Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in a fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough Find nothing but grit Because I made rugged blood, sweat and spit yeah, like a horse I fly for a bumpy ride I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm Because I'm building stronger what is up, ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live at the Sprint Coach Podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines, but most importantly, provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. This is your first time tuning in. Welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve. So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Corey Buchan. Happy Monday, everybody. Just a quick reminder, it was daylight savings time yesterday, so if you haven't realized that by now, you're living under a rock. And two, tomorrow, election day. I already put a post out there. Go out there and vote, you guys. All right? That's all I'm going to say about that. We all know what it is. Get out there, vote, register to vote. If you haven't, do whatever you got to do.
Get out there and show up tomorrow with the polls. And with that being said, I got a very special guest for you guys here today. We're going to talk about, you know, carrier identity. Like, where is all this stuff coming from? Technology, all that fun stuff. And there is no person that is better suited for this conversation today than my good friend Kyle Provost with Broker Carrier. Kyle, what is going on, brother? How are you?
Good morning, Chris. I'm doing fantastic. As you can tell, this light coming through the window, it's a bright, sunny day here. Feeling great.
I love it. I'm a little upset, though. You already got the glasses. You should have an orange polo with a black quarters up on. We could really pull that doppelganger look off here.
Yeah, that was. That was really my bad, man. I should have. Should have thrown on the orange polo, dude.
What happened? I'm bringing that up because last Friday I had Sean on with denim and they did like their Halloween zoom the day before. And apparently Sean dressed up as me for Halloween. So, like, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and I was like, why is there somebody with a backwards hat and orange polo in on this photo? And then I looked in, it was Sean on that as well. So that's a thing. Now you can just dress up as a Chris Jolly or the Freight Coach for Halloween or any other day of the week. Now it's certified.
You've made it big, man. You're it. People are dressing up as you as Halloween. People are using pictures from your show as, like, their profile pics on socials. Man, you're. You're in. You're in the zeitgeist.
That's just what happens when you just show up and talk into a mic every single day repeatedly for four straight years. Oh, man. So, dude, what's going on? What's new in your world? How's everything going? It's been a while since you've been on the show.
Yeah, so we've just been in a really kind of hardcore development mode, man. I've basically just been here in the office since the last time you and I talked, you know, for a couple of years there, I would say from about Q3 of 2022 up and through the end of 2023, were doing an experiment looking at a couple of different dimensions of our carrier data. Not just, not just the static data that the vetting tool uses, but then the operational data that gets created as people conduct onboardings and make load announcements and cover them to the system.
We were trying to identify if there's something you can see in that data, some kind of trend that would help us develop a system of shortcuts to help brokers even more quickly and more easily figure out, okay, you've got, you know, X number of eligible carriers. Say there's, you know, maybe 120 carriers that probably would be good for this load you're looking for, but we want to instantly peg you the three that you should just call right now.
Yeah.
And we reached our conclusions, decided that we do think we can pull that off. And so for the last few months, let's say, I want to say about six months, it was sometime right after that conference in Arizona that we started working on, and now it's ready to roll. We've, we've tested it every single way we can think of, and it's about to come online. So it'll be a pretty subtle change for our users. All you'll notice is that when you run a load announcement, your top three or top five of your list is going to be these highly suggested, highly recommended carriers. And on the back end, the system will send them the announcement, give them 15 minutes to respond before it sends it to everyone else.
Yeah, so we're gonna try that for a little while because our typical response time to coverage is 8 minutes. So 15 should be plenty to see if this approach is really going to make a difference for our guys or not.
I think that, you know, as we've developed all of this stuff out, I, I think that, you know, giving not necessarily prohibiting a carrier from getting freight was like our big mission, you know, because I feel like there's a lot of stuff that's out there right now that, you know, because like, I get asked by drivers all the time, they're like, hey, with all of these systems that are out there, it's like there's like more and more hoops that they got to jump through they feel like, to get business, you know, and then it's like, and then it, you know, the parameters behind it. And our whole thing all along was, is it's to highlight the right carriers for your freight and then make it more efficient for you inside of your operation to book said carriers. Right.
Because the only way to actually fight fraud, the only way to actually fight this is a strategy that I personally apply inside of my brokerage. You want to know that is, ladies and gentlemen, here's what it is. I use the exact same trucking companies repeatedly on my customers freight. I don't go out there to a load board, I don't go out there to do anything. I have developed a carrier base and I stay with said carrier base because their performance is there, their communications there, and my customer loves it. So this is a way for you to go out there and actually fight through a lot of this stuff. Because it, you know, the data is clear, you guys, freight theft, identity theft, all of that is on the rise. It's continuing to go up. So therefore said problem is still there.
