Highway, a freight technology platform, is positioning itself as the 'Plaid for Freight' by building enforceable digital transaction rails to combat rising direct cargo theft. The company monitors 2.5 million loads monthly, detects behavioral anomalies like sudden load spikes, and enforces identity verification via facial recognition and ELD-VIN matching. Its Trusted Freight Exchange has grown to become the second-largest freight marketplace in seven months, serving 250–300 integrated customers and listing over 60,000 loads daily. With brokerages operating on razor-thin 3–4% gross margins and fraud increasingly professionalized, Highway insists that data alone shows risk — only standardized, embedded transaction controls can prevent theft.
The freight industry stands at a crossroads that looks remarkably familiar to anyone who remembers the early days of fintech. Before Plaid became the connective tissue linking bank accounts to lending decisions, borrowers shuffled paperwork and lenders operated on good faith. Now that same transformation is coming for trucking, and Highway’s Chief Commercial Officer Michael Caney believes Highway is building the rails that will make it happen.
The Changing State of Freight Fraud
“Highway is Plaid,” Caney told FreightWaves in an interview. “Highway is allowing a user, a carrier user, to say: ‘We’re asking the question — are you willing to tell the truth about who you are? And are you willing to let the world know if something changes?’ And when they’re not, that’s a tell.”
The nature of cargo theft has shifted dramatically. Double-brokering schemes, once the dominant threat, have given way to direct theft. This shift is partly due to identity verification tools from Highway and others that have made impersonation more difficult.
“The reason that we see direct theft rising is because it’s no longer easy to impersonate a carrier,” Caney said. “We’ve made it harder. You actually have to be picking up freight for a while.”
The challenge now lies in detecting when legitimate carriers “break bad.” Highway monitors roughly 2.5 million loads a month, watching for behavioral anomalies that signal trouble: a five-truck operation suddenly booking 100 loads, unfamiliar carriers moving into high-value commodity lanes, or sudden spikes in user additions.
“There are things that you can detect where you say, ‘Man, that guy’s gonna start stealing freight soon,’” Caney said. “We geocode facilities, so we look at the propensity of a commodity or a facility or a traffic lane, and we look for carriers to move into that lane that maybe haven’t been there before.”
Chameleon carriers, those operations that shed identities to escape enforcement history, are another persistent threat. But Caney argues detection is straightforward when carriers must verify principal ownership through facial recognition, provide real names without virtual private network masking, and match vehicle identification numbers on electronic logging devices against scheduled auto policies.
“Not all electronic logging device providers are created equal,” Caney said. Highway has begun shutting off data feeds from providers that fail its integrity standards, telling one recently: “If you don’t change the way that you send data, we’re gonna say that any connected ELD through this particular provider is no good and brokers shouldn’t trust it.”
The Economics of Fraud and Market Incentives
Behind the fraud epidemic lies an uncomfortable economic reality. For years, shippers squeezed rates to the point where some brokerages operate on 3 to 4 percent gross margins. This isn’t earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, but actual gross margin.
“When shippers [were] providing the rates, and there’s some brokerages operating out there at 3 and 4 percent gross margin — barely breaking even, they’re just trying to stay in business — their incentive alignment’s off,” Caney said. “Shippers have pushed it till it’s breaking.”
That pressure cascades downward. Carriers can’t afford compliance investments. Non-domiciled and limited-term commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders account for a disproportionate share of stolen loads. Fraud itself has become professionalized, requiring more working capital to operate. This means bad actors must target higher-value shipments to cover their costs.
“Fraud’s a business,” Caney said. “It’s organized, it is well thought out, there’s technology behind it, and it now costs more to run a fraud business.”
Enforceable Standards vs. Data Commentary
Caney offered five key points during a recent conference appearance. One stood out: “Data shows you risk, but it doesn’t prevent it.”
The solution, he argues, lies in making the transaction itself the enforcement mechanism. When a broker books a carrier with a connected ELD that auto-assigns to the load based on proximity, it then verifies the vehicle identification number against the scheduled auto policy and uses a secure rate confirmation conduit that prevents inbox interception. The added steps means theft drops to zero.
“When someone comes and says, ‘We’ll create the standards like a Visa,’ and you choose to trade outside those standards, you’re choosing risk,” Caney said. He compared it to a renter offering to pay outside Airbnb for a discount: the platform’s guarantees disappear the moment you step off the rails.
A Trusted Freight Exchange to Rebuild Trust
Highway’s Trusted Freight Exchange has scaled rapidly since launch. John Tozer, who oversees the platform, said it has become the second-largest freight marketplace in roughly seven months, with 250 to 300 integrated customers posting upward of 60,000 available loads daily.
“The trust in the Trusted Freight Exchange is more valuable than anything else,” Tozer said. “It has to come from pre-vetted brokers.”
Approximately 100,000 motor carriers currently meet TFX eligibility requirements, having provided identity verification, connected an ELD to a truck, and confirmed that the device links to an insured asset. The platform emphasizes relationship-building over transactional load matching.
“The biggest mistake I made when I started back in the day in freight tech with Newtrul was thinking that technology is going to replace humans or replace relationships,” Tozer said. “More importantly, technology done the right way enables both.”
Post-Montgomery Impact and Safety Guardrails
The Montgomery event has sent ripples through the brokerage community, though Tozer cautioned against overreaction. Highway has responded by enabling brokers to surface safety rule sets and identify performance-guaranteeable carriers based on the company’s data footprint.
“What we’re seeing is there’s a lot of fear associated with post-Montgomery,” Tozer said. “I’ve heard the wide gamut of things — that this is the event that’s going to consolidate the brokerage space, that this is the event that’s going to put thousands of brokers out of business. I don’t think we have enough information to say any of that is actually true yet.”
Insurance markets, he predicted, will ultimately determine the new standards. Highway’s Load Lock technology seeks to address a critical gap: verifying that the carrier who completed vetting is actually the one picking up the load.
“You can do all the diligence in the world, but if that’s not the carrier that picks up the load, what does it matter?” Tozer said.
Future Outlook: Capacity Procurement and Lane Intelligence
Over the next 12 months, TFX will focus heavily on capacity procurement features and lane intelligence. Examples include identifying the top 10 to 20 carriers that should be running specific lanes based on historical performance and safety profiles. The approach brings sophisticated vetting tools once reserved for major fleets to the broader market.
“We cater that approach and make it really easy for the operator to build that relationship with the best carriers that meet their rule set,” Tozer said.
Caney framed the industry’s trajectory in historical terms: “Ten years ago, we didn’t have visibility, we didn’t contemplate digital transactions. It’s not a fault of why we got here. We’re simply following the evolution.”
That evolution, both executives believe, leads inevitably toward enforceable digital standards — the same transformation that brought credit card security to e-commerce and identity verification to banking. For freight, the question is not whether those rails will be built, but who will choose to ride them.
Source: FreightWaves
Compiled from international media by the SCI.AI editorial team.
