The Scam Economy of Freight (with Justin Martin) | Episode 310

The trucking industry is being rocked by fraud schemes that threaten honest brokers, carriers, and shippers. In this episode, Justin Martin (SuperTrucker) exposes tactics like ELD tampering, stolen trailers, and “chameleon carriers” that exploit loopholes and undercut legitimate businesses. He shares red flags to spot, why rates remain depressed, and how to protect yourself in today’s high-risk freight market.

Follow Justin Martin: https://x.com/supertrucker 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back Another episode of the Freight 360
podcast.
We're going to continue ourdiscussion from last week with
another guest this week.
We'll introduce him in just asecond and if you're brand new,
definitely check out last week'sepisode with Danielle, where we
started to dig into the ELDdiscussion and fraud and some of

(00:20):
the animosity and just some ofthe negative, dark cloud topics
that are happening and poppingup in our industry lately.
But there's also an entirewebsite full of searchable
content from prospecting carrierrelationships, protecting
yourself from fraud, gettingstarted as a broker.
You've even got the FreightBroker Basics course in there.

(00:40):
If you're looking for aneducational option that we put
together with DAT on how tostart a brokerage or grow your
team and educate them, share uslike it.
Comment all that good stuff.
It helps get our content out tothe folks that it's really
designed for.
So, without further ado, I wantto give a quick intro to Justin

(01:01):
Martin, who's joining us here,otherwise known as Super Trucker
on X.
So, justin, for those thatmaybe don't know you or just
have seen you on X, quick littleintro on yourself and we'll get
into today's discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, hi, thanks for having me guys.
I was a truck driver for 15years and was just kind of like
an online shit poster andsomehow stumbled into a job at
Freightwaves.
I was there for a little undertwo years and left when the
Firecrown merger happenedbecause their plan for me was to
take me from trucks and move meto boats and I said I don't
know anything about boats, sothat's where I'm at today.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Fair enough, We'll get more into you and kind of
your thoughts and opinions andall that good stuff in a little
bit here.
Ben, what's going on down inFlorida?
Gearing up for some footballtoo, with your Steelers kicking
off this weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Kicking off this weekend.
Us Open's wrapping up thisweekend too.
Been watching that for the pasttwo weeks Down to the
semifinals.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Now I did see Jess Pagula on the women's side man,
I actually was able to catchmost of her matches her games,
Game set match.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
What is it called?
Honestly, I don't know.
She's playing today at sevenagainst the number one,
sabalenka, and then the othersemifinals tonight at eight, the
finals tomorrow.
So I would love to see herupset Sabalenka tonight.
That would be really good.
And then Djokovic is playingtomorrow night against Alcarez,

(02:35):
which would be really cool,because Djokovic won in, I think
, 23, and then Center won in 24.
So it would be really cool tosee an old head win against the
number one and number two.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, nfl, we're back .
We're recording on a Thursdaytoday, so tonight is Thursday
night football.
As happens every year, theSuper Bowl champs get to host
the season opener for the leagueand the Dallas Cowboys will be
playing Philly, so expectingnothing short of just a dominant

(03:12):
game blowout.
But we'll see, justin, what areyou an NFL guy at all?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I had to become one when I moved to Philadelphia.
My parents are Air Force.
We moved around a lot so Ireally had no sport affiliation
whatsoever.
And then when I met my wife orgirlfriend at the time not wife
I had to get converted into thatcult.
It's funny that we're talkingabout this right now.
I literally just got a textfrom somebody that sent me an.
Nfl memes page link oh nice,Everyone's all excited.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
In your household it's Go Birds, I assume 100,
everyone's all excited In yourhousehold.
It's go birds, I assume.
100% Okay, nice man.
Well, I think you'll bepleasantly content with the
outcome of tonight's game.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Hope so.
Grease up those poles baby.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, ben, you guys are playing at the Jets, the
Steelers are this weekend, andthen I'm going to try and see if
I can do this little mediathing here Sunday night.
And there goes the copyrightinfringement.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
I was just going to say that.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's why I kept it short.
The Bills Sunday night footballhere in Orchard Park hosting
the Baltimore Ravens.
So no one in Buffalo isconfident about that game, it's.
You know.
They got to go out there andplay well to get a win.
Even at home the Ravens aregood.
So, um, steven, you sent overyour uh, you got you guys are

(04:31):
playing.
You call them the city up north, the browns.
I feel like that's like an ohiostate, michigan thing where
they like that, you know thatteam up north or whatever.
But what's your uh, what'sgoing on with joe burrow and the
bangles?

Speaker 4 (04:41):
uh, well, so everyone is very optimistic.
Can they win week one?
God?
I hope so.
Probably not, but we'll see.
You know, we have a longhistory of just not doing
anything in the first threeweeks.
What's?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
with the positive energy out there, man, what's
with the pessimism?

Speaker 4 (05:02):
I'm in Cincinnati, it's the city of New Zealand
You're driving up there, it'sbecause it's in the pessimism.
I'm in Cincinnati, it's thecity losing teams.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
You're driving up there, it's because it's in
Cleveland, right?

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, so I take my customers out there.
I got a customer up inCleveland that are big Browns
fans so we go to the game everyyear and week one is always fun,
so we'll do some tailgating andtake them out.
Hopefully the Browns lose so Ican shit talk for the next week
and a half, but we'll see.
It was cool.
I don't know if you saw thatpicture on the history of the

(05:30):
Browns and the Bengals.
It's one of those matchups that,regardless how good or how bad
the other team is, it always islike a fight to the death
between the teams and over thehistory Was it a bust.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, it's awesome.
And so over the history Fbetween the teams Division rival
.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Those are the best.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Over the history between thetwo teams, the Bengals have
scored 2,249 points to theCleveland Browns 2,090, which is
a lot closer than I thought itwould be.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Wow, crazy, Vegas is calling that a five and a half
point game.
I actually heard for anyonethat's into into like sports
betting and whatnot like theyused to say the home team gets
three points and they said thatnow cause, and where that came
from was like a mix of time zonechanges, hotel conditions, like

(06:19):
all of that.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
It's that, but also like there was a big
misconception and like my dadused to be booking like the
seventies and like a couple ofmy buddies dad's friends were
and stuff, and like they used totalk about all the time was the
goal of the line Isn't to makeit equivalent or a predictor.
The goal of the line,especially back then, was to
make sure the bookies had halfthe money on each side, so they

(06:43):
just made the spread.
The goal for a bookie is youget 10 grand on each side and
you just take the 10%.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
That's why the line will move as you get closer to a
game right, Depending on who'sputting money on what.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Correct and back then local betting most of your bets
you took, all of the bettingwas on the home team that week,
right.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
So like they always tried to move the line based on
how much money was actually beton each side, not based on who
they actually thought was goingto win by how many points, so
one of the guys and we had onlocal sports radio a few weeks
ago was saying, like they usedto, they used to throw three
points at the home team based onthings like time zone change,

(07:21):
you know the conditions of thehotel.
And they said based on like,based on where things are now
with like nice hotels andaccommodations like that's more
like one point five or one pointsix points that get factored in
and someone and I mean someone-in Vegas is part of the me on
this stuff too.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
You say referees too, like if there is a 50, 50 call,
call it tends to lean towardsthe home team um, anyway,
there's uh sports.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
I uh, I'll give my full take next week, um, once
we're through week one.
But uh, news I did see, um, wehaven't had any like major
hurricanes yet.
That's going to impact thefreight market.
But ben, they are saying thesecond half of this month is
where the Gulf, like Florida andthe Gulf states, are expected
to get like hammered.

(08:10):
So anyone who's shipping out ofthe Gulf area or into the Gulf
area, this is a time to haveconversations with your
customers, keep track of theseas these storms develop in the
Atlantic where they're supposedto hit and impact, and all that
stuff developed in the Atlanticwhere they're supposed to hit
and impact, and all that stuff.
What else in news?
You see what the truck's got anew host named.
Put that out in our newsletterthis morning.

