They Called It a Trap. A Factoring Company Agreed — Then Explained Why You’re Using It Wrong.

Why This Argument Never Ends Go search “factoring” in any trucking group on Facebook. Doesn’t matter which one. What you’ll find looks less like a conversation and more like a street fight. One driver swears it kept his business alive through the freight recession.

The driver next to him says it quietly ate his margins for two years before he figured out what was happening. And somewhere in the comments, a third guy says if you need factoring, you were never running your business right to begin with. None of those people are lying.

They just had different experiences — because they ended up with different companies, different contracts, and different levels of understanding about what they were actually getting into.

On a June 2026 episode of The Long Haul podcast, Adam Wingfield sat down with George McWilliams and Ivan Martinez of Summar Financial to stop dancing around the topic and just go there. No sales pitch. No hit piece. Just an honest look at why factoring makes grown operators so emotional. McWilliams didn’t waste any time getting to the root of it.

“Who wants their money controlled by a third party? You’re working, somebody’s hiring you for a service, and here comes this third party in the middle. And at times, there may be an issue and your money gets held or charged back. With very good reason, that can create a lot of turmoil and a lot of dislike toward factoring.” Sit with that for a second.

You ran the load. You delivered on time. You did your job. And now there’s somebody parked between you and your own money — and when that arrangement breaks down, when it’s a Friday at 3:00 and your invoice just went on hold and you need fuel to get home and the phone’s going to voicemail — that doesn’t feel like a business problem.

That feels like somebody took something from you. Every single person in that conversation — Wingfield, McWilliams, Martinez — kept landing on the same thing: is that factoring’s fault, or is that what happens when you pick the wrong company and skip the fine print? Almost always? The fine print.

The 36% Math — And the Part It Leaves Out There’s a LinkedIn post from Scott Reiser that gets passed around trucking circles pretty regularly. The math in it is straight: if you pay 3% to get your money 30 days earlier than normal terms, you’re effectively borrowing at 36% per year.

His verdict — factoring is a payday loan for trucking companies, nothing more. The numbers aren’t wrong. But Ivan Martinez pushed back hard on what those numbers don’t include. “If you’re strictly looking at factoring as only a payday loan, then all you’re looking at is the monetary cost,” Martinez said. “You’re not looking at any of your benefits.

Same thing as if you were to go to an amusement park — it’s gonna cost you $50 to get in. But you’re not just paying $50 to get in. There’s all these things added to it.” Think about what you’re actually buying when you sign up with a legitimate factoring company. Yeah, you get paid faster. But you also get somebody handling your billing.

Somebody making the calls when a broker is dragging their feet on payment. Legal support if a broker goes under and owes you money. And in a lot of cases — fuel cards, tire discounts, maintenance deals. Wingfield put it in plain terms: “I’m hiring an accounts receivable team that’s going to take that work out of my business.

It’s just like if you outsource an oil change or go get your haircut. There’s a cost associated with the service.” If you’re a solo driver who’s up at 10 PM chasing invoices, arguing with a broker over a short pay, and trying to figure out what you can even do about it — maybe 3% is cheap. Depends on your situation.

No way around actually running your own numbers on it. But let’s be real about one thing. Some of that criticism people throw at factoring? It’s earned. How Some Factoring Companies Burned Carriers and Ruined It for Everyone Wingfield asked Martinez point blank — has the factoring industry brought some of this reputation on itself? “100%. Absolutely.”

No soft answer. Just yes. Here’s the play that does the most damage. A company puts 1% or 1. 5% out front. Carrier sees it, thinks it’s a deal, signs up. Then the fees start appearing on statements. A charge for every page you upload when you submit documentation. A fee to receive your own money via ACH. A different fee if you want it wired instead.

A documentation handling fee — separate from the per-page one. And then, somewhere near the back of the contract in language nobody reads, a daily charge that kicks in on every invoice sitting past 30 days. Individually, not one of those fees looks like it matters. But stack them up on a $1,000 invoice and see what happens.

Wingfield did the math live during the episode. “It’s 1% of a thousand bucks — big deal. But if you’re charging me $15 here, $10 here, all of a sudden on that thousand bucks, it’s turned into 7% by the time you factored everything in.” McWilliams was direct about what he’d do first if