"Cash App Me The Money And Trust Me Bro" | Final Mile 135

Nate Cross & Ben Kowalski answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:

💸 Getting Paid via Cash App? Is it normal or a red flag for carriers?

📊 Best Way to Find Loads? Are load boards enough or is there a better strategy?

⚖️ Broker Bankruptcy? File on the bond only or use a collection agency too?

Support Our Sponsors:

Togo: Click Here

OperFi: Click Here

QuikSkope - Get a Free Trial: Click Here

DAT One - Brokers & Carriers: Click Here to get 10% off your first year!

DAT Outgo Factoring for Carriers: Click Here

AscendTMS: Click Here and use promo code RA-freight360! to get AscendTMS FREE for 90 days!

Recommended Products: Click Here
Freight Broker Basics Course: Click Here
Join Our Facebook Group: Click Here
Check out all of our content online: Click Here

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back for another edition of the Final Mile. This QA is coming to you today from our Facebook group. I think just about all of it. I looked, I looked through our YouTube comments for any good questions. And honestly, we just had a lot of people like praising us for some really good recent content we put out. And I'm, you know, a couple of critics out there,

Intro And Where Questions Come From

SPEAKER_01 0:19

but that's fine. Comes with it. Um, it's funny. I was listening to uh Joe Rogan. He was on Gary Breca's podcast versus like I think I think you and I had both listened to the Rogan episode that Gary was on. So I listened to the the vice versa, and they're talking about podcasting. And uh Joe Rogan was like, never read the comments. He's like, he's a can read the comments. He's got it's got it. And I'm like, that's where we get our content, that's where we get our like a lot of our questions from. But um anyway, we'll uh we'll get into our questions here. Um there's a whole slew of content on our in our library, so check it out at our website, and you've got all the the show sponsors down listed in the description and on your screen if you're on YouTube, so check those out, help support the channel. First question. Um I shortened it because it was pretty long. But basically the question is is it is it normal to be paid for a load via Cash App? And this whole thing, I was talking with a guy I used to work with because his nickn company got name-dropped, and they were like, Yeah, they they uh

Cash App Payments And Fraud Risks

SPEAKER_01 1:26

they cash apped me and then tried tried to get the money back. And I'm like, I definitely know like the real story was like the brokerage didn't cash app them, like a broker in the company cash apped a driver to try and get them to, you know, as a favor. Like, hey, I will personally send you money early for um whatever it is, you know what I mean? It could be an advance or just like an atta boy, I don't know, whatever. And it brought up the qu like the question to for discussion is like, what is an appropriate way to send funds when you're doing business legitimately? And I'm I am going to say that it because I dude, we see it all the time. Like people try to because we more and more now in our regular lives use things like Zell Cash App and PayPal, Venmo, and all that stuff. Like, I still think that I would not feel comfortable in business sending money outside of a standard method like a check, uh uh ACH, and if you're gonna do an advanced, like there's a couple big players out there like EFS and CamData that have come checks, right? Like, those are industry standard. So if you're a carrier and someone is offering to like zell you money up front for a load or cash app you, I'm telling you that it's not necessarily bad intent, but a lot of these criminal activities and like stolen identities and double brokers and stolen loads and all these things, right? A lot of them involve transfer of payments in a non-traditional method to try and coerce a driver into doing something that they don't know. Like you get an owner operator. I think I told a story this was like a year or two ago where this owner operator like had no idea that he just helped steal a load of apparel and take it to a warehouse to be sold in the black market. He just thought, oh yeah, this is what I was supposed to be doing. But he got, you know, paid some money up front by a quote unquote brokerage who wasn't actually a brokerage. They were a carrier, a fraudulent carrier that got tendered a load from a different brokerage and then impersonated another brokerage to then, you know, get this foreowner operator to do something that he had no idea he was assisting in. But um caveat. Yeah. The whole like I'll give you another example and then I'll get your thoughts on it. Like, this is an Airbnb situation, right? So, like, I'm coming to Florida in a couple weeks, and we're coming up on like our free cancellation for Airbnb, and we're just like, is there anything else that would be more optimal for us? And I'm going with my my wife, kids, my brother, his wife, and his kids. So we need a big house. And we found this one like right near the beach, near my parents. It looks awesome. And we're like, it's it's expensive, but it's like really close to the time of booking, and she hasn't booked it yet. Let's try to see if we can if we can kind of work a deal with her. And she comes down to the price we want, and then she says, But I'll need you to sell me $2,000 deposit that I will refund after a successful walkthrough at your departure to make sure there's no damage. And we're like, Zell you money? Like, can we do the transaction through Airbnb? Because that way, obviously, if you're gonna try and screw us, we could dispute it. Or pay and lunch on it. And we're like, no way. Like, once you Zell money, like you can't get it back.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I've accidentally sent it to the wrong person, and you definitely can't get it back.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Um it's like mailing cash to somebody, but instantly. Like there is no like control Z or whatever. You know, you can't move on to the case.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

