Highway setup asking for ELD integration

Rob said:

Broker clients sure must be different from carrier clients is all I can say. We bill over 100 direct clients and maybe two-three times a month one of them may actually ask if load is delivered picked up etc, Yet brokers clients need to know driver name dob address next of kin truck trailer info vin's finiacial company info and is truck on track to load that load we booked 32 seconds ago for pick up next week. Can I get the driver truck and trailer info. Sends us a tracking link the client needs it today to make sure you are on track for next Tuesday loading very very important, and did you get laid in the last week ( no I'm married) Funny how that happens. Usually I have found the cheaper the broker the worse they are to deal with tracing etc. Buck a mile brokers need all the above and more.

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This was my experience when working with larger companies, they all wanted EDL tracking with 0 exception... if the truck drove off course I would get a call. I'm not saying every customer wants this however, the larger companies end up adapting the technology first and it slowly trickles down. I believe this is what will occur when it comes to this. I'm not telling anyone to change thier business model I'm simply explaining my experience.

Man the highway? Fuckin useless. It’s a straight up scam. Imagine they try to seize your load I’d yank that shit off my ELD and laugh tell me how they’d even track me then. And why would they seize it anyway? ’Cause you didn’t pay me plain and simple.


There’s a ton of chatter online they’re grabbin your data. Once they got it they see every drop you do, your whole grind, and then they figure out how to squeeze your rates. Best move for carriers is if the rate ain’t right just say fuck it and refuse the load.


Look at US carriers they ain’t polite on the phone they lay into brokers. Meanwhile some folks be gittin’ on their knees begging for scraps. Big brokers are gettin fat stacks this year and that money is comin straight outta your pocket into theirs.

JEAN1966 said:

Man the highway? Fuckin useless. It’s a straight up scam. Imagine they try to seize your load I’d yank that shit off my ELD and laugh tell me how they’d even track me then. And why would they seize it anyway? ’Cause you didn’t pay me plain and simple.


There’s a ton of chatter online they’re grabbin your data. Once they got it they see every drop you do, your whole grind, and then they figure out how to squeeze your rates. Best move for carriers is if the rate ain’t right just say fuck it and refuse the load.


Look at US carriers they ain’t polite on the phone they lay into brokers. Meanwhile some folks be gittin’ on their knees begging for scraps. Big brokers are gettin fat stacks this year and that money is comin straight outta your pocket into theirs.

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Since when is Highway a paid service for carriers?

Don’t give me that cargo theft bullshit. No real trucker is stealing freight. I don’t care if the load’s worth ten million,the rate better match it. And quit acting like rates are only about miles. There’s time, difficulty, and real work involved. These clowns just dress up bullshit to sound smart.

and1920 said:

Listen, I am going to be honest here it may be a pain with these ELD connections however as a broker I will tell you many customers simply require this and without we wouldn't get any loads it's the new reality. I understand your approach but this is the new reality and as technology grows we must adapt... as the saying goes adapt or die.

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All, and I mean 100% of my direct customers, do not require ELD tracking and up to the minute location pings of their loads.
All, and I mean 100% of my direct customers, require me to answer my phone, 24/7 where necessary, to help fix their logistics challenges. I use my ELD tools to identify where the load is and put their mind at ease that their challenges will be met with the expectations that they entrusted to us. I get two or three of these a month and almost always during business hours.

For you to say that your customers 'simply require this' tells me that your customers are not the original freight payors. The majority of the freight payors will have no idea if a truck in Chattanooga, TN will make it for morning delivery in ON. That decision requires a lot more input than a dot on a map. You need to know what the driver did during the day and the preceding 8 days. Is the driver at the beginning of their shift or the end of their shift?

