Episode 16: Who can see your ELD data?

Jeremy Baksht on choosing an ELD and controlling who sees your data

[00:00:01] Jeremy Baksht: It’s a similar kind of feel and approach to buying a mobile phone, with the caveat that every ELD is self-certified and never tested by the FMCSA. So the first thing I would do is just make sure they’re on the registered list.

And part of our service at Truckstop is having that yes/no flag of still active with the FMCSA and still considered a compliant ELD.

[00:00:21] John Howland: Hello, welcome to another episode of Behind the Freight. Today, we’re talking about something that’s become a big part of the trucking industry: ELDs, tracking, and who gets to see your data.

Now, for most brand-new owner-operators, an ELD is required, so choosing one is one of the first technology decisions that they face. Now, it helps to know what these devices actually do, how they help you with your business, and how your data actually gets shared.

Now, today we’ve got Jeremy Baksht. He’s the CEO of Catena Clearing, a company that helps connect trucking’s different data systems, including ELDs and telematics providers.

And he’s here to help new owner-operators choose an ELD with confidence and keep control of their data. So, Jeremy, welcome.

[00:01:09] Jeremy Baksht: Oh, hey, John, thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and really excited to engage with your audience and hopefully meet some of these folks in person, too. I know we do a lot of conferences together, so grateful to be here, for sure.

[00:01:19] John Howland: Thank you, yeah. So I know you’ve worked with big data companies like Bloomberg, Walmart, and others. I’ve got to know: what the heck brought you into trucking?

[00:01:27] Jeremy Baksht: Well, John, it’s a great question and observation. A lot of people say they fell into this industry, so I won’t use that cliché, but I would say I look for big markets that haven’t been transformed yet in terms of their data usage.

So for me, the journey started at Andersen Consulting in the late ’90s, early 2000s, when the internet was a new thing and a lot of older industries needed to be transformed. I spent a lot of my time in utilities.

After business school, I got into industrial technologies as an investment banker, actually at JPMorgan and Citigroup.

And during that journey, what I found was large companies really need to focus on intelligence, analytics, higher gross margin, and really help their customers more and more.

So increasingly over the last decade or so, as I was involved as a VC in funding some data companies, as I was at Bloomberg, I was actually the global head of alternative data.

So we were scouring the planet for lots of interesting data companies and data sets. And then ultimately, I was recruited by Walmart to be the head of data strategy for Walmart US.

I have sat in a lot of seats, commercialized a lot of data sets, and when I found out about the ELD mandate transition again over the last nine years, it really dawned on me.

If you know a truck’s location, if you have all that you’re required to see, at least by federal mandate: hourly date, time, location, engine hours, vehicle miles, driver ID, vehicle ID, motor carrier ID, there’s a whole lot there.

So I thought if you had this drawer of information, you could ultimately be a clearinghouse to lots of different applications and platforms. That really is what drew me into the industry.

So consider me a little bit of a novice. About five years ago, I was doing a lot more in inventory management for Walmart suppliers.But ultimately, as I found out about freight and logistics in earnest, I started the company early 2024. We’ve had our product up and running since the end of 2024.

And I’m delighted to share that we have around 825,000 vehicles on the platform, rounding up, it’s closer to a million based on some history, but active vehicles, nearly a million. Over a million drivers, we’ve got almost 2 million trailers. It’s really been a labor of love.

You know, we’ve raised about $8 million in seed so far, love the industry, and have been learning by doing, going to conferences, talking to users of platforms, and then we have a lot of platform customers like yourself.

So happy to be here and looking forward to sharing a lot more depth on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we see the industry evolving.

[00:03:49] John Howland: All right, so for a, I call myself a logistician, somebody within the logistics industry that’s probably not on the same level as you.

I need you to dumb it down for me a little bit here and give me the elevator pitch of Catena Clearing. What is it you guys do? What do you do to make it easier for people in the freight industry?

[00:04:08] Jeremy Baksht: We see that electronic logging devices, transportation platforms generally, all require rich data from the fleets in order to do their work.

