
loads today or this week.
So there's, there's, there'slots of ways to do it, but yeah,
I think truck stop has thatfeature too.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I think you can build a private load board out on
truck stop.
I haven't gone into it, butsomeone mentioned that to me
recently.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, you can so that as well.
That to me recently.
Yeah, you can so that as well.
So dat has the um, the, the mynetwork or in network tool where
you can, um, you can identifycarriers that are in your
network and and, uh, do that.
Um, I haven't played around toomuch with that part of it, but,
um, yeah, I mean, at the end ofthe day, like load boards are
(16:35):
like a, they're a necessary Idon't want to call them a
potential risk, right, butthey're like it's kind of like
first time meeting, right.
It's like a dating app, likeit's.
You know, you don't know, youdon't know if someone's like
being honest with you or they'regoing to scam you.
But their whole purpose is tojust give you access to the
(16:56):
market and I think they do agreat job at it.
The goal is to obviouslyincrease your carrier
utilization so you don't have togo to load boards for every
load, but the reality is you aregoing to have new lanes.
You're going to have a go tocarry that may not be available
from time to time.
It influx in business.
Carry goes out of business notbe available from time to time.
(17:19):
It influx in business.
Carry goes out of business anyany factor that's going to
basically require you to findnew capacity.
Um, your load board istypically the primary tool for
that, so definitely need to haveat least one.
If you're a new broker, socheck out the link in our
description.
You can get 10 off your fullyear your full first year.
It used to just be one freemonth and now you get 10% off
(17:41):
the first 12 months, so youactually get an extra little
discount there.
So check it out, save somemoney and it'll help support us.
Anything else on load boardsNot really.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I mean other than the fact that, like it's a great
marketplace, but the thing I usemost 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 beable to price loads other than
just posting and talking tocarriers.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Absolutely.
I'm in DAT usually daily, sogood stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Final thoughts.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Whether you believe you can or believe you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You're right, and until next time, go Bills.
Welcome back the final mile.
We are at 92 of these.
That means that we've beendoing this segment for almost
two years now.
I do remember it was a coupleof years ago that we started to
break out the Q&A, so we canhave longer podcast discussions
and longer Q&A stuff.
So, but we got three goodquestions today, as always.
(00:21):
Make sure to check out all thefull library of content at our
website, freight360.net.
You'll also see the FreightBooker Basics course Great,
great option there for educationfor you, for your team,
depending on your setup.
It kind of encompasseseverything from starting your
own brokerage to what your backoffice does accounting, you know
(00:46):
, finding shippers, prospecting,winning new business, carrier
development all of the above.
And please take a moment tosupport the sponsors that are in
our description box and on ourwebsite.
That will greatly help supportour channel.
First question and these allcame from our Facebook group
this week, so thank you guys forbeing engaged in there.
That's the Freight Brokers andCarriers Network.
(01:07):
Why do brokers requestinspections from carriers?
And they went on to say, likewe haven't been inspected yet.
This is a carrier that askedthe 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 ainspection history.
Ok, so we'll try to explain it.
(01:29):
And then, ben, I'm curious likehow you personally handle it
and what you look for.
But the reason primarily forinspection history, or at least
looking for it, is with fraud.
The last few years there's beena lot of pop-up MC numbers for
carriers that don't actuallyhave trucks.
(01:51):
They paid 300 bucks, they gotan authority, they claim to have
equipment and they take a loadfrom a broker off a load board
and they either steal it ordouble broker it or you know
anything along the lines offraud, right?
So one of the things we can doas brokers is look to see like,
(02:12):
has this carrier been inspected?
Meaning like, have they gonethrough a roadside inspection?
Have they gotten hit on DOTBlitz 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 seethese things, because if a
(02:32):
carrier has been in business fortwo years, claims to have 20
trucks and has zero inspections,I'm not buying it.
Now there is the possibility,like what I personally do, if a
carrier is newer or maybe it'san 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 tomake sure that you're legitimate
(02:54):
.
That could be a picturetracking, a picture showing that
you're at the pickup with yourMC on the side of the truck.
Quickscope's a great tool forsomething like that.
Trucker Tools has good options.
Connect your ELD to somethinglike a highway.
