Can you walk us through how that actually catches fraud?

Yeah, definitely.

Honestly, so we have a free program where if anybody ever has anything stolen, you can go to our website and report that.

And what's interesting whenever we get those reports is we can actually deep dive into that and try to, we do an investigation.

But while we do that investigation, we're usually able to pick up on different signals, and the three biggest signals that we see is that either GenLog's has never seen them on the roa- or hasn't seen them on the roads in the last, you know, maybe 30, 60 days, 7 days even, usually indicating like a sold MC, or we haven't seen them in that area before.

We've never seen them haul in that lane, like it's very weird activity for them, or we've never seen that carrier with that equipment.

So by being able to see this on like a physical front and seeing exactly how they're operating on the roads, and since we've had our cameras out for, you know, three years now, over three years, um, we're able to see that history and pattern.

How, how does this expanded use happen i- in real time? Because this is, this is nuts to say the least.

So how is Genlogs responding to that?

You know, Genlogs, because we do have that unique data set where we're able to kind of have the eyes on the road, we basically developed a way for you to be able to see if the carrier is reasonable and have ordinary care based on asking them the hard questions.

And then making sure that they actually have like a reasonable policy to go in place.

So, and that's really what like the Supreme Court was asking for is making sure that you are asking those drivers is a hard question because they really don't have the ability to see everything on the road because they don't have enough staff within the FMCSA.

And speaking on that, it's just interesting with FMCSA inspections, just how sporadic it is.

It's really hard for a broker to get a full picture on what a carrier safety record looks like.

I mean, there's only like, what, 90% of carriers that are unrated.

So speaking of partnerships and the sonar partnerships, what partnerships at Genlogs are you most excited about right now? What's happening in your world there?

Check out the link in the show notes to get started today with DAT's load board or factoring through Outgo.

Well, I think what's interesting, so w- kind of what I talked about with Brian was, like, A, the sky's not falling.

I think if you are, if, let's say if a carrier...

So let me back up.

Whenever I was a broker, the biggest thing that we checked was if you're a conditional or unsatisfactory, we went loads.

Sometimes on conditional ratings it was, like, if they had a safety letter, if they had, like, a full, like, if they're a larger carrier and they kind of are, like, getting their stuff together, they fire drivers, like, they had this all in writing.

My, my compliance, uh, manager would look at all that.

So, um, can you talk us through kinda what your points were to take to DC, and then how did, how did those meetings go with the members from FMCSA?

My visibility solution wants more info."

Totally.

And if you think about this too, like a lot of brokers and carriers and things like that, they're collecting the information as to who the trucking, who the truck's gonna show up at the shipper and giving that information to the shipper.

But why not also send them a picture of the truck? "Hey, if this, if it's not this red truck that looks like this and a blue one shows up, give me a ring." And before we didn't have...

We would just go off of whatever the driver would tell us.

But now we have some more of the actual physical footprint.

And even with carrier vetting, as you said, like I'm real, I'm really deep into all this carrier vetting stuff, and I think there's a big difference between a digital footprint of a carrier and a physical footprint.

[laughs]

Can you walk us through what cargo theft looks like and the things that, you know, an early salesperson or early operator should be looking for from start to finish? What does that cycle look like?

Definitely.

So obviously there's tons of different vetting platforms out there that throw you red flags, but a lot of times even red flags, it's what do you do at that point to determine if they're bad or good, right? Like a lot of people operate in the gray area in logistics.

So I think the biggest thing is having conversations with them and kind of like back in the day, it used to be like, hey, your MC looks bad.

I can't work with you.

And they'd be like, oh, well, can you try this? My sister MC.

And you're like, what? What do you...

What would those things be, Danielle?

As long as these people can make money doing these nefarious acts, they're going to keep coming back to commit these nefarious acts because they're trying to scale their business, even if it's illegal.

Yes, for sure.

And it definitely has grown a lot.

And before, like I would say prior to 2016, the 2020 really boomed.

But it was just straight theft where drivers were having to be really careful about where they parked.

And they were having to make sure the type of...

When they back up to something, it's like on the back of a wall.

Are we fixing fraud in trucking today or are we just getting better at talking about it?

So before we get into all of the good stuff, I want to roll back to before you became the fraud prevention expert, before you've really been an active voice in the community in regards to fraud, you spent eight years in the trenches as a broker, right? And what did you see during those early years that made you realize that fraud was more than just a few bad actors?

Yeah, so I specialized in copper and electrical wire, and I did southeast to northeast, southeast to midwest.

Those were my lanes.

I was a carrier sales rep for eight years.

I also did a little bit of postal in the very beginning and then switched over to more of the high-value stuff.

And back then, it was a lot of straight theft, so a lot of The drivers had to, we had to really prepare the drivers.

Hey, you're handling high value freight.

How are scammers manipulating different platforms and digital tools to steal identities or even steal freight?

Like what kind of led you into this fight, right, against freight fraud and all that's come with it?

Yeah, so I was a carrier sales rep for eight years here in Gainesville at a little small brokerage.

And we did copper and electrical wire mainly.

So I mainly dealt with higher value freight.

And so that comes with greater responsibility, especially coming from a smaller midsize brokerage.

One loss takes a big, hit on that brokerage.

So I've really had to adapt vetting techniques and really had a long checklist of all these different things that I had to do.

Because, you know, what can the average American do to make a real difference when it comes to something as just prevalent as cargo theft and what's currently happening in the space and really just in general?