(08:35):
It's always interesting, likewhen a show changes its host,
like you know.
Is it going to, is it going tocatch on as well as it did in
the past and whatnot.
But we'll see.
Steven, is there any new newson that whole drama?
And, justin, you're huge onTwitter or X.
Yeah, I know the whole Boonerand Craig Fuller thing.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, I know Darren over at Carrier4 and posted some
screenshots of a text aboutshareholder stuff.
It seems like there's a lot ofthings that are supposed to come
down this week, but who knows?
Because he's got a couplepeople that I think he's
dragging.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
I just lost interest.
Drama's kind of fun at first.
Then you're just like, eh,there's better stuff.
I'm curious to see whatFreightWaves does going forward,
because it does seem like likekind of fun at first.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Then you're just like there's better, there's better
stuff.
Yeah, I'm just I'm curious tosee what freight waves does
going forward, because it doesseem like there's a vacuum there
.
Um, but the guy that you justmentioned, that, um, I read a
little bit of his history and hedid like some sports
broadcasting in chattanooga, soit seems like he's probably got
the personality to fill thatvoid, but I don't know it'll be
interesting.
Justin's probably got thepersonality to fill that void,

(09:44):
but I don't know It'll beinteresting.
Justin's probably got moredetails than I do.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Justin, what do you got?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Well, I'm a former Freightways employee, so I got
to be careful.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, that's true.
Give us some tips.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
I like Malcolm, so I went and auditioned for the show
too.
They were offering me theposition for a little bit, but
it would have been like a hugechallenge for us.
Malcolm is out of Knoxville, Ibelieve, so it's not that far of
a move for him.
But for me, like if I wassingle and like 10 years younger
, I'd have jumped on that in aheartbeat.
But I'm 42.
I got a kid that just enteredkindergarten.

(10:17):
My wife's family and friendsare all up here in New Jersey.
So I think I was a little toooverexcited in the beginning
because I was like I got to dothis, I want to do this.
And she just kept hammering melike you're asking a lot, you
know I'd be like giving upeverything up here.
So after thinking on it forlike a week or two I was like
damn it, okay.

(10:37):
Okay, I got to reallyreconsider this.
But I like Malcolm.
I watched him on his episodethat he auditioned.
I think he did a great job.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Um, it's really hard to find like the overlap of like
content creator, somebody who'sgood on camera, um, and then
also has like the freightbackground, like just that's a
lot of niches to fill andthere's probably not that many
people out there, so I hopenobody does well yeah, I will
say there's definitely and ben,we've seen this over the years
there's people who are reallygood at freight and are

(11:08):
knowledgeable in freight andhave tried to enter like the
media space of it and just kindof like didn't it didn't pan out
because, for one reason oranother, they didn't have the
time, didn't have the rightequipment or set up or they just
weren't, they just didn'treally click with being on
camera and talking and stufflike that weren't, they just
didn't really click with beingon camera and talking and stuff
like that.
And then we I've seen theopposite too we're like
someone's great on camera andtalking, but like they just they

(11:29):
don't have the necessaryknowledge to speak the lingo of
our industry.
So, um, yeah, that's, that's areally good point.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
I talked to so many people at like freight events
and I'm like man, this guy'slike super smart.
And then you know, you invitethem onto a podcast or do
something on the side and thenas soon as that camera's hit
their face, they just freeze upor they're just really dry on
camera.
And it's even more so on set atFreightwaves.
Like I don't know if you'veever been in the studio, but I
mean you're at a big desk andthere's three gigantic cameras

(11:57):
in front of you and there's agigantic monitor with, you know,
four different positions ofeverything that's happening and
teleprompter.
So having all of that in frontof you all at once.
If you're not accustomed tothat or given time to like
really acclimate, it's a deer inthe headlight moment for sure.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
I would say that's a huge thing.
Like even when Nate and Irecorded maybe it was like our
first course or maybe it was theone for DAT but like when
you're sitting in front of agreen screen and even with a
teleprompter and your own lightsin your own room, right, like
it is a different feeling thatyou have to get used to and like
it takes a lot of effort.
Like I remember being exhausted, recording for like an hour and

(12:33):
a half when we were recording.
Like all of that long content,like you'd record something over
and over again and you're justlike that takes a lot more
energy.
And I had a lot more respectfor, I think, broadcasting in
general, because, like you'renot really talking to a person,
a lot of these things, likeyou're literally just talking
outwards as you're kind ofreading something, but you then

(12:53):
need to bring personality tosomething that isn't even your
words and like for sure, like itis not something that I think
just comes natural.
You really do have to practiceit, I think, to get and boom
goes the dynamite.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, Like that, like that clip is like the uh, the
perfect example of it.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
So and then if you're , if you're editing, if you're
editing the content, to gettingcomfortable like seeing yourself
and being like, oh my God,that's what I sound like, holy
crap.
I did a podcast withFreightways while I was there.
It was audio only, but I editedall the episodes and that was a
really good exercise for me tojust really get comfortable of
like, okay, how I sound in myhead is not how I sound in the
microphone, so I just got to getused to that.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
On a freight note of that.
That's why I always recommendlike call recording when
someone's training in brokerageand sales.
Just like you hear themselvesLike we used to do this all the
time, like we would, uh, likeall of our calls were recorded
and then what?
One of the things that we woulddo in a sales meeting is like,
um, if you think you had areally good call, like, write

(13:53):
down when it was and we can, youknow, play it back as a team.
If you think you had a reallybad call, write it down, we'll,
you know, review it as a team.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
But hearing like, either where you fumbled,
stumbled or, you know, sometimespeople would think they had a
great call, we'd listen back andwe're like, we're like how much
of a skill do you think is thata struggle for you guys on the
brokerage side is finding peoplewho are comfortable talking on
the phone, because that's likethe hardest thing to hire
for yeah, that's such a tropenow, especially with the younger

(14:20):
people, like they're too afraidto pick up a phone and order a
pizza and it's like, okay, ifyou're too afraid to do that,
how are you going to pick up aphone and figure out how to move
millions of dollars of freight?

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, there's a to answer your question.
Yeah, it's a big struggle.
So, like Ben and I have said ita lot like some of the best
sales folks that we get don'thave a freight background.
They have a service industrybackground like you.
They have a service industrybackground like you know
restaurants, bars, things likethat Waiters, bartenders because
they have no problem justtalking to a stranger and

(14:50):
holding a conversation.
There's, there's like I saw astat, it was like a month ago
the amount of like thegeneration now, like in in
middle and high school, likethere are an increasing amount
of friendships where they arelike best friends through
digital, you know, like throughtext and Snapchat and Instagram,
and they'll walk past eachother in the hallway and not

(15:11):
even not even look at each otheror speak.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
It definitely wasn't that bad.
When I was growing up.
I was like the tip of the spearmillennial.
I'm 42.
So you know terminally online,lots of friends online, lots of
friends in person.
Um, many people that I knowonline I've met personally.
Um, every time I go to Matt'sit's like, oh, I'm meeting like
20 new people that I've met on,I've known on Twitter for years.
Um, yeah, it's, it's fun tolike merge those two together.
But I feel like as time goes on, those two circles are becoming

(15:39):
further and further apart foryounger kids.
I feel terrible for them.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, okay, well, let's, let's talk.
Let's talk our content today.
So did you listen, justin, toour conversation with Danielle
last week?

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, it was, man, she is absolutely cool.
I'm so thrilled watching herlike take off like a rocket
because she's she's doingexactly.
I gave her no tips at all.
This is 100% all Danielle'sdoing, but everything she's
doing is exactly.
The kind of advice that I'vegiven to people is like find
your niche, figure out yourtopic that only you are good at
versus everybody else online,and just hammer that drum as

(16:17):
hard as you can.
Stay on messaging and craftyour posts in a way that
somebody who has absolutely nobackground in this can follow
along, because I feel like somuch of what's happening,
especially the trucking industryside, these people in these
groups, they're so insular andall they do is talk with each
other so they're literally justranting back and forth with CFR

(16:40):
49, blah, blah, blah.
It's like nobody knows whatthat is.
You have to be able to speak toa broad, general audience.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Um, I gave the little uh theexample of me sitting down with
a Congressman last year and Iused an acronym and he's like,
yeah, we don't like, yeah, Ihave no idea.
Basically, I have no idea whatyou're talking about.
Don't use acronyms like breakit down, barney style for me.
So, um, so, but I guess I kindof wanted to to share a little

(17:06):
bit more about you and what youdo now and cause we.
You know we very intentionallylike pick the people that we
want to have this conversationwith around what's going on in
the industry.
But so you mentioned you usedto drive, um, what, what is uh?
And you you kind of teased, youknow you're, you're in philly
now.
Um, what, uh?
You're not behind the wheel ofa truck the way you used to be,
but what, what is uh, what isjustin martin doing these days?