You can do pay uh you could do PayPal, which I think is a good way where you have recourse where you can use it.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

PayPal and Zell both or no, PayPal and Venmo both have ways to dispute or try to reverse a transaction, but like Zell is literally like bank to bank. There's no there's like because your Venmo or whatnot. I don't I don't use cash app, but like Venmo, like you have a wallet where like your money goes from a your bank into a wallet and from a wallet to someone else's wallet and then to their bank. So yeah. Anyway, back to brokerage.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Here's a caveat though. So like where I see this much more commonly is brokerages in your first year of business because the brokerage might have no credit yet. Okay, but they might have plenty of money. They might have investments, they might have a bunch of cash on hand to start the business, but they don't have credit because they just got their MC, right? Or maybe they're in business six, seven months and they have a credit rating, but they're not approved by the factoring company, right? So from the carrier's point of view, like the carrier's like, hey, like I would like to work with this broker. Like I've talked to them. They have customers that really line up with the lanes I want to run and I think would be a good fit to work together, right? So in those scenarios, right, or where I see these most commonly, where then the broker goes, Well, hey, for our first load or two, I'll give you 50% after you're loaded, and I'll pay you the second half at delivery. So you send me the POD, I'll call the receiver, make sure the website is. Wire transfers are really hard to do. You can't usually have to go to a bank to do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

And I guess I mean like uh EFS, like a com check or an EFS check.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, because not a lot of like a 3% business charge that goes with them. There's the fee is one of them. The other aspect of it is that like brokerages have just moved away from the traditional ones because they were such a target for fraud. So like I most of the brokers I talk to like just have a black and white rule now where like they just won't use Comchecks or any of the EFSs anymore. Like it's just through, like you said, bank to bank or through a factoring company. But when you're a new brokerage and you really want to establish some trust with a brokerage, I mean a new care, like that's local. Like, hey, like once I confirm you're loaded, I'll give you half of it. You can't see my credit rating, so you don't have any way to trust me or verify me. And then I'll pay you the other half on delivery. And then maybe the second load is the same, and then the third load, it goes traditional. So I've seen that pretty common to like initiate the relationship where there's no trust, but you want to establish it. And like I've had brokers that like literally have driven to a receiver and handed cash to drivers because like the driver's like, hey, like I want to work with you, but you gotta meet me somewhere in the middle, literally, sometimes, and go like, I I I let's start working together, but like I can't verify you'll ever pay me. And I don't even know if you'll be in business next week and then I'm not money. So, like that's where I've seen them more common because the other bucket where I've seen them is in load hostage situations, is the other place that they tend to be pretty common where like somebody has stolen a load and is like, I'll give you the load back, but you got to give me some cash, and it's still at least cheaper than your deductible and your insurance.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, or right, the carrier, the driver gets fired mid-transit. You ever hear these ones? Like they get they're told like you're done after this load, and then the driver's like, yeah, yeah. So then the bro, the broker's like, dude, I will, I guess, cash. Literally pay out of box. I'll pay you. Like, yeah. All right. Interesting one. Uh, next question. Are load boards the best way for new carriers to find loads, or is there a better option? Um I think the question goes both ways. Is it also the best way for brokers to find new capacity, or is there a better option? And I think ultimately the load boards, so like your DAT and truck

