Truckers Fight for Visibility to Shippers' Rates

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OOIDA leaders Mike Matousek and Lewie Pugh discuss their petition to the FMCSA for rate transparency. Trucking expert Adam Wingfield joins the discussion as well.

This event is sponsored by:
OTR Capital, Cassandra's preferred factoring company. 

Transcript

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oh yeah i like seeing that live side happy friday everybody we are not there happy friday i cannot wait justin shepard i see you justin shepard all right here's the thing you guys okay i got my dispatch headset on happy friday justin shepherd woohoo i got my headset on today i'm i'm in serious mode um we have new tech again uh this time i have to tell everybody something um especially to andrew thiel uh if anything goes wrong with the tech this time it wasn't me literally i have nothing to do with it and i can see you hi rhonda i saw your yoga yesterday you killed it uh tim pool's in the house la slow oh laszlo shows up this time so we're so excited to have you guys today we have some special uh folks joining us and i'm going to introduce them to you in just a minute the freight coach is in the house i hope that everybody's hiring him for broker training because he's amazing his name is chris jolly if you don't already know him uh jake i see you you're in the crowd too so here's what we're gonna do uh new tech new everything uh i'm not doing anything so i'm super excited about that i can see your comments better i'm excited about that too uh here we go we have today uh oida which is the big trucking organization huge i've known about in my entire career and they're gonna come on they're gonna educate us about their initiative to get more visibility into shippers rates and it's so interesting and i brought in adam as well he is the trucking expert often you have seen adam on the show quite a few times because i will admit sometimes i lack the expertise that adam brings to the table so what else oh otr capital i gotta introduce them again because they are my favorite factoring company uh this is the one thing i heard something recently about a factoring company and a broker getting together and sharing all their data and it was a weird scenario and i want you guys to know that i double checked with otr capital and they don't play games with your data so to my carriers to my shippers to my brokers they don't play games with you they treat you like a family they're in the comments say hello to otr in the description here i put people you can get in contact with they take good care of you they also have a lot of back office support no hidden fees that is why they are mad tropolis's favorite factoring company so reach out to them all right let's get the party started let's bring on our guests and let them introduce themselves because they're all so amazing um and amanda miller will escalate all of the questions to me um and amanda um i got you on hangouts over here i'm going to keep an eye on the questions that you have so amanda miller is one of my favorite freight brokers from alabama and she is going to help us out today escalating anybody's questions so let's see how do we bring the guests on and a little bit bigger thank you i don't even have to do that you guys that is so exciting all right first person is louie can you introduce yourself because i'm not gonna lie you're already one of my favorite people um and uh and i think you're gonna be a favorite at mad trouble mike's already laughing well thank you for that cassandra i'm glad i'm somebody's favorite people usually i don't get that i am louie pugh i'm the executive vice president here at oida i've been in trucking pretty much my entire life i was a small business one truck one trailer owner operator for 20 plus years um actually trucking is all i've ever done been on the board of directors here at oida for a little over 16 years now and been the executive vice president here in house two years could we give him any more titles mike please don't mike how long have you been wait is it ooida or is it wide out because i've been calling it oh i know maybe i'm wrong we like our pr our president todd likes oh ida but we'll take whatever mike mike welcome to the show um how do you know louis and is he always this nice or does he have a does he have a mean streak uh yeah yeah thanks cassandra for having us on i've been uh mike matusik i'm on the government affairs team work out of our headquarters with louis um kind of oversee our dc office on the legislative regulatory side of things i've been with the wider for almost seven years my background before that is in uh in dc on capitol hill on the legislative side of things works for a couple members of congress in their personal office and in the last two years i was on the house transportation committee so uh and then uh from there i moved out to the midwest where my wife is from and the rest is history and that's when i met louie and my life changed forever for the better the better i feel like we're dating and adam welcome back i'm so happy to have you here for those rare folks not near you could you introduce yourself glad to be back because thank you for having me on board i apologize for the uh the background but i just landed in uh atlanta today so uh but i told myself i'd make sure i wouldn't miss this but i'm adam wingfield i'm the managing director of logistics group we're consulting services and carrier services firm bursts out of north carolina right there in charlotte our focus is primarily on supporting small owner operators small fleet owners up to moderate side fleet on profitability compliance and other things that keep them in business myself i've been in trucking about 21 years now uh not as much not as long as louie but uh we spent a couple of decades in the industry i started off as a behind the wheel blue knuckle uh grew up to a fleet owner and then became an executive of a couple of projects too as well so industry experience about 21 years i've seen the industry go from from where it was to where it is now and my goal is to really continue to help move the needle and bring change to the industry the first time that i met adam and started really following him especially on instagram because he's a lot of really good educational material and shows on instagram um i will tell you guys that it was when the rates were really low uh in our country and carriers were extremely angry uh they were saying that brokers and shippers were taking advantage of them and i remember that the one question i had on my show for many carriers that came on the show was how much does it cost to run a truck like how much is your absolute minimum so that if i see a broker or shipper paying that per mile i know that that broken shepherd is going way too low and it was surprising to me because there weren't a lot of people who could answer that question and that's how i became acquainted acquainted with adam because he i feel like that is part of your business adam is that you teach people how to be more profitable with the way they run run their business and you kind of helped us break it down but but to my oh i to folks what what was your what was going on in your world when the rates were that low and people were really angry because i know a stressful time for everybody yeah i mean i agree with what you're saying there's a lot of owner operators out there that don't know what their cost of operation is i mean that's some of the stuff that we work with with our members through different programs especially with our foundation they