Those are, for me, likeworkarounds.
But, in a nutshell, that's myanswer as to why us, as brokers,
(03:16):
are asking for or I should saylooking for and wanting to see
inspection history.
How do you guys handle it?
Do you have like a kind of arule?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
of thumb.
Yeah, what we'll do is, one seeif the ELD is connected Again,
because a lot of carriershaven't been inspected if
they're newer.
So we want to still be able touse those folks and it's not
their fault that criminals areexploiting this.
So to give them the benefit ofthe doubt, we always ask the
driver who has accepted trackingfrom that phone number, right?
(03:46):
So if you're the driver oneyou've got to accept tracking so
we know that phone number istracking where you say you are.
Then we need that phone numberto text us a picture of the VIN,
usually from the door, like theactual plate of the VIN,
Because on the side of the truckcould be a magnet, could be
changed, could be painted on,but the actual VIN from the
plate on the, usually on thedoor of the cab.
(04:09):
And then we have the drivertext, a picture of his license
and his cab card and theinsurance.
So that way we know from thatcell phone that driver took
those documents out of theirglove box and took a picture of
the truck they're sitting in.
And then we make sure that VINis on the insurance matches the
cab card and the driver'slicense.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yep, yeah, good stuff .
So, um, you know, if you're acarrier and you're wondering
about this kind of stuff, um,have a conversation with the
broker, like hey, I'm new, um, Ihaven't been inspected yet, uh,
but I'm willing to do X, y andZ, so hopefully that kind of
(04:47):
stuff helps out.
And, um, you know, you can havethose relationships work
longterm right, cause there'sthe fraudsters out there.
What's what sucks about it islike this the, the bucket of bad
actors.
It's kind of like you know, onestudent, one student gets, you
know, messes up, the whole classgets punished.
Like you get good carriers thatare paying the price for the
(05:10):
bad actors out there.
So, um, but, yeah, all right.
Next question here we've got islandstar a good company for
freight agents?
Um, I will, I'll speak to thisone that I'm curious if you have
any any input on it.
Um, so I've been, I've beenaround the agent model for quite
some time.
(05:30):
I've talked to folks fromlandstar.
I've heard the good, the bad,the indifferent.
Um, I've never been an agentfor landstar.
I know that you've worked.
You work with a guy who's gotan agency with Landstar, so
maybe you can give some thirdparty confident or not confident
, generic, non-personal feedbackor whatnot.
(05:50):
But here's what I've heard.
It's good, ok, brandrecognition is great.
Right, people know Landstar.
Landstar has trucks, so they'vegot the ability to sell as
asset based the ability to sellas asset based.
The downsides of a land star ispotentially account saturation.
So if you've got literallythousands of agents operating
(06:13):
under the same companyno-transcript, you've got more
hands in the same pot.
So let's say you want to workwith a certain shipper, well,
the chances of them beingalready protected or assigned to
another agent or broker in thecompany is more likely than if
(06:35):
you're with a smaller, midsizecompany.
Commission, I have been told,is lower.
Like, if you broker a load, youmight only make 50 percent
commission of the load profit.
If you book it on a Landstartruck, it might be easier to
cover that load, but you'regetting paid a percentage of the
line haul which is sometimeslike 10 percent.
(06:55):
So yeah, it's lower.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I had a meeting with that guy you're referencing
yesterday and they get there's ahigher commission when they
book a brokerkered truck innetwork versus a Landstar truck.
I think they said there's14,000 or 15,000 Landstar trucks
, so they have a pretty bignetwork of their trucks.
They have like 170,000 carriersinside their network.
So it's a large network, muchsmaller of their own trucks.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I think they're arguably the largest agent-based
model.
So, yeah, their trucks, it'scalled, their BCOs, their
business capacity operators, Ithink it's called.
But yeah, so that's like someof the pros and cons, the, the,
so Pierce Worldwide, where Iwork, right, we were agent based
(07:43):
.
We also have a trucking company.
It's not massive and we treatthem as separate organizations
for the most part.
But one of the things that Ithink people enjoy about you
know, because if you're thinkingabout building out an agent
model in your brokerage, theseare things that you'll run into
if you try to do too much is ifyou get too big and you let's,
(08:06):
you know, I would say it'sarguably better to have um, 50
really good, strong agenciesthat are, you know, multi-person
.