Load Boards Vs Better Load Sourcing

SPEAKER_01 9:05

stop, for example, are going to be a very common marketplace that brokers and carriers will use to meet each other when they're new in business or if there's a new lane opportunity, et cetera. Um, because that's just you got to go where the person you're trying to connect with is, right? You gotta be where they are. And if they're on a load board, that's where you got to be. Um, not all capacity is on a load board, though, right? So I think there are some other tools that you can use that I think are very helpful that are not just posting loads and searching trucks and things like that. Or if you're a carrier posting your truck and searching for loads. There are directories, there are sourcing tools. So, like for what I like, for example, if I've got a broker that has a new opportunity and we're trying to find carriers that might be a good fit for it, um, I always tell them, like, yeah, you can post these, even if they're for you know, next month, post them and you can at least start talking to carriers and see who might be interested and what kind of capacity and pricing are we looking at ballpark wise. But I also say, hey, let's go, like, I love gen logs for this example, right? We can see, you know, what based on that lane, what carriers have actually been seen through images um in real time driving up and down those interstates, right? You got tools like highway where you can do a um a capacity search based on where from either ELD data or inspection data and their preferences um where they've identified that they want to work. I used to use the DAT directory as like a real common one for like a hey, let me find 50 carriers that might be a good fit for this as a backhaul, and let me just reach out to all of them. It could be a simple email like, hey, I got this coming up, any interest. Um, or you could start going through making uh a handful of phone calls. Um but I'm telling you, I think load boards uh Kevin Hill, I think, told us the stat of what kind of the percentage of capacity that's on loadboards versus just seems invisible from loadboards. And it's it's astounding. It's like half, I want to say, is just it was less than half. It was way less than half.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah. And the other thing too to keep in mind is just because you don't see someone's trucks on the load board doesn't mean that dispatcher isn't looking for loads, right? There's just a function.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

That's where like lane makers is really strong with DAT.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Well, yeah. And again, like I I there's something else interesting that came up recently that I didn't think about but really made sense. Is that like I always kind of thought that like once information got good enough that like you could find which carriers would be interested in a spot load to reach out to them, right? Okay. Now, some of these automations have gone live, and I've heard carriers talking about this where I can't remember, I think they were talking about ELD integrations where I was there a bunch of carriers are talking about, and they're like, I'm getting phone calls all day long because people are like, Well, hey, do you want this load? I know you're gonna be in Memphis tomorrow. And the carrier's like, How the hell do you know I'm in Memphis? I don't want everybody in the market to know where my truck is at any given time. Like, that isn't helpful for me. And people are calling me for loads, and I'm like, I don't even have an available truck. And it's like the other side of the fact of like involuntary versus voluntary on a load board. If you don't see their truck posted, they're not going to get phone calls. So they can choose, hey, here's my truck, give me some calls, or I'll wait and see if there's a load and I'll call you. When you start to automate some of this stuff, like you're now just having the market contact and reach out to carriers that like are like, I don't even have a truck. Why do I keep getting phone calls? So, like, there's places for both of them. Like, I think they're great to find new carriers. And also, like, things change so fast in our industry that, like, being able to go to a marketplace where I need a truck and you need a load, and we both found out we both needed each other an hour and a half ago. Like, that happens real time, right? You as a trucking company might have had a load that you were gonna load in an hour and a half and you didn't need one, then your customer calls you, and now your truck's trying to find a load. I might not have had a load an hour and a half ago, and my customer called me and gave me the load. So, in that short window of an hour and a half, you could need a new load, and I found a load I didn't have, and that's where we're gonna be able to connect to find that right fit. So, like for sure, there's a ton of value and you should be relying on them. But to your point, I don't think you should only be relying on them. Like, Gen Lux is probably the best tool I found for sourcing and reaching out to the right carriers when you've got like dedicated or loads that are coming up, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Yeah, I'll throw a uh shameless plug in here too. You can get 10% off your first year of DAT if you use our link in the show notes. Um, great for the directory, great for posting loads, searching trucks. If you're a carrier searching loads, posting trucks. Um, and if you're looking for like convoy platform for capacity sourcing or um highway for a small to medium broker at a at a at a very cheap price, um, you can get that through the Ascend TMS um combo, and you can get 90 days free of their full throw plan if you use the referral code in the description box. But shameless plugs, but we partner with these companies because we believe in their products and they and we know they add value.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

So I have another point. Because also I just kind of answer that from like the broker's point of view. But it's like, what is the best way for new carriers to find loads? Like best, again, what do you mean by best, fastest or highest paying? They could be two different things, right? But the easiest way to get freight, I would say, is probably a load board because you'll be able to find a lot of it and call enough people that have it to find a fit for a new carrier, right? Yep. Or calling shippers directly in your area. Like if you're based in Boca, call a bunch of shippers in Boca. Like, I got a trucking company, we're local to you. Love to be able to meet you in person and see if we can do some business together.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yep. All right, last question. When a broker that we worked with files for bankruptcy, should we only file on their bond or do we need to find a collection agency as well?

