Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough I ain't nothing but grit cause 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 cause I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is the freight coach morning show, the top morning show in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 08:30 a.m. Pacific, 1030 central to break down some industry headlines. And most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real sada freight, ladies and gentlemen, and I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak to transportation professionals because 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 it, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
Tracy St. Clair, good morning on YouTube. Carla is dead. Good morning over on LinkedIn. Cory Buchan. Happy taco Tuesday, everybody. Let's go, Nick Izzy. Let's go, big Chris. He says coming in over on YouTube. And you guys are going to hear that more and more often, you guys, because I want to get everybody to migrate over to YouTube because Twitter, for some reason isn't allowing me to stream there and then LinkedIn. The stream quality is just subpar. So I'm trying to get everybody to go over to YouTube, subscribe over there, look for the freight coach. You know where I am. Carlos Rodriguez. Good morning to you, my man.
He's also over on YouTube, but without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I'm having my resident insurance expert come on the show because there's a lot of shit that's going on right now and we need some clarity about this. So I got my man Cameron with Valley trucking insurance back on the show. Cam, good to see you, brother. How are you?
What's up, jolly? I'm good, man. How are you doing?
Oh, man, just trying to make a dollar out of $0.15, you know, as the raptors used to say back in the day reference.
Let's go. You are. You are a real one. This is the real side of freight hosted by the real one, man. I love tuning in and listening to this stuff, and then I don't think it should be hard to get people to YouTube, dude. YouTube runs the world. Like, I spend way too much time on YouTube. It's wild, bro.
I literally have a master's degree in YouTube university at this point. Like, I literally, that's how I taught myself how to do everything when it comes down to creating content, editing content, doing like, creating a podcast and all this shit, I learned everything on YouTube. Fortunately, now I have a marketing guy, my man, shout out Christian, who is just an absolute gangster who just does all of this for me now. So, you know, I can just come in here, talk my shit and then just send him everything and he just makes me look even fucking prettier, which is a feature itself to do.
But.
So, bro, what's going on, man? I think, like, this is a, you know, obviously I want to have you come on at least on a monthly basis to talk about insurance, to talk about kind of what's going on out there in the market and stuff like that because there's always legislation, proposed legislation and stuff that's happening out there. And mainly it seems like the drivers are going to get screwed at some point in this with raising insurance rates and a lot of stuff that's kind of happening outside of their control and, you know, so, like, what are you hearing from your end? And then we're going to lead into one of these articles that's kind of like, really, I think, kind of a scary thing for a lot of drivers out there.
Yeah, for sure. I think that, yeah, there's so much going on, so I don't know where to start on that. But from an insurance standpoint, just kind of at a high level view, I mean, it's still tough and I think a lot of people, you know, can feel it from multiple angles, including like, your home and auto insurance and all that kind of stuff. Right. Health insurance has been there for a long time, so people are kind of at the mercy of that. But, yeah, on the trucking side, especially for the drivers, motor carriers, we just continue to see, you know, the average rates kind of creeping up. We also, and I don't know why this is happening, but we're seeing a lot of trends for some, deteriorating accounts, like out of service is going up.
You know, they're starting to have a little bit more frequency in claims and I don't know kind of what the reasons are, but you start adding all those things and then your rates really go up if you can get insurance at all. And a lot of the, you're starting to see some companies go out of business. You know, one of the things that a lot of people will go to when they're trying to find insurance is like a program, what's called a risk retention group. So it's basically a group of insureds or carriers that are all the same. In this case, truckers, right, that kind of start their own little program, their own little insurance company, which is great in theory. And in fact, there's a lot of good models based on that.
And really, that's what insurance is kind of at its core anyway. However, the underwriting becomes poor. What do we know that's going to happen with motor carriers? They're going to have claims or accidents, right? There's going to be things that happen, like it's just inevitable with how many miles they're on the road, with how much traffic's on the road, with things that happen with cargo, things that are out of their control, weather related events, wind, hail, you know, flood, hurricane, that kind of stuff. All these things will affect that, which in turn, when, let's say this is a bucket full of money. That bucket goes down, you got a bunch of people that are putting money into it. What happens to it? Well, they got to put more money in to get the bucket back full again. Right.
Just the simple cause and effect there. But good news is, though, is there are a lot of still great insurance companies out there for the good companies that operate well, that prioritize safety, that prioritize maintenance on their vehicles, that try to have a culture that promotes, you know, driver awareness, pre check, post check, you know, preventative maintenance, that are vocal about that stuff. And, like, we still got companies that operate really well that pay stellar rates. Right. So you're just susceptible, though, if you're not vigilant right now, that's all.
