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The freight market has had to deal with a degree of whiplash over the last few years. The high-demand COVID era of 2020-21 saw thousands of new carriers and third-party logistics firms enter the market, eager to provide additional capacity and take advantage of higher rates.  Starting in 2022, that demand dried up precipitously, sending freight rates and tender rejections plummeting. This freight recession continues today and was one of the topics discussed at the Transportation Intermediaries Association’s 2024 Capital Ideas Conference, held April 10-13 in Phoenix, Arizona. The market slowdown has caused thousands of freight brokers and carriers to drop out of the market.  “This market right-sizing is painful. Regardless of whether it makes sense to get rid of some of the excess capacity in the marketplace, these closures obviously hurt people,” said TIA President Anne Reinke.  Fraud and transparency were two other significant topics addressed at the conference. During the past year, the association stood up a fraud task force and launched a quarterly fraud report to better educate member brokers/3PLs and encourage them to take action to fight double brokering and theft. Reinke estimated in January that fraud costs the industry up to $700 million in freight payments each year.  On the transparency front, TIA cited a statistic that 92% percent of carriers are unrated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Nine of 10 carriers across the country operating with no safety rating by the federal government is an untenable situation for brokers and 3PLs who rely on working with trustworthy carriers. The FMCSA has shown a willingness to change the status quo, but no industry consensus on how the ratings should be changed has yet emerged.  However, one especially compelling session at TIA Capital Ideas discussed the state of cross-border operations between the United States and Mexico. In an informal poll of attendees at the “Effective & Successful Cross-Border Operations” session held on Friday, April 12, half of brokers/3PLs said they currently operate in Mexico, while a number of those who don’t operate in Mexico indicate they want to in the coming years.  While that’s not exactly a scientific survey, it does signal that operating in Mexico is a growing subsector for the industry and that operating south of the border could be an option for many 3PLs going forward. Let’s look at three things to keep in mind when thinking about cross-border operations in Mexico.  1. Manufacturing is big in Mexico, and it’s only going to get bigger. Mexico’s status as a developing economy has made it a natural target for manufacturing over the past few decades, but recent market forces have accelerated that existing trend.  Trade measures taken against China in recent years have made Mexico more attractive to ship from for manufacturers due to lower tariffs and closer proximity to developed markets like the U.S. and Canada. According to the Mexican government, the country received a record $36 billion in direct foreign investment in 2023, much of which is attributable to companies nearshoring operations away from Asia. Additionally, Mexico was the U.S.’ top trading partner in January.  The trend is poised to continue for at least the next several years. 3PLs have the potential to do major business in Mexico, and building relationships with shippers and carriers early in the boom can give brokerages a huge leg up on the competition.  2. Risks are higher than the U.S., though. Doing business in Mexico isn’t quite as simple as putting up a new office across town. To say nothing of the bureaucratic aspects of starting a business in a different country, there are important differences involved with transporting freight in Mexico.  Mexican carriers are not required to carry the same amount of insurance as their American (or Canadian) counterparts, and any coverage they do have is likely to be based on the tonnage of the load and not value. This can lead to a situation where a high-value load from a shipper has minimal coverage.  Cargo theft is also an issue that is, unfortunately, on the rise in Mexico. In 2023, theft grew by 3.9% over the previous year, according to the country’s public security ministry. Shippers and brokers should also not expect the same visibility and service as the U.S. Oftentimes, stakeholders will receive updates on WhatsApp or only at truck stops near the U.S.-Mexico border. Additionally, there is no electronic logging device (ELD) mandate in Mexico. 3. Steps to mitigate risk are available – and imperative to brokering in Mexico. Traditional insurers have typically been hesitant to assure cross-border loads, which has often meant a 3PL takes its chances with minimal insurance or asks a shipper to sign a waiver of liability. However, given the freight and manufacturing boom in Mexico, insurers are becoming more receptive to insurance agreements. Brokers may be able to secure additional insurance on behalf of the shipper to cover the full value of the freight.  And while ELDs and other telematics are not required in Mexico, carriers that use them help guarantee a level of visibility and safety. One example mentioned during the session involved Nestlé, who had seven shipments hijacked in one week in Mexico. However, because the food and drink giant used tracking on those shipments, they were recovered.  These factors make it imperative for 3PLs to take proactive risk management steps that discern the best carriers to work with and employ specialized customer agreements with shippers.  Whether you work in one country or three, Transflo can help 3PLs work more efficiently.  Operating outside of the United States as an American broker or 3PL isn’t easy. Language barriers, customs issues, foreign laws, and the potential issues discussed in this blog may take up significant time and effort. But that doesn’t mean your partner carriers and shippers stateside will have time to wait.   For your more bread-and-butter freight, there’s Workflow AI from Transflo, which can reduce up to 97% of manual work and automate countless tasks. Then, your team will have more time to work with unique cases – or begin or continue operations in Mexico.  

