Motive Throttled Highway ELD Data After Payment Demand

Highway notified customers this week that Motive restricted the integration between the two platforms and demanded payment for access to carrier data. Highway said it does not charge carriers for its services and will not start charging them to preserve an ELD connection. The practical result is that Motive ELD data now refreshes less frequently inside Highway's platform.

What does this mean for carriers running Motive ELDs?

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. 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. The company also said it can no longer back freight those carriers move under its Performance Guarantee. Highway 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.

The Performance Guarantee withdrawal returns risk to brokers

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.

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. 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.

Neither company disclosed the commercial terms

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.

Motive has not publicly addressed the change. Highway declined to comment beyond the notice sent to its customers. Neither company has publicly described the state of discussions between them or indicated a timeline for resolution.

Motive's financial picture 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.

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.

Highway's model runs the other direction

Highway's 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.

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.

The substantive question is who holds commercial rights to carrier data

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.

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.

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.

What small carriers running Motive should do this week

Highway said it would work with the more than 275 other ELD providers it integrates with to offer discounted alternatives to carriers considering a change. If you run a 1-to-10-truck fleet and Highway brokers account for a meaningful share of your load volume, compare the cost of switching ELDs against the risk of reduced visibility to those brokers. Check a side-by-side review of ELD options to see what other FMCSA-registered devices cost per month and what the swap timeline looks like.

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.