"The set-up packet didn't even contain a contract ... [and] would come back and would get thrown into a manila folder, thrown into a file and forgotten, and you were using the truck." --Roar Logistics Senior Manager Scott Filipetti on many brokers' yesteryear approach to carriers
What brokers call carrier onboarding has certainly evolved mightily from the process Roar Logistics' Scott Filipetti describes off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio podcast. We’re talking the process brokers use to get a carrier set up to haul shipper customers’ freight, likewise ongoing monitoring of the basics of compliance with insurance and other requirements.
Gone are the days of the manila folder, for certain.
Today, Filipetti notes, the company utilizes the Highway service to manage onboarding, vetting and ongoing monitoring of owner-operators and other carriers, on top of a set of standard operating procedures you’ll hear him describe in the podcast.
Increasingly automated, detailed vetting by brokers all around trucking is aimed in part at preventing crash liability. It's newly urgent given the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that killed off brokers’ standard defense against negligence suits in state courts after an accident.
[Related: Owner-ops respond to broker group's freakout over SCOTUS decision]
Scott Filipetti, over contracts and compliance at Roar, well knows the risk. Unlike the prior broker featured on Overdrive Radio after the SCOTUS ruling, Roar’s actually experienced a post-crash suit in Filipettt’s time there.
Roughly seven years ago, he said, the company wasn’t successful getting the suit thrown out in total. Yet they did keep it out of a jury trial with a settlement, which Filipetti attributes in part to the broker’s consistent approach to carriers, sticking to those SOPs, and documenting everything.
But also, fundamentally, the company takes an approach to carriers that places real value on relationships, still likely the biggest driver of the business it does with carriers today.
As information available about carrier operations and safety-related performance has gone from the trickle of old to an absolute flood of potential sources over the last decades, Filipetti stands firm in the conviction that clearcut guidance for brokers and shippers is needed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
"It would be nice if the FMCSA had some type of standard that we and other brokers, and shippers, could follow," he said -- detailing what they absolutely have to do in checking any carrier’s credentials, and what they don’t.
[Related: Broker group wants FMCSA to publish list of 'high-risk' motor carriers]
He's in favor of the general approach of the Transportation Intermediaries Association in pushing for a "hiring standard," he added. Clarity in such a standard might benefit carriers, too, whether through expanded opportunities or generally less invasive intrusions into their businesses by vetting services in the wake of the court's ruling. Much more on that front in the podcast:
Roar Logistics has been a Broker of the Year in the National Association of Small Trucking Companies’ Best Brokers program more than once in the last decade. That honor goes to a single broker annually during NASTC's conference in Nashville, where Overdrive also honors four fleets as finalists in the Small Fleet Champ awards program each year.
Time is running out to enter to compete in the program for carriers between 3 and 30 trucks. Get into the running by July 31.
Enter to compete in the 2026 Small Fleet Championship.
Hope to see you there.
As mentioned in the podcast:
- Watch for our survey of owner-operators about broker vetting and more to publish this week.
- Roar Logistics' website.
[Related: Clifford C. Hay Inc., up from ashes, with new hurdles after crashes: Small Fleet Champ update]