(17:29):
And and you know how did youget into this whole uh online x
arena of, uh, you know the supertrucker persona?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
I just I just say yes to everything and then I get
invited on stuff.
So so my background I would sayI had like the very typical,
like my driving career isexactly what everyone should
want.
I was a company driver kind of.
I don't know if we can.
I already swore on this.
I ate shit for like the firstyear and a half.
I worked as a mail carrier, madeno money and then got out of

(17:59):
that drove for an owner operatorand that was just like a
different flavor of shitsandwich.
And then this like dream joblanded in my lap.
Absolutely, absolutely nothingI've done throughout my life is
100.
What I know it's like 50 50.
Who I know?
And it was this kid I knew backin high school and his dad
drove for a defense contractorhauling military freight.
And uh, he said my dad needs anew co-driver.

(18:21):
Um, are you interested?
And I was like this doesn'tsound real.
So met up with his dad and wehad a great time and I drove for
them for four years on themilitary freight.
So all the like, insanity oflike the fraud and e-logs and
all this stuff.
I was exempt from most of thatstuff in my career because I was
on military freight and we wereexempt from everything,

(18:45):
everything.
But I feel like over time,especially today, that pipeline
has kind of broken down becausethat's like what companies that
hire experienced drivers want is.
They want somebody to kind ofgo through an entry level
company, not hit anything, for ayear and a half and then come
work for us.
But that pipeline is completelybroken down and that's kind of
where I see my position now islike I have been through that
system, I know what it's likebeing in that seat and I want to

(19:07):
try and help people make itthrough their first year or two,
because if you can do that andsurvive, you're hireable pretty
much anywhere.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Let me ask you this because I remember one of the
first episodes I ever did ofthis podcast was it started in
2019.
And I remember talking about,like going into 2020, my like
thoughts on the industry andwhat I was hoping for, and
obviously 2020 brought us whatnobody expected.
But I said, I really thoughtthat the animosity between

(19:37):
brokers and carriers.
I really hope that brokers andcarriers would find a way to
have more of a middle ground anda coexisting relationship
that's of mutual respect,because we both need each other.
And as you fast forward throughthe preceding six years since
2019, we've had COVID, we've thewell got shut off of freight

(20:03):
and then it got fire hoseblasted and rates went crazy and
then we had a wild amount offraud and you don't know who to
trust.
So the animosity has almostgotten worse and it's because of
, you know, a select pool of badactors and bad players in this,
in this arena, and so you werekind of saying a few things off

(20:26):
air beforehand.
I'm curious to your perspectiveon like where is that?
You know, because Ben and I seeit through the broker's
perspective.
I'm curious, where do you seekind of the broker carrier
relationship on the whole, likecurrently and you know any
general thoughts on it.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I think right now, today, it's like the worst
it's ever been, and part of theproblem is because none of these
communities talk to each other.
You know, as a carrier, you'relike oh, these brokers, they're
always ripping me off, and sure,there's definitely some bad
actors out there, but what thecarriers don't realize is that
the good brokers hate those badbrokers too, and they're they're

(21:06):
like why don't these brokersever call out these bad guys?
I'm like they do all the time,but they're in their own, you
know, silo communities yeah,it's like most of your carriers
are on facebook, tiktok, twitteretc.
And then all your brokers are onlinkedin, because I don't know.
I don't know why, but that me,that's just kind of like how
I've seen it.
There is a fairly medium-sizedbroker section on TikTok and

(21:30):
they're fantastic because it'samazing what they'll do.
They put their phone in frontof them, hit record and they're
just on calls all day long andyou really get to see how the
sausage is made.
And I wish there was a way thatthe good carriers and the good
brokers can all come togetherand just realize it's not like
me versus you, it's us versusthem.
You know it's all of us in thistogether, trying to build good

(21:53):
relationships and move somefreight and make some money,
versus everyone else who's justtrying to rip both of us off.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's a really good point, Ben.
Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean I think there's two things that
determine what freight rates areright.
It's a free market with verylittle barriers to entry, and
then we can talk about what someof those are and the
regulations that are meant toput the guardrails on the free
market.
But at the end of the day, it'sthe number of loads to be moved
and the number of carriers thatcan move those loads.

(22:21):
Right and post-COVID.
Not only do we have way lessfreight to move, it's getting
worse.
Like the manufacturing indexcame out yesterday, it's
retracting.
Basically almost every good andservice that we use in this
country is shrinking.
Like US manufacturing isshrinking because they can't get
raw materials.
People are spending less moneyat restaurants, less money going

(22:43):
out to events, less money ontravel.
We have less people coming tothe country to spend money in
our country on food and things,even when they're traveling.
We have, overall, just lessthings moving.
Everything in the economy isshrinking outside of data
centers and billions andbillions of dollars going into,
investing into those servers andgiant data centers.
Right Outside of that, theeconomy is shrinking.

(23:05):
So there's less freight to move.
Now on the carrier side, thecarrier market hasn't shrunk and
again I'll piggyback on.
What Dean has said on a fewepisodes and written a lot about
is like outside of the pandemic, you had two carrier markets
emerge.
You had carriers that saved alot of money right, that were
able to run for less thanprofitable rates longer than

(23:25):
normal, and you had carriersthat were able to buy very cheap
equipment pre-COVID and getsome COVID funding, that were
able to sustain lower rateslonger than they ever have right
.
But he had made a point thatlike somewhere around this year
or somewhere within the next sixmonths, give or take, like all
of those trucks that were boughtaround COVID pre-inflation,

(23:48):
like they're going to needrebuilds, like you can't
indefinitely run those, so likethey're coming up with a large
expense that most of themhaven't had enough money saved
away to be able to pay for.
And the ones that boughtequipment at the peak that was
really expensive, they'rerunning out of the savings that
they were able to bank duringthe peak of the rate If they
saved anything.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
If they saved anything, right.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
So, like you're still , it's not an indefinite run of
hey.
Rates can stay this low forever, but shippers will take
advantage of anything they can.
That's the way the free marketworks.
The people paying for thesethings are going to try to drive
costs down until they can't,and then service fails.
Then rates go back up.
That's the cycle that happensin every free market, the
economic cycle.

(24:29):
But the thing that I wanted tosegue into are the guardrails,
because it's not a level playingfield.
If every driver is supposed tobe able to legally drive for,
say, 11 hours a day, with theresets and everything, right,
some of them aren't playing bythat rule, right?
And then when you have carriersthat are doing what they
ethically should be doing notdriving when they're tired,
making sure their, their trucksare maintained they're the ones

(24:51):
going out of business.
Where the other carriers andyou guys have uncovered a lot of
evidence as to how some ofthese carriers are bringing the
entire freight market down andkeeping it there, to me is, I
think, where drivers and ethicaltrucking company owners should
be angry Like this is where theyshould be directing this
frustration and anger, asopposed to companies that want

(25:14):
to work with them, give themmore business and help them
maintain their equipment atbetter rates.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, freight has always gone through like that 11
year boom bust cycle.
So you know carriers who, like,have been through three, four
or five of these cycles.
Those are the ones gettingwiped out now and that's where,
like, the alarm bells reallyneed to start sounding, because
what we're dealing with now iscompanies that knew.
It's one thing if, like you,came in during, like 2019, 2020,

(25:41):
bought some trucks, we'rechasing super high rates and
then the rates crash and thenyou get wiped out.
Okay, I'm sorry, you know shithappens, but these are companies
that know what they're doingand they're getting, and they're
still getting wiped out and,like, that just does not happen.
And I don't think enoughinvestigation has been really
done on the impact of thesecarriers that either came in

(26:02):
during COVID or right beforeCOVID and have been able to
stick around, cause normally youwould think that when rates
crash, these guys get flushedout, but they're still sticking
around.
So it's like what are these guysdoing differently versus
everybody else?
And what we're finding is, youknow, a lot of them are
chameleon carriers.
A lot of them will, and youfind this stuff on Facebook.
They're so brazen with it.