So how often should you be, you know, reaching out to your insurance agent or how often do you reach out to your clients, cam, to, you know, kind of keep them educated on things that are going on out there that could affect their policy?
Yeah, for sure. I think it kind of depends on the needs of the client. So a lot of what we'll do when working with a client of ours or if somebody's referred to us is kind of figure out where they're at in the journey and what their goals are. Right. And how big they are. Like, what resources do they actually need? I mean, it could be some clients I swear, we talk to, if not daily, weekly, for sure. Right. Like, because they have things come up or questions come up or they're trying to negotiate on freight land, a contract. They've got questions on what the contract actually means and what the insurance, what it's asking of the insurance piece, right. You know, a lot of the times, I mean, I'll get asked like, hey, is this worth doing?
Like they'll ask my opinion on certain types of loads or freight and like, what do I know? Or what have I seen other than that, you know, quarterly maybe checking in. One of the big things to do is always make sure, like, your MC's 150 is up to date, right? So, like, if you're adding drivers or trucks, I know a lot of people will maybe hold off on adding those trucks or maybe they will add trucks when they don't actually have that thinking that it'll improve their safety scores percentage wise. Right. Common core math, I'm not sure what they're doing. But anyways, it's like making sure the story is told and it's uniform with what the actual company is doing because that makes our job a lot easier, especially when we go to the insurance companies that actually take a look at these things.
They're going to pull up, you know, websites, social media. They're going to pull up FMCSA, look at the safety scores, their cab reports. They're going to go into, you know, the different programs that all that you have access to that everybody has access to, that's all just public information and data on brokers or carriers or whoever, and they're going to see what's out there in the world. Hey, and then they might have questions from that. But if everything looks good, if it matches what I tell them, if the stories align and, like, what we're trying to accomplish there, the insurance companies don't question that and they're good with it.
So, yeah, dude, I think that there's a lot of, you know, factors and emerging scenarios that are starting to pop up out here that I think a lot of people need to be, you know, kind of vigilant of, you know, and some of these trends that are going on. I mean, I'm seeing articles coming out about, you know, freight theft is increasing, you know, obviously fraud, double brokering, and then, you know, there's also a lot of stuff that's coming out with vetting software that I don't know, man, I think it's going to be interesting to see how a lot of these things kind of tend to shake out.
And I think that a lot of, you know, you kind of got to not rush to judgment on some of these situations that are starting to present itself because, you know, man, it's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time before I think it's your company or you are in that exact scenario and you got to better prepared for it.
And you know, the one argument I wanted to talk about is, you know, there's this freight theft ring that kind of popped up here and I don't know how much, you know, how in depth it was, but, you know, this article was from freight waves and it's freight ransom allegations rock brokerage industry nearly two dozen freight brokers saying Illinois trucking company and its network of affiliated carriers targeted their companies a few days before the 4 July and are holding 36 confirmed loads hostage until demands are paid. This article was released on Friday the 12th. I didn't see any updates at the time of this show today, so I'm just going based on the fact that this is all still going.
A source familiar with the situation said the number of loads could rise to around 50 based on new information provided Thursday by insurance and private investigators. On the basis of additional information, the sources estimate the total value could be as high as $5 million. Since Monday, 22 freight brokerages have come forward with claims that their companies fell victim to elaborate scheme allegedly. I want to be, you know, allegedly orchestrated by Agility Express of mundoline and its affiliated network of more than 24 carriers. Some brokers said they attempted to call law enforcement about freight being held hostage, but they claim they were told it appeared to be a civilization dispute. And then it, you know, a guy by the, who goes by the name of surge cuts go is listed as the president of Agility Express.
Agility and cuts go did not respond to freight waves, phone and email requests out there. So like, dude, how do you, I mean, we'll go through more of this in there, but when you're seeing this right now, how are you preparing your customer, your clients for situations like this? Because I think, you know, another thing, and this might be in the article very much, but like I always think about the carriers who are hauling that double brokered load, who are, you know, who. I have no idea that the load was supposed to go from Houston to New Jersey, but it's actually Houston, you know, it was tender to them as Houston to California and it's going to one of these shady warehouses that are involved in there. How are they liable for claims in this situation?
That's tough scenario and we've actually seen a little bit of an uptick in scenarios that are going to be similar to this one of the other ones too is like, you know, we're starting to verify pretty heavily on when people are calling to make changes, especially when someone wants to update, let's say, an email or a phone number. In the past, it'd be as simple as like, Chris, you just text me, hey, got a new email, or call me or call into the office even, hey, got a new email switched over, need to update it. The email will look very similar to what their email is, but it might just be like one digit off or a letter off or a number or something.
