ATLANTA — Jordan Graft sees a lot of corruption, bad actors and fraudsters in the trucking industry.
“People used to be able to hire a carrier based on three emails, passing a rules assessment and an insurance certification and that’s just not possible anymore. The world’s just changed,” Graft, founder and CEO of Highway, said at FreightWaves’ Future of Supply Chain event.
Graft was joined on stage Wednesday by FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller in a discussion titled “Trucking Fraud and Cybercrime Briefing.”
“We see fraud at almost every layer, whether it’s the insurance: Whether it’s the ELD layer, whether it’s email phishing, fraud is everywhere. They’re trying to get in at every point of access of a freight broker,” Graft said.
Dallas-based Highway is focused on solving the digital identity problem in the trucking industry. The firm aims to remove risk and friction between brokers and carriers by being an onboarding provider with a carrier identity engine.
Identity theft, double brokering and other types of fraud are costing the trucking industry over $100 million annually, according to experts.
Fraud and carrier identification must be addressed through layers of security, Graft said.
“You have to have a multilayered solution that’s looking at not just does this carrier pass my overall company’s rules assessment, but what type of freight am I willing to give that carrier?” Graft said. “That’s the evolution that I think is the most fundamentally changing of what Highway is. Now we’re saying, OK, they may pass, but this carrier doesn’t get access to consumer electronic loads out of Southern California, or they don’t get access to high-value loads for this shipper.”
He said security is about removing friction from the process of carrier-broker relationships.
“We allow brokers to do load level compliance and change the requirements, and that’s so important in this industry, in this market right now, because you have to reduce friction,” Graft said. “You can’t put friction on the entire business; you have to let certain things move really quickly, like your bottled water loads or your low-risk, low-value loads. Those need to be able to move quickly and not put a lot of friction on your carrier sales team to get those loads covered.”
A sense of security with high-value loads is important to brokers, Graft said.
“You want to focus your effort and energy and any compliance or risk function, you want to put that stuff in a matrix and focus on the ones that have the highest risk so that you don’t overly burden the entirety of the business,” he said. “How that relates to the freight brokers and their ability to serve shippers is that we think we make our brokers better. That’s our job. We don’t serve shippers. We don’t sell to shippers. We never will. We serve one master, and it’s really important that we make our brokers better and make them the hero.”
Rob
Something as simple as a phone conversation between carrier and broker getting to know a little about each other will solve most of the problems without giving away vital carrier information such as titles elds etc these things are carrier responsibilities not broker’s sometimes simpler is still better there will always be bad broker’s and carrier’s it’s all of our jobs to weed out the bad actor’s and not punish everyone for other’s bad actions
clint eichelberger
These people are worried about brokers getting hacked or corrupted.. really?? The brokers are already corrupt. Maybe they should look into that first.
Chuck
Highway and the brokers they represent demand that we as carriers provide them sensitive financial information and copies of titles to equipment and our driver’s licenses with signatures. This is a major exposure for carriers and puts them at great risk for title fraud, identity theft and other financial crimes. But neither Highway nor the brokers tell a straight story about who all at their companies have access to that information, retention policies etc. They all refuse to discuss any safeguards for this information including how well they do security background checks for employees who may have access to that information.
Highway personnel claim they do nothing with the information except route it to the brokers. The brokers claim that Highway is giving false information and that all they get from Highway about a carrier is an indication of thumbs up or thumbs down. Each one refuses to take full legal responsibility in writing for the security of the information provided to them by carriers and full responsibility for any and all resulting impacts from misuse. For the love of God how stupid does this industry have to be? Ask any state DMV whether it’s a good idea to just send off copies of the titles to vehicles along with drivers license with signature to places all over into who knows what for security and circumstances. So when the title fraud/identity theft happens Highway and everybody else will all run to some disclaimer bullcrap and leave the carrier with the problem as usual.
George
While so many are high-fiving & patting each other on the ass..drivers like me are experiencing a steady decline in our salaries. It’s no secret folks…Increasing taxes, insurance & fuel as well as spending more time away from home, something brokers don’t do, keep driving more & more of us out of this business. Many of us used to make good living out of a way of life that we love.. If someone doesn’t get a handle on the fact that our slice of the pie continues to get smaller & smaller there soon won’t be much a pie for anyone..