Is Highway good for vetting carriers?

[thecanman]

Hello,

I wanted to get some feedback from the community regarding carrier vetting services. Currently, my organization uses Carrier411 and RMIS to onboard and vet carriers. We’ve been considering switching to Highway, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling and the increased focus on carrier due diligence and fraud prevention.

For those who have used Highway, have you found it to be more effective for vetting carriers compared to Carrier411 or RMIS? Are there other platforms or processes you would recommend for stronger carrier vetting and compliance management?

I’d appreciate any insight or recommendations.

 

[thebluffs1]

Carrier 411 seems to work best on our brokerage side. On the carrier side of our business, we try to avoid working with brokers who use Highway- its too cumbersome, too intrusive, and bluntly, in general too annoying to work with. The solution has a ton of potential, but the implementation and customer service is a long way from being any kind of successful. Their support, particularly on the carrier side, is some of the worst that I've seen in freighttech.

 

[Fr8Guru]

I know there is a lot of good/great carriers, on this site that hate highway and what it represents. But it has been invaluable on stopping fraud for us, especially in the US.

The only issues we have had are when people bypassed Highway, which was a loophole in our vetting that we have since closed.

Is it perfect? No and it does struggle with Canada to Canada carriers. You will need a manual touch for some.

Also, for everyone who hates Highway/ELD linkage, go have a look at GenLogs. They have tripods on the side of interstates in the US taking pictures of every truck that drives past them.

Records MC/CVOR/Truck/Trailer. Correlates it all into a database and tracks where that truck has been.

They have over 3 billion images cataloged so far are adding more cameras daily.

 

[Jim L]

Also, for everyone who hates Highway/ELD linkage, go have a look at GenLogs. They have tripods on the side of interstates in the US taking pictures of every truck that drives past them.

First of all, the HIGHWAY ELD linkage is not really a link. All ELDs in the fleet, all data points, all the time is what HIGHWAY takes - not just the ELD attached to your load for the couple days. With this data, and a little bit of data crunching, they can get all the locations that a carrier loads at including my direct customers and other brokers. If @Fr8Guru has a customer location that they load out of 5X per day you can bet that HIGHWAY is selling that information to the highest bidder. All the big brokerages in the US, TQL, CHR, ECHO, RXO etc, will pay $$$ to have the leads of volume shippers/receivers. Of course, HIGHWAY maintains that they do not sell YOUR data but the data that comes from carriers who pay nothing is a different story and is free for the taking. It is so plain to see, and I don't understand how stupid some brokers are that they cannot see it and sign up for this.

We will not proceed with HIGHWAY if ELD is mandated by the broker or if the broker requires my staff to upload their personal driver's license just to log in. Just as a side note, one of my staff tried to block their personal home address on their DL by covering it with a post it. HIGHWAY did not allow the login to proceed. WTF??? Why do they need my employee's home address just to login? RMIS is fine, if you want to monitor my COI and FMCSA scores to report it to the broker, I am ok with, but this invasion of personal and corporate sensitive information is uncalled for.

As for GenLogs, yes, they may take a picture of a truck, but it is a lot harder to pinpoint exactly where that truck originated from or determine its destination. It is a totally different concept than GPS positions with 90cm accuracy every five minutes sitting in a data storage facility for some AI to churn out opportunities.

 

[loaders]

I couldn’t agree more with Jim L’s post. The unmonitored exchange of data is virtusually out of control, in spite of what the agencies collecting the data will tell you. Information like this is a valuable commodity and if there is a way to make a buck, selling it, manipulating it or categorizing it, someone will.

 

[Nawk]

I had a genlogs demo last week.

I found it "interesting" but certainly not a replacement to my current vetting process. It would be helpful to locate lost or stolen equipment. It might provide insight as to who really runs trucks in a jurisdiction (as opposed to who "says" they do),

Unfortunately, their Canada coverage is pretty much nonexistent at this time.

They are to get back to me with a cost...

If it's reasonable... I'll try it for a bit to use as an additional part of my process.

 

[thecanman]

Might look into genlogs. If you dont mind me asking, what is your process of vetting carriers?

I had a genlogs demo last week.

I found it "interesting" but certainly not a replacement to my current vetting process. It would be helpful to locate lost or stolen equipment. It might provide insight as to who really runs trucks in a jurisdiction (as opposed to who "says" they do),

Unfortunately, their Canada coverage is pretty much nonexistent at this time.

They are to get back to me with a cost...

If it's reasonable... I'll try it for a bit to use as an additional part of my process.

 

[ShipHapens]

I just had a broker question our crash rating due to Carrier411. FMSCA shows zero whereas Carrier411 shows 71% rating. Where do they get their information from? I tried to sign up and got denied due to being a carrier. I sent an email and got a bounce back to call them, which I did and got blocked that way as well.

 

[BrokenAxle]

Broker Snapshot is the best

 

[Nawk]

I just had a broker question our crash rating due to Carrier411. FMSCA shows zero whereas Carrier411 shows 71% rating. Where do they get their information from? I tried to sign up and got denied due to being a carrier. I sent an email and got a bounce back to call them, which I did and got blocked that way as well.

I work for a company that is both a carrier and a broker.

