# Ray Kowalski, VP Carrier Development at Midwest Freight Partners — read of CarrierCard, May 11 2026

> 14 years in freight brokerage, currently responsible for a network of about 210 active carriers out of our Schaumburg office. I coach my daughter's U12 soccer team Saturday mornings and spend Sunday evenings dreading Monday morning carrier no-shows.

## How I got here

Googled "carrier retention tools freight broker" sometime around 10pm after we lost two preferred flatbed guys to a competitor in the same week. Clicked maybe four results. CarrierCard was the third one. The other two were freight tech vendors with demo-request walls and no pricing on the page, which I close immediately.

## What I clicked first

"Weekly Performance Scorecards For Your Carrier Network" landed okay. Boring but clear. What I actually stopped on was the sub-head: "Automated video scorecards that show on-time delivery, lane reliability, and earnings every Monday morning. In under 30 seconds." That's specific enough that I kept reading. I've seen a hundred pages that say "carrier engagement platform" and I still don't know what those do. This one told me the format (video), the cadence (Monday), the runtime (30 seconds). That's a page written by someone who at least thought about the use case.

## Where I paused

The testimonial. "We went from 15% carrier no-shows to 5%. Drivers love getting recognized weekly, and we got way more reliable loads. Best $200/month we spend. Marcus, Dispatch Manager at MTE Logistics."

I stopped because $200/month maps to roughly 150-200 carriers at their pricing. That's a real mid-size operation. And the no-show reduction from 15% to 5% is a number I'd kill for. So I went looking for MTE Logistics. Nothing on Google. Nothing on LinkedIn. A carrier profile on FMCSA with five trucks out of Memphis, which is not a brokerage. That made me scroll all the way to the bottom.

## What I distrusted

At the bottom, in small type: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet."

Okay. So Marcus didn't say that. Marcus doesn't exist. The "Results From Freight Brokers Using CarrierCard" section with the 23% load acceptance increase is also fabricated. And to be clear, this isn't just a marketing mistake. They put a named testimonial from a named company in the middle of the page and then disclosed it's fictional at the bottom. I understand what they're doing (idea marketplace, not a live product), but a lot of buyers will never reach that disclosure. That's not honest, it's just technically covered.

The TMS integrations list also felt off. Echo, Cerasis, 3PL Warehouse. I've been in freight 14 years. My shop runs McLeod. Half the brokers I know run McLeod or TMW or MercuryGate. Cerasis got absorbed by Ryder years ago. Listing it signals to me that whoever built this page researched TMS providers without working in a brokerage.

## What would convince me

One real broker, named, with a verifiable LinkedIn profile, saying the video open rates are above 60% and their carriers actually watched them. Not load acceptance percentages (too many variables), just: do carriers open the video and does it affect their availability calls? A screenshot of one actual rendered scorecard video, even a sample, would do more than the entire "How It Works" section. And I want to see McLeod on that integration list before I even start a trial conversation.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The TMS list shows Echo and Cerasis but not McLeod or TMW. Are those on the roadmap, and what's the realistic timeline, or is a custom API the only path for us right now?
2. When you say "Remotion renders a branded 30-second video" -- is this actually a video file that gets attached or embedded in email, or is it a link to a hosted page that looks like a video? Because carrier email open rates are already rough and a link-to-video is going to get ignored.
3. You disclosed no live customers yet. If I'm willing to be an early reference customer, what does that actually look like? Do you want me to pay full price to beta test this or is there a different arrangement?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The core mechanic is specific enough that I haven't seen it done this way before, which is rare. But the fake testimonial framing is going to cost them trust with anyone who reads carefully, and the TMS list tells me whoever scoped this doesn't actually know what brokers run. I'd reply to an email if it was direct and acknowledged the no-live-customer thing upfront rather than burying it.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-11. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*