do a lot of training they have a lot of educational series out there to teach guys that we also offer a thing called truck to success which kind of takes a guy from being a company driver all the way to being his own motor carrier that's a big part of it is learning your cost of operations and knowing what your cost per mile it's really surprising to people when we have these classes when they we as our foundation has pretty much the average of what a big carrier takes to operate and what the average small carrier and there's a big difference between the two and what like i always tell them you need to try to get your numbers as close to that big carriers numbers if you want to be profitable because even though there's a lot more small trucking companies out there than large trucking companies the large trucking companies pretty much set the bar on freaking rates and what how things work out here for sure and as far as dealing with it and you know in the broker thing i mean i'm part of reason we're on here you know we put the petition forth for the broker you know transparency bill because that's a rule it's a regulation we can debate whether it should it's outdated or should be changed or whatever but it is a regulation and guys see it there's always been some rub you know especially in the last since deregulation between brokers and truckers and you know it's probably sometimes it's justified sometimes it's not justified but we see a lot of brokers who continue to be successful and gain more profits and and do good with their shareholders and we don't see that too much with small business carriers unfortunately yeah now we at oida try to preach through our members that you know brokers are you should use brokers to get yourself back or to find freight where you're not it's not you're in an area that's not your area we try to get our owner operators to understand you're better off to get your own customers deal with small shippers and stuff direct take the broker out of the equation a lot of times you know again use a broker for what they're for it gets you out of an area where you don't have customers you don't have freight that makes sense um could we go back to one thing that you had said you said uh that the the actually the big carriers are the ones who set the rates i think i heard that correctly um a question came through from from andrew teal and uh it's a good one it says how do you define big versus small in our uh in our industry when you're when you're saying that they're the kind of the ones that govern the rates well yeah and i would say you know you're you're talking your great big carriers probably what do you think mike 500 or more i'm not i know we've got some research out there on where the bars are but you know unfortunately or fortunately i don't know how you want to look at depends on which side of the spectrum large the large motor carriers they've got the volume they've got the trailers they you know work on a different format than small business carriers and for and when it comes to big shippers and big you know receivers and stuff like that they're more they're more interested in talking to big carriers that's where the little guys you got to find your niche you got to find that niche market i mean that's how i personally probably find that little niche that the big carriers can't do or don't want to do or don't want to mess with do you think that too uh adam is that what you approached yes and no um because then the rejections have a big a big impact on rates right so you know if you look back just a couple of months ago there was a large carrier that i won't speak on that just didn't even have the capacity to fill out 20 000 loads so they spilled 20 000 loads back out into the spot market and obviously when you got that many loads in the stock market that's going to impact rates but we talked about rates rates are rates are driven by just straight tender rejections you know when you got contract tender rejections and you got folks rejecting those contracts on the contract market and electric carriers can't facilitate capacity then it spills over to the smart market when it spills over into the spot market that's what makes rates go up and down and that's one of the biggest things that i what we do is we try to reach them one of the things i read um what louis was saying about you know making sure that you building relationships and building your own relationships so you don't have to rely on spot market freight now i won't say that there aren't any great broker relationships because even as a smaller carrier a broker can help you grow your business if you have the right partnership and develop the right relationships with that broker y'all have great conversations and y'all build trust together a good broker help you grow your business get a business out and when you think about any business right any business is going to have some sort of outsourcing right you're going to outsource something and in the beginning especially as a new carrier when you outsource expertise and you build a relationship broker that you can trust and that will help you learn the business help you learn and eventually you will be able to secure your own shippers and your own freight but it's a lot to that equation you got to provide good service you got to buy great communication you got to be transparent you got to be on time it's a lot of things that goes into that and you got to maintain safety but you know i agree that that there is a need to make sure that we facilitate a great relationship so that where you can start building your own shipper network your own your own network there but a good broker will help you grow your business just as much it's weird before we dive into mike kind of giving us an insight on the petition and a background and telling us more about that i want to go back to this big carrier setting the rates only because i'm a little uneducated in this area um okay stupid cassandra i always honestly i always thought the shippers and the brokers were the ones that truly were setting the rates because whenever i worked or was around or consulted for a broker they were always using the small carriers um because and shippers wanted that because they were cheaper um and i thought that that played a big role in the market and not as much the big carriers and i saw somewhere in here andrew teel um amanda brought it to my attention andrew thiel said if only nine percent of the carriers are large how do they really set rates ah thank you oh my god zeke you're awesome uh how do they really set rates given volume largest carriers hall probably less than 15 of the freight means the rest is set by small carriers that's what i was thinking too andrew could do any of you guys have any insight on this point so so let me let me let me make it a like practical example if four of us right if there's there's a load that the ship has and all four of us have independent carriers and we call on that particular load and i turn the load down mike turns the low down cassandra turns the low down and louis turns a low down the next time that shipper puts that low on the low board if he got more people already turned that low down and he's got to move that freight that's what he's gonna have to do he's gonna have to raise the rate make it more appealing so the fact that we're actually rejecting that tinder is what's going to push that rate up now if a force just or three or four of us jumped on it then obviously it's going to that's going to lower the demand for the cost of that that particular transaction that particular shipment tender