Repeal of Freight Broker Bond Increase Please Sign A Petitions on www.whitehouse.gov

I'm not an expert but ti strikes me that the idea of the higher bond is to weed out the thugs and bums and let the honest ones stand

....?

Is this the correct view ?

 

Like the Petition to the White House works anyway..that's just a toy for the kids to play with. And i agree, the bond should be $250,000...I've been burned on being paid before.

 

If it was to get rid of FMCSA I would sign up right now!

 

Based on the numbers, very few. According to both OOIDA and the TCA that got in bed together to push this through, most unpaid freight bills came from fraud. It will not matter what the amount is. When someone decides to commit fraud using someone else's authority the amount doesn't matter.

I am against the government being the person that sets credit standards for me. Since this increase we have had two very good brokers that paid well and paid within 10-days. One was the sister of a small business owner and only booked his companies freight. She worked part-time and moved 10-15 loads a week. She quite and CHR has the loads for far less.

The other did a good amount of business but because of some personal medical issues with his wife couldn't get the bond. He is now an agent and can't pay the same rate he did. Plus the big company doesn't pay as fast. After all the game playing of "I didn't get your BOL", when the clock starts it is 35-40 days to pay. All total it is like 60-days.

So all of you that have bought into the lies about "protecting the small guy" have gotten what you have asked for. You have pushed the better brokers out of business or into partnerships with the ones you complain about.

But on the upside, the TCA is now recommending OOIDA insurance and the big brokers are adding agents at a very rapid pace. So someone wins.

 

If you look back far enough on this board I think you will see posts.....probably several years ago..... between myself and a fella named Dice where I said all a bond increase would accomplish is to reduce competition among brokers and lower rates to the truck.

 

Yep and I believe G/MAN or maybe someone else came up with an idea the bond be based on a percentage of the gross revenue brokered in a year or something like that. Why does a brokerage doing 50 million a year have the same bond as one doing 50 thousand a yeat? People seem to think of $75,000 bond as some sort of guarantee they will get their money. Anyone who's ever lost thousands back when there was a 10k bond is certainly not going to forget lessons learned and stop applying them. Really then what did raising it to $75k accomplish? Nothing but knee jerk feel good for a minute or two.

 

$75000 is nothing for some, but "closing business" for others. Why this fixed amount for all?

But still, many one truck O/Os have more than $75000 pent up in equipment just to gross $200k - $300k a year.
I fail to understand why a broker grossing far more has a problem with a $75000 bond, if that is their primary business.

 

Yep. Doubt if we'll ever see that though. That would be like a gold backed currency and I doubt that we will see that again either. Carriers and brokers operate on more of a fiat system where the carrier invests the money based on expected return and credit rating and then prays that he gets a return on his investment.

 

Rates are going up now. So why would we sign this?

 

I can only speak for myself, but both of my unpaid freight bills we not due to fraud. Of course, I was very diligent in who I extended credit. A broker bond isn't going to pay on fraud anyway, that I'm aware of. Given that the $10k bond was around for 40 years, upping to $75k to take into account the devaluation of the dollar is a no-brainer. Now if you want to argue the broker bond, period, I think you and I would be on the same page as that WOULD be a deescalation of government intrusion into business. Simply raising a bond or insurance amount of a current law, for inflation, is not.