Highway Pushes Industry-Wide Data Standards as Freight Fraud Evolves

Freight identity and carrier vetting platform Highway is making the case for unified industry data standards as freight fraud continues to evolve in complexity and scale, according to FreightWaves. The company, which offers a $100,000 performance guarantee on loads booked through its platform, has reported a remarkably low fraud incidence rate — losing just one load out of every one million processed. Despite that track record, Highway's Chief Commercial Officer says the fight against freight fraud cannot be won by any single platform acting alone. The next critical step, according to the company, is building a coalition of stakeholders — including insurers, freight factoring companies and electronic logging device (ELD) vendors — willing to share and cross-validate carrier data. The premise is straightforward: fraudulent actors exploit gaps between siloed data systems, and closing those gaps requires coordinated action across the freight ecosystem. Freight fraud has become a significant and growing concern across the North American trucking and logistics sector. Schemes range from double brokering — where loads are re-brokered without shipper consent — to outright cargo theft facilitated by identity fraud. The financial and reputational damage to shippers, brokers and legitimate carriers has prompted increased scrutiny from both industry participants and regulators. Highway's pitch for shared standards reflects a broader industry recognition that technology solutions must be interoperable to be effective. By encouraging ELD providers to contribute verified operational data and persuading factors and insurers to align on carrier credentialing benchmarks, the company aims to create a more resilient, cross-verified data environment that bad actors would find significantly harder to penetrate. For maritime and multimodal freight professionals, the implications extend beyond trucking. As intermodal supply chains grow more integrated, vulnerabilities in the over-the-road segment can cascade into port operations, container logistics and international trade flows. Industry-wide data standards in surface freight could therefore offer downstream benefits for the broader cargo ecosystem. The initiative underscores a wider trend in freight technology: moving from competitive data hoarding toward collaborative infrastructure that raises the baseline of trust and security for all participants.