rejections has a huge huge impact on outbreaks it's not just not just the larger carriers it's overall rejections that hold uh louis what do you think about all this i i think that's on the spot market is what for sure i agree that but as far as contractual rates and stuff that's where your big carriers get a lot of free and then i don't know what the percentage is our foundation would have that which i know doesn't help right now but if we do have some food where yes the small carriers make up way more but the large carriers haul way more volume just because there's they have so many more trucks you know once big care has 20 some thousand trucks you know our guys has one makes sense so how did we get to giving mike a chance how do we get to this point where um folks came to you and said hey we need to go to the fmcsa we need to if i paraphrase this improperly i apologize we want to have the ability to know what brokers are being paid by the shippers so we want to see these rates we want to see these transactions for the loads that are run was is that how like how did that all come about and did i paraphrase that properly well so um actually this goes back a long time um i remember listening to a conversation um it was recorded but between our longtime president jim johnston and bob voltman who is what was the long time president of the transportation intermediaries association uh this was back in 2005 and had i not known what year it was it's the same issues being discussed now um so look it really came to a head uh in april and may of this year for the most part maybe a little bit earlier than that um rates just fell off a cliff um some of the per mile rates that we were seeing were below a buck you know there were 75 cents it was almost unheard of um and the impact on our members and non-members was was crazy and not so it was an impact to brokers because we know there was um but there was a big um basically a big protest if you will in dc back in may that lasted a number of weeks got the attention of the administration some folks in congress and really was a successful trip to d.c for those who made it so um this is not a new issue our petition uh yeah it was filed in in may but these issues go back decades uh and i'm sure we'll probably get into some of the legislative regulatory history but uh you know again nothing new um it was was really prompted by the coronavirus rates just falling off a cliff in april and may but um you know this would be an issue regardless of that really okay so and i'll explain that if you want me to yeah definitely so uh people are gonna hate this but look we uh oida we're not a fan of regulation um we we have plenty of battles to uh to say that and um but what i will say is the regulation is there if brokers don't like it they can go about changing it there's a process to do that through congress through fmcsa that hasn't happened and we can talk about the you know the icc and how they predated fmcsa look i appreciate legislative and regulatory intent as much as anybody going back 30 40 years i've seen assumptions made about what the intent was of that regulation but i've never nobody's ever connected those dots for me so we would welcome information people have that would show some sort of legislative or regulatory intent from 30 40 years ago i've not seen it i i've seen that referenced i've seen some obscure federal statutes referenced but looking at the regulation itself we think it's pretty clear i don't think fmcsa is going to do a whole lot uh congress maybe not my guess is this plays out in the courts okay so i don't here's the thing is from a legal perspective i'll send you i forgot to send you the material i'll also send you a video five months ago i did a video on rate transparency i actually did a video when when the folks went to dc um to the rest at least to my followers into the world i was in the dc thing seemed a little ridiculous um because it was a lot of screaming and a lot of uh arguments that were unfounded by the by the law and so it was hard to it was very hard for me to swallow the whole thing i understood whether i understood where people were coming from and that they're frustrated with the rates um and i'll send you the video as well but i went through the legislative intent and many attorneys who came on the fmcsa listening session said the same thing that i said in my video which is it wasn't the legislative intent to allow transparency into the shippers rates in this manner and then the second part to that was it was a legislative legislators intention to allow contracts to override this regulation so not to me i think the legislative intent argument is a loser argument a losing argument however uh that's just me who the hell what the hell do i know these days uh especially these days however how about today and moving forward what do we want let me take a quick stab at that so um let me offer another thing you know we've heard that shippers have non-disclosure agreements with brokers right that's a lot of broker-shipper agreements uh our issue with that is that's effectively allowing a third party not regulated by fmcsa to you know effectively exempt themselves from a long-standing regulation so our members can't hide behind non-disclosure agreements with any party to exempt themselves from any regulation so from a precedent perspective this is interesting to see what fmcsa will do about it uh that that's essentially what is happening or that's one of the loopholes uh that we think brokers are using is hiding behind a non-disclosure agreement between a shipper and a broker and i'm not saying that that's wrong what i'm saying is that the regulation would would require something different in our opinion and that's why i said earlier if people don't like the regulation go try to change it but our interpretation of it is a pretty it's a pretty simplistic view i mean we think that if you're a party to the transaction in this case a carrier um that you're privy to this information right or wrong that's what the regulation says in our opinion and brokers just to add brokers can use the same non-disclosure agreements with carriers to hide what they hand off to the carrier and they should and they should by all means yeah and they do i would say that regulations the regulations especially this 49 cfr part 370 all of those regulations that have to do with cargo claims kernel clean processing there's a whole mess of them that address when uh you have to pay for freight charges all of those can be altered by contract and waived and you can put that in an nda so if they are altered no one can know about it so if the ship resulted them or the brokers they can keep that confidential so it is pretty fluent in a lot of different parts of the regulations um moving forward though when you guys were going for this petition what were you hoping would like do you did you have carriers actually come to you and say i want to see um how much this broker is paying this is being paid by the shipper and what would they do with that information how would it how to benefit them yeah we've had carriers and members and everything ask us for this kind of information for years also another thing that it's not really been brought up but we see it here almost on a daily basis is we have a lot of brokers that a driver will deliver a load he'll have a clean bill of waiting and then he'll go to get a payoff a week or two later and they'll take 500 from him and say there's a claim on the load they won't provide any kind of paperwork or documentation or anything saying what that claim was our drivers got to