(26:22):
You go on any Facebook groupfor CDL jobs and it's like hey,
chicago-based hiring drivers forAmazon.
And we will edit your logs Juststating it specifically.
Then you get into the moreethnic enclaves.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Wait a second.
Those are actually advertisingthat.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
These aren't private telegram groups or anything.
This is how brazen these guysare.
They will post on a publicFacebook group hey, we need
drivers for Amazon.
We will edit your logs,preferably if you don't speak
English.
That's the one thing that we'rereally hammering down now.
Guy on TikTok goes on theseFacebook groups and he pretends
to be like an Indian driver toget hired there.

(27:01):
Because if I pick up the phoneand I'm speaking with an
American accent, click they donto get hired there.
Because if I pick up the phoneand I'm speaking with an
American accent click.
they don't want American drivers, they want guys that they know
are comfortable driving, youknow, illegally.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Why is that and why would a company do that?
Just for anyone out there thatdoesn't understand why there's a
motivation to edit logs, tohire carriers that aren't native
English-making, why would acompany do that?

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Because so, like when I went through training, it's
hammered into us that you are aprofessional.
Anything that you do thatscrews up, it's going to be all
100% on you.
It doesn't matter if the brokertold you or your dispatcher
told you X, y and Z.
If you do something and youscrew up and someone gets hurt
or killed, that is on you.
You are the captain of yourship.
Everything is on your shoulders.
And I think the attitude atthese companies is we can't push

(27:45):
guys like that around.
If I tell someone, hey, I needyou to go from A to B and it's
800 miles and I need you to bethere the same day, a guy like
me is going to tell them to getbent.
I don't care.
But anybody else that either ishere on a work visa or they can
hold their passport hostage, ofcourse they're going to bend
over backwards and do whateverthey can to you know, keep their
job and still be here legallyin the country.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
So what is that?
What is the correlation, then,to rates like tie that into the
market, right?
If you're a company that isoperating like that meaning like
you're, you're forcing driversto drive longer than an ethical,
responsible driver would,driving farther, driving more
hours and being bullied intojust chasing money over safety,
right?
What does that mean if thatcarrier is competing against you

(28:30):
?

Speaker 4 (28:30):
if you own a trucking company, what are they able to
do that you can't do?

Speaker 2 (28:34):
What's the?

Speaker 3 (28:34):
disadvantage or advantage.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, if I'm running that shady company it's a huge
advantage because I can undercutliterally anybody.
You know shippers don't care IfI can say, hey, I'll do it for
cheaper, here's your freight.
And we're seeing it with thepost office now too.
They've started switching fromtheir highway contractor rate
model to now where they justpost postal loads on load boards
and of course these loads aregetting underbid and that's how

(29:00):
we get that accident like we sawin I believe it wasorell, texas
, where that gentleman from HopeTrans fell asleep at the wheel.
In this particular case, withthis company, they had a system
at their company where a drivercould text dispatch I need
coffee and they would just addadditional hours onto their log.
And that was on a trip that was, I believe it was, 1,000 miles

(29:22):
or 2,000 miles.
So of course a guy like that,you know, driving solo on a team
load, he's going to get tired,he's going to fall asleep and
people are going to get killed.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Is that a cultural thing you think we're like it's
just an easier target for aforeign driver versus someone
who sounds American?
I mean where?
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Because we see why you know it.
It would be one thing if, if,if I, if I just did not care,
like I needed a job and I wantedto get hired at these companies
, they would hire me.
But because, but because theyhear the accent, they're like,
oh no, no, we don't want thisguy.
Depending, it really depends onthe company.
There are carriers like chicagothat are run by like eastern
europeans.
As long as you tell them like,yeah, sure, yeah sure, I'll run
cowboy, I don't care, they'llhire you.

(30:04):
The catch is going to be they'regoing to run you like a slave
and then as soon as you say,okay, I've been on the road for
three months, I'd like two daysoff, the instant you're out of
that truck, that truck is gone.
They'll fly someone out thereand snatch that truck from you
and I've talked to drivers thatdid that for a bit, like they.
They worked at a company for awhile.
Maybe they got into an accident.
No one else will hire them.
These are the only guys thatare going to hire them and

(30:25):
that's exactly what happensevery single time.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
If you had to guess what percentage of the driving
forces is in that sector.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, I don't know 1% 5%.
That is.
That is a Danielle question,cause for me it's percent.
That is a Danielle questionbecause for me I never knew.
You see the Facebook posts allthe time and social media posts,
but she's the one that's reallybeen digging into the number of
MCs registered and all thatstuff.
My guess would probably beabout 20 percent.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Here's the other way.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Because that's what it takes for the rates to be
driven that low.
If it's only one or twocarriers rates to be driven that
low.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
If it's only one or two carriers, you know that's
not going to impact the marketmuch.
So the thing that I wanted toback into is that same answer
from like the economicperspective, because Dean was on
the show like two years agowhen Nate, you and I wrote the
trucking course for that right,like ethics, driver hours,
profitability, teaching truckingcompany owners how to look at
rate per mile, you know,earnings per week and things,
and like the number he came upwith back then was like I think

(31:28):
like a dollar ninety five waslike break even or almost less
than profitability, and at thetime we're looking at like
average rates that are fallingbelow that.
And then anecdotally inbrokerages we're seeing loads
covered at like $1.55 a mile,over and over again $1.65.
And like the math just doesn'tmath right.
There is no other explanationfor how rates can fall so far

(31:52):
below what it costs to run atrucking company legally, right
within the regulations at 30%less than a guy doing it the way
he can.
And looking at as cheap as youcan possibly run this, you still
don't get below that number.
And even when you factor inbackhauls to your point, like if
it was only a few, we wouldn'tsee rates depressed this long at

(32:13):
this extent.
Like there is no other economicexplanation for that other than
there are companies literallyoperating outside of regulations
and like the analogy we weretalking about before and off air
is like this is what happened ahundred years ago in every
industry.
Like if I had a farm and youhad a farm and I could force my
guys to work 16 hours a day andfeed them once a day, but you

(32:34):
only work your guys eight hoursa day, five days a week, I can
sell my whatever I grow a lotcheaper than you.
No one's going to to buywhatever you grow because I can
sell it cheaper and keep moremoney.
That is, and I'm not proregulation, but that is the
reason the government putsguardrails on the free market,
because if anybody can dowhatever they want, safety is
the first thing that's going togo out the window and we all use

(32:54):
these roads.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah, I think it was Craig that put out a tweet a few
months ago saying that, likeright before COVID you know,
2018, 2019, there were some megacarriers that were offering
just to move the trucks for like80 cents a mile and that was
wiping out a lot of people.
So you know, these low ratescannot be sustained for that
long.
And until we started digginginto like this more criminal

(33:16):
aspect side, my thinking was weneed rates to drop even faster,
as hard as they can, just tolike rip the bandaid off the
pain over it.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, to drop even faster as hard as they
can, just to like rip thebandaid off the pain over it.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the longer you stretch this out,
because everyone's been lookingfor, like, different reasons why
, you know, right after COVID itwas like, why aren't these guys
going bankrupt?
Why aren't these guys goingbankrupt?
And the first thinking was,well, maybe they got really good
loans on their banks, maybe thebanks just aren't repoing the
trucks.
Then there was like a littlebit of you know, the PPP loan
fraud, that kind of stuff.
But you know, that's all saidand done.
Most of those guys are like youknow, anyone who did that kind

(33:46):
of loan fraud.
Some of them are doing time now.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
They're already being prosecuted.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
It's been so long GFace, our favorite Armenian
double broker.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
He and his wife are sitting in jail right now over
PPP loans.
I pulled up this is justnational averages, right?
But to month it was $1.61.
And currently this month it's$1.66.
So we've essentially flat.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
You've got a little bit of fluctuation throughout
the year.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
We had a little bit of a peak towards the end of the
year, which is fairly common,and then it just dropped right
back down after New Year's andit is just.
It's just stretched out like weBen.
I remember talking Two yearsago okay, is this gonna be the
year that everything kind ofcomes back?
And then again last year, isthis year to come back?

(34:50):
And then I hear jason miller'slike, uh, like last week or
whatever is like, yeah, I don'texpect much until at least a
year from now.
Still like um, but I'm curious,justin, like you, you're saying
you wish they would justplummet so fast that it would
essentially rip the bandaid off,force people to just stop
driving and, you know, find adifferent career.

