Pros/cons of tracking using smartphone apps

I have an issue with a broker charging me $50 miscellaneous fees for tracking on a load I only had for 14 hours, 320 total miles, and it's one of the larger brokers, charged me $50 to use Four Kites tracking, but its not in my phone, I think they're ripping us off as O/O

 

Name names, we're all friends here.

 

For all "Tin Foil Hat Users", myself included, I had the same concerns. The tracking via MacroPoint is done mostly because the broker can give the link to the customer with usually 15 minute updates, it is not easy to give access to a broker, or a customer with qualcomm. When I have to use MacroPoint I download it activate for the duration of the run. Once run is completed I Uninstall MacroPoint, and put my Tin hat back on,problem solved.

 

A broker charging YOU to track the load? We should be paying you to do it!

 

Pepsico

 

They should be charging the shipper not you, that said why did or do you agree to it?

 

Its open season on us, definitely wouldn't agree to that, in my invoice I noticed the miscellaneous charge, once I got an explanation, I realized I would never want this to happen to others, so I'm here, its getting hairy out there, just question it before you pull for them

 

Serving up Type II diabetes AND Four Kites. Nice.

 

Yeah that's like charging the truck to haul a load for you, just not right!

 

I think it’s a combination of things.

1. Lack of understanding with how it works and what the company has access too.

2. Lack of trust mostly due to poor and invasive practices of big tech companies.

3. Privacy first type of people. Truckers aren’t all young people who are used to being tracked constantly. These guys don’t even want smart phones and some probably don’t even want cell phones. They can handle themselves and you will be the first to know if there is a problem.

I own trucks and a brokerage, and am a privacy first type of person who doesn’t have Facebook or any social media. But, I also happen to be fairly young so this isn’t just an older person “problem”. However, I will say since we track with macro point I was able to see just how little info we get. This made me ok with using it but because of having that knowledge. Before that I said no freakin way and I would never ask a carrier to use it.

Unfortunately there are a lot of ####ty companies out there who either aren’t where they say they are, or are trying something shady so it’s becoming more and more crucial to use macro to manage your risk. We use it for that more then cutting down on check calls.

Edit: Technically the broker can track you after the load is delivered unless you call the number and hit whatever number to quit tracking. If your on a 2 day load and the broker chose 5 day load, and you don’t stop it, then it’ll keep tracking. Sometimes I’ve saw drivers tracked for about 12 hours past delivery until we shut it off ourselves. So, point is after delivery call in to shut off just like to called in to accept it. More days cost more money though so it doesn’t make sense to choose longer then needed.

As far as $50 that’s nuts. It cost on average $4 or $5 to track with Macro and being small we probably don’t even have that good of a deal.

Edit 2: For us we can choose between tracking every 1 hour, 2 hours, or 4 hours. It’s not a constant track. You can “ping” it anytime but that costs more money and usually only need that if you suspect a problem on a critical load.