SIGNAL: Grounded in Truth
Everyone in this industry has a podcast now. Give it a year, the freight brokers will too.
So yes, we know the irony. We're launching a show into an industry with more voices than listeners, more hot takes than actual takes, more people explaining freight on camera than people who've dispatched a truck. Noise isn't what we're short on. It's what we're drowning in.
Here's the difference. SIGNAL: Grounded in Truth is long-format, on purpose. Truth doesn't fit in ninety seconds. A ninety-second clip is somebody's opinion wearing a blazer. A real conversation, given room to breathe, stops performing and starts being honest — worth thirty minutes of your day, and none of your scrolling.
In 1 Kings 19:11-12, Elijah stood on the mountain expecting God in the wind, the earthquake, the fire — and found Him instead in the still small voice that came after. Most of what passes for insight here is wind, earthquake, and fire. We built this show for the quiet after. That's where the signal lives.
Industry leaders. Operators. People who've lived with their own decisions. No fluff, no scripts, no one performing for an algorithm.
Available on all major podcast platforms. Follow 146 Media — 146-Media on LinkedIn, @146Media1 on X, 146media on Instagram, @146Media-Spartan on YouTube.
The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.
Peace and Love.
SIGNAL: Grounded in Truth
Freight Fraud is no longer a back-office nuisance!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Michael Caney is the Chief Commercial Officer at Highway, the freight industry’s leading carrier identity and fraud prevention platform, where he leads marketing, sales, sales engineering, customer success, and partnerships. He is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee “Freight Alley” — and has spent more than 20 years as an operator in freight, starting with his first job out of college as a freight broker with two phones on his desk.
Freight fraud is no longer a back-office nuisance. It is organized crime. Identity theft, double brokering, and cargo theft as a criminal enterprise are costing the industry hundreds of millions annually — and most carriers have no idea their DOT number can be cloned and used against them before they ever know it happened. Michael Caney has spent three years building the identity infrastructure the industry should have had a decade ago.
Carriers are not just bystanders in the fraud conversation. Their identities are being stolen. Their reputations are being used by bad actors. And the brokers who are protecting themselves from fraud are increasingly requiring carrier identity verification before they book. The carrier that is not verified is becoming the carrier that does not get the call.
The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.
Peace and Love.
Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal. I am Mike Vincent. Signal, a lot of noise out there, especially in the trucking industry. We cut through that to bring the clear signal grounded in truth. My guest is a longtime friend and colleague, Michael Caney, who is, I believe, your chief commercial officer at Highway right now. Yeah, Freight Industry's leading carrier identity and fraud prevention platform, where he leads marketing, sales, sales engineering, customer success, and partnerships. You're still based in Chattanooga, Tennessee in Freight Alley. Which I think you helped. I think you helped uh coin that phrase, Freight Alley.
SPEAKER_00I mean, Craig gets all the credit for that. Don't, don't, like he's gonna hear that and call me and say, What are you, why are you taking credit for that, Kaney?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but here's the thing. I've I've actually divulged where that came from to many people, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was a marketing ploy to get people to come to a Thursday night kickoff meeting, and it was the opening of college football, right? I remember that. I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was crazy. Because remember, yeah, if you when you joined, you had to bring your college football helmet put in the rafters. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that was awesome.
SPEAKER_00I missed, I missed the helmet wall. And like, and like when I when I worked there, when we worked together, the good news is like there was already a Longhorns helmet, and like that was like that was a team I that's a team I follow in love. Um yeah, that was the Longhorns helmet. That was Ben Murphy's. Right, and then they took it down. I was like, well, don't take it down just because you know, poor Ben, but like put the Longhorns helmet back. So um put it back up there.
SPEAKER_01Put it back up there. Were you there when um when Fontenells came through and I had put a pacifier on the Michigan helmet?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. So but anyways, look, started as a broker straight out of college, mid-market 3PL leadership, supply chain technology, senior roles at Bear Transportation Services, Redwood Logistics, Third Corner LLC, Riverside Transport, uh, freight waves, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had a I've done a I've done a I've done a lot, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then you started you started Growth Nexus before you even joined Highway, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did, man. Um, you know, it was you know, a lot of us like when we're in between stuff, uh we just find stuff to do. And that was more, you know, Growth Nexus was more about this like response to just market demand of people of brokers wanting help, you know, especially like especially brokers like between like 50 and 200 million that are just trying to find kind of their next growth phase. And and uh I would just step and do fractional leadership and advisory, and and it was just kind of uh I just didn't want to not work. I was just kind of between gigs. And so I started that business. And what was interesting about that business is there was enough demand that I ended up actually having to give it to a partner to come to Highway. I mean, it was it was it was a real little business. We we sp we ended up spinning it down, but um yeah, one of my old one of my old coworkers ended up taking over that business as a as my partner and running it for me. And it was cool, it was cool. I got to meet a lot of freight brokers and um and help them help them grow. So it was good, it was awesome.
SPEAKER_01It's awesome, dude. So look, dude, a highway is fantastic. You've had a fantastic career. You started with the broker as a broker, yeah, out of college. It's fitting that they call it a BS in a business administration because you gotta have a lot of BS to be a broker. That's right, that's right, that's right. Especially, especially back in the day, or you gotta be able to sling it, that is for sure.
