Motive Restricted Highway’s Data Access Over a Payment Demand

Highway notified its customers this week in an email communication, that Motive had imposed new limits on the integration between the two platforms, telling compliance leaders that the electronic logging device provider had begun restricting its application programming interface connection and had indicated Highway would need to compensate it for access to carrier data. The change took effect immediately, according to the notice. Highway’s stated position is that it does not charge carriers for its services and does not intend to begin charging them in order to preserve an ELD connection. The company said the practical result is that Motive ELD data now refreshes less frequently inside its platform. The downstream effects Highway described are specific. Brokers hiring carriers that run Motive hardware now have reduced visibility into those trucks. Highway said it cannot currently provide location-based Load Lock Alerts for loads hauled by those carriers, and that it can no longer back freight those carriers move under its Performance Guarantee. The company said it would offer an alternate tracking path through its carrier-facing mobile application for Load Lock Plus customers, while acknowledging in the notice that application-based tracking is disconnected from the equipment itself. Highway also said it would work with the more than 275 other ELD providers it integrates with to offer discounted alternatives to carriers considering a change. The Performance Guarantee is a commercial backstop under which Highway assumes financial responsibility for outcomes on loads moved by carriers verified through its platform. The company introduced it as a differentiator, positioning itself as the first carrier vetting platform to put its own capital behind its verification work. Withdrawing it for a subset of carriers returns that risk to the broker. What Has Not Been Established Motive has not publicly addressed the change. No trade publication had reported on the dispute at the time of writing, and no filing, press release or customer communication from Motive describing its reasoning has surfaced. Highway declined to comment beyond the notice sent to its customers. The account above comes entirely from that notice, and Highway is an interested party. Neither company has disclosed the commercial terms at issue. What Motive asked Highway to pay, what the original integration agreement provided for, and where any discussions between the two companies currently stand are all unknown. The number of affected carriers is also unpublished. Motive serves customers across trucking, construction, oil and gas, agriculture and other sectors, and does not break out how many motor carriers have equipment connected to Highway. Any estimate of the affected population would be speculative until one of the two companies discloses it. Several claims circulating alongside the notice are not supported by it. The notice does not describe a disconnection or a loss of data. It describes reduced refresh frequency, the removal of a specific alert product, and the withdrawal of a commercial guarantee. Carriers running Motive hardware remain visible inside Highway. What changed is the frequency of the underlying data and the risk position Highway is willing to take on loads those carriers move. Whether brokers alter routing behavior as a result is unknown. The notice makes no claim about carrier load volume, and no data covering the period since the change has been published. Motive throttled Highway because Highway refused to pay for the ELD connection. Small carriers using Motive will lose access to the Highway network, which powers a large share of brokerage freight. In this climate, brokers will be reluctant to pick a carrier that Highway… — Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ (@FreightAlley) August 27, 2026 The Reach Question Highway’s public marketing states that the company is behind 80 percent of United States brokered loads and holds active certificates of insurance on more than 175,000 carriers. That figure is a self-reported measure of platform reach rather than an audited market share number, and platform involvement in a load is not equivalent to control over whether the load is tendered. The more independently established measure of Highway’s position comes from its August 2025 growth equity round, led by FTV Capital with participation from Lead Edge Capital . At that point the Dallas company, founded in 2022, served more than 1,050 brokers, including 70 of the 100 largest brokerages in the country. Brokers handle roughly 30 percent of all truckload spend. That concentration is the reason a bilateral integration dispute between two vendors carries market-level implications. Carrier vetting has consolidated onto a small number of platforms over the past four years, and the commercial terms underpinning those platforms have not been tested publicly until now. Motive’s Position Going Into the Dispute Motive filed publicly for an initial public offering on December 23, 2025 , applying to list Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MTVE, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays and Jefferies leading the offering. The listing has not priced. The stock is not trading. The registration statement has been open for eight months. The financial picture in that filing is relevant context. Motive reported revenue of $327.3 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025, an increase of roughly 22 percent year over year, against a net loss of $138.5 million. The loss widened from $113.9 million in the comparable period a year earlier. In the third quarter alone, the company recorded a net loss of $62.7 million on revenue of $115.8 million. A 2022 funding round valued Motive at $2.85 billion. The company remains in patent litigation with Samsara. Whether those conditions motivated the decision to seek compensation from Highway is not established. Motive has made no statement connecting them. The financial figures are drawn from the company’s registration statement and the reporting that followed it, and the timing is a matter of record rather than an explanation. Highway’s model runs the other direction. Its revenue comes from broker subscriptions, and carriers access the platform at no cost, which is central to how the company assembled its carrier network. A per-connection fee paid to an ELD provider would either compress margin or migrate to carriers, and carrier-side charges would conflict with the free-access position the company has held publicly, including in its 2025 response to questions about its handling of ELD data. What the Dispute Actually Tests The substantive question raised here is not which company is right. It is who holds commercial rights to the operational data a motor carrier generates, and what happens to freight movement when the parties to that question disagree. Carriers purchase ELD hardware and pay monthly subscriptions to satisfy hours of service recordkeeping obligations under Part 395. The data those devices produce has since acquired a second function, serving as the verification layer that brokers use to confirm equipment presence and movement before tendering freight. That second function developed without a settled commercial framework governing who pays whom for the connection that carries it. Highway has stated publicly that carriers control their own ELD connections and can connect or disconnect at will, and that it accesses carrier data only with authorization. That describes the mechanics accurately. It does not address the commercial arrangement between the two vendors, which carriers are not party to and have no standing in. Carrier consent governs whether data moves. It does not govern what one company may charge another to carry it. For brokerage executives, the immediate exposure is narrower and more concrete. Loads moved by carriers running one specific ELD platform no longer carry a guarantee those brokers had priced into their risk posture, and the alternative tracking method Highway has offered is, by its own description, less reliable than the equipment-linked connection it replaces. Neither company has publicly described the state of discussions between them or indicated a timeline for resolution. Nothing in the dispute alters federal compliance obligations. Motive devices remain FMCSA-registered and continue to satisfy hours of service recordkeeping requirements under Part 395. What changed is commercial visibility inside a private vetting platform, an arrangement that sits alongside the federal requirement rather than within it. Why It Matters Carrier vetting has consolidated onto a small number of platforms whose access to operational data depends on commercial agreements between vendors that neither carriers nor brokers are party to. When one of those agreements breaks down, the verification layer brokers rely on degrades without any action by the carrier being verified. Upcoming FreightWaves Events Compliance Brokerage Compliance Symposium The day before F3. Every compliance issue you face - fraud exposure, carrier liability, FMCSA rules, cargo theft, insurance gaps - navigated by attorneys and operators defining best practices in a changing industry. 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The Signal at Chattanooga Choo Choo • Chattanooga, TN Register Now Adam Wingfield Adam L. Wingfield is the Editor in Chief at FreightWaves and the Founder and CEO of Innovative Business Development Group, Inc. — the parent company behind Innovative Logistics Group, iDispatchHub, iCoach360, and CarrierLens. He has spent more than two and a half decades in the transportation industry, with experience spanning Schneider National, Prime Inc., McLane Foodservice Distribution, and Lowe's Companies. Adam's work focuses on helping small fleet owners and owner-operators build businesses that are financially sound, operationally structured, and built to last. His teaching philosophy centers on breakeven intelligence, cost-per-mile clarity, and sustainable growth over motivation-driven hustle. Through projects like The Playbook at FreightWaves, he delivers education, strategy, and industry analysis for carriers running one truck or twenty — covering compliance, freight markets, driver management, and the business decisions that separate operators who survive from those who scale.