So we work now with a couple dozen companies, whether that’s load boards, fuel cards, insurance, TMSs. We’ve got lots of different use cases, so it’s really a little bit tricky.

So the FMCSA has approved almost a thousand different electronic logging devices. We integrate to over 300 of them, certainly all the majors and some of the ones in the middle and long tail.

And what we do is we take that information, which can have various data sets and information on where the truck has been, who’s driving it, the carrier identification.Those data sets can actually be used to help a truck and a fleet essentially perform better. So right now, we have 42,000 fleets we cover.

And of those fleets, whether that’s routing, dispatch, fuel management, all the data sets that we can share with the platforms of record, they’re the ones that move into platforms of action and execution. So we even have some AI companies that we feed now as well.

So I think the biggest misunderstanding that folks have in this industry is that the ELD is a tracker that somebody’s watching. It’s actually similar to the black box in an airliner, so it’s just really recording permissioned data in order to serve that back to the FMCSA.

But having said that, some of the electronic logging devices are very elegant; they may have higher price points, and they serve different use cases. So the driver owns all their data, the fleet owns all their data, but it can be shared across platforms.

So if you’re a Truckstop user, for example, we are the electronic logging device integrator to almost 550,000 vehicles for Truckstop.

So if you want to work with Truckstop and find a load and do all the things that you want to do on the platform, we actually are the validation that gets into your ELD to move it into Truckstop for understanding lane history and some of the other types of information that Truckstop needs.

So I guess to put it succinctly, it’s a recorder, it’s aftermarket typically, and it’s sitting in a truck in order to enable all that data to be shared by partners for insurance, for fueling, for finance. It’s really like an enabling feature.

Now, not all ELDs are created equal: some don’t have odometer readings, some don’t have fuel levels. I would say most of the ELDs do have some of those things, but we even see VIN number missing 20% of the time.

So the reason we exist really is to try to create a common model of all the same data to go into the platforms for your users, essentially.

[00:06:38] John Howland: Yeah, so I would say a commonly asked question that we get here, obviously, we’re talking to brand-new owner-operators that just get their MC and they’re getting ready to kind of move their first load or order, or just getting prepped and ready to kind of hit the industry.

So we do get asked a lot of questions here at Truckstop. One of the questions we get asked frequently is around ELDs, and those new or brand-new owner-operators coming in ask, “Well, do you know what the best ELD in the industry is for somebody like me, a brand-new owner-operator, single owner-operator?”

If you were in my seat getting asked that question, how would you respond to that?

[00:07:13] Jeremy Baksht: That’s great, John. Well, I would say it really comes back to budget, price, and feature sets you’re looking for. So I do want to give some range finding here.

If you want to be compliant and you just want to focus on being compliant, there are some on the order that are a little bit more inexpensive; those can be $15 to $30 per truck per month.

They typically are not much more than an app on your phone that doesn’t necessarily read the engine; there’s no data sharing amongst platforms, but it does offer regulatory relief and that recorder box that you need.

So if you’re just interested in being fully compliant and being on the road, the FMCSA has a registered list of almost a thousand. A couple are revoked here and there.

It’s a self-certification process, so I think a lot of them sprung up that maybe don’t necessarily have a right to exist, but there sure are a lot of them. So if you wanted to start with, “Let’s just be compliant,” there’s that sort of cheap and cheerful approach.

Now, there are some that are a little bit more sophisticated that offer some data in the middle; those can be $25 to $35 a month, and often the hardware cost is fairly insignificant.

If you have some sensitive cargo, if you’re running chemicals, there are some that are much more hardwired and suited in that have a tablet as well. Those can be as much as $500 upfront and, let’s say, around $50 a month, which could be overkill for one truck or overkill for a small fleet.

But I think range finding, what are the features and functions you need? It’s not that different from a cell phone plan from that perspective: do you want the best gadget, do you want to pay the most money, are you going to be doing overseas calls, those kinds of things?

It’s a similar kind of feel and approach to buying a mobile phone, with the caveat that every ELD is self-certified and never tested by the FMCSA.