(35:12):
What would it take for that tohappen?
Is it even possible?

Speaker 2 (35:16):
That was my attitude before we started looking into
this stuff.
Now I'm realizing like if that,if that really happened, a lot
more good companies would getwiped out.
I had my timelines wrongearlier.
It wasn't 2018, 2019, it was thegreat financial crash oh during
, during, like the 0809 crash,uh, mega carriers were taking
freight at 80 cents a mile, um,so you know you adjust that for

(35:36):
inflation today, um, but alsoyour.
So the number you threw upearlier that was the.
That's not, that's not themedian, that's the average.
So that low rate, half thefreight's moving for less than
that.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, exactly, and interestingly, on that point I'm
glad you mentioned that is, ben, when we talk about if
someone's using a rating tool,like we'll just mention DAT, for
example, they're a sponsor ofthe show, we're partnering with
them in a lot of things.
When we look at that 50thpercentile and then rate view,
is when they give you that upperand lower threshold that's your
25th to 75th percentile and wetell people like, yeah, if you

(36:11):
want to be able to book acarrier for lower than that 50th
percentile, you've got to havemore lead time and better
carrier relationships, and blah,blah, blah.
And now you start to start tothink like, well, when you get a
carrier that's below that 50thpercentile, it could be because
they're doing some nefariousthings and they're, they've got

(36:32):
some shady practices.
So, um, on top of I don't wantto go sideways on this, but on
top of like all the, the risksthat we're thinking about now
we're not only are we trying tocontrol our costs, but now we're
spending even more on liketrying to balance.
Well, is this guy legit?
I've got to pay all this extramoney every month for, like,
vetting software and additionaltracking tools and these

(36:52):
integrations and all this stuff.
And it's like we're, we're,like it's like a race to like
the bottom of profitability.
It feels like and yeah, I meanit's.
It's scary to think that, likethe amount of times this year
alone that in my brokerage wethought we've done everything
like better than the acceptedstandard and we still get
someone who's screwing us over,scamming us or stole someone's

(37:15):
identity or, you know, had shadylogs and all that stuff.
So yeah, I don't have a moralto that story, but it's more of
just a frustration and rant onwhere things are at.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
I want to tie into that because I think it's a good
segue into how and what ishappening that allows carriers
to undercut legitimate truckingcompanies.
Right, and like one, wedefinitely know insurance that
we could talk about of hey,we're insuring one truck, but
we're running dozens of truckswithout insurance just to be
able to get through a vettingsystem, and most vetting systems

(37:48):
don't have VIN level insuranceverification.
So, like the old way of hey,this MC has insurance does not
mean the truck you book doeshave insurance.
Right, is one of the obviousones.
Driving way longer than legallyallowed allows them to cover
more miles at a lower rate permile, which is the really
obvious ones.
Driving way longer than legallyallowed allows them to cover
more miles at a lower rate permile, which is the really
obvious one.
Stephen uncovered one like twoweeks ago, related to trailer

(38:09):
stuff that you think is relatedto like ELD information being
put out to anybody that needsaccess to it.
You want to talk about how someof these companies are cutting
costs by literally not evenpaying for trailers.
So not only just not paying forinsurance, like literally just
not even paying for their owntrailers.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Yeah, I was talking to a former driver of mine and
he left two years ago.
He's been at four differentcompanies since then and he's
coming back now and he saidevery single company he worked
for was editing the logs, andthe last two companies they
didn't even have their owntrailers.
What they would do is theywould tell the driver hey,

(38:48):
here's this trailer in this lot,you got to go pick this up and
then they would keep thattrailer for 29 days.
And the reason he's leaving isbecause it was.
The last company was JB HuntTrailers and JB Hunt had reached
out to him personally becausehe had parked in his lot that he
pays for.
They had called the lot and theynoticed the trailer was there.
They got a hold of him and hesaid, hey, just so you know,

(39:08):
like that trailer you're haulingis stolen.
I was like what do you mean?
And so their company had a listof JB Hunt trailers with the
numbers where they were at, andhe said, yeah, they would send
me to targets walmart's.
You know there were some randomdrop lots.
We'd go pick up a trailer for29 days, go drop it off
somewhere else, and we justthought it was ours and, to my

(39:29):
knowledge, jb hunt doesn't letyou haul anything except for
their freight on their trailers,and when I asked him he said
I've never hauled a jb hunt load.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
So oh my gosh, we would see that on the postal
side too.
You got postal contractors thatjust steal each other's
trailers all the time, and thesmart ones at least they don't
steal the postal trailers.
The government trailers do noteven have license plates on them
, so you get caught stealing oneof those yeah, you're looking
at major major time, but as faras like 10 roads stealing

(40:00):
someone else's trailer or movingaround with that pregame, they
just you know.
Oh, I need a trailer for thisload.
I don't have one in the lot.
I'll take that, guys.

Speaker 4 (40:07):
The other thing I was going to mention, going to the
costs and kind of to some of thestuff that Justin's mentioned
with CDL mills and stuff, therewas an article that came out, I
think it was this week.
The Louisiana DOT had a scam.
Six people were charged withhanding out CDLs and they didn't
have to pass a test to get theCDLs.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
So two or three states?
I saw that with right, Florida,California.
Wasn't there a third one in thenews that they—.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
Washington.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
There was a sting?

Speaker 4 (40:35):
I don't know, I just know.
So Jacksonville had a sting inFlorida, and then California had
that thing a couple of yearsago with their CDL bribery, and
then Louisiana just had sixpeople arrested.
And so I mean, Justin earlierwas talking about being that
professional, that's.
You know, I'm not going to runthis stuff illegally.
But then you have people whoare getting CDLs at no cost or

(40:58):
not even passing a test.
Like you can pay those guyspennies on the dollar and
they're going to do whateverthey want.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
The other one I saw was so they were showing on the
news network, right Like goingDMV video of guys going to take
their test with holes cut intheir shirt, with a camera and a
mic in their ear and the guy inthe parking lot was reading
them the answers.
To answer the question, I sawthat To cheat on the CDL test.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah, and again, guys who are doing that they're not
going to get hired at like JBHunt or Swift or whatever.
They're going to get hired atsome small independent carrier
who is probably friends orfamily with them back home in
their home country, and that'sjust how they roll.
They know how to game thesystem here and they're going to
do everything they can to getaround it.
Before we were starting here,we kind of touched on low-trust

(41:45):
society versus high-trustsociety and I feel like a lot of
the rules and regulations andpractices that have been put in
place over time in trucking inthe US was all based on the
high-trust system.
If I'm working with a broker ora shipper or whatever, I'm a
regular customer.
They know me, they know my face, but because there's so much
capacity and so many carriersout there, not everybody's a

(42:11):
stranger.
Um, there's all these new toolsthat have been have to put in
place and not very cheap tools,mind you either.
So all this um, you know thisincentive to try and get as
cheap a carrier as possible,hire as cheap a driver as
possible, book as cheap a loadas possible there's all these
extra costs that pile up downthe line If I hire a driver that
doesn't know what the hell he'sdoing.
I got to put a camera in thetruck looking at him 24-7, not
in case when he screws up.
I can at least cover my ass onthe insurance side If I'm a

(42:35):
broker and I'm hiring theseshady carriers to move freight
for me.
I got to spend tens of thousanddollars a month in vetting
software to you know.
Hopefully, try and weed theseguys out, and they know how to
get around those systems too.
So this idea of like, oh, wejust need to get everything as
cheap as possible no, there'salways like.
There is no such thing as likecheap at the end of the day.

