Experts from MyCarrierPackets and Parade Weigh in on Freight Fraud and Double Brokering

Double brokering is a hot-button issue in the freight industry these days, and it’s no wonder.

80% of brokers using Parade have been impacted by freight fraud and Truckstop calculates that there has been a 400% increase in double brokering claims. These issues are very prevalent and the majority of freight brokers are concerned by them.

Parade Account Executive Nathalie Freysinger hosted a webinar featuring MyCarrierPackets CEO Jay Pelkey and Parade Head of Product Lindsay Watt to chat about double brokering and freight fraud. At the end of the webinar, Jay and Lindsay took questions from the audience. Here are some of the key takeaways from the questions they received.

Sharing is Caring…Until it Isn’t

Both Parade and MyCarrierPackets have features that allow brokers to leave notes for their colleagues about a specific carrier, helping reduce the impact of tribal knowledge on potential freight fraud situations.

Both companies also look carefully at how data is shared. For example, MyCarrierPackets allows reporting on carrier issues to be either private or public, letting brokers decide whether their name is attached to a report or not. This puts control of privacy into the broker’s hands. 

Parade dove right into fighting freight fraud by creating a new tool called Carriers.FYI, which is meant to be used in conjunction with a tool like MyCarrierPackets. This tool uses Parade’s broad well of load and carrier data to let brokers enter a DOT number and email address and see whether the two have been associated in the past.

The Evolution of Fraud Signals

Companies like MyCarrierPackets have teams that eat, sleep, and breathe fighting freight fraud. These teams are always working to stay on top of the latest schemes of bad actors in the industry. This timely expertise is one of the reasons Parade and MyCarrierPackets are great partners. Mutual customers can benefit from fraud-fighting tools on both platforms.

Carriers Aren’t the Only Bad Actors in the Industry

It has to be acknowledged that carriers aren’t the only bad actors in the freight industry. There are bad brokers who engage in shady business practices.

There are even bad dispatchers. Dispatching services are often hired by owner-operators and smaller trucking businesses to handle some of the behind-the-scenes work required to get from point A to point B. This service can be very helpful, but independent dispatchers kind of fall into a wild, wild West sort of territory. They don’t have a DOT number to check up on. There’s no official channel to verify which carriers a dispatcher is dispatching for. Brokers don’t know that dispatcher is who they say they are and that they’ll do what they say they’re going to do at all.

MyCarrierPackets is working on ideas to help vet these dispatchers just like they vet carriers to provide a rating. This would allow brokers to know they were working with an honest dispatcher, offering more opportunities for those dispatchers to grow their businesses, and opening up potential qualified capacity for brokers.

The Continued Evolution of Fraud in the Freight Industry 

Con artists have been evolving for centuries, and technology has opened new doors for fraudsters. That’s why MyCarrierPackets and Parade are taking more proactive approaches. 

One of the most common double brokering fraud tricks we’re seeing today is using an email address that’s very close to the actual email address a carrier uses for rate cons but not exact. It makes it easy for brokers to miss the difference. 

To prevent this from happening, brokers can enter the carrier’s information, pull up their DOT number, and check to see that the email address being used is among the carrier’s validated users. If it’s not, MyCarrierPackets has a button to validate the address. They’ll check with the carrier to ensure it’s a valid user and get back to you. This works even better than reporting because it catches problems before they start.

Protecting Carrier Reputations Amidst the Fraud Frenzy

While the goal of onboarding and vetting services like MyCarrierPackets is to help shippers and brokers protect their businesses, carriers can sometimes get caught in the middle. As was mentioned already, not every broker is a good one. MyCarrierPackets has seen instances where carriers are being reported for fraud or double brokering simply because they were late or some other issue. While reporting or blocking those carriers is an acceptable way to resolve the issue, being dishonest about what happened is not.

MyCarrierPackets monitors double brokering claims and the number of reports a broker is submitting to ensure that carriers are being treated fairly. Brokers not following the reporting guidelines can even have their accounts suspended.

Want to watch the webinar and catch all the commentary yourself? You can find it here.