So the first thing I would do is just make sure they’re on the register. And part of our service at Truckstop is having that yes/no flag of still active with the FMCSA and still considered a compliant ELD.

[00:08:58] John Howland: Nice. I’m very curious here: is there a place specific for a carrier to go, a brand-new carrier, that has a list and/or can kind of walk them through a questionnaire to ensure that they will be selecting the appropriate ELD for them?

[00:09:15] Jeremy Baksht: I think the best way to do it is to look at the FMCSA list and just search for the ELD you’re planning to buy.

Having said that, if you’re a Truckstop customer, we do actually have an API, I know that’s basically a data feed that you can see from us, of who we work with, and we do work with more than 300 now. So the ones that Truckstop already works with connected through us are already listed there.

So if for some reason the ELD isn’t on that list, it’s probably worth head-scratching a little bit like, “Okay, it’s not already integrated, even though we’ve been up and running for a couple years.”

But I’d say the safest place is the FMCSA. And by the way, the FMCSA is not a watchdog; they’re not staring at all the information. Typically, they’re getting a batch update over time that helps them update the registry of what’s safe.

So consider this, I guess, the early beginnings of regulatory compliance, no different than what the FAA did for airlines over the last 40 years.

[00:10:04] John Howland: All right, so let’s just say I am brand new. I get one of those, I would say, cost-effective ones where I’m looking at something just to get in-house here.

But maybe I do dabble into the chemical space or something that needs a more robust ELD that’s required. What happens then to the owner-operator’s data if they go and switch, and/or upgrade or downgrade their ELD?

[00:10:31] Jeremy Baksht: So sometimes you have a period of transition where the data can be ported from one to another.

I would say that’s part of what our offering is: to the extent we have a live history on you, the specific fleet, or the specific owner, the specific truck, having the permissions to see that on the back end and moving that over is something that we can offer as part of a value-added service.

Typically, if you do switch, it’s kind of like switching a cell phone service: you may not get what you’re looking for, so getting it right the first time is valuable. And what I would say is, as you were suggesting about chemicals, one of the things that we do really well is what I’d call the Catena ID.

The Catena ID is a unique look of getting the carrier to the assets to the driver really well mapped, and that’s point-in-time, there’s a history there, and there’s also real-time.

Getting the truck-to-trailer pairing is incredibly important as well. So if you need to swap trailers frequently, and that trailer needs to be refrigerated or low vibration, or there’s some reason that you have a specific need to get trailer data as well, I’d be thinking about that, too.

So one of the aspects that’s a little bit different across some of these is some have mechanical codes. Do you need to understand engine failure?

Do you have an older fleet and you’re really concerned about staying on the road? Then buying the right ELD that actually can help you maintain that mechanical code, that’s important.

Now, if you have a brand-new fleet and the OEM offers a lot of rich data, you may not be as concerned; you may just want GPS and some basic activations, that’s where you head.

But at the end of the day, the transition is not particularly easy, and some have multi-year contracts, so getting it right upfront is probably your best bet.

[00:12:09] John Howland: All right, so I’ll transition a little bit. We’ll talk about an instance where maybe a driver or owner-operator is being asked by another company to see the data.

So in a case where an owner-operator is asked to authorize a platform specifically that they’ve never heard of, what should they be checking before clicking or doing any data sharing?

[00:12:31] Jeremy Baksht: I’d love to tell you that Catena works with every platform under the sun. We’re getting there; we’ve got 35 or 40 or so now, and we’re onboarding more every day.

[00:12:39] John Howland: That’s awesome.

[00:12:40] Jeremy Baksht: Yeah, we’ve been doing great. You know, I’m really proud of where the company is headed, and if we have the Catena check-in, what essentially happens is we already have your data.

If you are ready to permission another system to use the data, that is helpful. If the platform doesn’t work with Catena, there might be a new process: there’s terms of service, there’s a privacy policy.

It’s to some extent no different than if you were on Facebook or a social media platform and you’re going to another platform; you can have that kind of effective button to share data, but if it’s a new platform you’ve never worked with, you’re probably starting from scratch.