But this is the only way that has ever worked and this is the only way that's ever going to continue to work is when you found that trucking company that does everything that you're looking for, keep using them, you know, and now a tool like this, man, this just like it props them up and it keeps your top three because, you know, like, for, for me, man, inside of my operation we have our primary, our secondary, and I always call Them, My. Oh, carrier. Right. Like, ultimately, they're the one. They might be a little bit more expensive than everybody else, but I know beyond, like, they're gonna be there and they're gonna do it. And that to me is like, it's just the most effective way to do it.
And especially because most businesses out there are small business, you know, like, I'm doing both roles inside of mine. Carrier sales, customer sales. I'm doing all of that stuff, as are most people out there. This gives you a way to streamline all of that to where you know the people that you're reaching out to, where you don't have that thought in the back of your head, am I booking the right person or not?
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what tools like ours can only go so far. Right. What we can help you do, you know, the vetting portion of the tool can help you figure out if you're dealing with a legitimate carrier or not. Yeah, okay. But that's only step one. Step two is to establish communication with that carrier. Get a feel for if this is somebody you even want to work with. You know, move on through the process, Give them a shot, send freight with them once you know if the risk profile is right, and then you have to look at their performance afterwards. Did everything, did everything go smoothly? Okay, they get another shot.
If they made, you know, if they made some mistakes, if they caused some problems, if things didn't go smoothly, if they didn't sign the bol, Something just silly like that went on. That's great. You have a tool like broker carrier to go and source another carrier next time you need to move that same load on that same length. Right? Yeah. Eventually you get to a point where you have found your A team, you have found your dozen or so carriers for your lane who never make mistakes, who never cause problems, who do you write, who you enjoy working with, and now you're done. You don't need a sourcing or onboarding tool for that lane anymore. That's the thing we've been most proud of, is so many of our customers have gotten to that point. We see them in the load announcement data.
It just drops off such and such. Customer just never announces loads on this particular lane anymore because they don't need to. They found their A team. Right. So that's the reason why we've kept our prices grounded in reality is because our job is to get you to where you don't need us anymore.
Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. Right. And as it should be. I, you know, and this has never been one of those things where we're out here talking about load boards or anything like that, because load boards are a great tool, they're an effective tool. But for a point, right? Like you shouldn't need to continuously post the exact same lane every single day or every single week, or however the volume of freight that you have coming through, you shouldn't have to continue to post that stuff. Right. You bring it all in, you have all of that internal data, and now this just compiles all of said data for you. Because fun. Like ultimately, you guys, every piece of carrier data out there is sourced through the government. It's government data. It's all public data when it boils down to it.
And you know, that's why it's like that was one of our big things about putting that free tool out there for people to use, right? Where it's like, hey, you guys, here's the information. Make that decision based on what's already out there.
Yeah, the, you know, I enjoy having this conversation with our more intrepid, more technologically curious customers and then other people who just reach out is where does all this data actually come from?
Yeah.
And you have two very distinct pools of carriers that you have to consider. The easy ones are the interstate carriers and then the slightly more difficult ones are the intrastate only carriers. Right. So we'll start with the interstate carriers, they, because they conduct interstate commerce, are therefore beholden to a federal agency called the FMCSA who we all just know and love. Right. And the FMCSA maintains public records of not only carrier basic contact information, but also authority information, including histories of authorities such as actions of when they were granted, when they were revoked, what happened, why they were revoked, all of that, the current dispositions of every authority record that's ever existed. They have all of the publicly available insurance information pertaining to interstate carriers. I mean, they're Bach 3 agents. Any history of rejection, rejected insurances.
And so you take all this information that gets released and updated every day and you can very quickly cobble together an effective vetting tool that can find hidden connections and informational inconsistencies among interstate carriers. That's no big deal.
Yeah.
And now that takes you up to the point where you would vet someone that you're thinking about onboarding. But then when you use an onboarding tool to bring them into your network, you now have to collect things that are not public. Right. Payment information being the big one, because that's what we're doing, is facilitating a business relationship which by its nature, of course, is going to involve payment. Yeah, there. And then, of course, you always want to do your own work to verify the insurance information. Right. What the FMCSA gives you is what they know to be accurate, as far as they know. But you know that it hasn't gotten any individual attention.
Right.