sign clean bill leading from that shipper but now all of a sudden there's this claim but nobody and it's always an even number you know i i just have a real hard time finding it every claims 500 or a thousand dollars yeah that's a means a dick move why don't they file against a bond well this is them filing against the carrier themselves our drive or you know the broker taking money from our carrier and the carrier can't file against the broker's bond they got it a carrier certainly can file against a broker's bond that raises a whole uh that raises other issues in and of itself with uh the you know what is now a 75 000 bond but we have you can rack up 500 000 in claims against the broker 75 000 bond that happens all the time and carriers get paid pennies on the dollar when that happens so the claims process when you file on a bond is broken uh there's virtually no oversight from fmcsa on that the national consumer complaint database does not work so uh there's other issues when you're talking about filing on a bond that you know maybe we can't even get into in this uh this hour some point in time we should though we should and i think that leads back to what you said earlier where you didn't quite fully understand why truckers are down there in washington a few months ago that was weird well i think that it comes down to because truckers are just tired of it i feel you know every regulation all these rules they have to follow it seems like they're on the bottom of the totem pole every single time it rolls down on them and there's no oversight there they get no protection they get no transparency you know you can only take so much and you know when when when you're not even making any more money now you can't even afford to pay your bills or fees your family that causes for drastic things do they all ha that was everything handled the way it should be maybe it was maybe it wasn't i know we're not here but i think that's what drives people to do that yeah we see that not only in trucking but a lot of things in the world cassandra let me let me also add too um i think most people would probably agree that there's a gray area on this issue um you know whatever the historical intent was behind this what the regulation says now um quite honestly it would be nice if congress and or from csa addressed this or provided some clarification one way or the other on it um i think they need to um certainly from our perspective historically what our members have seen when we look at the regulation and what it requires uh in the real world if you try to get that information it's virtually impossible care brokers might make you come into the facility so if you're a carrier in florida and the brokers in california it's very unlikely that you're going to get out there anytime soon you may be able to review it they're not going to send you a copy of it we actually when we were looking at this earlier this year we sent a lot of information out to our members asking for uh for some feedback and i can't tell you how many carriers we had that said you know what we would love to see this information we agree with the regulation but we're not going to request it for fear of retaliation and we know i have email copies of retaliation from brokers against carriers for requesting that information so that happens you get blacklisted we know what happens there's proof of that so either way fmcsa should clean this up interesting these are these are points i didn't think about adam what are you thinking this whole time so you know obviously i represent the both you know down in the middle in terms of we represent carriers internet carriers are operating profitably and and compliant at the same time we want to represent what's right and what's feasible in the situation and one of the things that i believe is information that's pertinent to a shipment should be transparent you know period so whether that's your safety whether that's safer data to where you can detail whether or not the carrier has a has a great safer score their service rates things like that should be transparent during the shipment how much a broker mate is where i have questions in terms of if you look back at it you know just to to mike's point and what he was mentioning my biggest concern is that what are you going to do with the information right how is that information going to benefit you as a carrier now if i look at it one hand yeah okay we could look at it from a standpoint okay could there be gout in there you know somewhere in there could it be something that it could be some some serious trust issues so some anti-trust issues the thing that i worry about is that when we discuss broker transparency to the level is is i don't believe that lumping all brokers and one bucket uh is the right thing to do because it could be potentially inflammatory to the industry because it's the same rhetoric that can be used for carriers if you look at our service rates right now twenty percent areas that are moving throughout the country are out of this so you know we think about that we gotta look at it you know on both sides of the coin so you know when you talk about out of service there's a variety of whether it's vehicle maintenance private fitness but dude how's the service there's a variety of things that kind of go down into it so my my thing is is that i don't know if broker transparency in terms of what we are seeing to solve the issue however i do believe that the language shouldn't be hidden all the way down at the bottom of page 16 on the carrier packet you know perhaps that thing needs to be at the very top on the front of the page one i believe that that needs to be said hey you know what you're saying packet you're signing with this nba my biggest thing is that i really want our carriers you know when i look at it i really want our carriers to be transparent with their own business operations learn the business operations and dig deep deeper into that business operation because you know the thing about it is is that at the end of the day whether or not that broker is making 15 or 30 percent it's gonna change the rate doesn't load and it's gonna that's not gonna change the impact on that load i still have to make that load need to still like i think louis said that load still needs to put food on my table so whether or not that information is given i don't know i i really you know i don't think that if it was a top 10 issues for me in trucking that wouldn't be one of them louie what do you think about that because i'm i'm with him like all right you got the information because we have to set aside cargo claims and the aftermath type of thing because when i saw your petition it wasn't about that stuff it was more about the shippers rings so they get so the carrier gets visibility into the shippers and you can tell me if i'm wrong mike i could be wrong they get visibility into the shippers rates and they see that the broker just got 40 markup now what are we doing did we just know like okay this broker just ripped me off i'm gonna go work with another one is that what you guys are going for or that um well i mean that's just it i mean the brokers they have lots of information at their fingertips on how to choose carriers and the right carriers and stuff like that truckers virtually have nothing nothing brokers that's actually very true and and that's just it we don't believe that they should get the information up front like some have asked for we believe that we're all with the regulation once it's over so yes that i agree that truckers need to know their cost of operation they need to be well