Latest news with #WhattheTruck?!?
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cutting down fraud through smarter load tracking
Between unnecessary deadhead miles due to nonexistent loads and loads that are fraudulently reposted on various loadboards, freight fraud has had a major impact on supply chain operations in recent years. Jerry D'Addesi, CRO at Konexial, sat down with FreightWaves' Timothy Dooner on the May 30th episode of What the Truck?!? to discuss what Konexial is doing to cut down on issues like freight fraud and double brokering. Konexial is rolling out a solution that will cut down, if not eliminate, some of the common weak points in load transactions. 'We're taking shippers and brokers and matching them up with carriers in a sort of Uber or Priceline environment,' D'Addesi said. 'We allow people to bid per mile on the shipper side, and on the carrier side we match them up through proprietary algorithms that take the friction out of the process of negotiating loads.' One key part of Konexial's solution involves assigning a unique transportation identifier to each load, which will then be attached to every party associated with that load throughout its lifespan. 'We're really focused on proper identifiers and following ISO certification standards, which will minimize the double brokering and other freight fraud we're seeing out there,' D'Addesi said. 'We're hoping that this spreads through the education we're trying to provide to stakeholders, and that we can help heal the industry from some of the persistent problems we've been seeing.' Konexial provides asset protection through what the company calls VIN + TUID verification, as well as GPS tracking and geofence-based alerts. If a vehicle moves without authorization or skips a required checkpoint, Konexial flags the event and alerts the proper team for resolution. This minimizes the risk of loss, theft, or double brokering, while offering a full digital chain of custody for every vehicle. 'We place unique identifiers, basically a watermark, onto every load,' D'Addesi explained. 'We require everyone associated with that load, including shippers, carriers, brokers, and so on, to use that identifier, which prevents the load from being reposted.' D'Addesi hopes that this methodology is adopted by shippers, carriers, and loadboards around the country. If widely practiced, this level of security would change how freight is handled and greatly reduce fraud. 'When you care about it, you can start to eliminate some of the common weak points that bad actors target,' said D'Addesi. 'Through our TMS, we flag when information doesn't line up or when things don't seem right, because we work hard to do what's right for our clients and partners from an ethical standpoint.' Because Konexial is built on strong ethical values, D'Addesi says, the team takes its responsibility to operate with integrity very seriously and often has to make difficult decisions in order to protect its customers. 'Internally, it's the number one thing for us to do the right thing,' he said. With the widespread adoption of AI, Konexial has developed its own unique 'Ki,' Konexial Intelligence. 'We want to take our own proprietary capabilities and help the Konexial customer operate across our entire platform,' D'Addesi said. 'We use it to shortcut some processes and bring to light new insights, but the most important thing we're doing is taking data and information we record and creating actions to get to an optimal result.' According to D'Addesi, Ki is transforming the freight side, the telematics side, the loadboard side, and every other part of the Konexial platform. Ki is the engine that continuously interprets live data to help customers make smarter decisions, and it supports every layer of customer logistics operations. Unlike rule-based tools or disconnected software, Ki learns from routes, freight activity, behaviors, and outcomes. From predictive insights to automated workflows, it empowers teams to act quickly and with confidence. 'Ki is changing the way we go to market,' D'Addesi said. 'We have a competitive advantage through our proprietary systems, and we're really excited about everything we're going to do with it.' Click here to learn more about Konexial. The post Cutting down fraud through smarter load tracking appeared first on FreightWaves.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Fighting fraud requires a multi-layered approach
Freight fraud affects more than just finances. Falling victim to a scam or theft can damage vital business relationships and tarnish reputations. Between monetary losses and loss of trust, just one instance of fraud can cause a carrier to go out of business. That's why Truckstop's approach includes the most robust tools on the market to act as the first line of defense for carriers and brokers. During the May 8 episode of What the Truck?!?, host Timothy Dooner sat down with Truckstop's senior director of customer success Taryn Daker to discuss the evolving tactics required to combat freight fraud and what Truckstop is doing to protect the trucking industry. 'Truckstop is always looking at ways to better help carriers and brokers,' Daker said. By focusing on high-quality carrier inbounds, Truckstop is streamlining the load booking process for both carriers and brokers. The company's first-to-market Authority Age Filter increases quality inbounds from carriers who meet specific authority age requirements and ensures that loads can be seen by a wider pool of available qualified carriers. 'Many drivers will start the process of negotiating loads with a broker only to find out that they don't have the correct authority to book a particular load,' Daker said. 