So you, you could have 500people, but it's, you know, 10
per team.
Essentially, it's better tohave that than to have 500
single agents, because then nowyou've got 500 people all
competing against each other.
(08:27):
So things like that, thecommission to like these big
companies.
They have layers and layers ofmanagement and executive
leadership that you have to pay,who don't directly produce
revenue and profits.
Therefore, there's less meat onthe bone for them to be able to
pay competitive commissions,whereas you can get a 70 percent
(08:47):
at a company like Pierce.
So if you're ever interested inan agent role, reach out to
myself, ben, I know you've,you've been.
You know, reach out to myselfor Ben.
We can definitely get you guysin touch or kind of guide you
through options if there's agood fit there.
But anything else that you'veheard on the Landstar side?
I have literally heard ofbrokers that refuse to load
Landstar trucks because they'reworried about double brokering.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, Usually a lot of the brokerages like they'll
have a blacklist of someLandstar agents that they won't
work with because of that.
Like they were told, hey, we'llput a Landstar truck on this
and they brokered it out toanother truck, right.
So again, be careful, like whoyou're talking to and knowing
who you're doing business with.
Because, like, I've worked witha number of Landstar agents
(09:29):
that were great and I've hadgreat relationships where we've
co-brokered projects togetherbecause their network in some
ways didn't overlap with ournetwork and they were able to
find trucks in their network andout of their network that we
didn't have to be able to getcapacity we needed every day,
right.
I've had great workingrelationships with a number of
them.
In fact, the one you'rereferencing does a lot of
(09:49):
international business.
They also have a very largeinternational program where they
can do literally anythingoverseas, which we utilize a lot
.
I've referred lots of folks towork with them and, again, it's
like anything else, a very largecompany is going to have very
good people in it and someportion that aren't necessarily
ethical.
I would use Walmart as anexample.
It's like everybody shops there.
(10:11):
I can guarantee you there arebad reviews on Walmart's website
, depending on which store yougo into and what happened, at
what time of day and where.
Like any company that large isgoing to have some of these
things.
So just spending the time toget to know who you're doing
business with is always just agood piece of advice, I think.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
For sure, yeah.
Last question what's the bestload board for brokers?
So DAT is a partner and sponsorof 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 mugshot reference, um, what I did,
notice too, my mug.
That happened to yesterday.
The the thing on the bottomcame off, uh, and I love this
(10:59):
mug I've had, you've had it foryears and get some new swags.
I know it's one, one of myfavorite ones we like, so I love
the.
Like the load posting, trucksearching, really the analytics
tools are great though, likerate view, rate cap, that iq
market conditions, lane makers,like there's just so much in
there.
Um, I would argue that dat isprobably the um more popular of
(11:24):
the load boards that's out there.
Now, if you're looking at otherboards, truck stop is a another
one like our.
A lot of our agents use truckstop as well.
I have heard feedback that theyhave better, better luck with
owner operators and with opendeck on truck stop and the kind
(11:45):
of like the.
I try to think of the reasoningbehind it, and it's like you
got to think these things costmoney, right?
Truckstop has historically beena 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, Iwould argue that both is, you
(12:09):
know, probably a good mix tohave.
Now you've got some nicheboards too, like we actually had
a bulk loads actually reachedout to Pierce last week, because
we've got a few folks usinglike their free version.
And we're talking about.
You know, if we, if we do getinto more bulk business, you
gotta be on that board, like yougot, and you got to have the
paid version.
Great program on, like a yearor so ago, right, talking
(12:34):
through the bulk industry andbulk loads dot com.
So bulk loads Right.
Central dispatch auto haulingRight, that's a.
They kind of own the marketthere.
Central dispatch um, autohauling right, that's a.
They kind of own the marketthere.
Um, a lot of like Dude, I'm nota fan of the auto hauling
(12:55):
market.
I'm not saying it's bad becauseit has to happen, but the
amount of double brokering thatI've just experienced in it is
wild.
I've almost never had the rightMC number show up.
When you're doing an auto haulThen you've got to end up
recontracting the correctcarrier.