transparent in their business but you know they need something some sort of protection to help them know i mean what would just done for us in back in may when everybody was down there right well we would know whether brokers were really ripping people off or they weren't ripping people off i'm not saying either way because i don't know what you know we have a somewhat of idea i'm sure rachel did drop some but we're brokers taking advantage of the situation i mean a lot of brokers now are wanting you to wanting to track the trucks and track the loads and track the shipment and hey i'm not speaking out as a proponent or not proponent but i do understand why i mean when you order something off of amazon or whatever you can track it from the day it ships all the way to your door so that's the kind of society we're getting into i guess i don't think there are costs though but bro i'm sure amazon's getting a nice beautiful chunk of profit i don't know what it is i'm still gonna buy it right but my point is the tracking deal brokers can use that information they can know whether if they're tracking where trucks are they know whether they've got an over abundance of trucks they have a heads-up in my opinion prior to whether they're going to have an over abundance truck scenario or not so again they can offer freight accordingly like adam said when people they offer the loads if everybody turns it down then somewhere they know they've got to up the rates but they've all they've already got extra information and that's what we're looking for let's give the driver where he can make some good decisions um the regulation i'm not going to restate it you know state everybody knows what it is but basically requires parties to the transaction to have information made available to them including the amount of compensation received by the broker for the brokerage um so um you know that's what that's what the regulation says what also irritates us is and wait wait wait you're trying to draw a link with that cargo claim point with that no okay just checking no what i was gonna say was um in an overwhelming majority of uh a broker um broker carrier contracts that we see there's always a provision in there that requires the carrier to waive its rights to 371.3 we see that language almost everywhere and again this is practically malpractice if an attorney is and this isn't this is an interesting legal question is uh you know can they actually do that if there's a federal regulation can a regulated entity basically exclude themselves or exempt themselves from it by requiring in this case a carrier to wave their rights to it so think about the precedent from you know it it doesn't matter the answer is yes it's a powerful question because you can't do that in this case this 49 usc 14 501 allows us to do all of that in this case federal regulation you can't exempt yourself from a federal you just can't they allow it they say it in writing you are allowed to contract around this regulation i think they had about uh cfr part 372. is that between brokers and shippers it doesn't even matter because i think there's i think there's a distinction in there between brokers and shippers and brokers and carriers but i don't know hold on um let's just at least look at 49 usc 15 or 14 501. contract so give me one second to spin on down through this intermediaries all right pull up this resolve this contract well if i resolve this i'll put this in the comments for you guys and mike mike will respond to we'll keep it going in either the youtube comments or whatnot so to keep the i'm sure mike and i are the only ones who are truly interested in like the law and the intent and everyone else is like okay cassandra clare right on carry on um so so uh here we go so i want to go to wait how much time do i have sweet i've played okay so i want to go to uh the hearing the fmcsa had like a public hearing which i thought was pretty cool um and allowed people to come forth and talk about their thoughts i noticed that you didn't you didn't have a lot of carriers come on and i i recognize and understand the retaliation point um even though you could call in anonymously do you think now that rates are really good for carriers they're not as driven right now for this transparency or are they still emailing and calling you guys ready to go pitchforks i i think it swings as a pendulum you know when it gets bad and trucking and rates go down then then the behaviors swing and and it's not a celebration it's a hey we need to go find out you know who shouldn't solve but when the rates are up then you see all the facebook posts the instagram posts and the rate cons and how much they're making and the fact of the matter is is that and i don't know maybe maybe maybe maybe mike and lou to get as many many complaints but you do not hear the chat amongst the industry as you heard back in may uh i i just feel like it's just it's just a it's just a pattern of behavior that happens and let's go back and forth but we all know that rates are cyclical like you know it's just a pendulum the further you swing a pendulum back the heart is going to come back in the other direction we saw a race talk take a take a really big tank back in april and may but now we're seeing race we haven't seen since 2018 like so it's it's just part of the cycle and that's one of the things that i believe that we we have to do a better job in preparing people for the cycle of the economy that's a big part of the economy and do see these cycles um but i i just think that now the chatter from from the carriers that we deal with so we talk to anywhere between you know i don't know thousands of different characters that's not the message right now the the message isn't bad you know the message now is hey i can't find trucks and trailers another point of surprise man yeah and i agree with that i mean you're 100 correct then you know drivers um when things are bad they complain when they're making some money they're busy out trucking and they don't make money or they're they're you know they're not complaining i guess i'm sorry and i mean i i i think unfortunately that's where a lot of times these comment periods i mean we see that here in our office we try try to get members to comment and stuff and we can't stress enough how important it is that they do comment but i just think that's part of problem our guys you know they don't have any government people i mean i guess we're their government people for lack of you know they don't have any internalizes one guy one truck one trailer but if they're out making a living sometimes it's kind of hard for them to file these comments make these listening sessions sometimes these things are a little confusing for us they're in an office to try to get a hold of and make comments well i learned some guy out on the road trying to make it from do it with a cell phone like you want to add anything i love sorry mike i got intro for one second next exit logistics uh by the way you guys this is chandler one of my best friends um he says i have shipments that put food on the table and i have shipments that take the food table chairs cups plates away i love this point because um i have so many friends that say something similar and i saw ron cain was saying that from a shipper perspective as well which is we have times where we are losing our shirts and we have times where we're making it up um and there are and there are fluctuations in in these uh scenarios how would the visibility allow truckers to to balance that um that volatility yeah well a couple let me just to go back a little bit this issue