'Our Authority Age Filter skips that hurdle. We are always trying to make things easier for carriers and remove frustrating barriers while keeping broker processes secure,' she said. Daker described a video account wherein an owner-operator discusses being able to get business with only two months of holding an authority. According to Daker, many drivers and brokers are reporting success using the Authority Age Filter. When it comes to new tools and tactics for carriers and brokers, Daker says, it's important to always keep in mind the various kinds of protection necessary to fight ever-increasing sophistication that scammers are utilizing. 'The way I look at fraud is like an onion,' Daker said. 'There are different layers and different tactics brokers should be using to protect themselves from various types of fraud.' One of those tactics is Truckstop's Risk Factors. 'This is the only vetting solution that leverages Truckstop's comprehensive data and advanced intelligence,' Daker said. 'It tells you what's going on with a carrier's history and what their risk behaviors are.' Risk Factors can be installed as a Google Chrome extension, which makes it easily accessible, even during a phone call or ongoing negotiation. 'Brokers are busy, and they juggle a lot of different screens,' Daker said. 'The Risk Factors extension overlays right over your browser so if a carrier calls in, you can type in their MC or DOT number, and Truckstop intelligence will let you know if they're high risk, medium risk, or low risk based on a variety of factors,' Daker said. If an email address associated with an account has been recently changed, for instance, Truckstop will take those details into account. 'We analyze anything that can be an indicator that someone might not be who they say they are,' Daker said. With advanced analytics, Truckstop can observe patterns, such as multiple addresses associated with a phone number or suspicious activity with other brokerages, which lets brokers isolate those risk factors to further assess the situation. In Truckstop's Freight Fraud Blog, the company recently published some staggering statistics: in 2024, 65,000 freight thefts were reported, a 40% increase year over year. 'We saw almost thirteen thousand suspicious account attempts in RMIS, which we successfully blocked,' Daker said. 'On our load board, we had almost ten thousand imposters try to create accounts,' she said. Truckstop continues to enhance the layers of security and is always developing new ways to identify and stop criminals. 'The one number that really sticks out is that our in-house security team thoroughly investigated seventy thousand different entities in 2024,' Daker said. With advanced AI tools, the number of cyberattacks and scamming attempts have increased rapidly. Just as security teams keep developing more robust security, bad actors continue to develop more pernicious methods of attack. 'Fraudsters are always look for gaps in your system that they can exploit,' Daker said. What, then, can carriers or brokers do to better protect themselves? 'One of the best layers of security you can use is working with a trusted partner who is also evolving in technology and tactics,' Daker said. 'Even if you're implementing the best tools, your partners and clients can be potential weak points that bad actors can use to get to you.' In January 2025, Truckstop customers reported 45% less fraud compared to January 2024. 'That decrease is due to different tactics that we're bringing to market, not just any one thing,' Daker said. According to Daker, it's vital for both carriers and brokers to be able to assess potential partners and how they're evolving with the whole range of tools and tactics as they advance every day. In 2024, Truckstop also implemented identity verification and multifactor authentication to better secure broker and carrier operations. 'These kinds of security checks better protect our customers from various types of fraud, and we make an active effort to keep constantly implementing new tactics,' Daker said. Click here to learn more about Truckstop. The post Fighting fraud requires a multi-layered approach appeared first on FreightWaves. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
How to improve safety during Distracted Driving Awareness Month
Chris Hayes, Risk Control Assistant Vice President for Workers' Compensation and Transportation for Travelers Insurance, sat down with FreightWaves' Timothy Dooner on the April 21st episode of What the Truck?!? to discuss the Distracted Driver Awareness month as well as the risks and effects of distracted driving. Distracted driving remains a prevalent safety issue, with many incidents each year caused by cell phones and other distractions. 'In bumper-to-bumper traffic the other day, I looked at the car next to me and thought, 'that's a good episode of that TV show,' and then I realized that this person was watching television on their phone while driving in traffic,' Hayes said. 'If I can recognize the show from another car, that just shows how distracting that behavior really is.' Ultimately, safety is in the hands of every driver. Until all cars are self-driving, carriers will still need drivers. Even with technology like autonomous trucks, someone will need to be present in those trucks for the foreseeable future. 'Statistic after statistic shows that drivers are the cause of roughly ninety-five percent of accidents,' Hayes said. More often than not, Hayes says, it's the passenger vehicle that's the primary cause of the accident when it comes to light vehicle/heavy vehicle collisions. 