SPEAKER_00That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_01But walk us through the two points, man. I mean, how did it how did you get to to here, man? I mean, you were you're how do I get a how do you air? How did you get to CCO of fraud prevention from broker?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man, I think um that's such a great question. Being a freight broker was a lot of fun, and the and the reality is, Vincent, I just liked brokers more than I liked shippers.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So no offense to all my shipper friends, but like I loved, I loved working in and running freight brokerages. I loved the design of freight brokerage. I loved thinking through the business models. Um and I just I loved the business. And so what I would try to pivot more toward businesses to help freight brokers because I just loved the industry so much more than more than I loved like trying to help a shipper solve their problems. And look, that's that's what freight brokers do, but I just I loved the freight brokerage business. So what I enjoyed about what we got to do together in sonar, um you know, all that, all that kind of stuff. And so um it was kind of a similar thing as how I got to highway. So so I was running a brokerage. I was running a business in Savannah. I was at um a company called Port City Logistics, and I had responsibility um at the time I was your chief growth officer, so I had responsibility for like the technology um innovation, how we went to market, the brokerage business. I had the fleet there too. And that's when I met Jordan. And at the time, I'm running this brokerage business, and it was uh it was a smaller business. And I and I went there to do that, really specifically, Vincent. I was like, you know, there's enough tech out there that I believe I could take a $7 million business and turn it into an $80 million business pretty quick. And like that was kind of my thesis. I just wanted to figure out if I could do it, build a really niche brokerage business that created a lot of cash flow for this asset company. You know, we weren't we weren't gonna go build the next MOLO, we just we wanted to build a good business. And so I did that. And one of the really the important things I needed was a back office solution. And I got to know Jordan from our time together at Freight Waves because he was a pretty he was a pretty big sponsor, if you remember, right? Like the Triumph, the Triumph paid brand and paid a lot of bills in the early days when you and I were over there, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. From the very, very beginning. In fact, we met with we met with them the day the company was of inception when it was TransFX.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep. And so, and so I got I got to know him a little bit at Freight Waves, and then I called him when I was at Port City, and I was like, man, I need I need audit help, I need payment help. And and and so and he then he did me a solid, he helped me out, and and because of the ways they wanted to underwrite us. They wanted to sell us freight rock ref refactoring instead of Triumph Pay. And anyway, so Jordan just he did me a solid. And and and I wouldn't have been able to grow that business the way that I did if it weren't for Triumph Pay. Okay, so fast forward, Jordan leaves Triumph Pay, buys carrier lists from our friend Kevin Hill. Kevin Hill, and I run into Jordan at a conference, and I had just happened to have an argument with my current vendor the night before at a conference because they sold that business and and they were just they were just cratering it. Like so RMIS had sold to truck stop, and truck stop had sold to iconic, and they basically took that business down to a very small support staff, and I couldn't get anything I needed.
SPEAKER_01Pete Pete Lutdenfeld and the guys.
SPEAKER_00Yep, and I couldn't get anything I needed. I couldn't get anything I needed. And so, and then so the next week I demoed this this this concept. It was kind of a concept at the time called highway, and I was like, man, like you you have figured out how to solve the problem. And you figured out how to solve the problem for two reasons. One, he built the the rules engine at the data layer, not the application layer. So the primary problem that I had with RMIS is they couldn't they couldn't persist a change across all users. So you had to wait. Like if you wanted to adopt some type of change, they had to do it tenant by tenant by tenant by tenant. And then the second thing is he had solved the identity problem. And I got so excited, Michael, that I just like called 10 of my CEO buddies. Like, you gotta see this thing. Because we were all having the same problem. We're all experiencing fraud, we're all experiencing service issues, we couldn't get insurance certificates processed, we couldn't get application changes made. And so we're all, you know how this industry is, Mike, like we're all texting each other, like, what are you doing? So I just called on my buddies, you gotta see this is you gotta see what he built. And so he he he he asked me to be uh like an advisor for him, and I was like, okay, sure, like I'm kind of already doing it, like I'll I'll introduce you to people. And and then I left um Savannah, Georgia, um, because I was commuting from Chattanooga and that became an untenable solution. Um and it just kind of was a natural thing, man. I was helping him out through the summer and and introducing them to some companies and and helping them think about how they go to market. And then he just asked me to come come join the company. I was I was man four years ago. Um so the short the short the long and short of it is I love Frey brokers. I love helping them. This industry was under attack four years ago, and I I truly believe that we had an answer to stop the the onslaught, and I think the markets validated that.
SPEAKER_01So you had when you went there, they had basically zero brokers, customers, right? We had a couple. Very few. But now I mean now it's ballooned. I mean, it it you you guys are all over the place, right? I just ran into your newest employees at down at the TAA TIA regional at Whiskey Ranch. And uh actually I picked up one of the cool new hats. I I I I wear it and I still have my I like ike uh pin on my button. Oh yeah, for sure. Dude, we'll get you into the office, we'll get you a whole bunch of swag. Um yeah, we'll get a whole bunch of swag or whatever. But what does that look like, right? I mean, specifically, right? You you you're talking to your your CEO buddies at the brokers, et cetera. And so look at what he's done here, right? Most people know highway as, oh, they just they they help verify the the carrier coming through the front door, coming through the front door, basically, not in the transition. But uh it's it's much more than that, right? The the technology underneath it is is much more than that. What what does that exactly look like? Explain that to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Man, that's that's such a perfect question. So the the initial go-to-market when I joined was was carrier identity and identity and access management for motor carriers. And the first demo modeled like, you know, we would show, like, hey, how the same way you sign with Facebook and sign in with Google, that's the way a motor carrier is gonna sign in. And then in order for that to happen, lots of security things are occurring, like for you to sign in and log in with your Apple ID. The market didn't understand that. Like it just, it was it was such a new category that we weren't gonna get product market fit if that's the story we told. So instead, we just said, how about your loads don't get stolen and we process your insert certificates within eight minutes? And the market loved that idea. And then we said we'll give you scheduled auto data, and the market loved that idea. And then we said we would give you, you know, ELD level visibility, and the market loved that idea, and fraud started dropping. And from that, we've now, the market's not been able to understand like that we are a full identity and access management platform for the motor carrier. So, what that what that means, Michael, is that like we're not letting everybody in and then trying to figure out who's bad. We are stopping them at the front door, and then we're curating that motor carrier's experience with the front broker. We're going all the way to the load level and saying this group of motor carriers can move all of the recycled boxes and all of the pizza boxes and all the bottled water that they want. But they cannot move solar panels out of Southern California. They cannot move copper loads in the Midwest.
SPEAKER_01And is that through their choice or just your understanding of the specific carrier's persona?
SPEAKER_00It's our understanding of the carrier's persona. And so and so that's the unique thing about highway, Michael, is the way that we're able to aggregate the data to build the persona. So we build the carrier persona, the broker sets the business rules, and we we measure the business rule against the carrier persona. And so there's a lot of things that go against the carrier persona. Like, so one of them is um uh just there, so we think about it in three pillars um authority, authentication, and capability management. And so like the authority and the authentication is like, is this a human? Are they a good or a bad human? Is there some smoke around this person and we don't really know? Are they associated with some things? So you just kind of have to like check the big boxes first.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then the second step is like, okay, if we want to let them play on our team, right, then what are they capable of? And then that has to do with their equipment type, sometimes the age of that equipment, the trailer type, their their level of insurance. Michael, we go all the way to the policy and read the exclusions. And so we may look at a motorcycle insurance.