doesn't die down for us just because rates go back up we're going to see this through the end good bad or otherwise um and and like i said earlier it's something that fmcsa needs to dr uh needs to address we can debate uh legislative intent all we want but uh until we actually have something in writing from fmcsa or some sort of you know legal ruling on this then we really don't know uh that's what we're looking for i think that's what some of the i think i would say that brokers probably want that now um we know that brokers don't like this regulation uh so let's either you know let's address it in some way and it's got to be addressed this has been going on for way too long we have um another 20 minutes i want to talk about uh and and for those of oh shoot amanda miller i'm sorry i got so engrossed um that amanda sent me questions and i got so engrossed that i didn't even see so let me make sure that i'm getting you guys the questions from people um let's see oh jolly already asked the question that i did so jolly and i are on like the same um point top question so far let's see okay i think i'm covering everything okay laszlo this was a good question lasso um what does your what is your position or what would it be um if the fmcsa does modify the rule how you request whoa zeke you're fast um and well i'll just read it off this screen uh modifies the rule by uh by not requiring the broker to reveal their revenue on the load what would you do if the fmcsa modifies the rule by not requiring the broker broker to reveal the revenue on the load well let me answer this it would seem like fmcsa wouldn't have to do that since broker's interpretation is that they can either exempt themselves from the regulation or long-standing statute exempts them anyway so it's not the interpretation it actually says it i'm gonna find that [ __ ] and i'm gonna post it if that's true why would fmcsa have to change anything they're not changing anything so that's my point to that question it's almost impossible to answer what we would oppose it absolutely but at the end of the day if that's what fmcsa does we would have to move on what would you guys feel about if there was a complete transparency like fmcsa came to you guys and they said all right because here's here's what the change would be to the rule the change would be one more sentence which would be you cannot waive this regulation by contract or remove the language that says regula that they're allowed to waive this requirement by contract so that's what it would be what if the fmcc said to you guys all right we're going to allow um this regulation and it's not going to be allowed to be waived by contract which means that carriers have visibility into the financial transactions of these shipments but in exchange carriers have to make their rates public do you guys remember back in the day like household good carriers and some of the tariff carriers made their rates public um what would you guys think about that if there was like a tit for that kind of mike can fmcsa even do that now that there's deregulation louie this is magical one hypothetical this is hypothetical oh my god why does he always have to be the smart one all right it's a tough question to answer i you know um hypothetically i you know i really don't know it's that's unlikely to happen uh there's it's more likely that this issue will be clarified one way or the other either for or against our position that was a good dodge mike um okay you know and and why not you know uh i i see a lot of the questions over there and and um again i still would would challenge um i like jake's question did you see that want to go back to the government regulated industry do you what is obitus position did you guys like it back before the industry was deregulated like you get i clearly do not notice look mike's like done with this interview man mikey fell off he's like screw her she's uh she's challenging me in the law i hate her i'll leave louie to answer this question um so oh thank you oh my goodness i love having help uh so so the question um was would you guys like to go back to the where what it was before deregulation um well my opinion the only thing that's changed since deregulation is rates aren't regulated and tariffs aren't regulated everything else about this is the most regulated deregulated industry in my opinion so i mean other than regulation of rates and tariffs what's changed that's so true um okay i'm going to i want to talk about uh one more thing that's actually the most important thing and why i wanted you on here besides a better understanding behind this transparency push which is what else can we come together with on an as an industry or what else is on your agenda for regulation change if anything at all are you because i i haven't been paying attention to what else you guys are working on where you promote so so one of the things that if if it was a magic world for me it would be it is way too easy to get a motor carrier uh number these days way too easy it's way too easy and way too easy to get broker authority too and same thing it's way too easy there's no there's no onboarding process there's no safety requirement so get this so i get an emcee right i'm happy along i can have less than a year experience behind the wheel get my emcee i'm hiking along down the highway how much down they i get a letter mail saying hey it's time for my safety it kind of reminds me if i if we were only getting to an airplane today right and we walk in and the captain comes on the board and says hey you know what the flying gangs airlines we have not got safety audit yet we'll probably have within the next nine months so feel free to just to stay on board we're going to be safe it's way too easy when you see our plane's gonna be super cheap it's probably gonna be well i mean i don't know that we don't know that it couldn't help but the thing about but the thing about that the thing about that is is that it's so backwards why aren't we putting up and then when you think about it's a root cause to insurance issue right so talk about the the insurance height you know the the gl height from 752 proposed 2 million whatever there is but there is where's the safe programs that's going to put us in better position so where we defend that like half of the carriers again have no fleet safety programs so i don't and so if there's any regulations in in my eyes that needs to be a focus on i'm going to do a good job like the motor and carrier the marine public is safe by making sure our motor carriers are in order because a lot of times what we see is that we see a lot of these nuclear verbs happening as a result four hours of service when i'm looking at people elds and doing eld reviews you should see some of the hard breaks that you'll see just see some of the speeding violations have and these are some folks that have not been in the business for three four months and you got drivers going up and down the highway 80 miles an hour i'm like you know really we've got to do a better job at having a standardized process in order to get that emcee it should just like get in the drive like i said it was harder for me to get my private my cdl license than it was for me to get an mc number right and it was harder to get a driver's license isn't that amazing and i think to flip that so that louis and mike have another hypothetical situation because mike loves hypotheticals like they're his favorite um which is would you guys would you guys support ohida or potentially think in your heart so you'd be behind a bill like that that was presented that said had some more