Episode Highlights

Jeff Dickinson

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to this Weekend Trucking, the podcast that talks to real trucking professionals and gets seriously into the nitty gritty of what it takes to run a business in this industry. Today I’m joined by Jeff Dickinson. He is the president and CEO of RGTX Logistics Solutions and co-founder of the Freight Fraud Task Force.

Caroline: Thank you so much for being here, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Can’t wait for this conversation.

Caroline: Let’s get into it. What drew you to working in logistics and advocating against freight fraud?

Jeff: Yeah. That’s a two, that’s a two point question. So my wife got me involved into logistics. It wasn’t something that was on my my radar that I gotta work in logistics. I actually had a roofing company. I make a long story short back in 78, 79, I sold it. Didn’t know what I wanted to do. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, saw this job and said, Hey, crops of North America, which is owned by [00:01:00] Mullinax now, who is looking for a warehouseman?

Jeff: What do you think? Why not? The rest is history. I just started learning everything that I possibly could, became a sponge and. Knew that I didn’t want to be a warehouseman for the rest of my life. So I just kept on climbing and leveling up and started getting into these very complicated logistics operations, like putting myself in the harm’s way ’cause it’s in this industry it’s great to be uncomfortable, to be comfortable in order to learn more and.

Jeff: A lot of blood, sweat, and tears over the last 45 years for sure. And did I fail? Yeah, I failed miserably. And that’s how I learned, when you fall in your face, you gotta learn to pick yourself up and take a little bit of a beating. And I had great mentors, coaches, disciplinarians, very good disciplinarian.

Jeff: I used to get my butt kicked a lot, that’s all part of the journey in logistics. It’s very complicated. It’s very demanding. Every day you’ll get blindsided with a question or something that comes up that you least expected ’cause you’re not prepared. That’s how fast the [00:02:00] industry is moving.

Caroline: Tell me about when you learned about freight fraud. What was your first experience?

Jeff: I never had one. I’m being, and when I say that it, that’s why I started up and was a co-founder of the Freight Fraud Task Force in my 45 year career. I’ve never faced. Double brokering theft or any kind of deceptive practices that are out there? I never faced it and I didn’t. It’s what’s really interesting Caroline, is that back then we didn’t have the tools that we have today.

Jeff: They weren’t even thought of, they weren’t even a, a little blink of the eye or something that, you know. Hey, we gotta do this. It wasn’t back there. We didn’t have cell phones, we didn’t have anything. Just fax machines, and Nextels and all of that. And right now it’s fortunate but unfortunate.

Jeff: To double-edged sword. We have too much overlap in the industry when it comes to technology and fighting fraud. Everybody has their own perspective of how they want to fight against it. Unfortunately there’s a lot of content that’s out [00:03:00] there on LinkedIn. No names mentioned. But when I read that stuff, it’s actually creating loopholes and roadmaps for the bad guys in order to circumvent and find their workaround.

Jeff: It’s just like when a fraudster double broker, gets arrested and they go to court they’re in front of the judge and the judge starts asking questions and the defendants and all that, and they’re like how did he get caught? We did this and we were watching them for that, and we had patrols over here.

Jeff: That’s like a roadmap that’s a loophole because usually they bring in their entourage of people that sit in the courtroom with them and they’re like, aha, you know what? That’s how he did it. And so they just keep on reinventing themselves and finding those little holes, nook and crannies to slide right in there and take advantage of it, the freight fraud task force. Covers all areas of the industry. If you name it, we’re there. We we’re still building it. As a matter of fact, we just got legal. We had just legalized, we have lawyers we have legal [00:04:00] representation. The current board and their members being directors of certain divisions within the freight fraud task force.

Jeff: We have over 420 years worth of experience. That’s a lot of experience, and, we’re building it we’re continuously building it. And we meet about twice a week. The founders meet on a Tuesday, and then the members and directors meet on on a Thursday. And then we just discuss the the strategies on what we’re going to do.

Jeff: We don’t talk about how we do it, we talk about our achievements because we don’t wanna let the bad guys out there, which we call the scumbags. You’ve probably heard that before too, and that, that’s pretty much it on that side.

Caroline: So how do you thread that needle then? Because you don’t wanna give the bad guys too many ideas, but from my perspective, I wanna let carriers know what they should be looking out for when they’re booking freight, right? Something as simple as go to their website, check out the phone number that they have posted, call them.

Caroline: Make sure that the load is legitimate, make sure it’s actually [00:05:00] from them. That kind of advice, I think is pretty foolproof. You’re not gonna, there’s not a workaround that someone’s gonna be able to, hack the phone system of the whole brokerage. But, so I wonder how, what are some of the advice or educational.

Caroline: Nuggets that you wanna leave carriers with that doesn’t compromise what you’re trying to do with the freight fraud task

Jeff: That’s a great question. That was a golden that you just said, basically. Our vision is to foster a safe, transparent, and compliant freight industry through investigation, evaluation, education, and collaboration. We vet all these carriers that come to us, because it could be a bad guy out there, a fraudulent carrier that’s trying to find out information.