SPEAKER_01So it's kind of like it's kind of like, look, uh, you get a you get like you buy something, right? Like I just moved, so I just bought a whole bunch of stuff to put in screen porch, right? For vendor screen ports. So look, you don't normally go out and buy $2,500 worth of aluminum extrusion. That's right. That's right. Is that is that kind of the same, same thing, right? Like this carrier is usually hauling hay across West Texas. What are they doing uh, you know, with a load of copper wire?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and yeah, so it's it's interesting. So you're kind of actually hitting on two pieces of the business. So we we think about the business in in three buckets identity, load level compliance, and capacity. And so, and so if a broker books a load, books a carrier on a load, we're gonna measure that carrier's persona. I love the way you talk about it. We we establish a carrier persona, we're gonna measure the facets of that persona against the aspects of both the cargo and the origin destination pair. Like, so is this a high theft lane? Is this facility a high theft facility?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00And we look at, we actually look at the facility independent, you'll appreciate this, independent of the broker's payload. So highway knows what comes out of the facility independent upon the load data. The broker doesn't have to tell us the commodity. So like I know where the Tito's vodka ships from, I know where the Legos ship from. It's independently coded in my data model. So if I see a truck headed to a high theft thing, I'm gonna look at the risk, the cargo risk profile of the carrier, and I'm gonna look at their insurance. And I'm gonna flag the broker if there's any issues. And so the broker can take action.
SPEAKER_01Hey, you got this carrier on this loan, it just looks a little bit suspect to us because of the business and let them make that that judgment.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And so sometimes it's like it's like, hey, danger, danger, Will Robinson, like this this guy, he shouldn't even be in your network. And sometimes it's just like, hey, this is an excluded commodity. Go buy a shipper's interest policy. If you want them to haul the freight, fine, but you're gonna need to go get some excess. You know, you're gonna need to go to LoadShare or Logistic or whoever does your shipper's interests, and you just need to make sure the cargo's covered. Or, hey, you need to call your agent, or you need to call that. You just you maybe it's a yellow light. You need to go check on this because you may have some cargo exposure. Um or or we may see uh a truck assigned to it on the telematics device that we don't see on a scheduled auto policy, and we want to make sure that that's insured. And so, and so we're taking all of the workflow that a broker might do, like that we might have done in one of our old shops of like calling and checking. We're just automating all those things. We're checking to make sure it's actually the truck. We're checking to make sure that the telematics connected truck is actually on the insurance bonds. We're checking all that stuff. And in some cases, we even make the the the broker will elect to put the driver through an identity verification process when he breaks the shipper's geofense. And so it's some sometimes we're actually catching who the driver is with their license before they're allowed on the shipper's property.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. So so there are three characters uh in in I mean there's three main players, right? You got the shipper, you got the broker, you got the you got the carrier in most, right? The intermediary, the carrier, and the and the and the shipper. Specific to each one of those three, what what is what is each one of their issues? Or or what is the problem that people may not I mean I think they know what the problem is and they define it as such, but what is the actual understanding of that problem from each one of those entities' viewpoint, right?
SPEAKER_00So so I'm gonna I'm gonna actually broaden that. All right, because you're talking about constituents or participants of the transaction, and we have always thought of it that way broker, carrier, shipper. Right. Actually, Michael, there's well, let's take the shipper out of it for a minute and let's talk about five parties broker, carrier, telematics provider, insurance agent, factoring company. Oh wow, okay. Okay, and so and the reason I want to talk about, and I'm gonna get I'm gonna answer your original question. The reason I want to talk about those other constituents is because historically, those other three players, the factoring company, the telematics provider, and the insurance agent, have provided millions of data points into various platforms, not just mine, that in some way credentialize a motor carrier, that enable a broker to make a hiring decision, and when something bad happens, none of those companies have any skin in the game. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So think about this. Like when there is a factoring company right now that I know of, they're not a huge factoring company. They're I would call them a lower-tier factor. And 20 of their customers stole loads last year. There's an insurance agent that um pretty sizable insurance agent out west. And their customers, they're they're they're insured. They said, we're going to go help you get some insurance, and we're gonna send this insurance certificate, sold about two and a half million dollars worth of freight. There are telematics providers that we turn off every week because we look at problems in their data structures, we look at impossible travel, where they're allowing people to manipulate things. And so, as part of our security, like we're also vetting ELD providers and turning them off. And so, so all of those parties are introducing risk into the highway network and into the broker network. And when those loads get stolen, no one goes to that insurance agent and says, Hey, can you go help the broker with this check that they had to write to the shipper? Because you went out and lobbied this underwriter and you helped them get an insurance certificate and you did all these things, and the broker used that insurance certificate can make a hiring decision. Nobody goes to the factory and says, Hey, you financed them. And you made money on that. And you're you're financing, you're putting people through your underwriting process that you're financing and you're helping them be on the road in concert with the insurance company, in concert with the telematics provider, where is your skin in the game when they go steal freight? And so what I want you to think about real quick, I see your wheels turning, is the incentive alignment. The insurance agent gets to get their commission, telematics provider gets to get their ARR, the factoring company gets to go make their points on the paper, and who's left holding the bag? The freight broker. Who does the shipper pass all of that risk to contractually? The freight broker. Who pays the increase in the insurance premium for all the brokered freight? The freight broker. Who did the SCOTUS, who did the Supreme Court decision look to in the Montgomery ruling? The freight broker. Yet the freight broker has to rely on all of these other parties for data to make hiring decisions. Think about that for a second.
SPEAKER_01No, I I totally agree with you. I mean, and that's uh that was a big topic in the TIA meeting, and most of them, you know, the one I just mentioned, you guys were there, uh, and and and and all the others that I talked to is is okay, so there's this decision, but where is, like you're saying, where's the industry standard and where what how do you define due diligence on all those different aspects, right? So how do you figure that out? So you're not developing due diligence, you're just you're doing it, right? Uh in a sense, we're we're saying we're starting to define, okay, this is due diligence. X number of instances in the insurance file here means that you're not that reliable of an insurance carrier, and therefore your clients are not gonna play in our in our game.