(42:57):
Like you're going to get whatyou pay for.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
If it's too good to be true, it probably is Right.
The other analogy I wasthinking of we were talking
about sports, like we did at thebeginning of every episode,
nate.
It's like the reason you haverules is for a level playing
field, right?
Can you imagine if, like, theRavens are allowed to use
steroids and they're going toplay the Bills this Sunday and
the Bills don't, and they justnobody is going to check these
things?
Like, what's the likelihood oneteam has a chance against the

(43:22):
other, right?
Or that, like, one team just isallowed to do whatever they
want and no one's going to callany foul or any penalty on them,
and the other team gets everypenalty called because they're
following the guidelines?
Like it wouldn't be veryinteresting to watch as a
sporting event, but this is whathappens in business,
specifically in our industry,but somehow we've been able to
weed these things out and othermajor areas like manufacturing

(43:45):
and well, maybe not even farming, because, like now, that's an
issue with immigration but likethere's just not a level playing
field for legitimate, ethicalcompanies to compete with
companies that are doingeverything they can to flout the
law, and even to your point,justin, you guys uncovered a lot
of this when they go out ofbusiness.
They don't really go out ofbusiness, they just shuffle all
of their assets under anothermotor carrier number and then

(44:06):
restart the thing over again.
And if they got to fireeverybody, who cares?
They're going to bring somebodyon anyway.
Because even if you've got agood driver for three months, if
you're going to drop him in twodays, that he wants to take off
with his family, what is thechance that company has any
loyalty or respect for thepeople that work for them in the
first place?

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Let me give you an example.
I'm going to give you an example.
This is something that happenedlast week and then I want to
talk about, like the chameleoncare carrier thing after that.
But we had a load that webooked, a carrier who agreed to
a team.
It was posted as a team on theload boards.
It was agreed to as a team hadto get to.

(44:41):
It was it would have beenphysically impossible for one
person to drive it themselves inthe time frame and the distance
it had to go.
And the driver shows up solofive hours late and where you
know a customer wants to deductand the carrier is fighting it,
saying like I couldn't have.
You know, I couldn't havedriven that far in that amount

(45:02):
of time, you know and we're like, but you agreed to a team and
um, then there's some questionabout whose story is true, about
the timing.
So we asked for a download ofhis eld to show proof of when he
showed up and very quickly, oh,I don't I, I can't do that.
So clearly it was clear upfront is that he was going to to

(45:26):
uh drive with with a ghostdriver on the logs right to make
it look like a team, and theguy ended up getting getting
tired and that's why he stoppedand like.
So luckily he, you know he didthe safe thing and stopped and
showed up.
You know, slept and whichcaused him to show up late.
But his intent all along was todrive their solo, pretend to be

(45:47):
a team and as soon as we werelike, hey, we want to get you
paid.
You know, the 500 or whateverwas deducted for for this
customer fee of being five hourslate, we just didn't.
You know, we need your story tobe validated on your end, that
you know you were in theseplaces, like you said, you were
at the right times and your logscan prove that to us.
But no, they, you know, keepingtheir keeping their practice

(46:12):
intact versus you know, getting$500, that it wasn't a, the
juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
So, but talk to me a little bitabout, or talk to us a little
bit about this, the chameleoncarriers, because I know we kind
of touched on it last week, but, danielle, but hot, what, what?
How are they operating?
What is this?
You know, what should we belooking out for?
And I guess what's?
Yeah, what's their tactic there?

Speaker 2 (46:32):
so a lot of them.
Again, this goes back tofacebook.
Um, they just buy, sell andtrade mc numbers on facebook.
It's a huge open market.
Um, you know, there is no.
I'm sure there's private groupstoo, but most of these groups
are publicly available.
If you just go on Facebook,search MC numbers for sale.
These are carriers that maybegot registered during COVID and

(46:54):
then they just went inactive fora bit and now they want to make
some money selling them.
So people will buy multiple MCsand if they hire a driver and
that driver screws up, getsomebody killed or over time
their safer score reaches apoint where the FMCSA actually
steps in and shuts them down, noproblem, they just deactivate
that one and reach into theirpocket and pull up one of these

(47:15):
inactive MCs and keep haulingfreight.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Is that kind of what we saw with Hope Trans.
Didn't they offload a bunch oftheir drivers or their equipment
and move them over to different?

Speaker 2 (47:26):
We've seen that with a ton of carriers.
So going back a few years,there was that horrific crash in
Colorado.
A driver was coming down I-70and killed, I think, 10 people.
So the owner of that company,she was a Cuban immigrant.
The driver was a Cubanimmigrant.
So there's a reason why shehired him.
It's because she knew nothingabout running a trucking company

(47:47):
, but she needed somebody thatshe could talk to on a local
level and, uh, you know, havethem do whatever they wanted.
So he gets into an accident,kills a bunch of people.
That company gets shut down.
A week later, two weeks afterthat, she's got a brand new name
, same address, just stillrunning freight.
That lasted for like anotheryear or two before she finally
shut it down.
Now she runs.
She's completely out of freight, thank God.
But she's running a medicaldocuments translation company oh

(48:13):
great, Out of California.
But with Hope Trans it's thesame thing.
I think we're I'm blanking on anumber, but there's probably
like five MCs that are stillregistered with them.
So if and when Hope Trans getsshut down, they just open it up
on another one and the FMCSA isgiving them 60 days to clean up
their act.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
I saw that and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
So that's something I need to emphasize really hard
to you guys on the brokerageside.
The government is too slow.
They're too slow and tooinefficient.
They're not going to protectyou and your customer's freight
from getting ripped off by theseguys.
Whether they get stolen, doublebrokered or the load gets lost
because the guy gets into anaccident, you're still going to
be on the hook for this riskbecause they're just too slow

(48:53):
and inefficient to flush theseguys out.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
You have to be really careful at vetting your
carriers under as fine of amicroscope as you can, because
they're really good at this.
So let me ask you this I knowyou said this and I agree with
you that the government is tooslow and inefficient to solve
this problem for us, but ifthere's anything they could do,
even on a minuscule level, I'llbe in just over a week.
I'll be in DC at the TIA PolicyForum, where we get to talk
with members of Congress, withpanel from the FMCSA and the S,

(49:24):
and FMCSA is for safety.
So, on this note, what are someof the things that we can be
bringing to their attention orasking for?
Is it should there be like what?
What should trigger a red flag?
Is it the principal place ofbusiness?
Is it the registered owner?
Is it what?

Speaker 2 (49:42):
My, my.
My steps are always run up thecarrier, look at the address.
If the address is a house, a PObox, apartment complex, that's
red flag number one.
Then run the address.
If you find a bunch of carriersregistered that address, that's
a thousand red flags rightthere.
Do absolutely, under nocircumstances, do business with
that person.

(50:02):
If it's like one or two, fine,because that happens.
You know, sometimes carriersmight be.
You know, one carrier is theirtruck load and the other ones
are LTL or reefer or whatever.
But if it's like six, seven,eight different carriers and
they're all registered into onesingle address, that happens to
be complex.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
How does someone do this?
Justin, Explain to somebodywhere the easiest way and place
to go to do these quick vettingthings.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Oh, 100%.
Search carriers.
Garrett has made thisincredible website.
You could also do it throughSafer, but it's a lot clunkier,
especially if you're trying todo it on your phone.
But at least with searchcarriers it's so much easier to
just type in a company name orthe MC number or DOT number.
It has like a what do you callit?
A super search feature.

(50:46):
You just type any of thosenumbers in there.
Everything pops up.
So if I'm on my desktop browserI keep two tabs open.
I got search carrier in one andsearch carrier in the other,
first tab.
I'll run the trucking company,look at the address, copy and
paste the address into thesecond tab and then, if it
returns a bunch of results allin that same town, open up each

(51:08):
of those results in a new taband double check the address on
them.
And if all those addressesmatch, big red flag.
It's even more fun when youlook into the contact info and
you see like they're all eithersimilar or same names or the the
phone numbers too.
That's another big one.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
They might have a different name or maybe even a
slightly different address, buta lot of them they use the same
phone number for multiplecarriers yeah, I remember one of
the things, um, like thisdidn't feel like a big ask, but
one of the things we've lobbiedfor in the past is don't let a
motor carrier register at a PObox, like require a physical

(51:45):
address, and the the lack oflike understanding why that was
a red flag was alarming to me.
Like they're like, well, what'swhat's wrong with it being a PO
box, that being a PO box, andwe're like, if they can't show a
physical like location, that'slike the lowest, lowest level of
ask that I would say.
But in addition, like you getthe carriers that have you know

(52:09):
they say they've got 12 or youknow, oh, I've seen like 25
trucks and their address is aresidence.
And it's like, yeah, you don'thave a shop or a facility or any
kind of like small terminalwhere you you know where your
trucks are parked.
Like my brokerage is separatefrom our trucking company but
our trucking company has a wedon't even have a ton of trucks.