My main focus is the Broker part of our business...

When vetting carriers... I don't put too much weight on crashes... some platforms show all crashes that a carrier is involved in... while others... show crashes where the carrier was at fault (or issued a citation).

After going through the obvious check boxes (Insurance, WSIB, etc., etc.)

I look really deep into the unsafe driving violations To me...it speaks to driver training, and the type of people employed by the company. These violations tell the real story.

Then, Vehicle OOS levels (as a broker... these just lead to delays in transit).

Drugs / alcohol (for obvious reasons)

and then I look at the rest of the data points.

There's more to it, obviously... but I wouldn't get too much in a twist about your crash rate.

 

[BrokenAxle]

I do look at the crashes but like Nawk Said unless its the obvious Drugs and Alcohol or a carrier with 50% OOS rate I probably wouldn't use, what really is hard to do is asking if they have an experienced driver that can do the job if you have tricky deliveries.

 

[Mr Broker]

Hello,

I wanted to get some feedback from the community regarding carrier vetting services. Currently, my organization uses Carrier411 and RMIS to onboard and vet carriers. We’ve been considering switching to Highway, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling and the increased focus on carrier due diligence and fraud prevention.

For those who have used Highway, have you found it to be more effective for vetting carriers compared to Carrier411 or RMIS? Are there other platforms or processes you would recommend for stronger carrier vetting and compliance management?

I’d appreciate any insight or recommendations.

With RMIS I had a alot of fraud incidents. One even took me to small claims court because I caught them then decided not to pay them. I won the case after 6 months. One time one of them made a claim to my broker bond due to none payment because they were not the ones who delivered the freight thanks to our Customer that alarmed us that we were being double brokered. We were paying them $4800 for the shipment while they told the real carrier who delivered the load they will be paid $7800. All of this and many more stories Using RMIS. When we switched to Highway.. ZEROOOO fraud incidents. Especially when Highway made drivers upload ID and offer ELD support. This switch made a world of a difference. RMIS was good back in the day,,, but since Truckstop bought them they tanked. Then made it almost Impossible for me to leave them. That being said Highway may be expensive but from my experience dealing with Fraud incidents, court cases and Claims to your broker bond it worth the trade off. BTW we won the claim against the broker bond. Jesus is alive ... God is good..

 

[William]

Is there any other platform besides RMIS and Highway?
I just learned that RMIS does not validate Safety Fitness Certificates for intra-Canadian carriers and only monitors insurance for carriers operating solely within Canada. Is that correct?
It seems they don't have access to inspection data, safety ratings, or authority status for these carriers.

 

[AgentSmith]

@William there is no unified Canada only carrier safety rating tool. I'm an RMIS customer and I have a few issues with them so I reached out to Highway to ask a few preliminary questions before spending an hour on a demo.

Three weeks later still no answer on the questions; it has been a very frustrating experience. I wasted more time with them trying to get answers than sitting through a demo, the goofy part I'm prepared to switch carrier onboarding platforms but they dont want my money

 

[AgentSmith]

@ShipHapens Carrier411 pulls from the same data as everyone else, it is all the FMCSA, they connect via API.

DM me your company name (if you want to remain anonymous I understand) and I will look you up in Carrier411

Found this API that pulls basic carrier data

Swap out the DOT number for your own, I used ABF

data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?dot_number=82866

 

[carcomply]

For onboarding, we primarily use RMIS, along with Carrier411, SAFERWeb, and CarrierAssure. CarrierAssure is integrated with GenLogs, although that is an additional paid feature. It was actually really interesting to see the additional data available through that integration.

Carrier411 and CarrierAssure are fairly similar in the core data they provide, but they present it differently. Assure has a more of a rating system where they score carriers and compare their safety performance against similar carriers, rather than just providing the broader industry data you would see through Carrier411.

Assure also allows you to submit 'FreightGuard reports'. Those are anonymous, and you have to provide 'evidence' of the situation before the report will be posted, so there is a verification process to help prevent people from simply making false claims about anyone.

For intra-Canada carriers, unfortunately, we do rely a lot more on Google and Online reviews. We’ll look at Google reviews and often come here as well to get insight from other people’s experiences with a carrier.

We also go directly to the CVOR site to confirm the carrier has an active CVOR and to review their safety rating, if one is available.

The Canada Business Registry is another resource we use to confirm that the business entity is active, as well as to obtain their Business Number when needed for T4As. We’ve come across a few companies showing pending dissolution due to non-compliance, and those are generally carriers we tend to stay away from.

For carriers that have websites, we may also do some additional digging into the domain and website registration to see how long the domain has been established and how long the website appears to have been operational. It’s not a deciding factor by itself, but it can be another useful piece of the overall picture when determining how established a carrier actually is.

We sourced out what Highway has to offer within the last year and a half. From what we’ve seen, they seem to be pulling ahead in terms of their overall offerings, technology, and fraud-prevention capabilities. That said, I completely understand the concerns around their platform and privacy, so I can also understand why some companies may be hesitant to use them.

It’s definitely a little more challenging vetting Canadian carriers compared to U.S. carriers, so we’re always interested in hearing about additional resources or other people’s experiences.