'Either way, it's still people that typically make these things happen,' he said. When it comes to safety, distracted driving compounds with every other thing that a driver is doing. 'Being distracted while you're in your sleeper doesn't matter, of course, but when you're on a crowded highway going sixty miles an hour and it's raining, every one of those factors makes it more dangerous,' Hayes said. Distraction erodes all of those skills that a driver should have, according to Hayes. 'The most important thing is to be able to see where you're going and maintain the right space between you and the vehicles around you,' he said. Every year, the CVSA hosts a program called Operation Safe Driver, which involves focused enforcement over the course of a week in July. 'Many drivers may not appreciate dealing with the extra enforcement, but it's an important cause and encourages safe driving behaviors,' Hayes said. Last year, between July 7th and July 13th, the CVSA pulled over more than 11,000 vehicles, including both commercial and passenger vehicles. The most common infraction for commercial drivers was speeding. 'Cutting down on speeding is absolutely the key to maintaining safe roads,' Hayes said. 'Close to 12,000 people die in speeding-related crashes out of the 40,000 who die on the road every year.' * Speed affects nearly every aspect of road safety – necessary following distance, a driver's ability to react in time, and the severity of an impact. 'Speed is everything, especially when you're driving a commercial vehicle,' Hayes said. Surprisingly, failure to wear a seatbelt was the second highest infraction found during 2024's Operation Safe Driver. 'A lot of people think that wearing a seatbelt only affects them and their safety,' Hayes said. 'If you're in a collision, though, the thing that keeps that collision from getting much worse is your natural reaction to grab the steering wheel and hit the brakes to get control of your vehicle, which you can't do if you get bounced into your passenger seat,' he said. 'If you've seen videos of crashes from interior cameras, you know that a driver without a seatbelt never stays in that seat,' Hayes said. 'Wearing a seatbelt is not just about your safety. It also can keep other people in your vicinity safer in the event of an accident because you can be in a better position to keep your vehicle straight, steady, and stopped.' It's also worth noting that not wearing a seatbelt is actually a bigger violation than speeding in many states. For Distracted Driving Awareness Month, Travelers wants to remind all drivers that their main job on the road is to get their vehicles to their destination safely. 'Any secondary task you have to do is well below that in importance,' Hayes said. It's vital that office staff participate in avoiding distractions too, says Hayes, because many carriers are far too apt to call drivers while on the road. 'There are many other ways to communicate safely with drivers now,' Hayes said. 'When I started in trucking, drivers would call dispatch twice a day, and somehow the economy still kept turning.' There is nothing more important than the driver's ability to stay focused on the task of driving, because otherwise too many people can be hurt. 'As an industry, we have to pull out of the sense that we need to be connected at all times,' Hayes said. From the perspective of safety professionals, according to Hayes, there is still a lot of work to be done. 'I've been trying to find ways to make telematics improve safety since 2009, and I'm still working at it,' Hayes said. For many carriers, trying to examine and respond to every single alert of a safety issue is impractical. In speaking with one customer, Hayes learned that their fleet received 3,000 alerts every morning between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. 'In a situation like that, it's difficult to know which alerts to look at,' Hayes said. Some carriers, he says, are even concerned that they may be in more trouble if they neglected to address something crucial. 'What we're helping our customers do is focus on something we call 'metrics that matter,'' Hayes said. 'With the wealth of data you get from cameras, telematics, engines and GPS, you can focus on which stats actually make the most impact in safety for you right now, and you can turn that into methods for coaching your drivers,' he said. Instead of simply reprimanding a driver for an individual incident, for instance, carriers can show them how they compare to other drivers and examine the patterns of what they do right and wrong. 'Don't forget to work with your telematics provider,' Hayes said. 'You don't want to report every minute for every driver. What would be better is to see on a regular basis who is performing and who is not so you can provide a straightforward scorecard and help drivers understand where they are.' Knowing who to coach and provide feedback to, Hayes says, is a key factor for fleets to improve their overall safety. 'It can be a huge help and a tremendous motivating factor to know that your speed is too high and that you have harsher usage of the brakes than anyone else in the fleet,' Hayes said. 'For the most part, everyone is out there trying to do a good job every day, but we just need information in order to improve sometimes,' Hayes said. Click here to learn more about Travelers Risk Control. *Source: The post How to improve safety during Distracted Driving Awareness Month appeared first on FreightWaves.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How can freight tech companies stand out in a crowded field?