Jeff: So we’ll do facial recognition. We’ll do the big background check on them dig in, see if they have any freight guards on them or anything. You name it. We’ll research it before we give that information out. If they’re a good guy and they wanna know how to [00:06:00] protect themselves, then we’ll do like webinars and we will do face to face we’ll do podcasts all that just to help them out.

Jeff: On the education side where we’ll go right there and we’ll talk about what kind of problems are you having? And then we’ll send the SME the subject matter expert in that specific area of the freight fraud task force. Because we wanna hire, it’s not it’s volunteer, right? So we’re not really hiring.

Jeff: It’s people who have the same passion as we do that wants to drive out the bad guys. So those people will take their committee or subcommittee members, whoever they may be. And they’ll go there because they know that better than anybody else. We want people who are smarter than us. On that’s the only way that you’re gonna succeed, right?

Jeff: And plus we get to learn that in a collaborative effort as a whole, the people that are running the freight fraud task force. They’re learning from each other and they’re asking those questions, I didn’t know that. Or whatever. And we talk about that. We’re like, so how?

Jeff: Where’s our strategy where we don’t have to tell people how [00:07:00] we do it, but. They get that information. So that’s part of it. What we do. There’s another thing too. We were on WFAA, which is a affiliate of WABC, news where we uncovered PPO bs, which is a principle place of business in Texas and other areas as well, where there were like almost 700 companies that were.

Jeff: That were working out of a very small building, not so good, we’re working directly with the F-M-C-S-A. We’re trying to make changes. We are we are going national. When I say national, we’re gonna have a point person in every single state that has direct relationships or contact with the governor, Senator, Congressman.

Jeff: To help us push the narrative, not in one state, but all the states, because the more coverage that we have, the more that we’re able to push our narrative and what we’re all about. Plus to get those sponsors, the big hitters, the insurance companies, one guy who’s on our our force Tommy Rook.

Jeff: You can look him up, if you will. He started the M-C-I-E-F, which is the Motor Carrier [00:08:00] Information Education Foundation. He’s been in the business for 60 years, so he is a, he’s a co-founder as well on the insurance side of it. And I know you’re in a factory company and all of that I’m sure that you talk to each other, not specifically Tommy, but it’s a big impact on the insurance company because.

Jeff: All those deceptive practices and fraudulent activities that are out there, trickle down to you and I, who we are, the consumers. So you figure with all the advanced technology and your tools today.

Jeff: That are even attacking, cybersecurity as well, right? ‘ cause you got the digitalization of of freight now, where you’re getting the attacks through the net and that they’re getting that crucial data and they’re forging bill ladings and all this other kind of stuff.

Jeff: So the thing is that it’s. It’s tough. I don’t want to, I don’t want to go to the full extent of it, but it’s difficult. It’s difficult to say the least on that.

Jeff: The biggest question that I ask everybody out there is. If your tools are so good, why is it escalating? [00:09:00] Why is it escalating? Alright? Because if you’re on top of that and you’re really having an impact, it should be deescalating, then escalating to monumental figures out there that are just beyond, it just blows your mind. It’s just crazy. So what’s happening? What, what’s happening? What are they trying to do that they’re not actually doing?

Caroline: And I, it reminds me a little bit about, say you’re on a boat and your boat gets a leak, and water starts rushing in. You can invent a bucket, but if the water is rushing in so much faster than the bucket can pour the water out, you’re gonna sink.

Caroline: So those tools that we have, they are, they might be part of it, but they’re clearly not sufficient.

Caroline: And actually one of the most low tech tools is something that we at Bobtail will just use as evidence. When carriers do get caught up in fraudulent situations, we, if we learn about it fast enough, we can call the real [00:10:00] broker and say, Hey. That person that you’ve been in touch with, they didn’t deliver your load.

Caroline: Our guy delivered the load. And you know how I know because there’s only one person in the world right now that has the physical copy of the BOL, and it’s my guy, not your guy.

Jeff: Yeah.

Caroline: here’s the proof of that, and that’s actually even the lowest tech part of it. It’s who has the physical piece of paper and how do you prove that?

Jeff: Yeah. That’s just the whole thing, when you, because I’ve worked for enterprise shippers most of my life. I’ve, I was on that side for 37 years and I. I never had anything that was stolen because of what I implemented and safeguard. When the drivers came in we took a picture, of them. We took a picture of the back of the truck with the product in there and we had them sign the bill of Laden. We had them count the freight the chimney blocks that were in each pallet. They had a list. We gave ’em a form and they, this pallet, 1 35 boxes to, if we had ’em [00:11:00] count everything, because our freight were so expensive.

Jeff: Some of the loads were two to $3 million. Loads. That’s, that, that’s a lot. You talk about geofencing, you talk about reroute designs. Even though you’re going to the same ee you wouldn’t go down the same road twice. You would do a workaround. You wouldn’t leave at the same time every single day, or different days.