SPEAKER_00Is that is that kind of how it works? Yeah, yeah. Well, so so think about it this way the broker is always gonna make the hiring decision. Highway doesn't make hiring decisions. Right, but you you can raise the flags and go, look, you might want to so brokers were essentially asking the same question you are. Yeah. And when when the financial world was asked this question, they answered it with a conforming transaction. Like what debt is like you have loans that are either conforming or non-conforming, prime, subprime. We have that in in we have we have different levels of risk and insurance. And so we just said, okay, how do we do that? How do we answer this question for the free broker? And so what we did was we went out to market and put a performance guarantee in place. Right? So one of the things, I'll give you some elements of that. So one of the things we look at in a performance guarantee is the verified pickup score of the motor carrier. We look at the connection, we look at their identity alerts. And so basically, when you book a load, there's about six things that need to be present for us to guarantee that load. And so when we guarantee that load, Michael, what we're saying is if you if all of these elements are present and you don't override any of them, you assign a carrier to a shipment, and this shipment passes the elements of the performance guarantee, highway's gonna look at that like what we would say is like a type of conforming transaction. It conforms to the standard. And if and if that load is lost to theft for any reason, fictitious pickup, cyber, any reason, we are going to cover the broker up to $100,000. It's our insurance, our balance sheet, our balance sheet, Michael.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's that's pretty solid. I I can see where you could you could take that verification as well. It's a brilliant, brilliant play. I would expect nothing, nothing less than a team you got there to come up with something that smart. But you see what I'm saying? I could see a virtual role with that, but that is fantastic.
SPEAKER_00You're pointing to standards. Like you asked the question like, how do you define the standard? You you you have to make it enforceable and you have to have skin in the game. So so we can't say that there's a standard if we don't put skin in the game. Uh uh 100%. And so you have all these vendors out there. They say all these words, but none of them guarantee it. Well, they all come out and say, we're the new standard, or we're the new level of whatever. And it's like, great. Are you gonna show up and guarantee that when the and and here's another thing, Michael? It's not like 10 carriers qualify for this. More than 80% of carriers in a broker's network on the most carrier piece qualify to be loaded under the performance guarantee. And so and so is the a it's the problem we've always had. 20% of the market as well problems live, but we keep hiring them and we keep ensuring them and we keep financing them with factors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know what I'm saying? No, I 100%. I've argued barrier to entry and constant review is being the biggest problem. And you just you just hit on all of it. I mean that that's exactly what is I was asked the other day I was at a at an event in in Fort Worth and somebody they asked me is the Montgomery decision the the recent good or bad for the brokers? And I contend that it's painful but good for the industry because it's going to force exactly what you're starting to do. It's going to force those things to occur where there actually is a standard there are barriers to entry and there are clear due diligence standards that come out. Is that a fair statement? Do you agree with that? I mean it it sucks but it also I mean it you don't want to see a $604 million nuclear verdict against any anybody but and it opens up brokers to uh certain headwinds you know insurance and and things like that that are going to certainly hurt them a little bit but it it forces the issue and it it points to now maybe we can move on to a better day. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00It it does and I think um yeah I the good for bad good or bad it's hard to argue good or bad. And and different camps of brokers are going to argue that differently. Sure. Right? So so Drew Wilkerson is going to go, you know, went on Craig Show and said, hey look we've got the right liability limits and there's only five brokers in the country that can deliver what we can deliver right and you have some brokers are going to say hey don't say that because we don't want to be a target for the plaintiff bar. And and so it's a little bit like well who can define a safe motor carrier well nobody's done it yet. Even EMF FMCA hasn't done it right now and they're supposed to right and so and so you know part of what came out of the oral arguments was you've got to you've got to ask the hard question right and you've got to demonstrate reasonable care. Okay well who's who's going to define what reasonable care is what are the what are the specific of the hard questions so so here's what I'll tell you. What it does mean is that I I do think a way that it will help brokers is in the same way that markets mature after most fraud events or most things right like like when we came out of the subprime 2008 crisis we got real tight and we don't we don't have a lot of shady lending practices that we used to have so like I've got 1400 freight broker customers and it's claimed that there's like 15000 freight brokers. And so and so you know for the freight broker that that uses highway like I'm like I'm I'm the I'm the most premium thing in the game and I'm not I don't apologize for that. And so for the freight broker that uses some cheap $800 a month solution just because it's cheap, do you you want to answer for that when you sit in front of a jury and say hey man I just I just want to use the cheapest thing possible so I can make the highest margin possible. So I what I I'm saying the freight brokers that actually invest in protecting their shippers I think they're going to be able to have a different argument with their shipper about what what composes that price that they give the shipper. Because we're no longer just talking about like am I going to deliver this sometime and where do I sit on the routing guide? We're talking about is it going to get stolen? And we're talking about is is the broker of the shipper going to be open to any possible legal liability with a loss of preemption? And that's going to be reflected in what it costs to move something. And a good broker is going to be able to go to their shipper and say look the cost to serve you the way you want to be served that calculus has changed. And so I think what you're going to see is the best brokers do really, really well because amazing companies always shine in adversity. They always find a way to persevere yeah they they always find a way to get better. Like when you look through history and you get all of the the books that Jim Collins has written good to great great by choice how the mighty like you look at all of his research great companies become greater when they have pressure applied to them. And so I think great companies are going to continue to be great Michael that's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I agree. So I I yeah I mean it's a a great answer and I appreciate that because it really um it kind of talks through the reasoning of of why this actually is going to be a good thing I think because like exactly everything you just you you just said the great are going to shine it's going to force them to be the pressure is we need safe we absolutely do. And I mean we're talking about uh yeah yeah 100% we do. I mean some of the numbers are staggering. 64% of carriers in Ontario Canada should be out of business right now should be placed out of service. I mean that's that's insane of the trucks from the recent statistics if you you know extrapolate out. But so when you the bad actors they they know who the easy targets are right. I mean like like you said like 80 I think you said like 83% of the carriers in on average in a in a broker's stable are would meet the standards right but it it is isn't part of the problem that the nefarious players are are are pretending to be them they're they're they've stolen those identities.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so you got yeah you got a twofold problem one you do have legitimate carriers that under their current operating practices and who they are are perfectly fine motor carrier where that breaks down on the motor carrier side is really in their own cyber practices because a motor carrier doesn't have cybersecurity Michael right like I mean and this is something you know we were talking about the Spartan family companies that that's really something you guys should look into is how do you help the small and medium fleet with their info security. Okay so yeah what that means is yeah so so you know you put a fence up people go somewhere else right you hang a camera up right and so when you look at like yard management right like the more security people are going to avoid it right if there's a fence and there's cameras and there's dogs right like whatever whatever so we watch them run from us. We just kind of our monthly team meeting this morning and our head of risk gave us an update on on how attack vectors are changing. And they almost change monthly.ft events we look at change in ownership events and like they these these bad actors are very very good at pivoting to the point like what we watch we can almost tell like that they're they're doing penetration testing against our network they're doing penetration testing against the carrier's network they're they're doing pen testing to figure out where can the water run? Like where can it go? You know what I mean? Yeah where's the where's the crack in the wall? Yep. Yep. And so and so to your point the motor carrier is vulnerable. And so one of the things we have to look for is even if the carrier is not necessarily totally at fault like they're not doing anything nefarious is is this motor is the behavior that's being that we see on this load not typical? Is there an anomaly? Is there a sudden change in London? Is there a sudden change in the types of brokers they work with right like like there's all of these patterns that live in the algorithm that say hey whoa whoa okay you don't normally go buy a bunch of aluminum extrusion right you might have gotten a fraud alert on your credit card.
