Check Call: Freight fraud gets long-overdue attention

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Happy Freight Fraud Awareness Day! Fraud has run rampant through the supply chain forever, but it is getting special focus on this day to highlight what a huge issue it has become in recent years. Carriers, shippers, brokers and seemingly everyone else is pointing out that they have been victims.

This first-ever Freight Fraud Awareness Day is geared toward bringing the issue to the attention of policymakers and leaders in the logistics space to work on solutions and policy changes that could make fraud easier to prevent or impose real consequences on those committing it.

In an article by FreightWaves’ Grace Sharkey, Andrey Drotenko, president of strategic relations at Verified Carrier, says, “It’s not just that this brokerage or that carrier got screwed over — it’s a whole supply chain issue affecting all of us. We’re all paying for it, whether through higher prices or damaged reputations.”

The best first step toward a situation as of now is to share experiences. Tell others what happened, how it happened, who the fraudulent party was, etc. so that they may learn and take the necessary steps to keep it from happening to them.

“Freight fraud schemes like double brokering and cargo theft are estimated to cost the industry between $500 million and $700 million,” Sharkey notes.

According to the Transportation Intermediaries Association, fraud can cost roughly $402,000 annually per company in the industry.

Overhaul’s “United States & Canada H1 2024 Cargo Theft Report” found, “The surge in theft incidents has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in financial impact. The average loss per incident skyrocketed to $115,230, marking an 83% increase from the same period last year. This trend underscores the growing sophistication and ambition of cargo thieves, who are systematically targeting high-value shipments.”

Southern California remains the biggest target for theft. It’s more important than ever to have rigorous vetting in place for carriers and to communicate with those in the industry about these incidents. LinkedIn isn’t only good for humble bragging about sales wins and overcoming obstacles.

Market Check. This week’s market sees some unusual activity out of southeast Missouri. Outbound tender rejections have skyrocketed in Cape Girardeau. The Outbound Tender Reject Index has risen 241 basis points to a 14.57% rejection rate. Cape Girardeau isn’t usually a hotbed of freight; rejection rates this high are extremely atypical for the market. It’s a 746-basis-point increase year over year. The sharp uptick in rejections is reminiscent of March 2020 when there was a massive jump in a short time as a result of the pandemic.

Fortunately there appears to be no new pandemic on the horizon to account for this drastic uptick. It’s more likely an indicator of the P&G plant working overtime to catch up on the rush of toilet paper following the panic-buying that occurred as a result of the East Coast port worker strike. In a few weeks, volumes and rejections will return to normal and Cape Girardeau will return to being a market that doesn’t take priority for securing coverage.

Who’s with whom? Let’s go, girls. It turns out women make up a significant part of the supply chain. The Women in Trucking Association regularly updates its Women in Trucking Index. This index serves as a benchmark to measure the percentage of women who make up various roles in the transportation and logistics industries. The one male-dominated field now is seeing some women shake up the space.

The most recent findings show that “A significant percentage of women are involved in leadership roles. For example, an average of 28% of executives in the C-suite are women and an average of 34.5% are company leaders with supervisory responsibilities. An average of 29.5% of board members are women. Approximately 40% of participating companies report that between 20% and 49% of their boards of directors are females. An average of 9.5% of all professional truck drivers who hold CDLs are women. Approximately 38.5% of dispatchers are women. An average of 38.5% of safety professionals are women.”