Jeff: Geofencing, make sure that your gas tanks are completely filled, the filled that you went to the bathroom, that you can’t stop within 250 miles. That when you go out there you do pre-check inspections on your trucks. Walk around with my dock supervisor, put the seal on the back of the truck, do the snap test on, and make sure that it is right, seal on tact on the back, on the bill of lading, with the number on it.

Jeff: Yeah, there’s so many different things that, that you can do, to prevent the fraud from happening. Checking their VIN numbers on their accord insurance policy. Looking at driver’s license. There’s just I could just ramble on and on, but those are some of the [00:12:00] type of preventative messages that you can implement as a shipper to protect yourself.

Jeff: That’s like a lost art because a lot of the shippers out there, their primary focus is on saving money. Saving money. They don’t vet the carriers that the way that they should, because let’s face it, there’s those bad guys that are out there that are doing the cheap freight.

Jeff: They’re the iffy kind guys,

Caroline: saving money in the sense that it’s very short term.

Jeff: Yeah. And plus they don’t they’re doing it for so cheap that they’re neglecting the periodic maintenance on their vehicles and pushing it, again, another insurance problem, a nuclear verdict, a thermo nuclear verdict, like the one that’s down in Texas, $460 million verdict.

Jeff: That things are, that are preventable. You have to, you take the thing in this industry, Caroline, is this, is that deceptive people will do deceptive things in desperate times. That, that’s a fact. We are in a desperate time right now. The economy is sunk. People need to put food on their [00:13:00] table.

Jeff: If they got an offer that they can’t refuse, they might bite. They, they might bite. Another thing is, you know what a TWIC card is as well, right? Yep. Tw, it’s transportation worker identification card, right? So you have brokers out there. What’s the definition of a transportation worker, right?

Jeff: A transportation worker. Is anybody that touches freights or moves freight or does any kind of operations around freight? My idea, and I’ll be more than happy to share this, and I just had a conversation with a senator last night. In New Jersey and I said we should level down, not level up. Level down means to the broker level, not to the brokerages, and have them issued those brokers TWIC cards, it’s identification card that they can be able to put those numbers on each transaction so you know who’s accountable for that specific issue, if it went to double brokering or if it’s a theft, or any kind of deceptive practice.

Jeff: That card, facial recognitions, whatever [00:14:00] EV is right on that bill of LA and is on that transaction. So you can, it’s like tracking a fraudulent activity from Asia or Europe or whatever, where you can track that IP address, where it came from. There’s just so many different ways.

Jeff: I hate to use this thing, but I always do. The skin a cat, you have to really outthink the thinkers. If you’ve been in the business and you have that practical experience, and not to say I know it all, I don’t, I learn every single day that comes into play and with the freight fraud task force and we have over 400, four oh years of experience, when you look at that practical experience of being in the trenches.

Jeff: Working at those places and understanding the mechanisms and how they work, whether it’s in factoring or if it’s manufacturing distribution the intricacies of logistics mechanisms, how they turn and burn every single day from the inside out rather than the outside in. ‘ cause it’s unfortunate, but a lot of the brokers out there, 95 plus have never even been in a warehouse, have never that, brokers and [00:15:00] shippers.

Jeff: In most cases never met, they never had a handshake, they never saw each other. It’s it’s been on a phone, so you, by due diligence, you really have to take those precautionary steps in order to save your brand image and reputation. And I say that all the time because when you load a truck if you were a broker or a factoring company and you allowed this kind of stuff, your brand, your image, and your reputations inside that truck. Everybody that touched that truck, that put that carrier in place. ‘ cause remember, the initiation of fraud starts at a shipper anywhere in the world. That’s what starts the process. So if you’re not on top of your game and you’re not asking these pertinent questions and follow ups to make sure that he or she is who they say they are, when they back up.

Jeff: You’re in deep trouble. You’re in deep trouble more now than ever before.

Caroline: Talk to me a little bit about the solution of the TWIC card. This is really interesting. How is that different from an mc number, A DOT number? Because part of the [00:16:00] problem, from what I can tell, is that it’s so easy to get your authority, like there’s almost no barrier to getting it. How would a TWIC card be different than that?

Jeff: Thew cards were for the ports and all that. That’s when they, that’s some time ago. So when you think about that, you show your identification and it’s this is you here’s your number driver’s license. All that is all part of it. When you implement, a lot of good companies get a bad name.

Jeff: When, yeah. They hired that person to represent them, but they didn’t do it. The company didn’t actually do it. They’re just an accessory to it. When I say that is that they’re guilty by association. They didn’t physically do that. So the CEO, the CFO, the president of that company, not all are engaged with the lower level people.

Jeff: I hate saying that, but that’s what they are.

Caroline: So a TW would be on the level of an individual,

Jeff: correct

Caroline: not on the company. So the company has an auth, has an

Jeff: no. Everybody would be [00:17:00] like, get a certification, get a direct card and then any transaction, that identification number would be on every single transaction that they do from the time they get that that call. To the time that they process and book that load and go.