And then all of a sudden, and keep in mind, this might be months until we see the cause and effect of this, but then all of a sudden there'll be loads that are booked under their dot number. And then we're verifying and sending out proof to that email that were supposedly thought was their email. And then all of a sudden now people are moving freight under your company with you not even knowing about it. So like, you know what I mean? Like stuff like this is popping up. So I mean, we're educating our clients on it. You know, that goes into like what you mentioned. There's all these tools to verify and look people up. Carrier 411 or Carrier says, like all these different things. However, a lot of these people on paper are going to look good, right?
They've built this image or they've bought this MC or this company that has decent history. And you may not have the experience in dealing with them to know who's who or what's what to like have your, you know, spider senses go off and like that kind of thing where it's like all sudden, you know, like these guys, it's an orchestrated hit, which blows my mind. I read that article and I didn't even know. I mean, I know there's freight theft and I know there's organized crime, I know there's this, but this isn't even like really theft. They're like, you know, holding it hostage to negotiate, to try to get more money because they feel like they should have got paid or their buddies got shorted or whatever this article was talking about. I mean, it blows my mind. It was wild.
Yeah. And we're going to go on, you know, and go a little bit further in this. And because it goes on to say an executive at a large freight brokerage said one of their loads was hijacked, and that they use a lot, you know, they thoroughly vetted their tools and they say we use the majority of the vetting tools and not one of them is 100% effective at identifying carriers out there, they told them, because they want to be what you call it. Anonymous this is a very coordinated effort by this group of carriers to take 50 loads in ten days, they say.
While it's not uncommon for bad actors in the transportation to hold high value loads hostage in an effort to negotiate a higher rate, multiple sources have said that wasn't the case, which range from shipments of cardboard to plastic items to dry food products. So these are not high theft value items at all. But here's one key point here of this article that I want you guys to take into consideration here. It says that it's also unusual that agility is acting as a debt collector on behalf of the affiliates that are associated with this. The company claims the targeted brokerages short paid the motor carriers for loads they hauled or deducted fees from their pay for failing to arrive at appointment times or for cases of product that were missing from a load.
According to multiple sources, the amount of unpaid debt allegedly owed to agility and its affiliates ranges from a few hundred dollars to around $9,000 owed to a carrier that a broker suspected of double brokered and paid the amount to the trucking company that was actually delivered. The loads of some of the unpaid debts go back to 2019. After searching through their records, the brokers freight wave spoke to found the unpaid feeds allegedly agility and its affiliates were attempting to collect, but added that the carriers were aware of the brokerage policies for missing appointment times, missing cases of product, or failing to properly secure loads in transit.
Some of the affected brokerages admit they were hesitant to acknowledge the situation publicly for fear of losing customers, and then others told freight waves that they have been transparent with their customers since the beginning, but fear retaliation from agility and its entities. My philosophy is that bad news travels fast, early and so, you know, so as soon as we think that the load might be in jeopardy, we tell our customers, one logistics executive said, brokers have to report these guys as soon as they think something suspicious is going on because that's the only way that people shut down. Who knows if they could have saved another 30 to 40 loads from being stolen. I, I want to interject something right here, from this article, because I've broke this down a lot and I am not condoning anybody holding those hostages.
I'm not doing anything or backing this carrier group or anything like that. I want to be abundantly clear. And if anybody tries to chop this up and do it, I keep all of my original fucking audio files and video files, so don't even try it. But from when I see that they're trying to collect debt because they, these carriers got short paid for fees, you know, about missing appointment times and, you know, cases of product were missing and, you know, from loads and so on, when I see a lot of this, all of these bullshit fees that I was telling people about on past shows, you guys, like, I think this is the unfortunate result of people nickel and diming carriers over these last couple of years.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't customers that don't reduce price or they don't find for late appointments, but it's not every single shipper out there, okay? Also, if there's a product that is missing from it. Did, you know, again, like this is just details that are missing from this article. So it's like, did we verify at the shipper that everything was actually loaded on there or were we lazy? And then, you know, the customer said that 1900 cases were supposed to be on there, but only 1890 showed up. But then we didn't verify at the shipper that all of those cases were officially loaded on the truck.
So again, like, there's a lot of things that could kind of come up of this, but I think that if you nickel and dime people on every little instance, unfortunately, I think this is the after effect of it. And I think that, you know, anytime that there are so many hoops to jump through to take freight from somebody, you know, when it clearly shows that, hey, their insurance is valid, they have a valid company and everything else, but, oh, your driver didn't sneeze and honk his horn twice when he entered the scale. So therefore, you can't haul any freight for it. This is the after effect, I think, of a lot of this stuff. And now I'm not saying you don't vet your carrier partner, right? Because you need to vet everybody that you work with.