But between the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), U.S. Congress, and state legislation, changing rules and laws can feel like flood-level precipitation if your company isn’t up on the latest developments.  Regulatory issues were a huge point of discussion at the recent Truckload 2024 conference, held by the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) from March 23-26 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. 2023-24 TCA chairman Dave Williams, the Senior Vice President of Equipment and Government Relations at Knight-Swift Transportation noted that, “Every time we turn around there’s something that ends up bringing a significant challenge.” One such challenge in the transportation industry is navigating changing labor rules governing independent contractors, which have made business difficult for owner-operators and carriers that use them, particularly in California. However, several other regulatory and legislative items were brought up in TCA’s Highway Policy Committee and Regulatory Policy Committee at Truckload 2024, each of which held sessions on March 24.  Let’s look at four items addressed by the committees at Truckload 2024:   1. Truck parking The lack of available parking for trucks has been a topic of much interest in transportation for several years now. In a January webinar, TCA Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Safety David Heller called parking the “No. 1 issue” for professional drivers and cited research showing that the average driver loses $5,000 per year in productivity looking for safe parking. Furthermore, the November 2021 infrastructure bill passed by Congress and signed into law by the White House lacked dedicated funding for truck parking.  The federal government and Congress are now addressing the issue, though. In January, the federal Department of Transportation announced $300 million in funding for truck parking in seven states. Currently, Congress is considering the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, which has bipartisan support and 61 co-sponsors across the House and Senate. It would fund $755 million in new truck parking projects over three years.   2. Nuclear verdicts and tort reform Since 2010, the frequency of $1 million+ crash judgments against fleets has skyrocketed, while the frequency of fatal crashes per hundred million large truck miles has declined. To discuss this trend and how litigation can be taken advantage of by lawyers, Lee Parsley, general counsel at Texans for Lawsuit Reform, spoke to the Highway Policy Committee.  Just one verdict can cause a carrier’s insurance rates to soar or force it out of business completely. In 2023, at the state level, Florida, Georgia, and Iowa took action and either passed comprehensive tort reform or laws that directly address trucking litigation and protect carriers from frivolous or inflated judgments. However, some regions may not have judicial systems that are as likely to side with a carrier, so this issue is worth keeping an eye on.   3. Speed limiters In 2016 and 2022, the FMCSA proposed – and later rescinded – rulemaking that would force large commercial vehicles to be equipped with a speed limiter. While another limiter proposal was expected at two different points last year, it now seems certain to arrive in May. If the rule is not pushed back again, carriers and drivers will get plenty of opportunity for public comment on the proposal. It could be years before potential enforcement begins.  But that’s not the only speed limiter rule that could have a massive impact on the industry.  In California, state Sen. Scott Weiner has introduced legislation that would limit speeds on every new vehicle sold in the state starting with the 2027 model year – effectively, only two years from now. Almost 1 of every 8 people in the country lives in the Golden State, but the rest of the country often goes along with California automotive rules, whether it be from states piggybacking on the more stringent laws or because automakers deem it too expensive to sell more than one version of a car or truck.   4. Side underride guards In April 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) for studying the effectiveness of mandating side underride guards to trailers. In that report, the government estimated that installing side underride guards on trailers would cost up to $1.2 billion per year. The ANPRM also estimated that 17.2 lives could be saved, and 69 serious injuries prevented annually.  Industry professionals don’t quite see the cost-benefit analysis of this rule as safety advocates do, as this would also decrease fuel efficiency by adding weight to the trailer. For fleets, a telematics solution like a sensor or side camera could conceivably warn a driver when an object is at the side of the trailer at a fraction of the cost.  Regulations and laws are unpredictable. Transflo isn’t.  Anticipating the exact laws and regulations that will affect transportation can sometimes be a fruitless endeavor – much like trying to nail down if that afternoon storm in May will bring tornadoes or a quick drenching. This year, an upcoming presidential election and the potential for some of these federal rules to be revoked next year makes the regulatory atmosphere that much more unstable.  What won’t be changing is Transflo’s commitment to products that make life easier and safer for fleet managers, industry executives, and drivers, whether you have 10 trucks or 1,000. Our telematics solutions, including ELDs, dashcams, and asset trackers, offer customizable integrations and fleet management platforms that allow a carrier to take safety and fleet maintenance steps on its own terms.   If you’re interested in learning more about telematics or any of Transflo’s products for carriers and drivers, contact us today. 