Jeff: So anything that happens between the initiation of the load being presented to the broker, to the time that they book it, to the time the receiver receives whatever they’re receiving, right? There’s a track, there’s a trace to that, and that puts that person who’s doing the booking on high alert because.

Jeff: Either they get ahead what I’m, I want to implement is a heavy fine, or they get banned from the industry for the rest of their life. Because when you think about it, it’s a huge fraudulent activity. If they’re on, not on top of their game and not doing what they’re supposed to do by due diligence, they should be they should be, they should pay a penalty for that.

Jeff: They really should. And if they know that from the get go when they get hired, it’s gonna bring down that level of, I [00:18:00] wonder if I could do that. It will be not a

Caroline: It just totally raises

Jeff: It’s raise the bar saying I may get a $50,000 fine for doing something like

Jeff: So have to bring it, like I said, you have to bring the level of security down.

Jeff: To who is doing the work, who’s doing that

Caroline: the ground.

Jeff: And it’s just another step on that, ’cause I’m an ethical broker. I’m freight validated. I have facial recognition, background check, all that, I’m honest. My integrity and transparency is first and foremost. I’ll tell you what you want to hear and what you don’t want to hear, but a lot of people.

Jeff: Don’t have that. They, a lot of people, unfortunately, I can’t say when they’re wrong, because it’s it’s not part of their upbringing or whatever. They’ll fight till the end kind of thing. And that’s not the way, that’s an unethical approach to doing business.

Jeff: So now you gotta put the, you gotta put those those barriers up. That saying, no, you can’t do that. You’re unable to do this, and here’s why. I just wanna let you know that you come in here, you get in a twit card, and if you do any fraudulent [00:19:00] activities, we’re gonna be able to trace that back to you as the one that booked this freight.

Jeff: And by the way, if you’re found guilty, it’s a $20,000 fine. Whatever. Just throw something out there that’s gonna make me go, whoa. I thought this was gonna be serious stuff. And I’m just throwing this stuff out. That’s the way that we think. ‘ cause we have to outthink the thinkers.

Jeff: Sometimes you have to think like a thief. If I’m gonna steal something, how am I gonna do that?

Caroline: Yeah.

Jeff: And then play out, play out the scenario. It’s just I’m a proactive, a problem solver, meaning that I’ll proactively think of an issue that’s going to come up my whole career.

Jeff: What am I gonna do if this happened? Because I, the way I think is that if you’re a proactive thinker who looks at the abnormalities that might come up, it’s better to be proactive than reactive. If you’re reactive and the water’s over the dam, you’ve lost it. You lost it. So that comes again with practical experience, not everybody has that.

Jeff: It takes time. You’re not gonna learn that from the get go. But [00:20:00] that’s how different people think of different things. It’s what are the possibilities of this? And like we talked in the green room before, before we did the show. It’s like this industry. You get blindsided every single day.

Jeff: It, every day is different. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but something’s going to happen. That’s a guarantee every single day something is going to happen. It’s how you react to that issue and how fast you can resolve it. That’s gonna prevent a lot of issues. Not just for that day, but even for the following days after that.

Jeff: So that’s why we think about this kind of stuff. And a lot of people in the freight fraud task force has that same mentality and passionate about that, and that’s when we start collaborating, we start thinking about that and saying, that’s not a really good idea. That’s a pretty damn good idea.

Jeff: When we start going with that flow.

Caroline: If you were starting a trucking business, let’s say within the last year, a lot of the times brokers won’t wanna work with someone who doesn’t have at least six months or 12 months on their authority. What advice would [00:21:00] you have for new carriers that are trying to get started? They’re having to wade through all of these new requirements that they have to get over in order to actually start doing business and doing good business.

Caroline: What are some of the ways that they can protect their business but also stay above water?

Jeff: Be honest with you, I wouldn’t start one right now. I just I, this is not a good time to do it, and I’ll use it as an example during COVID. Lot of people jumped on the bandwagon ‘ cause a lot of people made a lot of money. A lot of money. And they bought high ’cause they thought they were, it’s, it was just going to keep on going down the road and that they were just going to, their bank accounts were gonna be overflowing with cash and then something happened.

Jeff: We’ve been in this freight recession for a few years now and it squeezed out. And a lot of carriers, a lot of carriers went bankrupt, turning their keys, sold their trucks still in debt because they bought high and everything. They didn’t know how to budget their money in order to go over the obstacles and [00:22:00] barriers that every carry out there.

Jeff: Go through and they thought short term, not long term. And we’re in long term. Now we don’t know when that cycle’s really going to end, last year I was saying that second quarter of this year, now we’re hearing the third quarter, even in the first quarter of 2026, it’s a hard industry to, to break in right now and then, I know a little bit about this, but some of the biggest things that I know is that when you get your CDL license, the number one test on the test, on the test in order to get a CDL license is the pre pre-test or pre Yeah. Pre-check inspection on your vehicles. And a lot of these guys out there think it’s one and done, but they don’t have to do it after they, they get them on the test.