(52:30):
But like we have a facilitywith a wash bay, with a
maintenance, like a maintenancearea, and we leave our, our
unused equipment outside of thatarea.
It's parked there in oursecured location.
Like that is how a legitimatetrucking company, even of a
small to medium size, operates.
So when you start to see likethe ratio of, like how many,
like we all started with, likeyou know, equipment size,

(52:52):
equipment fleet size versusinspection ratio is like a red
flag.
But like when you don't evenhave a, you just have a po box
like, and then if you look atthat po box you've got you know
80 different dot numbersregistered to it.
It's like there's got to besome sort of either algorithm or
like quick check, that likewhen someone goes to do a
registration, like the fmcsa'sregistration, the urs should

(53:15):
have like some sort of like flagwhere it's like no, you need to
go through this additional stepto be able to be authorized,
because X, y and Z and againback to the government's talking
about.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Like I said earlier, all these rules were built on a
high trust system.
It's all self-reporting youregister your address and
whatever.
It is cool, we'll audit itlater on and over time like
staffing cuts and everythingBecause every new MC that gets
registered or DOT that getsregistered has to go through an
auditing process and I thinkthey've barely audited like 5%

(53:47):
of these since they've started.
Duffy is on national TV sayingthat he's going to be auditing
all the non-domicile CDLs in thecountry.
I'm like that does nothing.
That does absolutely nothing,nothing.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Get the carriers audited, and I'm like that does
nothing.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
That does absolutely nothing.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Nothing.
Get the carriers audited.
And here's the other thing too,like I, if the FMCSA just
required every trucking companyto have up-to-date VINs at any
given time that they're runninga load for with the accompanying
assurance, right, at leastyou'd have a centralized
database to go and look at andsee, hey, is the truck running

(54:19):
my load Literally the truck, notthe MC registered.
And do they have insurance?
Because not just BIPD insurance, but like, what insurance is
associated with that at anygiven time?
Because in every TMS andeverybody in the country could
just integrate with it and go,hey, this is the van, this is
the truck on our load, are theyassociated with this MC?
Oh, they've been seen with sixMCs in the past nine days.

(54:42):
Okay, like, it is not that bigof a technical lift to have all
of that in there, right Like allthis, all this stuff is is
publicly available, and forgetthat.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
That's really how Garrett works with, with search
carriers.
You know he's got a couple ofdifferent paywall levels,
whatever, but that's becauseyou's because some of that stuff
isn't quite as publiclyavailable.
So the VINs is an important onetoo If you want to really vet a
carrier, having multiple MCs atan address and this, this and
that those aren't guarantees.
But if you want a 100%guaranteed full-on chameleon

(55:15):
carrier, look, look up a carrier, scroll down to their equipment
info and just pick a truck atrandom, copy paste the vin into
a search carriers and just seeyou know if.
If it's a truck that's beenbought and sold and bought and
sold to like a couple couplecompanies over time, fine.
But if it's like, oh, it's at20 different companies and

(55:36):
they're all at the same address,like oh, okay, we need the feds
, like kicking in doors at thislocation ASAP.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Yeah, and like Genlogs I don't know if this is
in the current one, but whichwill be out is like you'll be
able to see like a timeline withlittle lines of where this MC,
this VIN was showed up underthis MC.
And you see a legitimatecompany, right the VIN.
When it leaves one MC, it stopsand shows up under another one.
The illegitimate ones, all thelines overlap, right?

(56:02):
You're like, oh, all of theseMCs have been run this year with
this VIN.
And you're like, okay, well,clearly that's not just a leased
on driver working for a periodof time, they're just throwing
magnets on the truck every otherday to change the MC, to run
another load.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Ryan Joyce.
Linkedin is like some of themost entertaining like freight
fraud stuff out there.
He just, you know, his day jobbefore getting into trucking was
he was tracking terrorists.
So he's just using the sametricks and tools that they used
doing that on these guys and Ijust it's it sucks because like
not enough people like knowabout Jen Logs and like what
he's doing.
I'll go on like Reddit andsomeone will say like oh, my

(56:38):
trailer got stolen and they'llpost a picture of it and I'll DM
that photo to Ryan and withinthree seconds he's like boom,
yeah, got it in our system.
We have a track Like he just hetracks down everything.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, the other thing too, nate, to your question on
what I think the government cando, and we talked about this
last week.
But like I researched thisafter because I'm like, wait a
minute, everybody's arguing fromthe government side that like
they don't want to allocatemoney to the FMCSA to do more of
anything, right, like, and weguys we talked about this off
air and then I was thinking Iwas like, but wait a minute,
like the FDA, the Food and DrugAdministration, does not use

(57:12):
taxpayer money to certifymedications.
What they do is they charge thedrug company to pay for them to
run the trials before they canmake a drug safe.
Why in the world can't thefmcsa have an eld certification
that is paid for by the eldcompanies that are supposed to
be set to this standard?

(57:33):
Make them pay for it, make thempay a premium to what it costs
the fmc to certify them, andthen the excess money could go
in to fund other things in theFMCSA and you'd have a smaller
number.
Because when you don't, when youcan self-certify, there is no
reason why I wouldn't just spinup 15 ELD companies with the
same servers behind me, becauseI can just keep putting a
different brand on it every dayand all I got to do is fill out

(57:55):
a paperwork and the FMCSA goesrubber stamp.
If they just treated it thesame safety that they treat
medications, with 85,000 poundtrucks driving down the roads
with everybody in civilization,why can't they charge the ELD
companies $5,000, $10,000 to payfor their own certification to
be able to sell that product, toliterally keep roads safe?

(58:16):
Like that is the whole point ofthat certification.
Like to me that is the mostasinine aspect of the entire
system.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Not only that, a lot of these companies because
they're based overseas.
That's where all your data isending up.
So, just on a national securitylevel, why would you want
foreign actors knowing where allyour trucks and freight are at
any given time?

Speaker 3 (58:38):
You can't get a freight broker's license without
being physically in the UnitedStates and paying taxes with a
tax ID number.
But for some reason thesoftware that sees all of the
literally vital, importantinformation, like literally to a
national security level, onlike DOD loads and things, is
just housed overseas by Godknows who, going God knows knows

(58:59):
where, and nobody's looking atany of it.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, when we really started putting that
all together, that that was like.
That was like my aha moment,Cause, um, that was where you
know they're getting all this,all this info from you.
You talk to carriers that are,um, there's a lot of brands on
Twitter now posting about like,oh, I had, uh had, an entire
trailer load of our sports drink, you know, get hijacked or

(59:25):
whatever.
And it's like I DM the CEO andI talk to him, I go back and
forth and I say this is usuallyhow a lot of these guys operate.
You know, they got phished orthey got into your email or did
this or that.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
At no point did I ever consider like, oh, it was
on the carrier side where theywere phished and they just sent
someone out there, uh, ahead ofthem just about every incident
of well, it is every incident offreight theft that I've
personally dealt with this yearinvolves the carrier having
their identity, having theiremail hacked, typically through

(59:52):
like a phishing scam orsomething like that yeah, you
know it's great.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
Like the one aspect of that is when you talk to like
some of these shippers andreceivers and you ask them like
hey, can you do us a favor?
Like when the driver checks in,just go walk outside and look
at the name on the side of thetruck or whatever, and they lose
their mind.
Like you want me to walk 50feet?

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
I'm not step outside in the parking lot, but it's not
out there but this is the last.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Let me give you another example.
This is one that actually Ryanwith Genlogs, him and his team,
have been helping me out with inmy company is.
We had one it was actually twotwo loads that a carrier was,
you know.
We went above and beyond,vetted, you know, very
diligently.
We even like told the shipperlike hey, here's the two trucks

(01:00:40):
they're going to show up theirname and mc is this, please
verify that.
So the shipper, before theyload them, takes pictures, sure
as shit, the right name, theright mc.
They even throw tracking on thefreight itself.
We're tracking through a gps umapplication and, um, the
freight gets stolen.
And we go on gen logs and the.

(01:01:04):
They were smart enough to getlike professional looking
placards tied to impersonatesomebody and they had hacked a
legit carrier's email to get theright information and all that.
But they weren't smart enoughto like put a fake VIN number or
something like that.
So they, their actual VINnumber was there.
So we tied the VIN number tophotos on gen logs of their

(01:01:24):
actual trucks without the fakeplacards on there.
But it's like we're, we'redoing all of all of that and
then we're like, oh well, wecould have prevented it if we
use this additional softwarethat costs three grand a month,
because that would have required, you know, multi-factor
authentication.

