ELD LIVE TRACKING/HIGHWAY??? Brokers locked me out.

The bigger downside is when working for someone you may not get a choice on how much of your data is given away. We need better privacy laws that make the data worthless. Remove the data market. Make trading in it federal pen time for all the c-suite of any company involved.
Wouldn’t help with those offshore but if you reduce it at home there’s less to steal.

(Rant off)

 

Yup, I got screwed for not having an inspection in the last two years and now this is a nice cherry on top for the day.

 

So I had to deal with this again recently and here is what I learned. This is only about ELD exempt trucks though.

After you go through the Highway setup, all the way at the end it asks you to connect to ELD. It also gives you an option to choose ELD Exempt.
When you click on that, then it asks for a copy of title, cab card and your drivers license.
Broker has copied a Highway person in the email chain and when I asked him if they guarantee my identity not being stolen by having a pic of my driver's license in their system and by all the brokers out there, I did not get a response, even though all my previous questions were answered right away.

In the end I ended up uploading a copy of my cab cards and a copy of insurance certificate with Vin numbers. That satisfied they broker and they got me activated.

Doing an online setup with another broker, I simply uploaded cab cards in field one, insurance in field 2 and MC Authority in field 3. They did not even ask for drivers license.

So if you have a pre 2000 truck you can simply give them your cab card, however if you have a 2002 or any other year with a 99 engine, a broker can also ask for some kind of proof of engine replacement.

It all varies by broker though. I had experienced calling on a load from a bigger brokerage, Axle Logistics for example and the low level agent who picked up the phone, did not even want to bother with overriding the Highway. Simply said my ELD is not connected and hung up, even though I have done tons of loads for them in the past.
I guess they attitude will change a bit when market flips in truckers favor.

 

Hope I don't get too much hate for this but I signed up for the eld garbage with highway. I wanted a load from a broker who required it and it was by far the best option I had seen in a while. I already agree to tracking on all my loads anyways. I'm a one man operation running load boards with no interest in direct customers. I work when I want to and park when I don't. There are tens of thousands signing up and moving on so trying to be the guy holding out is much like being involved in one of the countless trucker strikes that never go anywhere. ELDs got a lot of hate in the beginning too but everybody eventually adopted them and they will also adopt this.

 

If you all stood up together maybe this wouldn't happen.

Personally I think the eld mandate is BS. This highway thing is pushing it to the extreme. Just another scam like hireright.

I don't think anyone wants or needs a supervisor.

 

Can’t blame them for wanting to combat fraudulent carriers seeing how the FMCSA still hands out authority like free candy. The downside is being able to know where trucks are going in real time and using that data to influence rates.

 

"Good morning, we've got a hot load this morning in Nashville that we'd love to....oh, just a second, sorry about that, we're showing you in Nashville, IL not Nashville, TN lol, so sorry for the confusion, have a great day!"

 

I can blame them. They are wanting carriers to put their sensitive information at risk instead of just having the customer verify that the correct truck is picking up their load. It's like owners who just want to get in a truck and drive and not be bothered with all of the paperwork and other stuff that comes with the job, but they still want to make the big bucks. There is absolutely a middle ground here. Carriers can allow tracking their ELD to a guest account while under load, but Highway wants your primary admin account username and password. It should be a situation where everyone can benefit. But instead, carriers have to wonder how their data is being used and hope that Highway doesn't have their security compromised.

The CEO was not even involved in the transportation industry until recently. He's just another white collar investment opportunist from JP Morgan. Their support staff is overseas. That doesn't give me a lot of faith that they are motivated to reduce fraud in the industry, it just looks like they're in it to make money and wrap it up with a message claiming to save the world. He has found a way to con brokers into giving away their money, and more than likely a way to profit off of the carriers who sign up. In the event that this startup fails, this guy is going to float off on his golden parachute to another executive position somewhere.

I don't blame the carriers who are feeling coerced into doing this. I hope they don't get their identities stolen or their data misused. I will be finding my own customers, moving my own products, or finding a different industry to work in before I put my information at risk for some guy driving a desk who isn't even a stakeholder in the industry. It's not even about solidarity, but doing what is best for my business in the long run and reducing unnecessary risk.