Jeff: Hate the break. Break the news, but that is a

Caroline: It’s pre every trip, inspection

Jeff: Every time you bang, every time that you, every time you bang that door, you have to do a pre-check inspection, not at your terminal, and then just take off

Caroline: [00:23:00] right?

Jeff: you can pick up road hazards, anything on those tires or anything on the way en route to that warehouse.

Caroline: No, it’s every time you’re turning on that engine.

Jeff: Every time. Every time before you haul E, every time at the shipper’s door, when you bang that door, you have to do a pre-check inspection, and then you have to fill out DVIR, which is F-M-C-S-A 49 CFR 3 9 6 0.1, which is the DVIR. And then the pre-check inspection, which is a mandatory requirement from F-M-C-S-A, which is.

Jeff: 49 CFR 3 9, 2 0.7, right? That says you have to check, do a mandatory pre-check inspection on these eight components. That’s like the major ones that you’re supposed to. You have to make sure that your truck is roadworthy before you roll. And here’s the statistic. That would just blow your mind. So at any given day, there’s over 5 million trucks on our [00:24:00] highways, okay?

Jeff: Out of those 5 million trucks, 21.6 of them have been labeled OOS or Unroadworthy? Unroadworthy. So OOS is outta service. That means that one in five trucks out there that you pass on the highway could virtually kill you. Just think about how many trucks when you’re on the highway and you pass them every fifth one could just have a major mechanical issue or tire blowing out and take you and your family out.

Jeff: That’s a major concern of mine, and I want mandatory fines on that, like big fines, not like your first offense is 1,655. Do that’s. Garbage. That’s a slap on your wrist. These guys are driving 80,000 pound missiles out there that can just cause disaster. And the thing is, even with all the catastrophic events that are out there, and the accidents, the way I look at it is it always takes a catastrophic event to change someone’s mind.

Jeff: They could be like, oh, I’m not gonna do it. Never, ever happened until it [00:25:00] happens. And I hate to say it, if a driver’s out there and he has a family and he knows that his family was just killed by another driver out there in the same business as him, because when the forensic investigators go out there and they look at the tires and they see a drive tire blew out.

Jeff: And they look at the guy’s forged pre-check inspection and he says, this guy just did a pre-check inspection and he said he had this depth in his tire. He ran 250 miles out and he’s got bald tires. Phone nuclear verdict or thermo nuclear verdict, close down a company. It, it trickles down to dispatchers and owners of the company that should enforce these mandated rules and regulations that the drivers supposed to do every single day.

Jeff: If drivers are getting into the business and they think they don’t need to do anything, just get behind the wheel, steer it and collect money, they’re in the wrong business. So

Caroline: Absolutely. What do you think are some of the drivers of that mindset? Because I know that [00:26:00] enough about this industry. Certainly not an expert, but have worked in enough industries to know that everything is about how the system works. So it’s not necessarily just one bad actor, and it’s not a necessarily a moral failing of any one person, but it’s a whole system that incentivizes people to try and deliver goods as quickly and cheaply as possible, and there’s a lot of cost in that.

Jeff: Ton of costs. It’s, when they’re just getting by, when you think about that, like a $2 break even per mile they don’t, they’re not making enough money. To buy a set of tires and they’re like, Ooh, yeah, you know what? I’m gonna wait until I get to California from New Jersey.

Jeff: I’m gonna, I’m, they push it. They’re pushing a bar out there so far. And when I see drivers like that, I said, you know what, they’re irresponsible people. They’re irresponsible for themselves, their family. The fellow American, the shipper, the broker, their business owner.

Jeff: When [00:27:00] you think about that, right? Because how can you be a responsible person if you’re not taking those additional steps as mandated by F-M-C-S-A and also on the state level as well, to do these pre-check inspections and they don’t do it. If you can’t afford to run your truck and run it right.

Jeff: Invest into your equipment, especially the owner operators, the owner operators, they have a higher probability of doing that. But when you’re working for an individual, I’ve even heard drivers say that and say this, I don’t get, I don’t get paid. I don’t get paid to do that. Really, you don’t get paid to do that.

Jeff: So you want, you wanna risk your life and. Take the food off your family’s table because you don’t get paid to do the pre-check inspection. You’re not gonna do it. That’s, come on guys. I don’t know that, to me, that’s really irritating. It happens out there, and it’s not a single incident.

Jeff: It happens all the time. I was just talking to a couple drivers on one of my friend’s podcast and he says, no, it’s just not happening at at a warehouse or a shipper. It’s happening at truck [00:28:00] stops. Any place, these guys are not doing it. When I say, let me reframe, women and men are not doing it. And it takes 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes to do a walk around and just check out the, the things that you can see. We’re not asking you to go and break down the engine and do all this other kind of stuff. No, the tires, the brakes, the lights horn, windshield wipers, just those kind of things.

Jeff: It, it doesn’t take that long, when something’s. Operational when things are not operational and the mandate says that you, your equipment has to be in operational order, in order to move that freight, that things have to be in order and working as they should in order to protect yourself and the people around you and the product.