FMCSA just doesn't have the manpower for that. So it's important to do your own verification on that information. Now, your other pool of carriers, your intrastate only if they only conduct business in their home state, then they are not under the purvey of any federal agency. So their information is not included in all these daily releases. Now, there are places where you can get that information from the DOT that come out once a month, which is these big data download dumps where they put out the census information, they put out the huge batch of inspection records, accident records, all of that. Now you can take all of that and compile it into a system and you have about 75% of a vetting tool for intrastate only carriers. However, with them, you need to go the extra mile when you're onboarding them.
You have to manually collect their insurance information before you verify it. Right. So you have this. You have the same relative effectiveness, which is that you get an insurance agent to vouch that, yes, that's our client and yes, it's current, and here's a certificate that has your information on it. A certificate holder. That's the same place you get to with an interstate carrier. You just don't have that second level of assurance that you're. You're simply re verifying something that the government already put out.
Yeah, Sorry.
Nope, I was done. I was gonna say it's still effective, just not. It doesn't feel as ironclad, but it really is.
No. And I think like, ultimately you need to tell that story and you need to let the individual decide at that moment. Is this somebody who I want to work with or not long term? Was it easy to, you know, was there any additional hoops that we had to jump through? Because, like, ultimately a lot of what's going on out there, and I've seen this throughout the entirety of my career, this is not anything relative to anything right now. But there are always more requirements for carriers to take freight from brokers when it is a broker's market. That has happened throughout the entirety of my career. As soon as the market flips as soon as capacity tightens up, as soon as anything happens, all of those things go away. All of those hoops you have to jump through go away.
Because now you need the truck, right? So all of a sudden, no, we don't need your elds anymore. No, we don't need this anymore. No, we don't need that anymore. You do. We just need you to take our freight. Right. We just need your truck. Ultimately, that is the market that we are transitioning into. We're not there yet, but that's the next iteration. Right. So I feel like a lot of the additional requirements and stuff like that, th. Those are going to all go to the wayside. Right? So it's like that's one thing that we've, you know, I'm really proud of that we've kind of like stuck our foot down the whole time and we're like, here's the story. You guys decide. Because like there's. I don't know, man.
I just feel like the more and more resistance you build up from the carriers out there as a broker, the harder and harder it's going to be for you to operate. You might not believe me right now. You might not. Because you're going to be like, dude, I can post any lane out there right now and I'll have 60 trucks call in on it. You're right today. But what you're not thinking about here is in the future, you're not thinking about six months from now. And another thing to really keep in mind here, you guys, customer relationships are so fragile right now. Okay, Anybody out there who's cold calling? You guys all know what I'm saying? It's the longest sales cycle I've ever been a part of. Okay. As a broker.
But there are more opportunities that are hanging out there because the level, the appetite for failure is at an all time low if you can't come through right now. So as the market continues to change what I feel like, Kyle, there's a lot of brokers who are building up a massive wall of resistance of carriers who, when they don't need that broker's freight, are going to not haul for that broker. And they will have a laundry list of reasons why. Oh, remember how you made me do this? Remember how you made me do that? Well, fuck you. I'm not taking your freight anymore. That is ultimately what is going to happen.
Yeah, yeah. As the market switches back, you know, it's been a pretty strong broker's market for a while, but at least three years that's rapidly changing. We see it. And one area where you can see it is within our own data. Right. We, you know, we give our customers the ability to pause their accounts and it doesn't happen very often, but we've had it happening lately. You know, we, our customers are pausing their accounts because they've got their few carriers that they can work with, they've got their little bit of freight that they can move, and they're really not sure how the next few months are going to go. So as you see that happening, one reason why they might be having some difficulties is because they made it too hard for carriers to work with them. They asked for too many extra pieces.
They, you know, I think something that's happening, and this is just my theory. I'm sure, I'm sure folks at various conferences and summits would love to argue with me about this, but I think a large part of the freight industry has conflated operational security and cybersecurity principles together.
Okay?
So when you go and treat a real person, a real business, a motor carrier, like they're just a data item and you screen them in the same way that you would screen a user account or a login attempt or a connected device on a network, you basically just put up this wall of zero trust and it's up to you to prove that you're perfect before you get any trust. Right. That's the way you treat electronic systems, not people. But as the freight industry, which, you know, I've made no secret of the fact that I've assessed the freight industry as being very far behind in technological principles compared to other industries.
People are learning about cybersecurity and operational security at the same time and they're getting them mixed up together and they're treating people like systems and it's creating a lot of problems for them later. I know if I was a motor carrier and somebody demanded that I show them the title to my truck and give them the admin login for my eld, yeah, I'd say, well, you know, good luck with all that, but I'm going to go work for someone that treats me like a person.
Yeah.
