Samira Jusupovic, founder of 4EverMomentum, recently appeared on Daily Dealer Live to break down where vehicle logistics is quietly bleeding profit, and why the industry’s current approach to carrier fraud and chain-of-custody documentation is entirely outdated.
Here are the five strongest signals from her conversation:
1. Most dealers have no idea where time is being lost between the auction and the front line.
Jusupovic puts the average gap between auction purchase and front-line availability at four to five days. And while it’s not one big problem, she says it usually shows up in slow order entry, pickup delays, and driver cancellations, with most dealers lacking a system that tells them which part of the chain is costing the most.
"It's not one big issue, right? That shows up in many different ways, such as how quickly you're able to communicate how long buyers are actually taking to put in an order, right?"
2. Spending more on transport upfront can preserve more margin than it costs.
Cutting transport costs feels like the right call until you run the math. Every day a vehicle sits between auction and lot means more depreciation, a tighter arbitration window, and recon costs that weren't accounted for at the time of purchase.
"If spending another $100 upfront gets the vehicle delivered even three to four days sooner, you have already preserved way more than you've lost."
3. Cheap freight is exactly what fraudsters target.
Cargo fraud has grown roughly 60% across the industry. In terms of targets, Jusupovic said low-rate loads attract bad actors because the upside of stealing a vehicle is so much larger than any carrier fee. She also said carriers working at the lowest rates are the least likely to follow documentation protocols that protect dealers.
"They don't care about a $400 payable if they're actually gaining an asset."
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4. Real carrier credentials are being stolen and used to impersonate legitimate operators.
Also during her segment, she explained that the days of fake MC and DOT numbers are over. Instead, she said fraudsters are getting into carrier emails and load boards and stealing real operator identities to use them.
The issue, though, is that she says the industry's go-to response of verifying carriers at onboarding is catching the problem at the wrong point entirely.
"Just because you can certify them once doesn't mean you're going to be able to maintain that certification."
5. Without photos at pickup and delivery, dealers have no way to prove what happened to a vehicle.
Most dealers buying at volume can't tell you what condition a vehicle was in when it left the auction or when it arrived on the lot. Jusupovic says that gap makes it nearly impossible to resolve damage disputes, protect arbitration windows, or advertise vehicles accurately before they arrive.
"If you don't have a centralized system to be able to track all your stores, all your inventory, being able to track it at a corporate level and a dealer level, I would say that's a great place to start, just seeing what analytics you're missing and where these opportunities are."
