Highway and Qued announced a partnership aimed at improving identity verification and reducing fraud in freight appointment scheduling.

The companies say the collaboration combines Highway’s carrier compliance and identity verification infrastructure with Qued’s automated freight appointment scheduling platform, allowing brokers and 3PLs to confirm that both the carrier and the appointment associated with a load are legitimate.

The partnership is designed to address a persistent problem in the freight marketplace: ghost loads, shipments posted multiple times on load boards that may not actually exist or have confirmed dock appointments. This is according to Tom Curee, president of Qued.

“One of the things that’s been important for us is, how do we validate that a load is a real load?” he said at a conference at the Truckload Carriers Association’s convention in Orlando, Fla. “And there’s only one way to do it in this industry – it’s by having a valid PO number. The only way to know a PO number is real is to schedule an appointment.”

Through the integration, Qued will securely share verified appointment data with Highway for mutual customers. When a pickup or delivery appointment is confirmed through Qued, that verification will appear directly on Highway’s platform.

Loads with verified appointments show that a real purchase order and dock time exist, while shipments without the indicator may simply lack confirmation rather than indicating fraud: “It just means these are not verified appointments, so you may want to ask a few more questions,” Curee said.

“Fraud doesn’t start at the dock, it starts when identity and compliance aren’t verified upstream,” said Michael Caney, chief commercial officer at Highway, in a related news release. “Carrier compliance is the foundation.”Carrier compliance is the foundation. By partnering with Qued, we’re extending trusted identity beyond booking and into appointments, eliminating another gap that bad actors have historically exploited.”