But I think that this is the effects of things maybe going a little too far and now this is what people will do and this is the results of those actions, I think.
Yeah, it's kind of extreme actions, right? And, but they were pushed to this point, you know, I don't know. Like, once again, I think we have limited details as to what's actually going on behind the scenes and the high level approach on this. What's. I was thinking at it about it, too. Like, from an insurance standpoint, it's kind of tough because there's some intentional acts going on, right? So there's not really, like, damaged product or missing loads per se. They just have them. So even if the broker, you know, is going to try to go against their insurance or turn it in for insurance to get paid, I mean, it's going to take a long time to settle that out. And really, ultimately the broker is going to be, what, out of pocket to the customer until it's made whole again?
Or they have to, you know, succumb to their demands and hope that they pay it and hope that they get that load back. Right? And I don't, and I don't know. There's a lot of faith that has to be brought into that. But it's a wild, I don't know what book they read, these negotiation tactics, but it's just wild that this is the route that it's come to, really.
There are, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, because I've been in this situation before, not because of a unpaid, you know, issue or something like that, but I've been involved in something like this where a carrier took a load hostage and they said, if you want us to deliver this free, it's gonna be, you know, $5,000. And it was, they were so in depth with this cam that they had an NDA that we had to sign and everything from their attorney. Like, it was a very in depth scheme that was going on out there. But, you know, it goes on to say, like, how could I? And I want to ask you this, man, because if this is still going on right now and, you know, or people are just finding out, like, shit, one of my loads just got popped here.
How does a broker file a claim with their insurance company for this? Or does the insurance company say, hey, bro, if they have it, you got to either pay it or is there some sort of coverage?
You know, there's this, like, steps to going about a claim, right? But like, kind of the, and you know, this and kind of everyone knows this, especially on the freight broker side of, you know, for a cargo claim to actually pay out on the freight broker side, there's so many things that have to happen because you've got contracts in place, carrier agreements in place, which basically put the responsibility on the motor carrier. Right? So then it's kind of the duty and responsibility to go after the motor carrier's insurance and hope that they pay. In this case though, the motor carrier's insurance. I don't know if it's going to step up and pay right away because it's almost an intentional act and intentional criminal acts aren't covered. Right.
Like if it's premeditated, which it sounds like it is, there's a thing, you know, I don't know what the coverage that drops down it goes into. I guess what they said is like a civil case there, you know what I mean? And so that will take a long time to process out. Ultimately, hopefully the freight brokers insurance will end up paying, but it's going to take a long time. And that's the biggest problem. You know, most freight brokers don't have a surplus of cash just sitting here to cover loads. Right. Like I, I don't know, maybe you do, but I don't know. Many I talk to don't. That's where they start to panic, get in trouble. Because the ultimate goal for the broker is keep the customer happy and keep their contacts happy.
A lot of times, unfortunately, that means you coming out of pocket to make them whole again. Working out a deal, being 100% transparent with communication, which I know that some of those people, hey, we communicate open and early, which is probably the best way to do it. So you can let people know what's going on. They might then work with you. Right. Hey. Okay, sounds good. We appreciate you letting us know. And then with your intent to say, hey, we're going to make you whole. This is kind of the situation. I want to bring you in the loop so that it doesn't damage the relationship. Right. And it's how you act, I think, in that moment and after which will determine that long term relationship with the customer for sure. So.
Yeah. And I think that, you know, the more and more information that comes out about this, so, you know. Sources close to the situation alleged that Chicago paste attorney Thaddeus Ted Gaza is representing agility and its network of affiliates and drafted the settlement and release agreement reached by telephone gauze that told freight waves that he's the legal counsel for a number of trucking companies, but declined to confirm whether agility and its affiliates were out there. And then he says, I would not be in a position to make comments regarding anything involving legal matters of behalf of my climate or client if they are part of it. And then according to Illinois Supreme Court records, Gauss's law license was suspended for five months and 23. Okay, that's ten years old. That, that's eleven years old. That's irrelevant. I mean that's just like saying that. Exactly.
I think that there is a. I, you know, hold on. So if they have an attorney that's involved in this as well. I don't know, man. Like, I think that it's going to be very interesting to see how this comes to light and how the resolution of this comes out. I think it's a very interesting read. I really do. I go to freight waves, you know. You know guys, I'll have the article out there, but I really think I, this, I don't want to say that this is going to becoming more common, but this is the after effect, I think, of what a lot of people think. Like a lot of people think they're untouchable, man. In business.