requirements for carriers to get authority had some more kind of hoops to jump through but in exchange it's going to be the same [ __ ] for brokers too because right now i i do think we need to reduce the brokers when i hear louie telling me stories and i do you guys i do see a lot of the brokers are not watching this show oh no look i'm stressing louie out look i gave him a headache sorry to make the standards higher for the brokers to become a broker too it can't just be like this overnight thing and you know you've got a lot of you could people's lives working these truck drivers whatever anyhow would you guys support something like that or be or be interested in hearing more about that in this hypothetical magical wand land yeah i mean something like that came about i mean i agree with adam i think we all agree with adam it's way too easy to give ut number there is no checks i mean it's kind of sad that you can you know buy a d.o.t number and then you can be fined out of existence a year later just because you didn't understand what you're getting yourself into i mean whether you know or don't know here at oid us one of the services we provide is that we will help people get their authority we try to painstakingly go through the process with them and explain that this isn't for everyone make sure you you know a lot of guys get asked business i don't have any money or credit unfortunately and oh by the way they get ripped off with this whole leasing truck program too that's a whole nother at least purchased i'd love to do a show by at least purchase something that near dear to my heart that i hate but but you're exactly adam's exactly correct i mean the system's backwards um we've started here kind of i guess by my direction keeping track of the guys who file for authority where are they a year from now reach back out to the author you know and of course we can only reach out to the people that we get authority for and you know there's about a 30 to 40 percent monthly they get their authority in 30 to 40 percent a year from now they're no longer in business either they've went out of business they've had a problem maybe they've released a carrier you know there's different things again that's part of the reason we started our truck to success courses and stuff like that because this is a tough business and you know i always say there's no trucking for dummies or getting your d.o.t for dummies out there mike how achievable is something like that uh or have you guys ever tried to to have the barriers raised for motor carriers or for brokers um just not the internet's for mike we haven't tried yet but we have done some in-house stuff and come up with some in-house ideas to possibly push moving forward and go ahead mike i mean i rubbed you yeah no i mean i don't really have much to add other than there is no real barrier to entry uh it's very easy to get a cdl very easy to get your you know get a d.o.t number get your own authority maybe you go through a new intro audit at some point uh depending on which state you're in and how aggressively they actually do it do that stuff you know on the brokerage side i'm less familiar with that there's it doesn't appear to be uh many barriers to entry on the brokerage side and i think there are probably tens of thousands insurance and and you know one of the other points there are plenty of carriers that we would never um uh there are plenty of bad carriers out there uh and i think one of the things that's missed is we always assume that every you know not every carrier is good and not every broker is good uh so some of the transparent departments that are impr that are in place uh you know maybe some of the better brokers shouldn't have to deal with that stuff but there are plenty of bad brokers that really make some of that necessary so uh would oida do anything with the information no uh the carriers would no we're not a party to that transaction we wouldn't request it okay we wouldn't actually um but it would be pretty smart mike if the oh if oh i'm sorry i have to say why i've been saying it for 10 years i'm sorry uh tell your president i apologize uh for many other things my attitude too i usually have to apologize for that too but um that was one of the questions i was thinking in my head i'm like damn why they could have a survey out to all these carriers do something electronically so they could collect all this information if they have you know that's like a big chunk of information that you can have access to and have reporting on uh could not a uh could not a a a broker include a non-disclosure agreement in their broker carrier contract to prohibit said carrier from disclosing rates to anybody yes mike nice nice plug nice i love that i think he'll stay on camera a little bit longer now there was something else to a super good question hold on you guys i'm sorry it was better he's got a better face for radio than he does camera oh yes i love this um and uh omar oh what does omar have okay i've given loads to carriers by making 26.50 i think that's a negative and being a broker does it feel like ripping and it is not only one load that i'm talking about there were loads that i'd have to give by making losses yeah if i share that information with the carrier will they be able to do that load for me on anybody have a response to that or should we go on to buttered bread i know there was a butter bread let me just say this um we've talked to brokers we have brokers that are members of ours we know that brokers lose money on loads that happens we know that shippers um uh when it's economically advantageous for shippers they'll come in and try to renegotiate previously uh contracted rates with a broker that happens there are um you know it's not like we're saying that brokers have the best of everything and they don't have any issues to deal with um we're more focused on this exact this specific regulation what we see as long-standing loopholes to basically avoid it uh and the fact that there is a gray area right um we could sit here until our faces all turn red you know but the bottom line is there's a huge dispute among brokers shippers carriers fmcsa lawmakers as to what this regulation says um which goes back to my earlier point is it needs to be cleaned up one way or another so but again we're not sitting here saying that you know i have a family member who's a uh what i call a dispatcher for a broker but you know she's on the phones all day trying to get loads and i i talked to her and she told me how it works and and how they lose money on a regular basis and shippers will renegotiate uh you know long-term rates with brokers when it again when it makes sense for them to do that whereas brokers really don't have much leverage to do that if the shoe is on the other foot so um we get it you know uh our members rely on brokers just as much as brokers rely on our members so um there's a relationship here and it's not like um yeah we disagree on this issue but it's not the end of the world it worked out and really in the scheme of things um for people that we disagree with in dc uh we have a lot more disagreements with with other industries than we do with tiaa and its members or non-members i would just like to point out that truckers lose money on loads as well yeah i want to point out one more thing you guys just one more thing because i'm constantly hearing this but it's it is i get i love that louis louie led with some of the the [ __ ] kind of rolling downhill toward truckers often which can be quite true but lately i would like you to know that brokers have been bearing the grunt sorry