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About Stevens Trucking  Stevens Trucking is a family-owned, Oklahoma-based carrier that has operated since 1979. It runs approximately 350 trucks and has 1,600 trailers. Started by President & CEO Kenney Stevens at the age of 18 with just one truck, the company specializes in oilfield delivery and the dry freight sector. It uses a 99% drop-and-hook model, which keeps freight moving and drivers on the road. The company has been able to grow immensely during its 45-year history by focusing on strong values and putting employees and customers first.  The challenge  Stevens Trucking’s drop-and-hook approach to most loads means that drivers can get a lot of miles driven each day and week and don’t have to worry about detention time. For Stevens’ drivers, about half of which are company drivers and half of which are owner-operators, unnecessary time managing and scanning documents for loads was eating into driving time. For the back office at Stevens, which had grown rapidly over a three-year period, billing speed was suffering due to issues with document scans being unclear and needing further clarification.  The solution  Jessi Maschino, Chief Revenue Officer and Office Manager for Stevens Trucking was looking for a document scanning solution that would minimize the roadblocks drivers and the office were facing with document quality and billing. She knew Stevens needed a solution that would be intuitive and easy for drivers and would keep the business side moving along as quickly as their trucks.  Transflo Mobile+ was just the tool that Stevens Trucking needed, thanks to its advanced, accurate document scanning capabilities and simplicity for drivers. Additionally, offline document capture in Mobile+ meant Stevens’ drivers and owner-operator partners could keep their workflow going without a cellular connection, as the documents would send whenever a driver’s device is back online.  “We had been using another mobile upload app, but the quality of scans was not good at all and actually created more work for our billing team,” Maschino said. “From the time we first saw Mobile+ in action, we were sure that it was going to make a world of difference.”  While document scanning was the biggest reason Maschino and her team at Stevens Trucking chose Transflo Mobile+, it wasn’t the only selling point. Mobile+ also integrated seamlessly with Stevens’ transportation management system (TMS) preference, as it does with every other major TMS platform.   The results  Transflo Mobile+ document scanning has provided immense benefits to the drivers and office team at Stevens Trucking. Maschino and her team have reported that the image quality for scanned documents like Bills of Lading has improved, which has dramatically reduced issues like delayed billing.  “Using Transflo Mobile+ has helped out our billing so much,” Maschino said. “We can bill out all of our invoices faster now.” Furthermore, Maschino pointed out that the Transflo team provided great support while the app was being implemented and used. Overall, the Stevens Trucking team gave Transflo Mobile+ and its document scanning their highest approval.  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.  

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. 

DeGroot briefly discussed his current role and experience attending TIA Capital Ideas with Transflo.  What made you want to go into the logistics industry?  Our family has been farming in Illinois for four generations, starting as a flower farm serving the Chicagoland area and later transitioning to vegetable production in the 1970s, now serving customers nationwide.   Ten years ago, my brother Adam DeGroot started DeGroot Logistics to serve the transportation needs of our family’s farm and produce company. Since then, our company has grown to serve leading brands across the food and beverage industry. I have always been fascinated by the fresh produce and food & beverage supply chain, particularly the transportation side, which is why I’m so excited to be a part of the DeGroot Logistics team and our family of companies.  What are your career goals that you’d like to accomplish in the future?  I’m always looking to pursue professional development opportunities. That’s why I was so excited to receive Transflo’s scholarship to attend this year’s TIA Capital Ideas Conference in Phoenix. It was a great opportunity to network with peers, connect with vendors, and learn more about the latest trends and best practices, particularly as it relates to mitigating freight claims and fraud.   I look forward to continuing my personal professional development in the industry by attending future conferences and participating in TIA’s online education courses.  To read more about the 2024 TIA Capital Ideas Conference, check out our recent blog. 

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.