Jeff: And like I mentioned earlier all stakeholders that are around that. And it’s, it just blows my mind. It just blows my mind. I don’t know why.

Caroline: when you’re onboarding or gonna work with a new carrier. With your business, what are some of the questions you ask? What are the some, what are some of the things that you [00:29:00] check for to make sure that this company has a culture of doing the pre-trip inspection, doing everything that they’re supposed to be doing.

Caroline: Making sure that they’re not gonna double, cross or double broker. What are some of the things that you’re asking and looking out for when working with those carriers?

Jeff: quick. Some of my connections that may have used that carrier that comes in highly recommended cause we do that. And they’re trustworthy. I would do that. Apologize. I would do that. I use freight validate vetting tool. On that. I did some be beta testing on a lot of different tools out there.

Jeff: And if one vetting tool says one thing, I’ll back it up with another to see if it’s consistent and if they’re saying the same thing some or have overkill, which I love, when you have a trailing documentations that, that take the emotion out of the decision making and it says it is or isn’t.

Jeff: You’re looking at data saying, this one did this, it’s c, s, a scores, all this other kind of stuff. And you look at another one, it just says, unapproved, [00:30:00] you will. Why? Or approved like I’ve ran into it where one vetting said, approved, no trailing documents or anything on that statistic wise or anything like that.

Jeff: And I look at another one that said unapproved. This guy did this and did this. Here’s the documentation on that. Yeah there’s a lot of different things. Like way back in the day we met each other carriers. I used to have a ton of carriers, like well over a thousand carriers at that time, and I met.

Jeff: A plethora of them. And we went to lunch handshake, that emotional intelligence of being able to see them and when they’re looking in your eye and you’re having that cordial conversation and you know that they’re telling the truth and you get that firm shake, handshake, it was like an ironclad contract without the contract being written.

Jeff: Never had any kind of problems, now. You’ve got a lot of, I’ll say illegals or people coming into the business that have ill intentions that steal mc numbers or buy mc numbers in the black market. [00:31:00] And try to get away with that. Changing their registrations constantly all the time.

Jeff: If they get caught. They get a brand new MC number on a whole different name and a whole different location. You have to be able to follow it. You have to have that doc, that documentation and be able to dive into that to see that trail. Oh, this

Caroline: And be consistent, right?

Jeff: But it, this person was with this company and he owned it.

Jeff: Now he’s affiliated with this one, and now you got this one here and this is a newly registered one, but this guy already had a company just closed it down. Those are the kind of things that you have to really delve into. You get underneath the weeds, and like I said earlier,

Caroline: And this guy’s been based in three different major American cities in the last year. What? What’s that about?

Jeff: And the thing is, like I said, it’s a brand image and reputation that’s at stake with every single shipment. And knock on wood, I could get screwed tomorrow, and because I let my, I let my barriers down and it’s just nothing’s going to happen to me, and then boom, but I’ve been, knock [00:32:00] on wood, I’ve been very fortunate, just because you talk to a carrier, you have to talk to ’em multiple times, and then look at the owners. And you could, you could, a lot of ’em are on LinkedIn. You could look ’em up on Safer Web.

Jeff: You can, you could go you could go to many different sources to double check, and that’s why it’s highly important that if you have a big business, that you hire really good procurement, manager. Or support staff that has been in the business the whole time that have a book of carriers, not a book of business, but a book of carriers that they’ve done business with that are fully vetted.

Jeff: And the other thing too I must add is just because they’re vetted and good today doesn’t mean they’ll be the same tomorrow. Even if you’ve known them, they could have an incident that they didn’t tell you about that. If their CSA scores went down, why? But if you didn’t check on that and you put ’em out there and they get into another accident that’s on you because you didn’t do the vetting properly, you didn’t look into all areas of the possibilities where issues could come up and you have to be on top of your game constantly all the [00:33:00] time.

Jeff: You do, you know that you can’t let your blinders down. You can’t walk. And have tunnel vision. You can’t, you have that, you gotta look at the big pictures again, that comes with the practical experience and the things that you may have seen or watched part of, that you don’t want to be part of speaking, that we can’t do that.

Jeff: Here’s the reason why. That never happened to me because it never happened to you, but there’s a possibility that it could happen to you and these are the additional steps that you need to take and you need to take ’em every single day or at least once a week or whatever,

Caroline: and I think all of this applies back. From the carrier vetting the brokers that they’re working with too,

Jeff: oh, yeah. They have to, yeah. Yeah. Ab absolutely. Carriers should vet brokers, brokers should vet shippers because not all shippers are good shippers, right? Shippers should be vetting their assets if they’re going directly to the asset carriers through background checks on the brokers that they’re doing business with.

Jeff: Look at their profiles. Do they have the practical [00:34:00] experience and background? Have they ever worked in a warehouse? Do they know logistics? How long they had been in there? What are their niches? It just goes on and on. And when I was in their position, that’s what I used to do.

