Highway doubles down on ELD connections for carrier ID checks

In early July Highway, the carrier onboarding and vetting service, warned carriers about electronic logging device connections to verify carriers' equipment through the platform. Broker "connections will fail," the company said, for carriers who don't link their ELD in Highway's Connect platform.

"A broker needs to verify the carrier that they tendered the load to is the carrier picking it up," said Highway Chief Operating Officer Brittany Graft, placing the push for more ELD verifications in the context of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in May on broker crash liability. The ruling deep-sixed a standard defense brokers have to used to deflect civil negligence suits in state courts. 

How can brokers know the right carrier's picking up the load? Absent the shipper or receiver taking the time to actually cross-check bills of lading with the arriving carrier's truck, the driver's license, and/or plenty of other manual options, "this is confirmed through an ELD connection," Graft said. "Widely adopted compliance rules for Highway customers are requiring this ELD connection." 

With the warning, Highway intended to give carriers advance notice of screws tightening on the platform's vetting, but Graft emphasized benefits for all parties. Brokers and carriers alike are "exposed to risks they shouldn't have to carry," she said. 

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ID theft, double brokering, fraudulent bookings, legal exposure with cargo theft. "Those risks don't just hit the carrier. They hit the broker too," she said.

With the threat of safety-vetting accountability in state courts rising for middlemen, for carriers doing business with the brokers that use Highway, it could mean more reason to deny loads to the non-ELD-connected. 

Carrier vetting's rise alongside fraud proliferation

Vetting systems' recent reach into brokered freight markets has hit roughly 80% of owner-operator businesses in some form or fashion. Only 1 in 5 respondents to Overdrive's recent brokered-freight survey reported zero experience with a vetting platform. 

The research showed Highway the second most common around, behind only Truckstop.com's long-in-business RMIS.  

What's more, reported denial-of-business due to information contained in a vetting platform was about as common as the systems themselves. Just 39% of owner-operators had never experienced such a denial. 

Reasons brokers using vetting platforms deny owner-operators business

Download Overdrive's comprehensive report detailing owner-operator approaches to broker credit checks, vetting, and bond claims at this link, or via the form at the bottom of this story. Overdrive 2026 broker vetting survey

[Related: The third parties following you around the freight networks]

In addition to the most-common denial reason shown, ELDs loomed large in write-in responses. Also mentioned was "false information" -- a system might wrongly flag a carrierʼs association with multiple others after the owner falls victim to a business ID theft ring, for instance, and contact information gets changed in FMCSAʼs system. 

Carrier vetting providers in some cases strive to do better on that front, but picture-perfect data accuracy wonʼt lessen the sting of being denied freight simply because you don't use an ELD, or have the wrong one -- the biggest write-in denial reason owner-operators flagged with the survey. 

“Not the ELD they want,ˮ wrote one commenter. 

“Because of my choice for Garminʼs ELD,ˮ said another about attempts to connect to brokers through Highway. Other respondents refused the intrusion of an ELD connection. Highway's post-SCOTUS warning to carriers could make such a choice more onerous.

That is, if they have the choice to make. 

“We are ELD-exempt," said yet another Overdrive survey commenter. Far too often, "brokers do not honor that exempt status.ˮ

But they could, even today with Highway's "compliance rules" change insisting on ELD connections. 

"A broker always reserves the right to work with whomever they'd like," whether ELD-connected or not, Graft said, though Highway Connect will require that broker to "override" the system's ELD requirement. 

Carriers running ELDs that aren't connected through Highway in those cases "would not need to re-onboard" with broker partners, fortunately, said Graft.

For ELD-exempt carriers, the broker's override will continue to be required, and the company's Highway for Carriers free service can be used to verify their ELD-exempt equipment. That wasn't an option early last year. 

[Related: Highway denies selling, storing or otherwise snooping on ELD data]

ELD-exempt owners can set up there with a few steps, Graft noted. 