The freight technology landscape is evolving rapidly, but adoption remains uneven across the logistics industry. During the April 30 episode of What the Truck?!?, host Timothy Dooner sat down with David Bell, founder of to talk about the challenges and opportunities facing logistics companies as they navigate technological transformation. While freight tech companies have been adding value to logistics operations for years, many smaller companies remain hesitant to embrace new technologies. 'You still have a huge number of smaller companies who are just keeping their heads down and focusing on moving freight, giving the customer the best experience possible, and not even thinking about expanding with new technologies,' Bell said. 'It's hard for a lot of these organizations to deploy and get value out of new tech right away.' The conversation about logistics technology often focuses exclusively on industry giants and the cutting edge of new tools and methods, but the fact is that many trucking companies take a relatively conservative approach to novel technologies. 'When we talk about the huge brokers and freight companies deploying new tech, we lose sight of the fact that logistics consists of a ton of small companies who are just out there surviving,' Bell said. The result is a significant untapped market for technology providers who can create accessible solutions. 'There's a lot of potential out there if we can reach the smaller trucking and logistics companies with cost-effective solutions, because a lot of them aren't even thinking about adopting anything new right now,' Bell said. Even when company leadership recognizes the need for technological advancement, implementation faces significant hurdles at the operational level. Heavy workloads and cash flow concerns are some primary obstacles Bell has observed throughout his career. 'Unfortunately, on the operations side, even when executives want to go in a new direction, the workload prevents a lot of employees from having the time to train and experiment with new technologies,' Bell said. Bell's firsthand experience reveals a common disconnect between executive vision and operational reality. 'You can have support from the top down with a new product or process, but when you get down to the operations floor, everything seems to go wrong,' he said. 'A lot of people look for any reason not to change something they're comfortable with.' The challenge is particularly acute during transitions to new systems. 'Adopting something new is scary to people in the trenches,' Bell said. 'When you adopt a new TMS, for instance, the operations employees have to essentially do double work for a period of time while they're learning to manage it, and the executive floor doesn't necessarily feel that pain.' Bell sees generational shifts as a potential catalyst for change in the industry. 'In those companies that are bringing in the more tech savvy younger generations, we'll see a bigger transition from the old-school mentality,' Bell said. 'To adapt, you have to have people who are willing to make big changes.' For Bell, incentivization is crucial to successful technology implementation. 'When you're deploying any kind of new technology, you have to properly incentivize employees to make it work and get ROI,' he said. 'They need to also see a piece of that ROI or they don't have an incentive to take on difficult adjustments.' This insight speaks to a fundamental principle of management in logistics: aligning organizational goals with individual motivations. 'If you don't give your staff incentives to make your operation better, you're swimming uphill,' Bell warned. One of the most promising applications of AI in logistics, according to Bell, is breaking down language barriers that currently impede operations. 'One really crucial feature we have with CloneOps is that we can call drivers and talk to them in their language,' Bell said. 'That will help logistics operations tremendously, as drivers who don't speak English as a first language can now more easily communicate with American fleet managers who speak primarily English,' Bell said. is actively addressing this challenge by building a translation mechanism for fleets. 'We're working with one broker located in a part of the country where they don't have a lot of opportunities to hire bilingual employees, and we're helping them with the ability to communicate effectively with every driver, no matter what the language barrier is,' Bell said. Even so, the potential benefits of AI translation and AI voice agents extend beyond operational efficiency, Bell predicts. 'Being able to communicate across language barriers with any driver is going to be a huge help for a lot of the industry and can tighten up capacity across the board,' Bell said. When it comes to success in freight tech, Bell is more concerned with customer service and sound business fundamentals than pure technological innovation. 'As long as you have good service and put the customer first, provide what people actually need, and maintain a good internal culture and philosophy, everyone can win in this space,' he said. Much like the TMS market, it's likely that AI and other technological innovations will leave room for a wide range of competitive options. 'Who wins in the TMS space?' Bell asked. 'There are hundreds, plus even more proprietary ones, and they mostly have found their niches and work with other people in their network.' Depending on perspective, Bell says, there is opportunity rather than just cutthroat competition in the logistics technology sector. 'There are thousands and thousands of customers, and that's just in transportation,' Bell said. 'As long as you have a good business model and you're funded properly to account for the fact that tech isn't always profitable right away, I think most people are going to win.' The logistics technology landscape extends far beyond the headlines about industry giants implementing cutting-edge solutions. The vast majority of the sector consists of smaller operations struggling with basic adoption challenges, creating both obstacles and opportunities for technology providers. Successfully bridging this gap requires understanding the operational realities of logistics companies and properly incentivizing employees to embrace change. The future of freight tech belongs not necessarily to the most advanced solutions, according to Bell, but to those that effectively address the practical needs of a diverse and evolving industry. 'There are big players raising millions, and smaller companies bootstrapping their operations and making things work,' Bell said. 'It's hard to tell how it will play out. It's like the tortoise and the hare – you never know what will happen along the way.' Click here to book a demo. The post How can freight tech companies stand out in a crowded field? appeared first on FreightWaves. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