shippers but brokers have been bearing the brunt of being the insurance company of the industry of being the cargo claim payments for the industry of being the banks because shippers don't want to pay they want they don't want to pay quickly but they've got to pay the broker's got to pay the carriers quickly so there's like a lot of headache in there too so you're not the only ones that are feeling like the [ __ ] rolling downhill um we have just to be clear just to be clear we and i think mike said this once we realize there are good brokers out there lots of good brokers i think brokers probably a lot of times are like truckers you get in law enforcement and everything the bad 10 percent a lot of times get way more airplay and way more credit than the good 90 you know some of this transparency stuff that we're talking would probably help some brokers too because some of these unscrupulous brokers are hurting other brokers businesses as well and could actually possibly raise the bar and raise the money for the good brokers because it would get these you know fly by night or unscrupulous brokers out of business out of the system which would help everyone us and the brokers which is what we'd like to see yeah um adam do you have any other um if you had your magic wand is there anything else we're missing in this discussion of things that mike mike just loves this a magical wand let's put more work on mike's plate um and more headaches of things that we can come together as an industry for uh i i think i think we have to come together with a common voice uh at some point uh you know and i think that one of the points that that mike was saying it's it's so much uh it's a lot of things lost in interpretation in this industry you got you know one side saying this reads this way you have another side saying it read that way i think that there's a lot of things that we have to clean up i think that you know the fmscs said they need to get involved um you know with some of the things that we just talked about you know like from a safety perspective the nuclear perspective really getting by and really getting down to the root cause of these things because if we we have to come to a common place to start right so we got to come into a common place where we all agree that hey you know what if we can start here and be upon that then i think it'll build better conversations i think it'll build better better synergy and i think it'll give us more leverage so we can have more fruitful discussions on things that are not so close to us as an industry but right now uh you know just like you know to mike's point we are over the same stuff we've been arguing over for the last 20 years we're getting absolutely nowhere with it we've got to get something different we try to look different we've got to act differently maybe that's maybe that's not the hill we're going to die right now let's pick enough to really bark up yeah that's a really good point um what else am i missing anything else you guys and i'll let this go you know there is agreement on uh barriers to issue barriers to entry and the the nuclear verdicts that impacts trucking just as much as it does everybody else we tort reform is a huge priority for ours not only in d.c but on a state level uh in a number of states that we've joined state chambers of commerce or work with state trucking associations other uh you know state legislative interests that that you know that that's a total form's a huge issue but there are also so we're going to disagree on a few things clearly this is one of them but again back to what adam just said you know it's it's time for fmcsa to clean this up one way or another so you know another 15 years from now we're not still here talking about i know that would be so that would suck we'd make fun of louis this time though um yeah yeah i have a question though uh you brought something up and the on a white is pri like top priorities with legislative in the legislative context is the transparency is that the top priority is tort reform the top priority or is the barrier to entry which one is like your top priority right now legislatively none of the above uh that's more of a as we see it right now is more of an issue with the federal agency uh and potentially the courts than it than it will have anything to do with congress and if anybody's waiting on congress to do anything um don't hold your breath uh because it likely won't happen so our we have other real uh you know our priorities are elsewhere on the legislative side of things but if i had to rank this i mean this is a top five or top ten priority for us whether it's going to be with fmcsa congress the courts this is a huge issue for our members and we're going to see it through the end one way or another okay um all right you guys were brave coming out here and uh mike we're going to continue this debate uh that bores everybody else and that infuriates each of us i'm serious you should um send me hello let me i know we're out of time but um there was an issue i worked on for a number of years where i had to go back to i we talked about this yesterday back to the early and mid 80s looking at regulatory filings and comments and and uh actually the regulatory history on issues so i appreciate that i know that this is uh that uh there are a lot of people we may disagree on on that history but send me what you have i will look at it absolutely i have plans for me connect the dots i i will or or you connect them for me maybe i'm wrong yeah adam yeah i love this adam cassandra needs to have adam back for a program um i want to give you guys a heads up i am doing december 4th i'm going to do an episode on hours of service um because you guys know there's been some changes um folks now who have decided that they've got to be compliant with hours of service because of the elds now they we're hearing a lot of screaming about the hours of service and how it doesn't work um it's too inflexible so i want to have a show about that you guys are welcome back adam you included anybody else who wants to join me for because uh december 4th because i want to talk we're going to talk with the leading attorney about the changes and then we're going to talk about what can we do as an industry to improve these regulations because i think a lot of people agree that they are kind of make things difficult but we can't not have them because accidents and fatigue is so closely linked to death and accidents that we can't ignore it either so mike i see that face is mike laughing at me louie i'm laughing with you yeah we don't completely agree with that but it's okay we don't have to agree we're back on for an hour as a service episode then there's a show fatigue seems to be that big catch-all word that they like to use so we don't have to think that fatigue fatigue's the big problem that some people like to make it out to be oh my god jolly said people will help people all right you guys are awesome this is probably one of my favorite episodes you welcome back number four email me and let me know mike uh i'm gonna spend the rest of the day now researching and battling with you because let's do it take a look now you know i feel every day working with this guy i'm so sorry but i love him thank you and adam good luck in atlanta we appreciate having you i hope people reach out to you if they need help uh with their training and with the profitability of their business adam is our person that we go to and now oh why it is too so cool all right thank you guys nice to meet you adam nice to meet you too well uh in the broadcast i don't have to do it