Jeff: When I went out to brokers or assets. I wanna know who they were, who my rep was. If my rep was the guy that was gonna take care of my business, or if he was gonna hand it off to somebody I never met. There’s so many different things and steps that you can take. And again, if I was a shipper, I was a shipper.

Jeff: You wanna know who you’re doing, you’re partnering with, cause it’s like a family. Hopefully they’re gonna be there for long term. So you got to get to know them if you’re using a factory company, not all factoring companies are good factoring companies, so

Caroline: are not.

Jeff: So you have to vet your factoring companies as well.

Jeff: It. They could run with your money too. They could hold off paying you as well. They could just be a run of the night that just came overseas, that just opened up a business and have no plans to operate past three months and just raking the cash for three months and adios, they’re gone.

Jeff: Just vanish. These are the things you have to do. So many things you [00:35:00] have to do in logistics. That’s crazy.

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Talk to me about some of the tech that you like working with when you’re working with carriers. So things like tracking, we talked a little bit about these tools that are not enough in to completely do away with all freight fraud, but that certainly help and give you some semblance of evidence that your freight’s going where it needs to go.

Jeff: Yeah. There’s so many different ones out there. I’m not gonna promote them and stuff like that, but it all depends on you get to vet them as well. What are you looking for? Every company doesn’t have the same kind of abilities as everybody else, right? Some have are nichey, some don’t doing one thing, then the other, and you can’t have multiple tracking kind of thing.

Jeff: It’s just, it’s an overkill, it’s not money being spent. So you have to have those conversations with those tracking companies as far as. Are they, are you seeing eye to eye with them? Are they [00:36:00] gonna be able to meet your requirements? Even with geofencing and all this other kind of stuff that you that you need, especially on high value, high risk shipments that are out there that could be very costly if you happen to make a mistake.

Jeff: If it’s big business, you want to meet them, you want them to come over to your company and have a sit down and start discussing so they can learn more about your business. You can learn more about their business. What’s, what would work, what wouldn’t work. Just because you want tracking, you don’t want to jump into the fire and saying, that sounds good.

Jeff: I’ll start working with you. No, it’s not that easy, especially when you’ve got million dollar loads, it doesn’t matter any kind of load that you’re doing whatever needs tracking. You should vet them also.

Caroline: And if you were running a, let’s say you’re running a small fleet today. You’ve got a couple years under your belt. That’s the, a lot of people that we are working with at Bobtail, they’ve got a couple of trucks, maybe they have up to 10. Trucks that they’re operating they are, they’ve got, at least a year under their belt. What are the main things that you would [00:37:00] be focusing on as a small carrier to land solid, profitable freight?

Jeff: Boy, if I was in that position, I’d be asking a lot of questions. On the shipper, there’s, a lot of fraudulent activity happens between that when you’re trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes and you’re not really telling them how the operation works and the hours and oh, it only takes an hour to load you up, and they’re thinking, oh, that’s not long.

Jeff: So we can give ’em a better, price on the shipment and then takes two or three hours to load, hours of operation. Do you have, I have, and I won’t bring it out, but I have 169 point checklist. For shippers to fill out that I would have them fill it out and I’d be totally transparent.

Jeff: This is what the shipper gave me and I would send it off to the carrier. We’re looking at apples to apples rather than apples to oranges and what to expect. And then when they come back and they give me the rate and I go back no. This is what you gave me. So I gave them in order to give you a good rate [00:38:00] because now they know what to expect, like to drop trailers and picking up at midnight or two o’clock in the morning, it’s not a three o’clock in the afternoon, I’ll be home. See you in a little bit, honey. That kind of deal, it’s like those are the type of things and when they lie and say that a shipment only weighs.

Jeff: 28,000 pounds and it actually weighs 44,000 pounds. Because they’re trying to decrease their cost and it’s, oh yeah. But you know what? We had this last minute thing. I figured I had a, a 53 footer. I know I could go to 44. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and they put more stuff on it, that kind of stuff happens all the time,

Caroline: what is your response to that when you, maybe you’ve got your customers that don’t, that just don’t do that, but it sounds like that’s something that you’ve dealt with in the past, what is it that, how do you respond to something like that? Do you not know how physics works?

Jeff: It’s not that. The thing is that I don’t lie, when I went, let’s see. Many years ago I was working for this company and the CEO asked me to change the classification on a bill [00:39:00] lading. Because if you have a classification of say, 400, that’s light and that’s more expensive.

Jeff: On that the lower the rate classification, you start getting a little bit more density and all that, you get better freight rates on that. So the stuff that was getting shipped was like class 300. And he goes, no, I want you to put it as 77.5. This isn’t that, cause it’s gonna go through wait and inspection when you put that on there and then you can get red flagged.

Jeff: Then they’re not gonna wanna pick up your products or anything. So I actually went into the CEO office. This was long drawn up, but I’m trying to make it simple. And I said told him, Hey John, y you can’t do this or whatever. I don’t care. I pay you the money and if I want you to do it, you’re going do it.

