The Mid-America Trucking Show saw no shortage of news from federal regulators and truck beauty contest winners, but under the surface lurked tensions between rival camps of owner-operators on the issue of broker transparency. They finally boiled over near the end of a talk delivered by trucking guru and past Overdrive contributor Kevin Rutherford.
On one side of the broker transparency issue stands Rutherford. Flanked by Truckstop Chief Relationship officer Brent Hutto, Rutherford at MATS rebooted his long-running Certified Master Carrier program in a live format -- for those who don't remember it, it's an owner-op academy of sorts, taking place over days with intensive sessions aimed at delivering the ins and out of bootstrapping a trucking business, no matter the business or regulatory climate.
Preaching a radical kind of personal ownership over all things business, Rutherford and his followers don't think brokers being forced to disclose their rates would really help trucking, and indeed warn that it could backfire on carriers, ushering in a "race to the bottom" on rates.
In the other corner stands Dakota Springfields, who chalked up a win when, in November, she was successful with FMCSA's help in a bid to compel TQL to disclose the rate the shipper paid on a load of ice cream.
Springfields said it exposed TQL making a 44% margin on that load, and that more transparency would reveal more well-above-average takes from intermediaries, making it an urgent action item for regulators.
The in-person conflict was little bit more spectacular than, say, a pot boiling over on the stove. It happened after Rutherford's CMC program, at a talk delivered as part of the MATS Pro Talks series. Though Springfields at times heckled the speakers onstage, and Rutherford eventually did excuse himself a few minutes earlier than scheduled, both sides remained measured, the debate academic, you might say -- mostly, that is.
[Related: Broker margins, rates data, transparency: What owner-operators really think]
