A dispute over access to carrier data has disrupted an integration freight brokers use to verify equipment, track trucks and assess transportation risk.
Highway, this week, told customers that Motive had imposed new restrictions on the link between the two platforms. The ELD provider announced to compliance leaders in a notice it was beginning to restrict Highway’s application programming interface connection and that Highway would need to pay for access to carrier data. The changes were effective immediately.
Highway said it doesn’t charge carriers for its services, and has no plans to charge a fee just to keep an ELD connection active. Due to limitations on Motive’s side, the frequency of Motive ELD data updates in Highway’s platform is now lower.
The implications for brokers are more specific. Brokers have less visibility into that truck now if the carrier is running Motive equipment. Highway said it currently cannot provide location-based Load Lock Alerts for freight moved by those carriers. It has also abandoned the carriage of loads by such carriers under its Performance Guaranty.
Highway said it would offer an alternative tracking option through its carrier-facing mobile app for customers using Load Lock Plus. The company said, however, that the tracking via app is not directly linked to the equipment in the vehicle. Highway also said it will work with the more than 275 other ELD providers integrated into its platform to provide discounted options to carriers considering a switch.
Highway’s Performance Guaranty is a financial safety net that holds the company accountable for certain outcomes of loads carried by carriers verified on its platform. Highway launched the guaranty as a point of differentiation, positioning itself as the first carrier-vetting platform to back its own verification process with its own capital. Removing that protection for some of the carrier population is really about pushing that risk back to the brokers.
Unknown What is it
Motive has not commented publicly on the change. As of this writing, the dispute had not been reported in any trade publication, and no Motive filing, press release or customer communication outlining the company’s position had appeared.
Highway declined to comment further than the notice sent to customers. So the information available at the moment is only that provided by Highway, a party to the dispute.
The commercial terms of the disagreement are not being made public. Neither company has said how much Motive sought, what the original agreement for the integration called for, or what the status of negotiations is between the two companies.
The number of carriers is unknown as well. Motive works with customers in trucking, construction, oil and gas, agriculture and other industries, but wouldn’t say how many motor carriers have equipment connected to Highway. So any estimate of the population affected would be a pure guess.
Some of the claims swirling around the dispute also go beyond what Highway’s notice actually says. The company did not describe it as a total loss of data or complete disconnection. Instead it talked about slower data refreshes, the disappearance of a specific alert function and the withdrawal of its commercial guaranty.
Within Highway, the motive equipment carriers are still visible. The change is how often their underlying data is updated and if Highway is willing to take financial risk for freight they move.
It is also unclear whether brokers will change their routing or carrier-selection behavior as a consequence. Highway’s notice does not claim a change in carrier load volumes and no data has been published for the period since the restrictions were introduced.
Market Position of the Highway
Highway’s public-facing marketing claims it works on 80% of U.S. brokered loads and has active certificates of insurance for more than 175,000 carriers. These are self-reported measures of platform reach, not audited market share numbers. Highway’s involvement with a load does not mean Highway controls whether or not that freight is ultimately tendered.
A more independently documented sign of Highway’s scale was its growth equity round in August 2025, led by FTV Capital and with participation from Lead Edge Capital. Founded in 2022 and based in Dallas, the company said it now works with more than 1,050 brokers, including 70 of the 100 largest brokerages in the country at the time. Brokers account for roughly 30% of total truckload spend.
That concentration imbues a dispute between two technology vendors with significance beyond their commercial relationship. Carrier vetting has become more and more concentrated on a relatively small number of platforms, with commercial agreements determining access to the underlying operational data receiving little public scrutiny.
Motive’s Stance Before the Dispute
Motive filed for an initial public offering on December 23, 2025. The company intends to list Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MTVE, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays and Jefferies acting as lead underwriters. The IPO has not been priced, the shares are not trading, and the registration statement has been open for eight months.
That filing also provides important context of the financial figures, but it does not provide a rationale for the dispute.
Motive’s revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 were $327.3 million, up approximately 22% compared to the nine months ended September 30, 2024. But the company still posted a net loss of $138.5 million, versus a $113.9 million loss in the same period of 2024. Motive reported a net loss of $62.7 million on revenue of $115.8 million in the third quarter alone.
Motive was valued at $2.85 billion in a 2022 funding round. The company is also engaged in patent litigation with Samsara.
There is no suggestion that these financial circumstances influenced Motive’s decision to seek payment from Highway. Motive has not made that connection public. The financial data is based on the company’s registration statement and subsequent reporting, the date is noted but the motive is unknown.
Highway’s business model is a different animal. The company makes money from subscriptions from brokers, while carriers use the platform for free. That free-access model has been at the heart of building its carrier network.
If Highway had to pay an ELD provider for each connection, that cost would either be absorbed into its margins or passed on to carriers. Charging carriers would be contrary to the free-access model Highway has publicly embraced, including in its responses surrounding its use of ELD data in 2025.
What the dispute really tests for
The issue at hand is bigger than which company is right.
The dispute raises questions about who has commercial rights to operational data generated by motor carriers and what happens to freight operations when companies that control different parts of the data chain disagree over those rights.
Carriers need to buy ELD equipment and pay for monthly subscriptions to meet federal hours-of-service record-keeping requirements under Part 395. But the information generated by those devices has taken on a second role: providing the verification layer that brokers use to establish that equipment is present and moving before freight is tendered.
That extra role has emerged without a universally agreed commercial framework to decide who should pay for the connection over which the information is carried.
Highway has said publicly that it is the carriers’ responsibility to manage their own ELD connections and they can connect and disconnect as they please. The company has also said that it only accesses carrier data when it has permission.
The statements clarify the technical relationship but do not resolve the commercial relationship between Highway and Motive. Carriers are not parties to such agreement and play no part in establishing its financial terms.
Authorization by the carrier determines if data can be transmitted. That doesn’t necessarily dictate what one technology company might charge another for access to that data.
To brokerage executives the issue is more immediate and practical. Brokers no longer have the assurance that loads carried by carriers using a certain ELD platform, had been factored into their risk calculations. Highway’s alternative method of tracking is, according to Highway, less reliable than the equipment-linked connection it replaces.
Neither company has issued a public statement on the status of the talks or a timeline for resolving the dispute.
The disagreement does not impact federal compliance requirements. Motive devices continue to be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and remain subject to the hours-of-service recordkeeping requirements in Part 395.
Only the commercial visibility in a private carrier-vetting system has changed. That setup is not in lieu of, but in addition to, federal compliance requirements.
Why This Dispute Is Important
A handful of technology platforms are increasingly relied on by the trucking industry’s carrier vetting process, and those platforms rely on commercial agreements that govern access to operational data.
That leaves brokers exposed to the risk that when an agreement between technology providers falls apart, the verification layer used to evaluate carriers can erode even when the carrier itself has done nothing differently.
So the Highway-Motive dispute is more than a struggle over an API connection or a payment request. It raises an increasingly important question for digital freight operations: who owns the commercial access to the data that brokers rely on to know where trucks are, if they are moving and how much risk a specific load might carry?
Right now, the jury is still out, with brokers using Motive-equipped carriers seeing slower data refreshes, degraded alert functionality and the loss of Highway’s Performance Guaranty.
