Melissa Forman said double brokering was not talked about as much before six months ago, but with the freight industry on a downswing, bad actors are getting desperate to make an extra dollar.
Forman, president of TriumphPay, said that extra dollar is resulting in $500 million to $700 million in annual carrier spend, and double-brokering scams are on the rise. Scott Cornell, transportation lead and crime and theft specialist at Travelers, said double-brokering scams were up over 100% coming out of the fourth quarter of 2022 and into the first quarter of 2023.
“What is being reported as double-brokering activity is just the tip of the iceberg; there is a lot more out there than the industry realizes,” Forman said. “The cost to the industry is exponential when considering claims, lost shipments, unsafe carriers, lost customers, etc.”
Historically, the tools for fighting double-brokering have relied on reports from brokers, publicly available information and basic scoring models. These methods, which waste brokers’ time and aren’t scalable, aren’t enough anymore.
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TriumphPay, a payments provider for the transportation industry, recently partnered with carrier identity management technology provider Highway to combat double-brokering fraud. The partnership combines two industry datasets – TriumphPay’s data on freight spend and Highway’s carrier and equipment information – with a proprietary algorithm to identify who is hauling more freight than their actual equipment would allow.