Technology assists us with getting this information to the customer. In the good old days, we would wait for the driver to call in on a pay phone, and we'd ask him his ETA. Technology advances allowed us to see the truck via satellite and eventually we could send messages back and forth via the satellite. This was followed by cell phones where we can reach the driver at any time (where there was service). Now we have ELD and breadcrumbs. We use this technology to service our customer but brokers now a days want us to share all this technology, without reserve, to service their customer. Remember, the broker's only service is to pimp out a load. They state they provide many more services, but the only prudent service is putting their customers load on LoadLink and sending their load confirmation sheet to the carrier. The rest of the services provided is reactionary to this.

I don't believe for a minute the freight payor is looking at the dots on a map, and I don't believe for a minute the broker is calculating weather the dot in Chattanooga, TN will make the delivery in ON the next morning. This makes me feel the only thing that all this data will be used for is to screw the carrier should something go wrong. For example, 'What do you mean weather delay on the 402? Why did your driver take 11 hours off last night? He could have beat the snow storm if he left earlier. I see here on the US DOT website that the driver could have split his log.'
Now all of a sudden, the broker becomes the fleet safety manager.

Brokers need to have a long hard conversation with their customers about what they need the data for and what the customer thinks it will solve or help. Not all brokers are like this, but not all brokers are demanding all my ELD data be given to some 3rd party entity to which I have no business relationship to.

Jim L said:

All, and I mean 100% of my direct customers, do not require ELD tracking and up to the minute location pings of their loads.
All, and I mean 100% of my direct customers, require me to answer my phone, 24/7 where necessary, to help fix their logistics challenges. I use my ELD tools to identify where the load is and put their mind at ease that their challenges will be met with the expectations that they entrusted to us. I get two or three of these a month and almost always during business hours.

For you to say that your customers 'simply require this' tells me that your customers are not the original freight payors. The majority of the freight payors will have no idea if a truck in Chattanooga, TN will make it for morning delivery in ON. That decision requires a lot more input than a dot on a map. You need to know what the driver did during the day and the preceding 8 days. Is the driver at the beginning of their shift or the end of their shift?

Technology assists us with getting this information to the customer. In the good old days, we would wait for the driver to call in on a pay phone, and we'd ask him his ETA. Technology advances allowed us to see the truck via satellite and eventually we could send messages back and forth via the satellite. This was followed by cell phones where we can reach the driver at any time (where there was service). Now we have ELD and breadcrumbs. We use this technology to service our customer but brokers now a days want us to share all this technology, without reserve, to service their customer. Remember, the broker's only service is to pimp out a load. They state they provide many more services, but the only prudent service is putting their customers load on LoadLink and sending their load confirmation sheet to the carrier. The rest of the services provided is reactionary to this.

I don't believe for a minute the freight payor is looking at the dots on a map, and I don't believe for a minute the broker is calculating weather the dot in Chattanooga, TN will make the delivery in ON the next morning. This makes me feel the only thing that all this data will be used for is to screw the carrier should something go wrong. For example, 'What do you mean weather delay on the 402? Why did your driver take 11 hours off last night? He could have beat the snow storm if he left earlier. I see here on the US DOT website that the driver could have split his log.'
Now all of a sudden, the broker becomes the fleet safety manager.

Brokers need to have a long hard conversation with their customers about what they need the data for and what the customer thinks it will solve or help. Not all brokers are like this, but not all brokers are demanding all my ELD data be given to some 3rd party entity to which I have no business relationship to.

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I wholehearted agree with you, but I'll tell you with large customers (may be because they're bored honestly) the second the tracking goes off course they get a notification and I know I'm getting a call. Many times the tracking can be wrong (carrier took a differnet truck ETC). The other issue working in a brokerage in my experience as an employee is you may be able to speak to the customers directly but you end up being pressured from management to leave these large conversations to the sales agent. At the companies I've worked for it seems most of the sales agents were so scared to have candid conversations with the customer that they simply wouldn't do it because they didn't want to rock the boat.