But like anything, if you’re sharing data, nobody really wants to read the terms of service, but a fleet manager should probably look at the privacy policy and terms of service.

And before you click that button and share your credentials, you probably want to know where the data is headed. So I would say our goal is to be the platform and backbone of the entire industry, and we’re on our way.

We’ve probably got 25% of the heavy-duty Class 8 industry, which I’m super proud of, but we’re not fully there yet. So until we’re there, we’re not sort of the Plaid or the brand name just yet, but we’re on our way. So I’d be very thoughtful about: What are you sharing? Who are you sharing with?

And of course, the data privacy piece also segues into the fraud piece. We actually hired the head of security out of Plaid to be our head of security: Shane Fonseca joined us a month ago, and it’s a really unique asset for us.

Most people would say your company is way too early to have brought on that senior of a person, but to us, the data, covering the data, holding it where it needs to be held, and permissioning correctly is all we care about.

I mean, this data is so valuable. At the end of the day, stealing loads is something that the industry has had a real problem with and will continue to have more and more attack vectors, so protecting the data is something that we are very serious about.

And even if it’s a platform Catena doesn’t touch, I would definitely be looking through that website or that platform and seeing how they’re sharing your data.

[00:14:29] John Howland: Love it, great advice. Obviously, I hear two major things from our carriers around fraud in particular, and you mentioned that: double brokering obviously being one, and the other being where there’s a fictitious pickup or something that just seems off.

To simplify that for me, how does a broker use the data within the ELD and the truck’s data to catch those sorts of situations?

[00:14:56] Jeremy Baksht: Consent in the platform is super important. So if you authorize, once a requester gets that share agreement scoped, location, hours of service, vehicle, and driver data all get passed through.

And if for some reason the VIN numbers don’t match, this is where Catena ID comes in. That’s our own part of the business where we’re looking at VIN, we’re looking at license plate; if there’s a couple things that don’t match, we’re going to throw an exception and have that looked into.

Now, nobody’s perfect, but at least having some edge of an issue or a defect is a good start. Now, sharing data on an unconnected carrier, it’s pretty scary. So time-boxing, scoping, looking at the audit trail, having all that perpetual use, that’s part of what we do.

And the intelligence is built on top: we do a lot of geofencing, load visibility, fleet intelligence, so that monitoring that we offer platforms, I think, is one of our best advantages.

So I think the short answer is: know who your counterparty is, know that you’ve authenticated, and at least you’ve got 98% of the way there. But no question, if a VIN doesn’t match, a license plate doesn’t match, if something looks off, there’s probably a problem.

[00:16:03] John Howland: All right, this is a fun part of the segment here where we’re going to jump into a game, which is fun. So I want to put some common ELD beliefs to the test. Okay, so I’m going to read you a statement, and I want you to answer that statement with true, false, or it depends.

[00:16:18] Jeremy Baksht: Okay.

[00:16:19] John Howland: And if I’m getting it wrong, then set me straight.

[00:16:21] Jeremy Baksht: Okay, sounds great.

[00:16:23] John Howland: So statement one: we hear quote, “If my truck has an ELD, my broker can automatically see where I go.” Is that true, false, or, eh, it depends?

[00:16:34] Jeremy Baksht: I would generally say that’s false. At the end of the day, the ELD talks to the vendor’s cloud, in this case, whatever platform you’re working with. A broker only sees what they’re authorized to see and what they’re scoped for, so that window is set by you.

So if they’re only looking at one load at a time, that’s fine; that’s ring-fenced to a load, that’s the default access.

Typically, at the end of the day, with the DOT at roadside, to some extent it’s dependent, but I’d say it’s generally false: you can’t just assume a broker is going to see everything.

Now, if the broker wants to see everything and you’re willing to do that, that’s another story. So I’d say authentication, permissioning, and what the authorization level is allowed to do is what’s really there.

Now, if a broker has a great relationship with a couple carriers and they want that ability to do dispatch better, to do optimal routing particularly in LTL, my suspicion is you’re going to want to let that enablement happen, but it’s still dependent on who owns the ELD and your fleet manager.