SPEAKER_00 15:15

So very good question, especially with RR going under, because I've been dealing with this like once a week from somebody.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, the whole RR family of companies. So there's like multiple um companies involved under that umbrella. Well, I'll tell you, I'll I'll tell you how I've seen it in practice. Filing on bond is first come, first serve. So you have the, you know, the whole risk of like, is the bond gonna be empty by the time just for that.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

First come, first serve, bonds are 75 grand still, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Minimum 75 grand, yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Okay, so 75 grand is basically 20 loads that are coast to coast, right? So if that brokerage is doing anything more than like 20 loads a week, like, and you're the 21st person in line as a carrier, like you're not getting any money from the bond. Like it's a pretty low number.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Yeah. Um, but if you can be one of the first ones to file on it, it's it's basically the first couple services is a good thing. Whereas a collections agency, you're gonna have to pay an attorney or a collections firm for their um services. And if a company truly goes bankrupt

Broker Bankruptcy Bonds And Collections

SPEAKER_01 16:27

and there's no money left. Like that's another thing. Yeah, so I would yeah, I would encourage you guys if you want to learn more about this one. We did an episode on um Freight Collection. We did a couple episodes on Freight Collections um late in 2025. Um, check those out. Um, but I think the answer to this question is like depending on how much you're owed, would probably determine if you're gonna do one or the other or both. I would absolutely file on a bond because it's as simple as you contact you. Yeah, there's nothing to lose. Worst case scenario, you don't get any money, it didn't cost you anything. If you hire a collections company, depending on how they are structured, they might say you only pay us if we collect. Then you have really no risk to do that either. But if they're like, we're gonna charge you a fee up front to initiate this, and then here's how you settle the rest of the fee afterwards. Then you gotta decide, well, how much am I if I'm owed $100,000? Yeah, it might be worth $10,000 or $20,000 to get $100,000. Um, if you're only owed, you know, for one load for three grand and they want to charge you $1,500 just to initiate it, probably not. Probably not, yeah. Um, cost of doing business. It's an interesting question. Um, I think more importantly, it it brings up a point of doing a proper check on if you're a carrier, check your broker's credit before you accept a load for them. If you're a brokerage, check your customers' credit before you take a load from them.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

I have a better question for you, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. As a broker, okay, that is an agent for a company, like RR is an example, right? Say I'm an agent for R and they file for bankruptcy, and I'm not aware. Now I go to another home, I go to Pierce to go get a position there. Was it R they went bankrupt? So I come to you and I go, like, hey, I want to bring all my customers to you and my carriers, right? But none of the carriers that I worked with at R from the last month there got paid. So they start going after my customers once I'm now at Pierce. Now what do I do? Two questions. First question is like, how should you be checking the credit rating of the brokerage you work for as an agent to see if this is ever likely to occur? Because this really puts an agent in a very difficult position because now the carriers are going with the collection agency at your customers. You thought your employer paid all the carriers, they didn't, and your customers are like, well, dude, I loved working with you, Nate. We've been working together for years, but I've got attorneys sending me emails about every load you guys ran for me last month, and they're telling me they're gonna sue us for the freight charges. Is that preventable?