You know, and as this market shifts back into carriers favorite, you're going to see a lot more of that. You know, this 8200 broker authorities that have lapsed or gone invalid over the last few months, you're going to see that rate accelerate. It's going to go back down. I would, I would bet you this that probably by Q3 of 2025, it's going to be back down to where there are fewer than 20,000 active broker authorities. Remember, it hovered around 19 5, 197 for the majority of 2021 and 22. I think that's where we're going. This, this 27,000, whatever active broker authorities is not going to be the number for much longer.
Oh, dude, I'm right there with you. I've been saying that on this show for a while. I truly think the mass exodus from this market is going to come in the form of freight brokers. And I'm. And, and I feel, and again, it doesn't have to be this way, right? Like there's still time for people to change their ways, but I don't see that happening. And ultimately I feel like what. It, it's swung kind of too far with it, right? Where it's like you have some brokers out there or brokers out there have a conflated sense of driver, you do what I say. Dance monkey is essentially where it's at. And you know, again, if you don't believe a shred of what I'm talking about here, I want you to go join some social media groups that are driver focused, okay?
Don't even pay attention to the posts about how shitty brokers are. I want you to pay attention to the screenshots of emails that are being sent from brokers to drivers, all right? And then I want you to think a little bit more pragmatically about what I'm talking about here, okay? Because what has been built up is a major wall between what you have to do to haul my freight. And although it is very opportunistic in today's day, whether tomorrow changes things in the election or 2025, whatever happens here, you guys, it will revert back. And I'm seeing and I'm feeling this. And again, you guys just take this from somebody who actually moves freight every single day, okay? The actual conversations that we have with the drivers who haul our freight.
I don't think a lot of people are very prepared for what could happen based on the level of disrespect and everything else that has happened and the hoops that they've had to jump through. And again, back to my statement of this is coming from somebody who actually moves freight. I understand the realities of booking loads probably better than anybody else who talks about it in this space, okay? But with that being said, you guys, software is a tool for you to enhance your capabilities ultimately. Right. A lot of this data that is out there tells a story. If you see, hey, so and so this carrier is associated with that carrier, and that carrier probably shouldn't use them. Does that require you to go out there and publicly lambast them? Probably not.
I would say that it's probably just best to find a carrier who fits inside of that and move on. I mean, I know that there's. I just had an attorney on the show a couple weeks ago about a site that is now making it impossible. Like, they're not removing bad reviews on carriers. So I feel like there's. I don't know. I just have a different feeling right now, man. It's just my gut. All right. Ultimately, my. When my gut and my gut is very rarely wrong about what can happen from this. And when you make it so hard to work with, eventually you're going to find it very hard to even have a business.
Yeah. I mean, it's extremely important to remember that in the age of social media, in the age of electronic communication, your reputation for how you treat people extends very far beyond the circle that you think it does. People you've never met, people you've never spoken to, could potentially have seen emails or texts or chats that you've sent people, or potentially could see social media posts that you've made.
Yeah, right.
You know, and, you know, I've. I've been just as guilty of it as anybody else. I've. I've said things in emails that I. That I might not, you know, shout with a megaphone at a business conference. But that's just, you know, somebody that I'm talking to in confidence who I know can handle what I'm telling them. Sure, it happens, but you never think you're going to hop on Reddit and see your private email blasted on the screen. I can't imagine how that makes these carriers feel. Yeah, they're just trying to drum up some business and feed their families and some broker treats their communications like. Like it's an item for social media content. Like it's some kind of silly joke. Yeah, that kind of treatment, without that layer of anonymity that some of these platforms provide, that would be putting brokers out of business.
That kind of behavior right there. And I wish it would, honestly, because we just don't need that in any industry, let alone one that has so many moving parts like this and that. I didn't mean that pun, but.
No, no, I. It's all good. I You know, I just look at it as, you know, out of all of the freight that I've moved in my career, man, I can say this with 100% confidence. 95% of the people that you interact with, drivers, carriers, they just want to provide for their family. They want to be told the truth. They want all the low details, like if you failed on it yesterday and now they're a quote unquote, first come first, or all the, that brokers set them up. They just want the truth, right? Like, that's why I always say, to me, it's the little things, right? If a load weighs 42,300 pounds, don't tell somebody it weighs 40,000 pounds, all right? Just tell them it weighs 42,300 pounds.
Because to me, the type of person that I am, if you lie to me about that, what else are you lying to me about, right? And then we just dig ourselves into these holes and then we make it a lot like, this job is challenging enough. We don't need to make it any harder than it really is, you know, And I look at it as, it's going to boil down to some core principles that the next, you know, wave of what comes down to it is just giving them everything, right? Like, again, I have yet to receive a bill of lading from a customer of mine that doesn't have load information, that doesn't have a pickup address, that doesn't have points of contact. Literally every single one of them has all of it. All right?