[00:17:27] John Howland: That’s great, okay. All right, statement number two: “Sharing location data with a broker means giving up control of my information.” You kind of answered that a little bit, but true, false, or, eh, it depends?

[00:17:40] Jeremy Baksht: Let’s go with depends on that one. Now, sharing your password with a friend is probably one way to authenticate without authenticating, so the consent-based piece of this is what’s important. So I’d say it depends a bit, but you should always know your counterparty, right?

At the end of the day, are you working with the same customers, the same carriers, who are you working with? Because at the end of the day, picking who you’re partnering with is probably the most important thing, but I’d say it depends; it’s not an all-or-nothing.

[00:18:06] John Howland: All right, number three: “Any ELD I can buy online is legal to use.” True, false, or it depends?

[00:18:14] Jeremy Baksht: This one’s a funny one because I think in the beginning the FMCSA, because they were allowing self-registration, kind of said anybody that wants to build a hardware package can, and we’re just going to go for it.

They have sort of twisted and turned on this a little bit, but in the last year, they have not approved any new vendors. In fact, if I’m looking at the numbers, typically 5 to 10 are pulled off the shelf every month, so this is a pretty new thing.

But I’d say we’re going to go in the other direction: ELDs generally are shrinking, and the FMCSA is being very thoughtful. So just because somebody sells you an ELD or tries to doesn’t necessarily mean it’s compliant anymore, and this is a dynamic list that changes every month.

[00:18:52] John Howland: And to kind of jump out of the game, because I just thought of something: if an owner-operator gets an ELD that is then taken off the list, like you said, that data, and obviously they need to get another ELD, or can they continue to use their existing ELD even though it’s not on the FMCSA list? I mean, what is that transition like?

[00:19:11] Jeremy Baksht: Yeah, unfortunately, I’ll have to check, but I think it’s like a 60-day time period to replace, and in the meantime, you’re probably going to have to move to paper logs until such time as you get another ELD.

So as I was saying, John, pick it upfront, be right the first time. If it’s a good, high-quality one, it’s probably never going to be revoked, so it is a pain, and I think you’re given 60 days to fix it.

[00:19:31] John Howland: Cool. All right, number four: “Once I authorize a platform to see my data, I can’t take it back.” Is that true, false, or, eh, it depends?

[00:19:42] Jeremy Baksht: Typically false, just because you’re authenticating one time. These are all token-based systems, security-level systems where if you actually want to disconnect, you should be able to disconnect.

In fact, with some of our customers we work with, we have had very little churn, but in the instance where a platform goes out of business or there’s some issue, we often have to purge and delete historical data, and we’re very thoughtful about it.

But typically, if you are basically wanting to disconnect your data, you should be able to, and there should also be a purge behind it. So it’s not as scary as it sounds.

It’s almost like your bank password on Mint.com or something: if you enable them to see everything in one place, great, but if you have a kill switch, you should be able to kill that as well.

[00:20:24] John Howland: Good. All right, again, another transition into closing this out. This is, I would say, my second favorite section here, but I’m going to ask you a few questions.

The first one: obviously, it seems like you’ve had a very diverse professional career where you’ve been in data within finance, retail, and now in trucking. Okay, so I want you to look ahead five years from now into the future.

What’s one thing you think trucking technology will be able to do in five years that drivers or carriers would find chaos or find just hard to believe?

[00:21:00] Jeremy Baksht: Today, I’m a really big believer in autonomy. I think the autonomous vehicle movement, particularly across middle-mile lanes, is going to really dramatically go forward.

We’re seeing some really cool stuff, and I shouldn’t name names, I think we can all read the websites and the news that are coming out.

But at the end of the day, I follow passenger vehicles very closely, and whether you’re talking about Tesla or Waymo, the ability to get from the airport to downtown is amazing.

I actually grew up in Austin. I haven’t lived there in a couple decades, but when I’m visiting Austin and I see robotaxis on the road, it’s a pretty amazing thing, and the way they’re able to navigate traffic is exciting.