SPEAKER_01Yeah oh yeah for sure I did yeah as I was doing it in fact in fact they said look you the the transaction is not going through did you get an alert and I was like oh yeah I did actually while it was press one yeah so press one it was me okay try the card again right it's it's the same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00So what we have to do is we have to constantly look at where we may need to dynamically introduce friction in a transaction to try to catch something or stop something. And so and so one of the things that we we talk about when we're on the road is just how obsessed we are with the truth. And so one of the things that because I do love freight brokers and I was one and I kind of think of myself as one, I get really concerned and frustrated when vendors show up and they go, I'm the answer. And it's like no you're not because as soon as as soon as that gets locked down they're going to move and do something else. Like they're going, whatever your answer is that you so boldly advertise the first thing they're going to do is try to impersonate the thing that you're doing so they can go steal something. It is a game. It is a game and and what you hear Jordan Graf say is like they're on offense, we are on defense every day.
SPEAKER_01Well the best defense is a good offense does that mean that you have to be constantly evolving the solutions that highway has and and going to I mean by your by yours by your logic everything you have right now is under attack and you just said you're monitoring that on a daily basis. You can see the attacks happening right?
SPEAKER_00Oh bro like like we have to monitor insurance certificates because they are now looking across um insurance agencies that use common domains, Gmail things like that, which by the way if you're an insurance agency using a Gmail, can you please throw up and act like a real company and they're trying to impersonate insurance certificates, right? They're there we caught one the other day where like someone impersonated an underwriter and and the FMCSA took it in the file. So the FMCSA had a fraudulent underwriter on file. Wow and so we're telling this is not real and they're going yeah but it's in the FMCSA and we're going I'm sorry but that they they got it in there they got it in the L and I file they got it in the filings but it's it's fraudulent and so when you talk about yeah man this business we never thought that this is how deep we would go yeah like we it just it just we just keep getting pulled deeper because the bro the broker comes to us to solve the problem now.
SPEAKER_01So you're constant yeah you're constantly developing new things by new problems that brokers see and by by problems that you're seeing right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and so and so it's it's it's what we see in our data. It's the intelligence that we gather from law enforcement we talk we talk to the Scott Cornells of the world we talk to the tappas and so and so we're we're gathering intelligence from multiple places we're we're we've got we've got actors we've got our own people that sit in telegram sites and go to Facebook and scrape and so I mean we're constantly looking for the emergence of the next threat that's why that's why we have a business unit that doesn't worry about capacity that doesn't worry about track and trace all they worry about is is security. We put it in its own business unit and they have a they have a strategic plan that's updated every every three months that says like hey these are your top concerns around protecting identity protecting security protecting cargo like they're all and they're like they're we believe incentive so like they're paid they're paid and incentivized based on the overall threat and fraud reduction that they create for freight brokers. Like it's not a nice to have here it's like the core of what we do.
SPEAKER_01One of the arguments that I've always made is is that it is the it's it's the connection between the entities or between the transactions not necessarily the transactions themselves but the connections between them are the easiest targets right to kind of drill in and like you said leak that water right though those cracks 100% crack. And you've described it before like yourself and I don't know if this is right but you I I think this is right but you said that load board posting is a huge intelligence leak. And I think those are the same that's the exact same concept right that's right.
SPEAKER_00That's right. So so let's think about let's think about what the load boards do really well as a category and why there's really only one category leader which is which is DHC and why every other why every other load board fights for scraps which is why we don't have a load board. We have an exchange and it's very different. It's a materially different business different business philosophy we can get into that if you want to but if you think about what a load board does really well and why they're the category leader is because it is a listing site and it never purported to be anything different. And so all the freight brokers you got a bunch of fraud on your side well what do you expect if you look at their incentive alignment their incentive is to get as many credit cards as possible to so so they can get as many truck postings as possible to get as many broker subscriptions as possible to get as many load postings as possible because it's the way they monetize their volume like it's the business model. Like don't be mad at them because that's the business model. You signed up for it. Okay you don't like the business model go find a different business model for you broker but they are a listing site that's that's what they are and so you you don't know if the loads are real you don't know if they're can gets you don't know if the same you don't I can certainly tell you that if that if the loads that if if if if a if if any of the listing sites not just the team if any of the listing sites um loads were real then all the sites would have more loads than are ex than exist in North America in a given day. But like there's not as much load volume. If you look at if you look at total truckload and you look at the percentage of that freight that moves into the spot market that is the total available spot volume then the load boards theoretically have more than the total available spot market freight in the country. So what does that tell you it tells you that it tells you that the liquidity is exaggerated. Okay if you look at if you look at motor carriers right if you look at truck postings you look at truck postings and you look at like like trucker tool says they have all these carriers and okay they don't because I can tell you with 100% certainty Michael that it is 168,831 carriers that move freight for freight brokers. That's the number it's the whole number it's not 3000 it's not and I and we can go deep and we can look at like how many ever private fleets 1680 carriers that move freight for freight brokers that's it's the whole that's all of them. That's all of them 1.4 1.49 million vehicles something like that that's that's the number and so when a when a listing site says we've got all these truck postings from no no you don't no you just you just don't I don't know where they're coming from but and it's okay it's a listing site. Yeah and so they have those they have those many listings they can't verify that any of them are real that's right and so and so okay so now that we've gone through all of that lengthy diatribe to establish they are a listing site that's not designed for listings to have integrity. It's designed for volume it's designed to to just have a bunch of listings. Okay. That's not where you go put all your details because because because that data can be scraped it can be stored. It's so so now I've got an OD pair and I've got a commodity maybe and I've got a broker's name and I've got a phone number and I can go if I'm a bad actor I can go screen scrape that I can store it I can throw that into a data model I can learn over time who's got the most load postings I can look and I can then begin inferring oh this facility is Coca-Cola and this is the broker that has it and I can go get all this intelligence to then go back and target that cargo later. And that's what they did. That's exactly what they do.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Because when they hit Michael they don't miss when they hit Michael incredibly don't miss they're incredibly sophisticated, right?