In logistics, AI is being used today to bring productivity to a new level, with a significant amount of traditional manual work in the back office being reduced or automated thanks to AI-powered products. But most of the story of AI in logistics and trucking is yet to be written.  To separate fact from fiction in logistics AI adoption and development, Transflo Chief Product Officer Justin King joined the panel, “Beyond the Hype: Industry Leaders Chart the Future of AI Deployments” on Feb. 28 at the McLeod Software AI Conference in Birmingham, Alabama. Vooma Co-Founder Jesse Buckingham and Parade VP of Product Lindsay Watt joined King on the panel, moderated by Seth Clevenger of Transport Topics.  Here are three takeaways mentioned by King and the panel:  1. Humans aren’t going anywhere, but the nature of work will change. Predictions about autonomous trucks populating the freeways and AI handling every aspect of the shipper-carrier or driver-broker-carrier relationship may have a place in science fiction, but they’re not realistic now. Instead, the current role of AI in logistics lies in taking over time-consuming, everyday tasks.  During the panel, the experts mentioned a variety of opportunities for AI in the sector that can improve upon traditional workflows. To that end, AI models trained by a variety of data sets can approximate human decision-making power for many lower-risk decisions. Some use cases include:  Document processing  Document scanning  Chatbots to answer drivers’ questions  Driver safety risk  Fleet maintenance  Optimizing freight bids  Identifying trends  The panelists mentioned that the near future of AI in logistics should be a collaborative one, with humans in charge and using AI to get things accomplished, leaving brain power to more complex problems and important business relationships. Furthermore, human-AI collaboration will require a degree of additional workforce training to ensure employees understand and use the technology in the best ways for the business. 2. Al adoption may take time for organizations to adopt. While AI can help logistics and trucking companies save money and time, implementing it may make employees throughout the organization wary. On the management side, AI will evolve very rapidly in the coming years, which will make adapting and pivoting to new capabilities crucial.  This is why King and the rest of the panel believe it’s imperative for companies to clearly communicate the problems can be solved with AI and reassure the workforce that they – not any AI platform – are the most important parts of the business.  “It starts with leadership… and being intellectually curious, right?” said King. “If you’re running an IT department, for example, asking your QA folks, ‘Hey, have you used any sort of AI tool to debug this code?’”  King also mentioned that small-scale experimentation of AI tools across the board at a company can produce a “force multiplier” effect, leading to higher-quality code, a better overall product, and greater trust in AI as its capabilities evolve.  Meanwhile, carriers and brokers who are apprehensive of AI or want to hold on to the technologies of yesterday too long run the risk of being outpaced by the competition and having significant obstacles to AI development once the technology becomes inevitable.  “As with any new technology, the companies who embrace it early on and use it, even in small ways, don’t expect it to change the business overnight,” said King. “But even if you’re deploying it in small ways and you’re leveraging some technology of software to help your business, you will be on the forefront of your competitors.”  3. LLMs can help fuel the data engines of tomorrow. Without access to lots of data – and good data, at that – AI models don’t go anywhere and offer little value to logistics companies. Brokers and carriers typically have massive amounts of data in a transportation management system, but not all of it may be accurate or structured in a way that’s conducive to AI development.   Thankfully for those organizations, large language models (LLMs) used by a skilled and experienced technology provider will make it feasible to validate and clean up data for use in a practical, time-saving AI model powered by machine learning.  “Using AI to create the dataset is actually one of the most interesting opportunities that we have right now,” said King. “Historically, it would have been very costly to capture all of the data off of the documents. But now, using OCR (optical character recognition) and AI, you can do that in a fairly cost-effective way.”  How Transflo approaches AI  The Transflo team takes a customer-focused and sustainable approach to AI. They use multiple AI models, including LLMs, that are trained internally. The team also favors progressive AI development that takes time to learn and analyze customers’ business needs so they can deliver solutions that save time and money.  Transflo’s Workflow AI solution has helped customers drastically slash the time spent on formerly manual processes like billing and data extraction. In the case of Overland Park, Kansas-based freight brokerage Ryan Transportation, Workflow AI’s deployment saved up to two hours of daily work for every employee, which enabled staff to better utilize their skills and focus on more strategic work.  To learn more about Workflow AI and how Transflo’s solutions can help move your logistics business forward, contact sales today.  