SPEAKER_01 19:15

You know, I've had so a few years ago, we had a guy that came to us, and he's not in the industry anymore. Um, but he ran a brokerage. Actually, you know him. Um, but he used to run a brokerage, and his brokerage went under because he mismanaged his fund his finances, and um he shut down the company and became an agent for us. One of his carriers said, Hey, your bond is dried up, and we know you're now with Pierce as an agent, and Pierce, we want you to pay us. And then all of a sudden, like we're like, dude, what is go like you either have to settle this with this carrier or we have to disassociate with you because we are not having our name dragged into this. And it was a collections company that came to us on behalf of the carrier, and it's the same collections company that we use to try to collect if we need to. And it was, and the guy was like, you know, he came, gave us benefit of the doubt, and was like, hey, you know, I know you're a customer of ours, so I just wanted to throw this out in front of you so you can address that internally. And we handled it. Um, and he ended up, he got out of the industry anyway. Now, on the flip side, I've also more recently had a wave of those former RR agents who have come to either join Pierce or inquire about joining Pierce, et cetera. And I've had a conversation with a few of them. And I'll tell you that one of the really one of the things I love when I talk to someone that's interested in joining our company is when they ask things like you kind of outline. They'll say, like, if I were to look on the load board, or if I'm a factoring company looking into Pierce Row wide, like, what am I gonna see as far as like credit score, reported days to pay, et cetera? Like what's gonna and I I like that they ask that because they're thinking about what is the reputation of the company, how is it gonna look? Am I gonna have trouble getting carriers, etc.? Um and if you're a brokerage and you have agents, um, that is a that is something that's absolutely going to either attract or detract from someone wanting to do business under your organization um for very good reason, right? If a factoring company is gonna if a if the three big factoring companies aren't gonna work with your company, we just lost a ton of capacity, right? If you my days to pay like I talked to a guy um, I think it was like last week, and he basically he's starting to lose capacity because his company's days to pay has swept from like 30 to then like 35. And I think he's at like 42 or something right now. He's in the 40s. And he what he didn't understand, he's like, Yeah, I think it's just temporary. And I was like, I'm like, you have to think about. What direction is this heading in? Because whether or not you come to us, like the longer you wait, the worse it gets, the harder it's going to be for you to make a smooth transition out of there and into somewhere else. I said, but it is, you very, very rarely see those things go back in the right direction. Those are usually the precursors and warning signs of terrible financial management of a company. Right? They start to slow pay, and slow pay happens before no pay. And no pay is when the door shut, they file bankruptcy, the bond gets dried up, and they go out of business. So interesting discussion. Did that answer your question? I know you kind of asked a couple different ones there, but yeah, because I was, I mean, like I thought about it after.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Like I had a client that that occurred with, and like I know a few folks too that left RR that I've talked with over the past whatever couple months since it's happened. And I'm like, it made me think about it more. I'm like, huh. I'm like, I don't think that I've ever I always tell people to ask the questions you said, like, look at the credit when you kind of get onboarded. But it then it made me think, I'm like, well, if I was an agent, I would probably want to continually look at that, right? And I kind of feel like maybe you would know that, maybe you wouldn't. Like if my carriers weren't getting paid, I feel like they would have probably reached out to me, but maybe not, because like if the carrier's got a factoring company, their factoring company might be emailing my brokerage accounts payable team and going, like, where's the money? The carrier might not care because they got paid from RTS or Triumph or whatever. So, like, you actually might not see this as a broker or an agent, right? For a brokerage that is, you know, on the verge of going bankrupt before it actually occurs. Now you could, but you would have to pay for it. Like you would literally have to like use some credit monitoring tool to actually have that in real time. But it's it's an interesting question, right? For agents out there.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yep. Yeah, I usually I recommend if you're if you're an agent and you're shopping for a new home, um, ask the questions about like typically you knowing how long they've been in business will speak a lot. So if they've if a company's been in business for 20 years versus three years, right, you've got a defin different level of track record. Days to pay, um, you can look that up normally yourself if you just go to like DAT or something like that. Um, but asking like, what are your standard carrier terms for pay? What are your standard customer terms for pay? Um, what are the quick pay options? Um how do you handle disputes on you know invoices, charges, short pays, et cetera? How do you handle disputes on claims and and all that stuff? And um also, too, when you start to see companies that either nickel and dime you first off, or on the flip side, it sounds way too good to be true. Those are usually warning signs. Like if they if they had like I saw a company that was like um uh they had to the agent had to pay the factoring fee for the load when the loads got factored. So like if they had a let's say a three and a half percent factoring fee, like they're having to pay that out of their commission. It's like, what are you like what are you really offering me? Like if you can't even pay to fund your own company, why would I bring my money to it?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Or I've seen like, you know, they're gonna offer you know 85% commission and blah blah. And it's like there's not like enough meat on the bone in like any organization to pay that long term and give you free everything and you know, all the all the things.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

So agreed.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. But hey, if you're looking for a new home, reach out to me. Pierce is always looking for some good some good agents. So any uh any other thoughts on that one?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Final thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Either you believe you can or believe you can't. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

And until next time, go Bills.