The Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association has come out in favor of giving carriers a voice on the Carrier411 legacy “carrier vetting” platform, after that company made changes to its consequential FreightGuard system earlier this month.
Carrier411 recently moved to make all broker allegations in its “FreightGuard” reports about carriers permanent after 72 hours, thereby eliminating the possibility that a carrier could get a false FreightGuard taken down. Now, the reports can merely be amended after the initial 72 hour pending period, and the platform will even hide the details of the broker that filed the report.
[Related: Carrier411’s big changes to its ‘FreightGuards’ might open a legal can of worms]
Aron Lynch of OOIDA’s Compliance Department said he’s in the trenches talking to carriers about problems with carrier vetting platforms like Carrier411 every day.
“It’s something not talked about nearly enough,” said Lynch. “This is one of the top three issues” his team deals with, “and it’s been like that for years. I don’t think the public, or even the industry realize just how deeply this affects carriers and how wide-ranging this is. We get calls on a daily basis about this subject.”
Overdrive in recent months has dedicated time and attention to varoius carrier vetting programs — from recent referenced reporting on Carrier411’s shifts, to issues within Carrier Assure for expedited van carriers graded F seemingly for no other reason than the lack of a roadside inspection. Recent survey respondents saw little good coming from the recent-history proliferation of vetting platforms, which sell to brokers the service of vetting carriers and, in some cases, demonstrably harm the ability of carriers to operate in spot markets, as OOIDA’s Lynch emphasized.
“Not a day that goes by that we don’t have some issue with Carrier411 or these others like Carrier Assure or Highway,” said Lynch, while noting that Carrier411 and its FreightGuard reports represent the “biggest and longest-tenured” among vetting systems.
Following Overdrive reporting on Carrier411’s recent moves to make FreightGuard reports permanent after a 72-hour period, OOIDA contacted a feedback line set up by freight fraud prevention specialist John Cantera.
Asked what OOIDA said on the feedback line to Carrier411, Lynch noted the “main gripe” was that Carrier411 refuses to hear the carrier’s side of the story when brokers file allegations to a FreightGuard, or even over simple data reporting issues.
“There’s never really been a great way to actually voice your side of the story,” Lynch said. Many OOIDA members who reach out to Lynch’s team “say they don’t even have a chance to respond” to a pending FreightGuard report.
[Related: Brokers’ new ‘carrier vetting’ craze bad for trucking, carriers say]
As previously reported, Carrier 411’s system sends an email via the FMCSA-registered email address associated with a carrier, giving the carrier a chance to respond to the broker. Even if a carrier does respond in time and provides documents or other proof of their innocence to the broker, none of that will show up on Carrier411. CEO Darren Brewer, as previously reported, noted his organization will not take calls from carriers: “Every known phone number from every carrier is blocked from us.”
Many OOIDA members and owner-operators, Lynch said, “aren’t technologically savvy. They don’t look at their email and see that in a 72-hour period of time. They can’t even respond to a bad mark” that could “really bankrupt the carrier.”
Detroit-based attorney Dan Artaev, who has represented carriers suing brokers over false FreightGuards and won substantial compensatory and punitive awards, on Friday revealed he spoke to yet another carrier whose business was all but destroyed by a FreightGuard thanks to no direct action of their own. The business in question “lost 80% of its volume due to a false FreightGuard report,” Artaev wrote in a LinkedIn post. That carrier’s “MC number and identity were outright stolen, used to book a shipment through a fake phone number and a fake dispatcher who called herself ‘Sonya.’ The carrier affected did not even book the load in question, has never interacted with the posting broker, and did not know anything about it until receiving” the FreightGuard.
Nothing, not a police report nor a report to FMCSA, helped the carrier Artaev spoke to. Now, it’s headed to a costly court battle with the broker, potentially even Carrier411, as Artaev intimated. After Carrier411’s recent changes, the broker, even if it eventually does admit the FreightGuard report was unfair, wouldn’t be able to delete it from the platform.
“There’s no accountability for this, that’s what we’ve seen over the years,” said Lynch. “This does negatively impact carriers on a daily basis. That’s the end result. These accusations are etched into stone.”
Carrier411 CEO Brewer previously noted that he doesn’t believe false FreightGuards harm carriers, saying 95% of FreightGuard reports contain true information.
“Where do your statistics come from? Is that 95% true? Where do you get those numbers from?” asked Lynch. “I won’t say carriers are perfect. Some FreightGuards are legitimate and some should be put to the forefront as well. But this is something that damages carrier after carrier after carrier.”
Brewer said the 95% figure was based on internal data, but wouldn’t share what data or how he would even know which of thousands of FreightGuards were true or not.
And the volume of evidence for the harm caused by the other 5% (presumably) can’t even directly reach Carrier411 — the company has blocked OOIDA’s phone number, OOIDA said, in addition to the phone numbers of known motor carriers.
Carriers are to brokers “almost disposable objects,” said Lynch, who characterized brokers as seeing lots of loose capacity in a market like the present. “But this is their livelihood. These carriers have kids and have a family. … We respect small businesses and entrepreneurs like Carrier411, but when it comes to impacting our members, these complaints seemingly go unnoticed and are never addressed.”
Lynch and OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh called for a “rebuttal process” for carriers on Carrier411’s FreightGuard system.
“These carrier rating services are just going to continue to grow,” said Pugh. “I understand why brokers use these things, but they have to be fair and balanced. That’s the problem. They refuse to take the call from the trucker or OOIDA or anyone else.”
Pugh noted that the brokers being so picky represents a luxury of that “loose capacity,” and that brokers should mind that the market could soon turn.
[Related: ‘Fraud apocalypse’: Brokers circling the wagons, shutting carriers out of freight]
“The sad thing is when the economy does tick back up, a lot of brokers quit using these services when they’re going to need trucks,” he said.
“During times of booming business, you don’t hear much about this,” said Lynch.
Carrier vetting platforms are fundamentally digital solutions to very analog problems. Fraud and cargo theft watchers agree that software and/or online systems alone can’t solve trucking’s crime problem — humans that understand trucking need to be engaged for the final decisions. And it’s perfectly kosher to operate in a low-tech way — many owner-operators prefer it.
OOIDA said it had tried in the past to create a broker-vetting system internally, but it didn’t get adequate participation from carriers to make it viable. Lynch and Pugh were hopeful that a feature of OOIDA’s new partnership with Truckstop could yield some results, as there is a reporting platform there. Meantime, carrier vetting programs should stop “blackballing motor carriers based on hearsay,” said Pugh.
Pugh urged independent owner-operators to do everything possible to land direct freight and keep off the load boards, at least until the market turns and brokers come crawling back.
[Related: Roads through the dark clouds of a very tough market: Owner-op limitations, possibilities]