For decades, traditional load boards have been the default place to post freight. But today, the freight landscape looks very different. Fraud is exploding. Identity spoofing is rampant. Sourcing capacity is inefficient. And the manual steps required to cover a load have multiplied as brokers try to protect themselves.
As Michael Caney, Chief Commercial Officer at Highway said on stage at FreightWaves F3, freight fraud has become an arms race—and the criminals are often “the most innovative actors in the industry.” Brokers are feeling that pressure every day.
The truth is this: The real cost of traditional load boards is no longer just subscription fees. It’s the cost of broken trust, operational inefficiency, and ongoing fraud risk inside your network.
Highway built the Trusted Freight Exchange (TFX) to solve the problems traditional load boards can’t—and were never designed to solve.
The True Cost of Traditional Load Boards
1. Weak Identity = Lost Trust
Traditional load boards make it easy for anyone to sign up, post freight, or claim capacity with minimal verification. But at Highway, everything begins with one question: Who’s really hauling your freight?
Without verified identity, brokers face:
- Impersonation and spoofed emails
- Fake carriers claiming loads
- Double brokering and cargo theft
- No certainty about who’s on the other side of the transaction
This isn’t a theoretical risk. Every month, Highway blocks over 100,000 fraudulent attempts. Fraudsters actively reverse-engineer processes, exploit weak verification gaps, and adapt daily—leaving brokers to either run their own identity checks or absorb the risk.
2. Operational Inefficiency That Drains Your Team
Traditional load boards generate sheer volume—but not necessarily value. How many times have you seen fake loads on the board? Many times brokers and carriers get stuck verifying the identity of each other to make sure the load is real.
These steps include verifying:
- Identity
- VIN and vehicle availability
- Insurance and exclusions
- Compliance
- Broker–carrier connection
- Payment eligibility
- Communication authenticity
The operational burden pulls teams away from revenue-generating work and delays coverage in a market where speed matters.
3. You Bear the Full Cost of Fraud
Load boards don’t prevent fraud. They simply facilitate transactions. When something goes wrong, the broker absorbs all of the fallout.
That includes:
- Direct financial loss
- Insurance claims
- Shipper frustration
- Reputation damage
- Operational drag from investigations, rebooking, and recovery
What’s often missed is the opportunity cost: Time spent unwinding fraud is time not spent covering freight, servicing customers, or growing margin.
As Michael shared, Highway has helped eliminate massive volumes of fraud across broker networks.But when theft does occur, the post-mortem is often the same: the controls that Highway has built that could have stopped it — identity verification, Load Lock, Secure Rate Con Delivery — weren’t being applied consistently or at the load level..
That’s the fundamental issue with traditional load board environments:
- There is no shared accountability
- No enforcement of identity standards
- No protection beyond the moment of posting
When fraud happens, the platform moves on. The broker carries 100% of the downside risk.
Why Brokers Are Moving Their Freight to TFX
TFX is not another load board—it’s a secure digital freight exchange built on identity, verified assets, and fully conforming digital transactions. It’s the ecosystem brokers have needed for years.
Here’s why.
Reason #1: Trust Through Identity
With verified identity comes trust.
To participate, carriers must verify their identity, connect VIN-matched ELDs, share full cargo policies, and adhere to broker-specific rules. For brokers, this means every carrier is real, verified, capable, and compliant. That’s the kind of confidence the industry has been missing. The outcome of leveraging real-time data from the Highway Network to power your capacity sourcing is being able to find the right carrier for your load every time.
Reason #2: Real Carriers Only
Carriers see only the freight they’re actually able to haul, based on insurance, equipment, ELD-verified location, broker rules, and actual asset availability. With only real loads and real carriers in the system, Highway is able to match the right carrier for your load using our Carrier Recommendations engine. The result is quality liquidity, not noisy volume. Just the right carrier for the right load, creating trusted relationships for your lanes.
Reason #3: Fraud-Resistant Conforming Transactions — End to End
TFX is powered by the full Highway ecosystem:
- Identity → verifies the user and carrier
- Load Lock / Load Lock+ → authenticates carrier-to-load assignment
- ELD verification → ensures the asset is real and available
Together, these components eliminate the 8–15 manual steps operators perform after receiving a traditional bid. This is what a truly digital, frictionless, fraud-resistant transaction looks like.
For brokers, the outcomes are immediate:
- Faster bookings
- Lower operational cost
- Better carrier relationships
- Virtually zero fraud exposure
- Higher digital adoption
- A safer, more predictable network
The Bottom Line: Traditional Load Boards Are Costing You More Than You Think
Fraud, inefficiency, and trust gaps are not just operational headaches—they’re revenue drains, customer risks, and brand liabilities.
TFX represents a new era of freight movement—one where trust is earned through verification, workflows are automated through identity, and fraud is stopped before it enters your network.
