How to check out a carrier in ten minutes.

A carrier owns trucks and hauls the load under its own motor-carrier authority. A broker owns no trucks and arranges the move with a carrier under separate broker authority. Both are legal and both are useful. What is not fine is not knowing which one you hired, because it decides whose truck has your freight, whose insurance applies and who is liable if something is damaged.

Search the SAFER Company Snapshot at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov by USDOT number, MC number or company name, and follow the Licensing and Insurance link for the authority history. The definitions in the table are from FMCSA’s own types of operating authority page.

Federal rules also make a broker say so. Under 49 CFR 371.7 a broker may not represent its operation as a carrier, and its advertising must show that it is a broker. A company can hold both authorities, and the Entity Type then reads something like CARRIER/BROKER. That is legitimate; ask which one applies to your load and get the answer on the quote. For what changes when you book the carrier itself, see booking the carrier directly.

1. 01

   Confirm the authority type and that it is active

   The authority should match the job: Motor Carrier of Property for a company that says it will haul your load, Broker of Property for one that will arrange it. Then check that it is active, with no revocation and no out-of-service order. A carrier whose authority lapsed last month still has letterhead.

2. 02

   Verify insurance at the source

   Ask for the certificate to come directly from the insurance agent with you named as certificate holder. A PDF forwarded by the carrier proves nothing, and forged certificates are one of the most common tools in freight fraud. Check the expiry date, and check the cargo limit against the value of what you are shipping. For vehicles, ask for the per-vehicle limit as well as the per-load figure.

3. 03

   Read the safety record

   The FMCSA Safety Measurement System publishes percentile scores by category. Unsafe Driving and Vehicle Maintenance are the two that correlate most closely with claims. A high percentile is bad; it means worse than that share of comparable carriers.

4. 04

   Check the operating history

   How long has this authority been active? A new MC number is not disqualifying — every carrier had one — but a brand-new authority carrying a high-value load is a combination worth a second thought, because double-brokering rings churn through new authorities.

5. 05

   Get the no-re-brokering commitment in writing

   Ask directly: will this load be hauled on your own truck, or placed with another carrier? Both answers can be fine. Not being told is not fine, and this is the step most shippers skip.

Double-brokering is when a company accepts a load, then hands it to a different carrier without telling the shipper. Sometimes it is a capacity shortfall handled badly. Increasingly it is deliberate: an entity accepts the load, a real carrier hauls it, the shipper pays the first entity, the first entity disappears, and the carrier who actually did the work comes looking for its money from the only party left standing — you.

It is also a standard method for stealing freight. A load handed to an unvetted party is a load nobody is watching. The defence is the same in both cases: know who has physical custody of your freight, in writing, before it moves.

• A rate far below every other quote. Nobody hauls at a loss for fun.
• Insurance certificate sent by the carrier rather than by the agent.
• A carrier with no power units on SAFER. Whatever the website says, that is a broker.
• An authority activated in the last few months quoting nationwide capacity.
• A phone number that only ever goes to voicemail. A real dispatch desk answers in business hours.
• Reluctance to name the driver or give the truck number.
• A different company on the bill of lading from the one you booked.
• A large deposit demanded up front on a consumer vehicle move, before any truck is named.