SPEAKER_01I mean it and it getting more so and more so more so.
SPEAKER_00I just had Scott Cornell on we were on uh what the truck this this this morning talking about how sophisticated things are too are are are becoming and how the more and more and more are gonna organized and how they're gathering this data which is brilliant when you're talking about this so let let's let look if you're going to get you you see the the the obviously the benefits and and and how this solves problems for the for the uh the freight broker when you're a carrier right and an actual carrier getting verified by highway re does that not allow the small guys now to actually compete with some of the big guys right I mean it is this is a huge benefit for a carrier to go look I'm verified by highway right that's right it does and so and and so let's talk about a couple things like like being verified by highway there's no like I'll hear people say you know they were they're green in highway well there's no first of all there's no red green in highway you either have claimed your identity or you did not claim your identity so that's kind of step one and then and then let's go back to like like Michael if you go to Zillow right now the house that you bought in in Justin you can go claim that as your home and Zillow's gonna like put you on it so they just the the carrier we have all the carriers in the United States in highway and they just they come and claim their profile they have to pass an identity test you have to pass an identity test to get your credit report so now this profile is sealed and locked to you there are people that are there are carriers that are in highway that that no broker will work with because they've got a stolen asset alert or they got an identity alert or they you know they're doing things. And so here's what I would tell you if you're a good carrier if you're a good carrier is really not that hard. It's really it's really is is a really easy process. The problem and where we get a lot of noise is that we don't we don't we don't do customer service we do security. And so there are a lot of small motor carriers that that play stupid games and then they win stupid prizes. Hmm they log in from different places they share codes that they do things that are clear violations of terms of service they do things that are clear security issues and like we we just tell the truth about their behavior and then they get mad at us for telling the truth. And so yes like if you're a great carrier you're gonna get more freight we're gonna prioritize you in those in the search result algorithm we're gonna suggest we have a suggestion model that suggests to freight brokers additional carriers for loads based on the types of freight and the types of carriers that a broker's work their broker works with. Work just like your Amazon cart. Do all that and so and so yeah if you're a great carrier we're going to actually push you to the broker. But if you're a bad carrier like it you you is a very it's a very thin it's very thin ice and it's very hard to fix because because of the chameleon issue. Like we won't let you just run to a different MC number to look different. We're like no this guy just went from here to there same guy. And so we draw that association we flag it and so they one of the reasons that small carriers sometimes hate us is because they're actually not true chameleons but carriers play that game they run for safety they run from things right like they run from a bad they run from a negative record of some sort. Yeah we just watch them where they run. And so they they can't run anywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that's okay. I mean if you're hated by the person who's running from real issues then that net the purpose. Oh man we get death threats it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah it's crazy but we've all we've also had carriers we've also had carriers that um I have one particular friend his name's Mike that's not his real name by the way but I can't say his first name and so he goes by Mike and um he's uh he's a Polish brother up in 312 man up in Chicago and he's a great Chicago carrier um and when I met him he had 25 trucks and now he has a hundred and and we helped him grow his business like like he had problems in his profile early in the days of Highland we helped him clean it up we helped him understand how some of his behavior was was was emblematic of of kind of a bad actor's behavior and you know you can't have the same email in there seven just just things that are just not good hygiene Michael and we helped him understand that and then and then when he because of the way that his persona presented in in highway man brokers started loading him a lot and he's like man like once you help me like my business screw all these brokers started calling me give me more free and like so the first time the guy met me he cussed me now he gives me a hug he texts me like he you know he he calls me at Christmas and it's like those are cool stories. I mean there's a bunch of carriers on Reddit that hate me but like there's also a lot of carriers that we've that we've helped and we're really we're really proud of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah yeah well I mean yeah uh yeah and if they really wanted to change things and turn things around they'd they'd call you and say hey how to help me help help me to not be on the blacklist or or it's funny there's there's a there's a woman out there Rob Carpenter I think did a story on her and she has an AI MC selling marketplace.
SPEAKER_00Her whole job is the selling of MCs okay sure and so you know this you've been reporting on this long enough and you spent enough time back in the media space to know that like that buying and selling of an MC is not like I'm gonna go out and do some merger and acquisition work and buy a company. I'm buying I'm trying to gain control of an entity to to so I don't have to impersonate it so I can control it and do things with it. And it's never a good thing. And so we track that and when the when the when when there's changes that suggest a change in ownership we make the original owner come back and attest whether or not they sold it and we make the new owner come back. And so and so we just you know just like you if you if there's a change in ownership and you go buy a car you gotta go put the title in your name right that's right and so because no controlling entity will do anything about it because it's not a real sale we do something about it. And so these people get you know highways shouldn't shut somebody down just for changing their phone number. Okay listen knucklehead we didn't shut somebody down for changing their phone number that's not true. We didn't shut somebody down for changing their address we raised an alert that said there's been a possible change in ownership based on a number of factors. And the buyer and the seller need to come attest to that either they did or they didn't sell it. That's not shutting a carrier down for changing your phone number that's shutting a carrier down for changing an address That's what gets said. And it gets said by people whose fraud scam that we're hurting. And it gets said that highway's hurting small carriers. Okay. No, we're not. We're not. We're not. We're hurting people intentionally that are trying to do bad things with my customers' freight.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's true. But on the other side of it, you're helping those people understand what will make them a more secure carrier and therefore more attractive to gain more freight and grow like your friend Mike.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. And the other thing, too, is a good carrier does not want, you know, the bad apples that ruin it for everybody. They don't want these guys on the road.