"Navigate to the Equipment section of Highway for Carriers and submit documentation to denote an ELD-exempt vehicle," she said. 

That will be important if you're doing business with Highway Load Lock+ subscribers like the most recent one, big broker RXO. Load Lock+ is Highway's in-transit tracking option for brokers and their ELD-connected carrier partners. ELD-exempt and other owners set up in Highway for Carriers "can use the Highway mobile app for tracking purposes if they're on a load for a Load Lock+ customer," Graft said. 

Side benefit: Overdrive's survey asked carriers questions about broker vetting, and several respondents noted Highway for Carriers' utility for that purpose since its introduction last year. 

Readers can download the 19-page survey report via this link or the form at the bottom of this story. Graft said the service enables carriers to run checks on unfamiliar brokers to review and/or discover: 

• Any broker's authority status and credit standing
• For brokers whose business touches the Highway platform, carriers can see detail on countries from which the broker's users have accessed Highway.
• Broker contact details, and rate-con and invoicing info
• Company size, industry affiliations, history

For frauds experienced from any middleman, carriers can report that, too, and Highway's TFX load board flags "loads that are posted by a 'vetted broker'" in the system, Graft said. That is, "one that is able to meet payment obligations."

[Related: How owner-ops dodge shady brokers, ensuring freight's paid when due]

Broker vetting: Next trucking tech play?

Most Overdrive survey respondents reported negative principal impacts of the rise of carrier vetting in recent years. 

Looking for silver linings, it's reasonable to ask whether broker vetting platforms like Highway for Carriers might be on the verge of their own surge. 

Just 6% of owner-operators reported using such a system outside of tools offered by load board and factory company partners. Yet growing demand for broker-vetting functionality was named the single biggest carrier-vetting impact by 16% of survey respondents. 

Carrier vetting systems: Biggest impact?Since Overdrive last asked a similar vetting-impact question of owner-operators in 2024, more 6%) are seeing opportunity for small carriers to shine with their middlemen partners, another possible silver lining.Overdrive's 2026 broker vetting surveyFor her part, Highway's Graft said the recent ELD moves are meant to "protect our carrier network" by delivering a clear-cut way to "prove their legitimacy and protect themselves, while giving brokers the confidence to keep booking with them." 

She cast both Highway for Carriers and the TFX load board in those lights, too, both free to use. 

Aside from whether we ever see any broker-vetting boom, it's at least clear Highway's principal paying broker customers have the company on the move. Impacts of the SCOTUS ruling underlie a new subscription add-on with carrier-safety risk in mind, beyond the core carrier-identity-verification efforts. 

Highway's new "Bluewire Broker Package" offers middlemen access to three report types, with carrier scoring in the "Severity Risk Snapshot," a "Benchmark Report" to analyze risk trends in a broker's entire carrier network, and a "Risk Intelligence Report" for prospective-carrier pre-qualification. 

The last ties in indicators of "identity fraud, re-registration schemes, and false credentialing," said Highway Chief Commercial Officer Michael Caney. 

The new subscription add-on is in partnership with Bluewire and its nine-category "GAP Score" metric, which purports to assess trucking companies in the nine areas "most used against motor carriers," according to the Bluewire website. 

Caney said Bluewire's scoring "is built on more than 652,000 carrier evaluations" now with nearly four years of monthly updates to those category metrics. 

Regular readers will recall Bluewire CEO Steven Bryan's recent remarks about the company's contract with the U.S. Department of Transportation with a goal in part to advance a "broader, data-driven framework to better understand -- and ultimately rate -- every motor carrier operating under DOT authority. ... No more unrated carriers."

[Related: FMCSA safety ratings fall off a cliff]

Download Overdrive's full survey report to access tactical detail around broker vetting, via the brief form below. (Find a summary of highlights in the story at this link.) 

[Related: FMCSA's safety rating revamp: Truckers caution against use of SMS, roadside data]