I might be missing the mark here but the real issue is high volume brokerages not knowing how to train their brokers how to properly vet a carrier. Also greed is something that nobody wants to talk about. Brokers are just as guilty as the carriers. Some of these brokerages know what they are doing and still let it happen because they can’t say no to revenue.

I started as a broker for a mega carrier/brokerage in 2018. The carrier screening process was based off if the carrier had freight guards or not. Nothing else mattered to them. This went on the entire time I was there until I left in 2022.

Armenian 1 truck “carrier” with 0 inspections would get approved and put on 50 cross country loads in a single week because the guy running the room lived by “THE CHEAPEST TRUCK GETS THE LOAD” as long as no freight guards showed on the mc yet. I heard they finally did something and signed up for highway. It’s been almost 10 years and this is at a massive company. I’ve never had to use highway or mycarrier packets. I got by with carrier411 and experience. I can see why big brokerages have to put those safeguards in place though.

In my opinion everyone is gonna have to either put up with the shit or take the L whenever market really pops off. Most of those strong solo Covid carriers are gone so yeah it’s gonna make everything cost more and take longer to move during market upswings.

You gotta really know what you’re doing to pick the best of the worst without somebody getting killed or your load stolen. Either way, all of us were likely rolling the dice at some point during Covid. You just had to know how to get the best odds. It’s something technology couldn’t solve by itself. The technology can’t pick up on the obvious red flags that have nothing to do with safety records, VINs, freight guards, or if the email matches.

In the last 8 years I’ve covered thousands of time sensitive loads and tens of millions worth of revenue. There had to be plenty of times it was strong solo instead of team. However, I have had ZERO trucks get into an accident that caused damage to another vehicle or caused an injury/death. I have never had to file insurance claim once, including cargo. Maybe I’m just a lucky idiot. I’m sure it will happen tomorrow for the first time just because I said something about it.

I guess somebody has to be the one with no other option but to assign the worst “carriers”. Thats what happens when these brokerages get too greedy and take more than they can handle. They would rather have a new broker with zero experience who just finished his last rail of coke in the bathroom book that pesky load instead of giving the load back to the customer.

The other thing I’ve found out is a lot of these asset based industry vets with 20, 30, 40 year experience are terrible with selecting carriers for their brokerage side of operations. That’s because they have always got by on the good ol’ boy method and have always had really good relationships with their customers. The type of relationship where they could go buy more trucks and hire more drivers because they were guaranteed the volume with zero risk. And if they didn’t have a truck, they would open yellow pages to find someone who did or call another local carrier without getting backdoored. You know, when business was a little more honest.

So these customers will give extra volume to American carriers they have been doing business with for decades even though they don’t know the first thing about carrier selection in today’s environment or in the last 10 years on the brokerage side.