SPEAKER_01They absolutely don't. You're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00They don't want them on the road, man. And and they're the ones that actually drive the rates down. You know, so a lot of people in the small carrier community will pontificate on the internet that it's the brokers are evil and the brokers drive all the rates down. Well, okay, first of all, it's the shipper that drives the rate down. It's the shipper that pays the bill. It's the shipper that does the procurement exercise. If you look at brokers, if you look at even private companies that report and public companies that report, broker margins are compressed, Michael. It's not like it was when you and I did this 20 years ago. When we made 18, 20, 25%, right? It's not. Broker margins are compressed. So somebody's somebody will hear about one random 30% ripper and report on it like it's the norm. It's not.
SPEAKER_03It's not.
SPEAKER_00And by the way, the broker may have had a million dollars of liability tied up in that cargo. And so 30% is fine. I digress. The point is broker margins are compressed, and it's the shipper that engages in the procurement exercise that pits the brokers against each other to drive the prices down. And it's the small bad actor carrier, the unsafe carrier, like a you do this, like the Spartan holdings companies, like you guys see the financials. You can't run trucks. I mean, Adam Adam Wingfield, like he works on this, right? Like you there, there are just rates that you can't run a piece of equipment at.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, you can't.
SPEAKER_00Bad people. And so if you're a shipper and you listen to this, you're kind of part of the problem. If you're a shipper, you have a, in my opinion, a responsibility to understand the base operating cost of a motor carrier and probably not tender freight out below the base operating cost of a motor carrier. Like let's just think about that.
SPEAKER_01None. And most of those people that are making those decisions and or those policies that allow that to occur wouldn't do that in their normal life. Right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01You're not going to go about buy something that you know is unway under the just no way the quality is going to be there. There's no way that that the security is going to be there, right? It's just not.
SPEAKER_00I mean, there's a little bit of an element like you get what you pay for. Like I think, I think Charles Gracie said this, like we kind of have the supply chain we signed up for, and it's on all of us to go fix it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's 100% right. It's 100% right. But I mean, there's there's I mean, there's a bit more to it than that, but yeah, and it's a little difficult to do. Let's bring up the exchange, man. Because we're getting we're getting on. We're getting on things. Talk to me about it. I mean, you said I mean, look, the idea or the concept in my mind is that both sides need to come together, both sides need to play correctly in order to make this work. Can you explain that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So the exchange is where the exchange is where standards culminate. And so, and you I love the way that you, the thread you were kind of pulling on earlier, that it's that it's it's not the transaction itself, it's the parts of the transaction where where the things can leak. And you're right. Right. One of the things that Jordan saw when he was running Triumph Pay is where he was when he first saw fraud, right? A broker would call and try to stop payment on a carrier because they weren't sure the carrier really ran the load. Jordan's like, how do you not know who ran the load? You know, this is before he understood the way that a broker booked for it. And so it's really hard to move left in a transaction. And so what happens is like what we've tried to do is always move left in a transaction. We look at the booking and then we go get MacroPoint, and then we try to figure out if that's a good carrier or not based on how they're tracking, and we should have moved left at the very beginning of the transaction. And so when you talk about parts, right, the where the leaks are, the leak happens around the rate confirmation. The leak happens when you know you allow someone to social engineer um a carrier rep through GChat or um or a text message, right, through an insecure communication channel, right? So let's just say that like highways secured everything that we can secure, but you know, somebody gets into GChat with a carrier rep and tells them, man, I'm having email problems, it's down, I need you to talk to me here about this. You know, I always take this Coca-Cola load, right? Because they know they know the carrier that usually runs it, they know the load, they know this, and so they're just gonna call and talk like they're the carrier. They're very good at this. Okay, so what does the exchange do? Exchange says, hey, if you're a freight broker and you're posting on the exchange, it's only real loads. It's not a listing site. The only way that a load can get from a freight broker to the exchange is if we get it from the TMS. You cannot manually post a load in the exchange. You can't do it. Um is not doable. You can't do it. Okay. The second thing is that freight broker has actually gone through financial underwriting by Triumph. Like all of my customers have to go through an additional underwriting process to get on the exchange. Not every highway customer can automatically put loads on the exchange. Because the carrier, like that carrier's gonna get paid. There's gonna be a world where it's coming where every single load on the exchange has a payment guarantee attached to it. So you see a loan on the exchange, you don't have to call your factoring company, you don't have to call your your bank. Like, that's a good load. It's a real load, it's bookable, and you're gonna get paid.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And that's free to the carrier. Now, but what does the carrier have to do? It has to be a clean carrier. They have to have a connected ELD, they have to have their full insurance policy. The owner of that carrier has had to go through identity verification. So that when a broker and a carrier are connected on the exchange, it everything is real. Everything's a real load.
SPEAKER_01They're hitting those six points or the number of points that you said that would put them in maybe. Gotcha. That's right. That's right. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00Right. And the eventuality, the event, the certified network that I'm talking about, about insurance agents, factoring companies, telematics providers, how is it going out and creating standards? Like the eventuality is that those elements will come into play too on the exchange. Like, hey, are this do these parties play with vendors that are certified? Are they real? And so, and so there's there's there's a whole eventuality to this where it's like when you get into your Robinhood account, like you're not worried about it, like you're just trading securities. The exchange is not a listing site, it's an exchange, right? And so, and so I want to talk about the other thing about the business model that's really important. Marketplaces and listing sites. And this is not something Michael Caney made up. You can actually go read about it in this book. Anybody wants to read about it, you can go read about it in this book. It's called Modern Monopolies. I didn't write it, a bunch of consultants did. The the the goal of a marketplace is to extract rents. It's the business, is we extract a rent, okay? And we grow the the set of our data, right, and aggregate it to become more powerful in our rent extraction, right? Like, like that's it, the goal of a marketplace is to enrich the value of the marketplace. I gotta make the marketplace more value. The goal of an exchange, a visa, a stock exchange, is to distribute the value to the participants of the exchange. It's to create a safe environment where participants can trade with each other based on the same set of rules. We're all looking at each other saying, for me to trade on this exchange, I'm agreeing to play by the rules, and if I don't play by the rules, I get kicked out of the exchange. And being kicked out of the exchange or not allowed to participate is an automatic market signal. And so the goal of an exchange is to distribute the power to the participants of the exchange. It's to create the environment where they are the ones that matter, it's to facilitate connection, not to increase listings and extract rents. These are two different business models. And everybody thinks that I'm like being inherently critical of load boards when I do it. I'm not being inherently critical. I'm saying they're living up to their business model. If you want a different outcome as a participant, get off of a marketplace because you're you're you're you're doing what the business model is supposed to do. You you are having you are participating in rent extraction by giving them your data. Like you are choosing to participate in the model that you complain about.