At least the customers that I work with, and if you're working with customers that don't provide that shit, probably shouldn't be working with them. But that's a conversation for another show. But ultimately, I think a lot of people need to be looking at it like this. I, and this is something that I'm applying. And again, I have every dollar I've ever made laying on this strategy working. So we'll track this over the years to see if this is going to work or not. Okay? I want to be a broker of choice for my customers, yes. But more importantly, or just as important, I want to be a broker of choice to carriers. I want them to know that anytime they see me, my company's name, or anybody associated with my company, they know that they're going to get taken care of.
That is a broker that they're going to want to work with. And that is a strategy that I am going to apply over time and again as things progress, you guys, as the market, as my companies grow we'll see if I'm right or not. But again, I'm still waiting for that business plan from that broker that comes to me and shows how you survive without trucking companies. Okay. And I truly feel like the harder a lot of you make it, the harder it's going to be for you in the long term. Because when it boils down to it, all of this data, all of this carrier vetting, all of this stuff out there, you guys, it's public government data.
You should be able to see all of this information in front of you and make a decision if you want to work with somebody or not. If somebody has 17 different email addresses associated with 19 different mcs, probably shouldn't be booking them, no matter how smoking the raid is on there.
Yeah, that's, you know, like people don't realize just how simple a vetting tool really is. If you want to find out is there more than one carrier registered at this address, that's an SQL query, right? That's not a judgment call. That's not a vetting process. That's an SQL query. You know, if you want to find out there's more than one carrier, has more than one carrier had this phone number in the last five years, there's more than one carrier, had this email in the last five years. Yeah, that's an SQL query. Any idiot CS major at any college could build that, right? That's not the point. The point is to use software in a smart way to conduct your process in the way that you need to.
And that's why we built Broker carrier to be a little bit lighter, you know, not so heavy handed, doesn't quite get in your way so much, doesn't try to do so much of your job for you is because we're looking for those small startup brokers that are still finding their own footing, still learning how they want to conduct their own business. And we help them develop that judgment and develop those good, strong relationships with the carriers that they want to keep.
Yeah, right.
These super heavy handed platforms we've all seen, and we have a few in our space too that just demand that you be able to electronically prove every single thing about the history of your business. And they want extremely intrusive access into all your systems. Well, that sort of platform has a purpose, that has an intention. They're trying to usurp those giant mega corporations from the incumbents. That's, that's what that's all about, right? When you, when you're, when your customer is a brokerage that has 500 brokers working and then 10 compliance people and nobody really has time to give anything a personal touch. Okay, there's your use case for these super heavy handed tools that don't forgive anything. Right. But that's not who we want to work with and that's not 95% of brokers. Yeah, you know, our tool is just like a phone.
You know, everybody has a phone, but some people make sales and some people don't. Right. Well software is a tool too. Everybody has access to it. Some people know how to smartly use it and some people don't. And that's just life. Tech is never going to fix that. You know, and really to eliminate the overall fraud problem in the industry, what freight lacks to that end is, is professional training standards, universal professional training standards. There is no standardized body of knowledge for how to become a freight broker. Not anything equivalent to a CDL for getting to be a freight broker. If the industry had that, I think a lot of us tech nerds probably wouldn't be in business.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to say you guys could just listen to this show every single day. I'll tell you what I do. And then there's your professional standards that we're talking about because you know, ultimately man, where I, I mean operational efficiencies, that's something. As somebody who's building an actual business, that's what I'm looking for. How do I do more with less? And I'm not talking from a headcount perspective. I'm talking about how do I do more work in a less amount of time because I'm bootstrapping everything. All right. As a lot of people who listen to this show are, I want to move more freight in a day and how do I do that? I spend less time sourcing and then more time reutilizing and keeping them out there.
That's how I can move 30 loads in a couple of days with just two people. Because we do the same thing, we use the same carriers and everything else and you know, we could increase that if our load volume was increased. But you know, we're building still and ultimately that's what it boils down to. It's repeatable, scalable processes that we can grow so we can hire more. But that is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. Kyle, thank you so much for joining me, man. I really appreciate it. You guys know how to find him. If you don't hit me up, I will gladly put you guys in contact with him and broker carrier, but that's going to be it for today, you guys. We'll be back tomorrow. 8:30 in Pacific, 10:30 Central. As always, subscribe to the show, you guys.
Share it out there to your network because if you see value, your network sees value as well. Kyle.
Go vote.
Go vote. Exactly. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. There we go.