But this stuff was never caughtfour or five years ago.
(13:18):
Selectus, really good for thatsmaller truckload If you're
going to go direct to thesecarriers.
So that's like your, your boxtruck, straight truck.
Sprinter, hotshot, expedite All, expedite All.
So they're a co-broker but theyoperate like a load board and I
love them.
So, like Alex Winston good,I've known him for a couple
(13:39):
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 amobile app too, so it's no
longer just desktop, uh, or webbrowser version, but you can
source.
They got like 7 think umsmaller truck load type trucks
in their network, um some otherrandom ones that I've used,
(14:03):
unless you got we, just we areall boarding with them.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Now we're doing more Mexican stuff, and um what?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
is it called?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Cargado.
Matt Silver um, the son of theguy who started Coyote.
Um, it is primarily a loadboard for carriers that have
been vetted that will run Mexicoand back into the United States
I can't remember how manycarriers.
Really good load board.
It's got some really coolfeatures to be able to book
(14:32):
loads in and out of Mexico.
If you've got customers thatare shipping international and I
believe they're going to bereleasing a side of it for
Canada as well it's really coolLoad board.
Little pricier than some, butif you've got the business on
there it's definitely worthconsidering.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Speaking of Canada, load link is the basically the
Canadian cousin of DAT.
I believe they're both in aprevious lifetime owned under
Transcore.
I used one in the past calledPost Everywhere, which was like
an aggregator of like 50 smallerboards and it was like pretty
(15:08):
cheap.
It was like $10 a month but itjust kind of helped you fill the
gap on any of those like reallylittle ones.
1-2-3 Load Board, I believe,was one of the more popular ones
.
That was on post everywhere.
These are marketplaces, right.
This is where brokers andcarriers come together to find
freight, find trucking capacityand yeah, so DAT gets my number
(15:32):
one ranking.
For sure you also get likelarger brokerages will have
either proprietary or usingpopular third-party plugins.
They'll have like their owninternal load board that
carriers can get things sent outto.
Like I was talking to steven,our producer, a couple weeks ago
.
We both use mcleod as ourprimary uh tms and mcleod has
(15:53):
the ability to, um, basicallyact as a load board for your
carrier network and send out youknow, here's our available
loads today or this week.
So there's, there's, there'slots of ways to do it, but yeah,
I think truck stop has thatfeature too.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I think you can build a private load board out on
truck stop.
I haven't gone into it, butsomeone mentioned that to me
recently.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, you can so that as well.
That to me recently.
Yeah, you can so that as well.
So dat has the um, the, the mynetwork or in network tool where
you can, um, you can identifycarriers that are in your
network and and, uh, do that.
Um, I haven't played around toomuch with that part of it, but,
um, yeah, I mean, at the end ofthe day, like load boards are
(16:35):
like a, they're a necessary Idon't want to call them a
potential risk, right, butthey're like it's kind of like
first time meeting, right.
It's like a dating app, likeit's.
You know, you don't know, youdon't know if someone's like
being honest with you or they'regoing to scam you.
But their whole purpose is tojust give you access to the
(16:56):
market and I think they do agreat job at it.
The goal is to obviouslyincrease your carrier
utilization so you don't have togo to load boards for every
load, but the reality is you aregoing to have new lanes.
You're going to have a go tocarry that may not be available
from time to time.
It influx in business.
Carry goes out of business notbe available from time to time.
(17:19):
It influx in business.
Carry goes out of business anyany factor that's going to
basically require you to findnew capacity.
Um, your load board istypically the primary tool for
that, so definitely need to haveat least one.
If you're a new broker, socheck out the link in our
description.
You can get 10 off your fullyear your full first year.
It used to just be one freemonth and now you get 10% off
(17:41):
the first 12 months, so youactually get an extra little
discount there.
So check it out, save somemoney and it'll help support us.
Anything else on load boardsNot really.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I mean other than the fact that, like it's a great
marketplace, but the thing I usemost 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 beable to price loads other than
just posting and talking tocarriers.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Absolutely.
I'm in DAT usually daily, sogood stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Final thoughts.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Whether you believe you can or believe you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You're right, and until next time, go Bills.
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