Eroding market factors, longer payment periods this season’s top carrier challenges

What’s on most drivers’ minds this holiday season? Carrier payment provider TriumphPay wondered just that.

TriumphPay surveyed over 650 truck drivers to gauge their opinions on some of the industry’s most pressing issues.

The findings revealed that 56.2% listed the continuing decline of spot market rates as their top concern this holiday season. In second, 31.3% felt heated for paying out of pocket for fuel as their most burning issue.

Emily Meyers, vice president, Factor Lead at TriumphPay, explained that although market factors like spot rates and fuel costs have taken precedence over long payment periods (6.3%) as the most concerning this year, this doesn’t mean the payments process isn’t any less challenging.

“Verifying the truth and the source of these invoices takes time and effort and carriers are already stressed enough,” said Meyers, who joined FreightWaves’ Put That Coffee Down to discuss the survey’s findings.

Though volume has been down this season, Meyers noted that the payment cycle has gotten longer.

“You can imagine, as a carrier, having to wait that long to get paid is a huge problem,” she said. “It’s also tougher for the carrier to predict their cash flow and expenditures while facing such a long payment cycle.”

Meyers said it’s not unheard of for carriers to wait up to 60 days to get paid. She said this is because the industry is still beset by manual processes such as phone calls, faxes and emails and having to rely on middlemen in each transaction.

Factors try to get their carriers funded as quickly as possible, but the process is often sluggish because of the ways in which data is shared. Meyers said the constant back-and-forth phone calls and emails create one delay after another that ultimately snowballs out of control.

“Something that should be happening fairly instantaneously oftentimes takes hours and even days to make sure that humans are speaking with each other to make sure everything is validated,” Meyers said.

But advanced automation technology is connecting the entire payment process and is helping more and more carriers get paid faster.

With TriumphPay, factors and brokers are able to pay their carriers faster through its robust carrier payment platform that seamlessly connects brokers, carriers and shippers with trustworthy data.

“Carriers have a business to run and they’re getting so bogged down with filling out paperwork to get paid, and there are a lot of middlemen involved in the transaction like brokers and factors,” Meyers said, adding that each party wants a slice of the pie.

“These are small business owners that have to interact with all of these third parties,” Meyers said. “And all of that exchanging of paperwork and changing of hands takes time, money and many phone calls and emails. That’s what takes the carrier so long to get paid and what we’re trying to shorten.”

More from TriumphPay:

Consider the data security of your payment process

3 reasons why brokers choose TriumphPay

4 reasons why factors turn to TriumphPay