Jeff: And I said, I quit. I said, I know I’m gonna be doing this for the rest of my life and I’m not gonna put any fraudulent stuff on it ’cause my name’s on that. My name is on that building. You can’t do that. I said, I sure can. And you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna tell the Kerry exactly what you’re doing.

Jeff: Then I did, I’m very transparent. And next thing they cut off the valve on him and nobody was going in there until [00:40:00] he changed his practices. And I learned a lot of stuff back there and I don’t know how to really. Answer your question because I was on the shipper’s side.

Jeff: I never did that to anybody. They’d never had that problem. I have recommendations from many different carriers on my LinkedIn profile that, that say who I am, that would back me up. I treated everybody very fairly, and a lot of them were friends. That’s the kind of relationship that we built.

Jeff: We didn’t build it for the day, we built it long term for many years. That because they, they learned and understood how I operated and I knew exactly how they operated. So it was like a match made in heaven, and we didn’t, we never really had any problems with that. But today, the, with a lack of training out there and all of that, and the high pressure to save money.

Jeff: Like I said, desperate people do desperate things, in, in really bad conditions. So it’s, it’s, I can’t really answer that ’cause I was never in that, I would say if I was a [00:41:00] carrier, you really need to check the amount. Like I said, vet your shippers. There’s a thing that we used to use in the past, which was a preferred shipper.

Jeff: And a preferred carrier. You get that status by being honest. It’s just like when you have overseas shipment and it comes into the port and you’re, you have your origin and you’re supposed to itemize everything to tell what is in what carton. And if you’re don’t, if you don’t have the right stuff in the right carton, they red flag you.

Jeff: Every shipment that comes in from overseas will be tagged. Inspection. It’s gonna cost you a lot of money with the steamship lines that are out there that you know are moving your product. ‘ cause it’s holding up, it’s holding up the business. ‘ cause you have to get in, inspect.

Jeff: It’s the same, it’s the same thing. Don’t try to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes and I think you, you’re gonna save some money. It’s gonna cost you a lot of money in the long run. It’s just like cheap freight. And I have this thing in the back there. It says cheapest is the most expensive way to conduct business.

Jeff: Because if you want to save $700 on a [00:42:00] load, it only takes one catastrophic event to close your business. And that $700 savings is gonna be the most expensive savings that you’ve ever spent. ‘ cause it could be millions of dollars. So do you want to take that risk? Do you want to qualify? You want a quality broker with.

Jeff: A high quality carrier that getting paid fairly, that’s going to do exactly what you want and be delivered on time. That’s the question of any owner out there who’s a shipper that wants service and know that their business is secured. Every time that you move it with that carrier, that’s what you have to think and it’s.

Jeff: To me, it’s not a risk worth taking to try to save money and to dive to the bottom in. In this. I’m not going to, I know what my value is. I won’t devalue my value. I was on their side and I have arguments with shippers a lot of times, and it’s just like they try to act like they know more than I, it’s like, how long you been doing it for?

Jeff: I’ve been doing it for 37 years for X, Y, Z company, and I talk to them because I can talk to them on that language. And that’s what they pay me to [00:43:00] do. They are literally paying me to tell ’em when they’re wrong. ‘ cause it’s my job as a service provider to protect them at all costs.

Jeff: And a lot of people out there don’t understand that. They don’t, they just think of profits over, over service’s. Terrible.

Caroline: Short term profits.

Jeff: That’s all. It’s not long term.

Caroline: Here ’cause they’re not with that kind of mentality, you’re never gonna have long-term

Caroline: Profits.

Jeff: Yep.

Caroline: Jeff, thank you so much. Is there anything else that we didn’t talk about today that you would like to impart on our carrier au audience?

Jeff: No. Just one thing that, we talked earlier about the freight fraud task force. We are growing. We have a lot of directors that are on board also in Canada as well. We have a team that are taking, our narrative and going to do it in Canada. Keep following the freight fraud task force.

Jeff: Follow myself, Jeff Dickinson on LinkedIn for updates on that. A lot of changes are gonna happen in the very near future. We won’t tell you how we’re doing it, but we’ll tell you about our achievements and if you have that passion in drive like my team [00:44:00] has and you want to defeat. Freight fraud on a national level on all ends.

Jeff: And you want to join us, please reach out to us if you have the experience level and you want to serve a great organization and nonprofit. One, with a bunch of great people highly trained people with a lot of experience. I’ll be happy to talk to you and we’d love to have you on the team. The more the merrier.

Jeff: And that goes for vetting companies out there too. If you wanna collaborate with us and join forces, reach out. You can talk to any one of my co-founders and any of my my directors on, like I said, we have many divisions that we’re gonna cover. And we’re gonna take care of every single point.

Jeff: In fraud. We really will.

Caroline: Amazing. Thank you so much, Jeff. Really appreciate you coming on the show.

Jeff: Thanks for having me. I’d love to come back again if you have me.

Caroline: Let’s do it. All right. Thanks everybody, and drive safe.