I really appreciate your perspective on this, thinking more out load here, this may be more of an issue as an employee in operations at a brokerage than anything.

and1920 said:

I wholehearted agree with you, but I'll tell you with large customers (may be because they're bored honestly) the second the tracking goes off course they get a notification and I know I'm getting a call. Many times the tracking can be wrong (carrier took a differnet truck ETC). The other issue working in a brokerage in my experience as an employee is you may be able to speak to the customers directly but you end up being pressured from management to leave these large conversations to the sales agent. At the companies I've worked for it seems most of the sales agents were so scared to have candid conversations with the customer that they simply wouldn't do it because they didn't want to rock the boat.

I really appreciate your perspective on this, thinking more out load here, this may be more of an issue as an employee in operations at a brokerage than anything.

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The freight payor, usually the company producing goods, has more important things to do than manage the intricacies of a trucking company's routing. I don't believe it for a minute that a large customer is taking your data, that you get from HIGHWAY, that comes from me, to put it in their system, to identify if the truck is off course, only to call you to investigate. A producing company is focused on production rates, quality control, getting their goods made and out the door. It's the reason why they give control to broker - because they can't do it themselves very well.
The more I read, the more I hear that your large customers are actually brokers.

Jim L said:

The more I read, the more I hear that your large customers are actually brokers.

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I do believe you may have found one of the elusive co brokers we all love.

@Jim L During the winter we check road and weather reports when calculating ETAs on time critical loads and add this to our updates to the client. Not everyone in the office does this regularly but it is part of our tracking SOP. The reality is if a carrier says there is a delay due to road and weather conditions then we start checking road reports and looking at weather radar and forecasts. I treat carriers like Reagan treated USSR, trust but verify.

Our clients are not tracking GPS breadcrumbs on a map, they leave that to us, they typically only want to know when there is an issue. They pay us to find the truck, vet the carrier and manage the load and not just send a rate con to some Loadlink rando, then move on to the next load. The "manage the freight" part is critical and you don't often hear brokers talk about this or make it their mission

If I was a carrier I would very reluctant to give access to ELD tracking on every truck in the fleet. Combine this data with load posting platforms, other driver tracking platforms and RFP platforms (Uber owns Jaggaer / Transplace) and you have a database on carrier capacity, carrier lanes and rates

@JEAN1966 We are not getting fat stacks or wheelbarrows full of dead presidents -- down markets are bad for us as well.

AgentSmith said:

The "manage the freight" part is critical and you don't often hear brokers talk about this or make it their mission

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As always, there are brokers such as yourself and then there are the rest. Brokers such as yourself know that if they don't provide the service you described, they'd be replaced. My comments were made because 95% of the other brokers do not. They get an email, post it on the LoadLink and if they get the load they'll send the rate con. Then complain and threaten nonpayment for absolutely everything. It's merely transactional.

AgentSmith said:

I treat carriers like Reagan treated USSR, trust but verify.

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Don't trust the carriers! Our industry doesn't deserve trust. If I break down, you'll get the location and the vendor where the truck is getting fixed. You can call the vendor yourself. That is the difference between me as a carrier and the 95% of other carriers. You can ask for verification and I'll back everything up.

I understand the relationship between the carrier, broker and freight payor. Unfortunately, 95% do not.

Jim L said:

As always, there are brokers such as yourself and then there are the rest. Brokers such as yourself know that if they don't provide the service you described, they'd be replaced. My comments were made because 95% of the other brokers do not. They get an email, post it on the LoadLink and if they get the load they'll send the rate con. Then complain and threaten nonpayment for absolutely everything. It's merely transactional.

Don't trust the carriers! Our industry doesn't deserve trust. If I break down, you'll get the location and the vendor where the truck is getting fixed. You can call the vendor yourself. That is the difference between me as a carrier and the 95% of other carriers. You can ask for verification and I'll back everything up.

I understand the relationship between the carrier, broker and freight payor. Unfortunately, 95% do not.

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well said sir!