The CVSA is a nonprofit organization made up of local and federal regulatory agencies and law enforcement authorities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Inspections will be conducted from May 14-16 across all three countries, making Roadcheck a massive, multinational undertaking that covers hundreds of thousands of highway miles.  In 2023, 59,429 vehicle inspections were conducted over the 72 hours of Roadcheck. Inspections most often include a 37-step Level I North American Standard Inspection for the commercial vehicle and a driver inspection.  Why Roadcheck matters  Those who have an inclination for math and probabilities may think that approximately 60,000 inspections across the 5 million some-odd professional truck drivers in North America means that one individual truck has a low likelihood of being inspected. However, that’s a flawed attitude to take for both carriers and drivers.  For starters, that chance of inspection for one truck and driver means that larger fleets stand a very high chance of getting inspected at least once – and probably more. But more significantly, a bad inspection – for vehicle or driver – has massive consequences.  Trucks can be placed out of service immediately after a Roadcheck inspection if they fail CVSA’s North American Standard Out-Of-Service (OOS) Criteria and until the issue(s) that caused the failure are fixed. Not only does this harm a carrier in the eyes of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) or its Canadian or Mexican counterparts, but it damages broker and shipper relationships, too.  Unfortunately, OOS placements from Roadcheck are not rare. In 2023, CVSA inspectors found 17,479 out-of-service violations in commercial vehicles and at least one violation in 19% percent of all inspected vehicles.  By a similar token, drivers can be taken off the road if they don’t have a proper commercial driver’s license, don’t have an updated DOT medical card, show signs of being under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances, have run afoul of Hours of Service (HOS) rules, or have been falsely or inaccurately logging hours. During last year’s Roadcheck, 5.5% of drivers had at least one out-of-service driver violation, with HOS violations making up about 40% of the overall driver violations.  On the plus side, vehicles that pass Level I inspections should receive a CVSA decal, valid for three months.  Regardless of whether you’re a driver, owner-operator, or manage a fleet for a carrier, you don’t want any vehicle or person to be in that out-of-service bunch. Professionals that make truck safety, maintenance, hours of service, and proper documentation year-long priorities will be most likely to pass inspections with flying colors. And even if you haven’t done that until now, there’s still time to self-inspect your trucks before May 14.  Focus areas for 2024  While vehicle and driver inspections are the backbone of each year’s Roadcheck, specific focus areas for inspectors to gather data on vary from year to year. In 2023, inspectors emphasized the function of a truck’s anti-lock braking system (ABS) and the importance of secured cargo.  This year, CVSA-sanctioned inspectors will prioritize tractor protection systems and controlled substance and alcohol possession. CVSA picked tractor protection as an important item “to increase awareness for drivers, motor carriers, technicians and enforcement personnel of these critically important vehicle components; specifically, the tractor protection valve, trailer supply valve and anti-bleed back valve, which may be overlooked during trip and roadside inspections.”     The rationale for highlighting substance and alcohol use almost goes without saying when hauling important cargo and sharing the road with millions of other drivers, but the CVSA made a point to mention in its release announcing the focus areas that the number of drivers who are prohibited by the FMCSA’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse (DACH) is increasing. Carriers should maintain stringent policies against the use of drugs or alcohol while on the job and regularly check the DACH database to ensure none of their drivers are listed as prohibited.  With the right tech solutions, Roadcheck is just another three days on the road  The most diligent drivers and fleets make compliance and vehicle safety a priority all 12 months of the year, not just before the three days of Roadcheck. Of course, it’s not always easy to do so with everything supply chain professionals have on their plate. Transflo can help.  The Transflo Mobile+ driver app is nearly in its second decade of existence and has everything a driver needs to get through their workday, all in one single app. With Mobile+, drivers can easily keep track of Hours of Service and refer to past logs. It goes above and beyond just compliance, offering drivers tools like navigation, weather conditions, mobile document scanning, and countless customizations and integrations.  Transflo Telematics, with the help of the Geotab Connect platform, can turn a truck’s On-Board Diagnostics port into a data-powered gold mine that lets fleet managers know when a truck needs to be serviced to avoid a costly OOS violation. Additionally, dash cams can help recognize unsafe driving habits so they can be addressed before a costly incident.  If you aren’t sure about how a potential Roadcheck inspection will go, reach out to Transflo for solutions that make compliance and vehicle maintenance easier.  

