Trucking’s “fraud apocalypse” could end in a heartbeat if brokers and carriers alike could simply distinguish between real operations and bad actor pretenders. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
Yet there is one surefire way to still make real connections in 2024, when double brokers seems to have cracked how to impersonate carriers and even rack up inspections on their records — simply meet in person and have real conversations.
That’s the vision of Dan Lindsey, president of Broker Carrier Summit, a twice yearly event meant to bridge the yawning gap between brokers and carriers. Lindsey, a former Marine who spent five years at TQL, said he saw “the good, a lot of the bad, and a lot of the ugly about the industry” during his time there, emerging with the dream to shut up the “keyboard warriors” once and for all.
Any carrier, or broker for that matter, who spends enough time on social media has seen brokers complain about carriers. Maybe they’re low-tech or don’t communicate, for instance. Carriers of course complain right back about broker — annoying, or too demanding. According to Lindsey, the online bellyaching has only gotten worse in the last few years, and it hasn’t really made anyone’s lives better.
“There are plenty of people on the broker side or the carrier side who are more than willing to complain and vilify the other side,” he said. “It’s easy to gripe, and we’ve heard the gripes from both sides, both justified and unjustified rants.”
From carriers complaints include plenty about outsize broker margins and transparency, middlemen who put too much stock in rates averages, and increasingly strict criteria brokers use to select carriers, often relying on incomplete and not-always-accurate DOT-compiled and other data.
[Related: Why brokers don’t want to give owner-ops transparency in freight transactions]
But enough is a enough, and former Marine Lindsey felt the need to take action.
“In 2021 I said, ‘What if we got brokers and carriers together in the same place to work through these issues,'” he said. “People always responded, ‘One: you’re insane, but two: If you ever do it, I’ll join you.'”
In April 2023 BCS had its first Summit in Indianapolis with just 35 attendees. Lindsey would have liked a bigger turnout, but said he was impressed by the lengths people went to attend. One from the top of Maine, some from the Carolinas, others from Florida and California.
“They all came to hear someone they didn’t know talk about topics that were not popular in an age where broker-carrier relationships were at their all-time low,” he said. “At the end asked we asked two questions: How many got value out of this? And how many of you would come back? Every single hand went up.”
Come back they did. At the next BCS in Tampa, Florida, 225 people showed up. Then in Kansas City, Missouri, 360 people.
Now, at the BCS slated for October 23-25 in Fort Worth, Texas, Lindsey expects anywhere from that number up to 500 attendees.
“I learned something in the Marine Corps, people are willing to do the hard things if they have someone leading the charge,” he said.
The difficult conversations between brokers and carriers
By now, Lindsey sold his old brokerage to a competitor to focus on growing his brand of straight talk in freight. “One of the things that sets us apart is we have those hard conversations” between brokers and carriers, he said.
One of his most important rules: “Everyone has to own their own sh#%.” BCS, he said, is not a place for mega fleets or brokers to talk about how great they are at solving the freight fraud problem and looking after their partners’ businesses during a historic market downturn, skyrocketing freight fraud and tech companies bursting on the scene trying to squeeze more dollars out of brokers and carriers alike.
“Carriers have to own their” shortcomings, he said, and “brokers have to own theirs.” After both those things happen, “have an authentic conversation.”
That’s reflected in Broker Carrier Summit’s unofficial motto: no scumbags.
Lindsey’s pitch to carriers is simple: “Stop working with brokers who treat you like garbage,” he said. “Find the brokers that actually want to help and want to do business the right way. We already have almost 75 brokers” registered to attend the summit.
In addition to the overall thrust of the event — broker-carrier face time to replace load board doomscrolling and cold calls — Lindsey has some “learning labs” planned for carriers on winning direct freight.
While the brokers and tech people play in a golf tournament on October 23, interested carriers can learn from these speakers on topics around how to win direct freight.BCS
Outside of the freight labs, ample networking opportunities offer a chance to “find legit brokers who are going to help you by being your outsourced sales team,” he said.
Ilya Denisenko, an owner-operator in his first year with motor carrier authority, swears by the BCS event and its ability to break down barriers. After previously being denied freight by basically every broker aside from giants C.H. Robinson and TQL, given his young authority, attending the summit broke the dam, getting him on a first-name basis with brokers that cut him past the “carrier vetting” stage in line.
Denisenko will talk about that and more at an upcoming Overdrive webinar on “How to build business for trucking’s down cycles,” where he emphasizes that if you can build relationships to profit in the tough times, when the market flips you’ll be well positioned to cash in.
How do owner-operators and small fleets survive and thrive in tough economic times? Find out in this webinar.
Join us for a live webinar Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. CT and hear from owner-operators and small fleets as we discuss how they prepared during the good times to weather the storms.
Finally, Lindsey stressed that trucking is a people business, and BCS hopes to put some of that human joy back into the work.
“It’s about learning how to enjoy being in logistics,” he said. “It’s hard to enjoy being in an industry every day that’s saturated by bad actors.”
When he had his own brokerage, Lindsey said there were “whole weeks where I didn’t want to go into the office. Every day we were getting 500 phone calls from scammer Sergei looking to double, triple or quadruple broker the load.”
Plus, it’s an opportunity as an owner-operator to go somewhere you’re actually wanted and valued. Lindsey said he wants at least twice as many carriers as brokers at the summit, “especially small carriers who stand to benefit most.”
Right now, there’s an “early bird special” on pricing and even a short “flash sale” of reduced fares. “We want to make it as easy as possible for small to mid sized carriers to attend,” he said. “There’s even free truck parking through Truck Parking Club.”
I’ll be attending, too, and I hope to see some of you there.
“If you want to work with brokers that are going to treat you like partners and not like cattle, come to the summit,” Lindsey said.
[Related: In a tough spot market, strong relationships with those who feed you will pay off]