SPEAKER_01Right. But I mean the the the the I don't think it's the growth of fraud necessarily or the more the more the realization of fraud. And we can argue that point some other time. That's that's absolutely fair, Michael. Right, right, right. But it's anti it's making the current load board of the marketplaces an antiquated place to to trade cars.
SPEAKER_00Well, I it makes it it makes it Facebook Marketplace in Craigslist. I mean, that may where you go, that may where you go. Yeah, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I uh it's yeah, it's okay to buy used lawnmower on it, but not $100,000 worth of freight moving across.
SPEAKER_00Look, if you were if you were gonna go buy a pontoon boat, yeah, you might do that on Facebook Marketplace. And then I'm gonna give me a pontoon boat. If you were gonna go buy like a big cabin cruiser, like you call your boat guy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like you call your boat ya. Like if you like if you go buy an airplane, you call your airplane guy. Like it's just it's just it's just like what is the magnitude of what we're exchanging here? And so this idea that we're gonna go exchange like secure information by putting things on a listing site and then exchanging things on a PDF is bananas to me. Like you gotta secure that document. Like, why are you sending load information, pickup address, like cargo? Like this is like, hey, here's here's this unsecure PDF. We're gonna send it through an email, and like, I don't know. I don't know if that email is encrypted, I don't know if that other inbox is encrypted, I don't know who's gonna get a hold of it. And so, like, if you think about what Freightbrookers did before our RapeCon delivery tool, they were just zipping out emails.
unknownOh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, they're still doing that.
SPEAKER_00They are too. They are too much. Well, some of them, some of ours do, some of ours do. Some of them are are more afraid of change management than and that's another thing, too, Michael. It's really easy for me to sit on your podcast and and and explain things and make them sound easier than they are. This is hard, Michael. It's hard. We don't get everything right. We we don't, we don't, we're not, we don't bat a thousand, man. We learn, and and it's hard for brokers. Change management's really hard, man. Like the this hit them really fast. And this is not, I make it sound easier than it is. It's really hard. The change management aspect of this is really tough.
SPEAKER_01It it it it it no, and it and it absolutely is. I I wanna I wanna end with one thing here, man, with one, with one question, brother. So you've you've got a long and and and uh successful career, and you've done a lot of things, right? And and you're in this position now that is critical. This is critical technology for our industry, and actually it's one of those that can be it really can be any type of exchange of goods and services, et cetera. You can extrapolate and and utilize the what you guys are building there, the processes and technologies, et cetera. You're looking at this and you're thinking about the the the fraud and the security and the et cetera. What is the one thing on your mind what keeps you up at night about our industry? What is the one thing that you go that you go, oh God, if we could sell that?
SPEAKER_00What is it Yeah, I'll answer that in two parts. One, the the thing, um Well let me do it in this word, yeah. So the thing that keeps me up at night like kind of practically pragmatically is how we solve the risk transfer piece. Like everybody can observe and infer, and like this guy can show you a picture, and this guy can show you a blue dot, and this guy can do everybody can do parts and pieces. And and so with observations, you make inferences, and from observations you get inferences and you get suggestions. So here's a suggested best practice based on what we can infer from this observation. Now, you can call it data science and you can call it all kinds of cool words, Michael, but but it's an inference. It's an inference based on an observation that turns into a suggestion. What we're interested in is is creating the standards that all of those observations and inferences are subjugated to. Okay, so why do I say risk transfer? Because this becomes a risk transfer game. There has to be a balance sheet for this risk to live on. And so you've got to have a better way for the insurance markets to look and decide who's a good carrier, who's a bad carrier, what's a good risk, what's a bad risk. Today, all of the cargo risk just gets lumped into one big bucket and it's kind of overly homogenized. And so we have to get it to where we have to get to a place where the good guys are no longer paying for the bad guys to exist. We gotta run them away. Okay, here's the second thing. It keeps me up at night more than anything, not just about the industry, but not a highway. Um you you you and you and I share uh the same worldview of our faith, and so I think you'll appreciate this. The the freight broker doesn't need another king. The freight broker doesn't need another large vendor lording over them and using the wealth that the freight broker has helped the vendor create to then turn around and control them and lord over them. The freight broker does not need that. And so the thing that we talk about almost daily at highway is that we are we are not kings, we are stewards. And the job of a steward is to act for the good of the king with the resources of the king. And for us, the freight broker is the king. And so, and so I think what keeps me up at night the most is the is making sure that the posture that we maintain at Highway is that of a steward and not a king. Because it's very easy to become Icarus and fly a little too close to the sun. And so, and so that's the thing that keeps us up at night the most, right? Is like, hey, just because we've had success, don't remember who got us here, and it was the freight broker that trusted us, and it's our job to be their steward, not their king.
SPEAKER_01The servant leader.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you're not intentional about it, you will you will become you will become the thing you don't want to become without intentionality against it.
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent. That is uh we're gonna end it there because I I absolutely love that, and I appreciate the fact that you, you know, our our faith is of the same, and I and I love ending on that. That is that is a brilliant thing. I absolutely love it.
SPEAKER_00I absolutely love it. Dude, it's been so good. I'm so glad I got to see your face and catch up with you. I promise, I promise. Dude, you're right.
SPEAKER_01I mean, like right over I could get in the car and see you in an hour, man. And I can't and come on, man.
SPEAKER_00Maybe we'll maybe we'll do a sit-down here. Maybe we'll come do this at the highway. We'll do a we'll do a Spartan podcast at the highway office. Oh, that would be fantastic.
SPEAKER_01That would be fantastic. We'll do that. Brother, thank you so much for being on everybody. This was the signal. We'll catch you next time. Peace and love.