A lot of people do, they think that they can reduce people's, they think that they can fuck with people's money, and that they just think that people are just going to have tolerate it. But eventually people snap. And I'm not condoning any of this behavior at all. At all. I want to be abundantly clear. I am not condoning any of this type of behavior at all. But that key piece of information in that article kind of says it, you know, like at the end of the day, is it really worth you withholding a couple hundred bucks from a carrier if it leads to this? You know, because I want you to think about this right.
You're in that moment and you reduce a carrier $200 or you put yourself in this situation where, fuck, now I have $30,000 worth of product that's gone that I might have to pay out of pocket if I want to keep my customer because my insurance just said there's nothing that they can do. You know, like those are very real scenarios that you need to think about in the moment. Because like, I think this is just the after effect of a lot of this. And I know this shit's been going on forever.
I just think that people need to be very fucking careful and they need to ask themselves this question in the moment when the initial thing happens on a rate reduction or a, you got to reduce their price because there was a claim on the load because of missing product or whatever that looks like. You got to look at the monetary value and you got to ask yourself in that time, do I pay it? Is it cheaper to pay this right now out of my own pocket, pay the carrier and never work with them ever again or continue to work with them? Because it, to me it just like based on the limited information that's in this article. These guys continue to use those carriers, and they probably did that on more than one occasion. And then that kind of led to this, it seems.
And who knows? I mean, once again, it's based on an article. We don't have all the facts. And then who knows the relationships? Who knows how long it was going on? Who knows if they even communicated, they were mad about the situation. And are those fees valid? Right. I think if the carrier sees the fee as valid, like this is agreed upon ahead of time, and it's, you know, yes, we are responsible for that. No big deal. But I think it's when they get the fees, they get hit with these fees when they don't see eye to eye on it. And maybe they didn't know about those fees that they're gonna get pissed. Right?
Yeah. And I tell people all the time, if you're gonna have any form of rate reduction on any shipment that you book, you need to verbally and have it. Everybody know, all parties know that. Hey, FYI, if this k, if this is late, for whatever reason, this is an imposed fee from my customer that comes down for $250 or whatever that is, they need to be notified of it. But I think that there's a lot of shit that gets kind of slid in there after the fact cam, that just pissed people off. And, you know, and again, I'm not condoning it, but I think, like, I see it. I see it all the time out there across social media, man. People are withholding fucking lumper fees. They're, they're doing a bunch of shit, man.
People are fucking with others, and this is just kind of what happens.
Yep. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, you don't mess with people's money, right?
No, exactly. Unless it's all notified on the front end. Right. Like, I've never delivered a load that I didn't know that there was a lumper associated with it at the receiver. All right. I never delivered a load for a customer that all of a sudden said, hey, there's a rate reduction if this loads late. All of that shit is pre negotiated on the front end, and every fucking one of them is, unless there is clear, visible damage to the product and the customer says, hey, FYI, it's $700 to replace this. You can either, a, pay us out of pocket or b, we can just file a claim like that. That's just kind of the way it goes. But again, it's going to be interesting to see how more and more of this comes about.
You know, because as things become more and more desperate out there, people are going to find ways to get their money back in one way or another. Whether it's, whether it's ethical or not is kind of irrelevant. People, once they get pushed too far, are going to do some shit, man. And it's going to be interesting to see. But I always think, like, at the end of the day, as long as you are being ethical, as long as you are doing the right thing, you're going to get rewarded long term. But yeah, man, it's going to be interesting to see. And as this shit continues to progress, man, I'm going to have you back on the show. But how does anybody, we're already at the top of the hour, man. This is fucking crazy.
How, how can anybody reach out to you, man, to find out more?
Really? I mean, if you guys, you can go to our email me, cameron@valleytruckinginsurance.com or find me on LinkedIn is probably the best way. I know that's where a lot of business professionals operate. So, yeah, I think that will be an interesting progression, and I will keep you posted on what we find out and kind of what we hear as this thing plays out. And I might reach out to, I'm curious on how some proceedings would occur in like a claim scenario. So I might come back with you on that stuff.
So, no, dude, I think that's going to be, you know, very valuable information for people out there, and especially the carriers that are hauling, you know, double brokered loads that are inevitably getting screwed out of payments and stuff like that. And then are they liable for a claim in the event that, you know, something does come out. So, yeah, that's already our topic for next time.
Good one. Yeah, we'll plan that one. Let's book it.
Well, hey, that's going to be it for today, you guys. We'll be back tomorrow. We got guests, I think we got guests coming on every day for the rest of this week as well. And, yeah, you guys, as always, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon. Now just awkward silence. Oh, man. Dude.