Now in heavy-duty trucking, first mile and last mile tend to be really tricky; that’s where a lot of theft and fraud happen. What you’ll need is an enablement of more data, more sensors, more sharing. You still need somebody with a clipboard to make sure everything’s going okay.

But at the end of the day, I think autonomy will happen faster than most people think. We were over-promised and under-delivered the last decade, so I think there’s a little bit of a “my hand got burned on the stove” feeling about this one, but I think in five years we might be surprised to see what’s happening on the road.

Now, whether that infrastructure can back it up and we’ll see new lanes on a highway, how quickly will that happen? Autonomous fueling and other things, you still have to unload, and there’s still a lot of human capabilities that are needed from front to back.

But I’m really bullish on autonomy; I think it just makes sense. At the end of the day, having less accidents and having more safety is important. Now, are there a lot of drivers that over time will be put out of work? I think that’s still a multi-generational path.

Even if we get to 1% to 5% adoption in five years, it’s still going to take a long time to chew through the industry, of course.

And the other thing is, certain interstates, certain routes are pretty straightforward, but when you start talking about weather, you start talking about real challenges, particularly seasonal spikes, it’s pretty hard to get autonomy right.

I’m a pretty big fan of Figure and autonomous robots and things for the house, and we’re still a little further away, but five years from now, I think we’re going to see a lot of exciting things, and I’m all for it.

I think at the end of the day, people ask me, “Is software dead?” Like, sure, you know, cooking’s not dead either, right? There are a lot of human tasks that people like to do; people still like to personally drive.

And for most of the truckers I talk to, it’s really like a lifestyle, it’s something they’ve been doing for a long time, so they’re not giving up the cab anytime soon.

So I’m bullish about the next five years, and the biggest surprise for me will be how much more data you need: how many more sensors do you need for autonomy? That’s where I get really excited.

[00:23:25] John Howland: All right, if animals could drive, which animal do you think would be the best driver? Or if you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?

[00:23:36] Jeremy Baksht: So I have two children; my younger one is four, and he’s really into Sonic the Hedgehog right now.

And just running down a dream and grabbing as many golden rings as possible is sort of what’s happening in my house, and I think just hearing that cha-ching is something I like.

So I like to think about us as kind of like the hedgehog of the industry: we’re nimble, we’re fast, we’re excited, tokenizing data and running down a dream, chasing coins. Maybe it’s a cheeky thing, but Sonic the Hedgehog is kind of like what inspired me to say a hedgehog.

[00:24:06] John Howland: Oh, to date, that might be my favorite answer, because I have young boys as well and big Sonic fans, so they would definitely appreciate that. That’s great.

All right, last question, and we’ll close this out: who is someone in the trucking industry doing great work that more people should follow?

[00:24:21] Jeremy Baksht: We’ve been really close to Sean DeHaan, our Truckstop sponsor, and he’s now COO and CSO, so I love seeing what he has to say at conferences. So if you’re not following him, definitely a good follow.

And you know, I think on the circuit, I really appreciate the JOC, particularly as the overlay to suppliers and inventory.

So anything that the Journal of Commerce is doing, I tend to pay attention to. So maybe not a surprise name, but there’s a lot of good folks there that are putting out great content, so definitely pay attention to Sean and the JOC.

[00:24:51] John Howland: All right, well, Jeremy, that concludes the talk. Thank you so much for being on. I’ve had so much fun chatting with you, getting to know that side of the world, the ELD data side of the world, which has been fun for me and very educational.

So thank you so much for being on. This is John Howland from Behind the Freight with Jeremy. We’re out. Thank you, guys.

[00:25:12] Jeremy Baksht: Thanks a lot, John.

[00:25:14] John Howland: If today’s episode helped you think differently about your operation, share it with someone in your network who needs to hear it. And if you’re looking for tools to help keep your truck rolling from finding quality loads to getting paid quicker, well, Truckstop.com is here to help.

Go visit Truckstop.com to explore the load board, rate insights, and risk management solutions built specifically for carriers and brokers. Thanks for listening to us at Behind the Freight. Until next time, keep the wheels turning and the bad loads burning.