Field note · September 2026

The first 90 days run on someone else’s money

A new carrier with one or two trucks pays for fuel the day the truck rolls. The freight bill for that load often pays out 30 days later, sometimes longer. In between, the owner is covering fuel, insurance, tolls, and a truck note out of whatever they started with.

That gap is why invoice funding, fuel cards, and dispatch are not three separate decisions for a new authority. They are one question: how do I keep the truck moving until the money catches up?

Most new carriers answer it by searching. What they find is dozens of sites that look the same, promise the same, and ask for the same form. Some want a long contract. Some don’t take new authorities at all, and the carrier learns that after the application. Some dispatchers take a cut and never find a load. The owner doesn’t have time to sort it out, so they pick whoever called first.

For a new authority, the vendor who wins is usually the one who reached them first, not the one who fit.

That is the part the vendor side misses. A factor who reaches a new carrier in the first weeks, with terms that make sense for a 2-truck fleet, is solving the problem the owner is losing sleep over. A factor who reaches them after they signed somewhere else is asking them to break a contract.

That is where I work. I screen the vendor first: do they take new authorities, are the terms in writing, does a real person pick up. Then I give the carrier two options, not a directory. The factors decide who they fund. The carrier decides who they sign with. My job is making sure the right two people meet, and that both already know why.

Ken Callwood · I introduce new small for-hire carriers to vetted factors, fuel-card, and dispatch providers.