TAMPA, April 24, 2024 – Transflo, a leading provider of technology solutions for the transportation industry, is thrilled to announce that it has won three 2024 Top Workplaces Culture Excellence awards. The honors are awarded by Energage, a purpose-driven organization that develops solutions to build and brand Top Workplaces. The Top Workplaces program has a 17-year history of surveying and celebrating people-first organizations nationally and across 60 regional markets.  Top Workplaces awards are based on feedback from a research-backed employee engagement survey at each recipient company.   The Transflo team is composed of a diverse group of experienced freight professionals with tenured backgrounds and high-level expertise in SaaS technology, freight brokerage, and fleet management. Together, they set the standard for the behavior and culture that characterizes the organization, creating an environment that values integrity and responsibility, innovative thinking, risk-taking, and efficiency while also inspiring creativity and collaboration.  Transflo was recognized for excellence in the following areas of workplace culture:  Innovation: Honors organizations who have embedded innovation into their culture and create an environment where new ideas come from all employees. Transflo embodies this area by encouraging employees to challenge the status quo and innovate through ideas, processes, and technology.  Work-Life Flexibility: Commends the organizations who provide options to their employees in how and where they work, as well as having managers who care for their employees’ concerns. Transflo features a distributed workforce across the country that both emphasizes collaboration and encourages team members to attend to important items and life events.  Leadership: Celebrates organizations whose leaders inspire confidence in their employees and in the direction of the company. At Transflo, leaders like CEO Renee Krug and President & CRO Bill Vitti understand the needs of the customers that front-line employees hear every day.  “At Transflo, we take immense pride in the culture we’ve been able to build for our employees and because of our employees. We are delighted to accept the Innovation, Work-Life Flexibility, and Leadership awards from Energage as recognition of our commitment to our supremely talented workforce,” said Ally Spaventa, Vice President of People & Culture at Transflo.  “Earning a Top Workplaces award is a badge of honor for companies, especially because it comes authentically from their employees,” said Eric Rubino, Energage CEO. “That’s something to be proud of. In today’s market, leaders must ensure they’re allowing employees to have a voice and be heard. That’s paramount. Top Workplaces do this, and it pays dividends.”   About Transflo  Transflo is the trusted industry leader in mobile, telematics, and business process automation solutions for the transportation industry in North America. Transflo’s customer-focused mobile and cloud-based technologies deliver real-time communications to fleets, brokers, factors, shippers, and commercial vehicle drivers, and digitize 800 million shipping documents a year, representing approximately $115 billion in freight bills and 3.2 million downloads of the Mobile+ app.  For media inquiries or further information, please contact: T.J. Muehlfeld [email protected], (412) 298-1239 https://www.transflo.com  About Energage Making the world a better place to work together.™ Energage is a purpose-driven company that helps organizations turn employee feedback into useful business intelligence and credible employer recognition through Top Workplaces. Built on 18 years of culture research and the results from 27 million employees surveyed across more than 70,000 organizations,  Energage delivers the most accurate competitive benchmark available. With access to a unique combination of patented analytic tools and expert guidance, Energage customers lead the competition with an engaged workforce and an opportunity to gain recognition for their people-first approach to culture. For more information or to nominate your organization, visit energage.com or topworkplaces.com.