(01:01:45):
Blah, blah, blah, or this othertool that tracks the eld and
it's like, well, the eld couldbe, you know, act fraudulent as
it is, so eld tracking is not100 going to save you.
The mfa could be hacked if they.
You know there's all thesethings that could be.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
You know there's like no perfect system and it's just
insane the amount of just likefraud and bad actors that are
out there hurting the like, thepeople that have good intentions
, that just want to do goodbusiness I wish I wish the fbi
would create some kind of liketrucking task force, because you
know there's so much of thefraud and theft and everything
that goes on it's it's a lowenough level that it's not

(01:02:16):
really like a priority for thembecause they want to go after,
like you know, terrorists andbad guys that want to blow up
stuff.
But you know, when you put itall together it's like you know
billions and billions of dollarsof freight theft that goes on
every single year.
And you know so a little bitmore about my background.
My family moved to Florida in1997.

(01:02:37):
My dad started a company withsome friends in the Air Force
called IST, innovativeSurveillance Technology, and
they built surveillance vans forthe government.
And so you talk to some ofthese agents over time and they
all kind of have like the samemotivational drive.
They just want like a nice bigjuicy case that they can hang
their hat on and say I busted upthese guys.
And say I busted up these guysand like if they created some

(01:02:59):
kind of like trucking task forcethat just went after crime
rings that were involved withall this stuff, it's one of the
greatest like target richenvironments we have right now.
Yeah, I remember.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Ben, I've told this story before, but we had someone
had tried to like pose as ourbrokerage and coordinated like
basically freight theft in anutshell and it was like 300
some k worth of apparel likeadidas pants or something like
that, and we knew where it went.
Um, it got like taken to awarehouse in la.

(01:03:33):
I contacted la county's da,like they're the da's office
district attorney, and theybasically told me yeah, dollar
amounts like not like that, thatdollar amount's not gonna get
on our radar.
Like sorry, and I'm like threehundred thousand dollars like
what?

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
like yeah, I mean sorry, but like we just you know
that's small potatoes and I'mlike this is you get and you
would, you would think like thisis because they're only looking
at that one, that one.
But they've got to realize ifthey bust that up, it's multiple
cases.
They've done that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Yeah, exactly, I've actually had some pretty good
success and it's long and drawnout, but I've had some success
with local FBI offices.
Depending on where the like,where the fraud happens, you'll
get some agents that are likethey're happy to like hop on
that, because they either don'teither they're newer or they

(01:04:27):
just don't have a caseloadthat's going to make them look
good or get their job done.
I've also had some good luckwith the, the IG's office under
the DOT.
So, like the investigative whatis it?
The inspector general or Idon't know whatever the
investigative like subset of thedepartment of transportation I
I've had at least one specificagent from there that I've

(01:04:47):
worked with for years on certainlarger cases where, like
they're able, they're able tostart building up a larger case
based on tips and complaintsthey're getting from various
different brokers.
But overall, most of theseindividual agencies are just
like, yeah, I mean they just seeone case, not enough.
And on to the next thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
So, yeah, they're not looking at the holistic picture
.
One of my biggest white pillsin all this stuff going on is
that a lot of these shadycarriers are trying to get
involved in the US mail.
I'm like, please do, please.
I mean it's going to suck ifyour mail gets stolen.
But yeah, the postal inspectors, they have a 98% conviction
rate and if they have you inyour sights you are toast.

(01:05:28):
They're not fast, they're verymethodical, but, speaking as a
former postal employee,typically what they'll do is
they'll bait you.
So if you're a letter carrier,on your route you open up
somebody's mailbox, put mail inthere.
There might be $100 in cashsitting there.
It's a sting.
They bait guys all the time.
You might get away with thefirst one, you might get away
with the second one.

(01:05:49):
Then they just sit there andthey wait.
They wait because they know ifyou're doing that, you're going
to do something else.
They just wait and they build ahuge case on you and they just
slam you with it.
I'm hoping that's what they'redoing right now with cases like
Hope Trans and others, but youknow it's going to take time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Well, the other thing , too, is like they need the
information to be able to dothis.
We were talking off air, Like,if you've got VIN level data in
a database and you can starttagging these VINs that are
associated with theft, you canstart to see the spider web,
right.
You can see all of the otherVINs that are associated with it

(01:06:25):
, right.
And if you have that, all youneed is, like allow law
enforcement access to thatinformation and allow them to
start towing these vehicles awaywhen they're seen on the road,
not just giving them a finethey're not going to pay and
allow them to continue drivingTo.
To me, that is absolutely alsoasinine.

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Like can you imagine we talk about duis.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Like imagine if you got a dui and the cop's like,
well, just be safe driving home,have a good one.
Like but yeah, a guy can justnot sleep for three days, drive
80 000 pounds and he's likehere's a fine you be safe out
there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Service you know what I mean.
Like they don't put a lot ofservice.

Speaker 4 (01:06:59):
They don't put a boot on your truck they don't put a
boot on nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
That's so common in the hotshot sector too.
Like I talked to a guy who gotinto it during COVID, no CDL, so
he's just running a hotshotdriving a pickup truck and he
racked up tens of thousands ofdollars in fines and was put out
of service almost every othernight.
And I was like so what the helldo you do?
And he's like, oh, as soon asthe guy drives away, I just turn
the truck on and keep going.
He just did not care.
And that's how a lot of theseguys are they just don't care.

(01:07:23):
So you have to take away theirtoys, take away their trucks,
take away their equipment, takeaway their employees, Otherwise
they're just going to keeprunning.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Well, to your point, right and again.
Like if you're not paying taxes, then getting a fine does
nothing, why would you care?
It's a piece of paper.
Like, if I'm already not payingtaxes and I'm already not doing
what I'm supposed to and Ifraudulently got my CDL, why in
the world would I care?
If I got a ticket, like you,just throw it in the gull blocks
with the other one and run yournext load until you get paid at

(01:07:53):
the end of the week.
There's literally norepercussions.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
And I talked to so many good carriers and they're
sweating bullets because they'relike oh, my driver got a fine
Because they're chasing thehigh-end freight, so you have to
go through much higher bettingand anything that damages your
score for that kind of freightis just devastating to your
business.
So a lot of this stuff ishappening just on the low-end
driving-hand side, buteveryone's getting crushed under

(01:08:18):
their premiums right nowbecause so much of this stuff is
out there eating up, yeah, yeah.
And you would.
You would think that therewould just be like enough people
coming together and being likethis.
This has to stop.
Like you know, enough is enough.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Yeah, all right.
Well, that will put a put a bowon this episode, just based on
how long we've been talking, butwe've got a lot more we're
going to start.
We're going to be covering herein the coming weeks.
So, if you guys don't followJustin, we'll throw a link to
his ex-account Super Trucker inthe show notes or in the YouTube
description.
Make sure to follow him andcheck out his stuff.

(01:08:52):
Justin, anything you want towrap up with on this episode?

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah, if you're on the brokerage side, you really
got to vet your carriers.
If they're offering you a lowball rate, you're going to get
what you pay for.
Sometimes, and on the driver'sside, like, hey, you don't like
hearing this.
Trucking is a commodity and youneed to act accordingly, and
sometimes having a good brokeron your side is the only way
you're going to survive throughthis.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Yeah, those are two really good points.
Um, steven, you got any lastthoughts on it no, it's the
whole thing's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
It's such a rat's nest of stuff.
And uh, I will say to thedrivers out there, especially
the ones that are like they're ayear and a half, two years in
kind.
Of like justin said, if, if youare looking for employment
somewhere like uh, the vettingsoftware is expensive but search
carriers is free, and if you'relooking to like, go onto a
business, like, at least look upthe company in search carriers

(01:09:47):
and see what they got, andthat'll at least give you a
little bit of insight into whoyour next employer might be.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Yeah, we're gonna have Garrett involved at some
point to share some data to toreally put like actual factual
numbers to a lot of the stuffwe're talking about.
So, and he's the one that builtsearch carriers.
So cool, appreciate everyone'stime, ben.
Final thoughts on your end.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
Whether you believe you can or believe you can't,
you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
And until next time go bills.