What should a broker check before tendering a load to a carrier?

Operating status and the right kind of authority; safety rating and its date; out-of-service percentage against the national average; BIPD and cargo insurance actually on file rather than merely required; identity continuity showing the carrier is not a re-registration of a revoked authority; and whether the party holds broker authority or shares dispatch contact details with an entity that does.

Is checking active authority enough to vet a carrier?

No. Active authority only means the registration is current. It says nothing about whether insurance is on file, whether the out-of-service rate is far above average, or whether the entity is a re-registration of a revoked carrier. Authority is the first check, not the whole check.

What does it mean that insurance is "required but not on file"?

Required is a regulation; on file is a filing. FMCSA records show both the amount a carrier is required to carry and the amount actually filed by its insurer. A carrier can be required to carry coverage and have none on file — and only the filing responds to a claim.

How often should carriers be re-vetted after onboarding?

Authority is revoked and insurance lapses continuously, so a file checked once at onboarding goes stale. Set a stated interval in your policy and append material changes to the carrier file so the record is current at the date of any incident, not frozen at first use.

Carrier Vetting Checklist: What to Check Before You Tender a Load

Six checks, in this order: identity, authority, safety record, insurance on file, re-brokering exposure, and then record the decision. The order matters — identity first, because every check after it is meaningless if you are looking at the wrong entity, and the decision record last, because it must capture what the other five actually returned.

1 · Identity — is this who it claims to be?

Resolve the MC/DOT to one entity, then ask whether that entity connects to a prior authority that was revoked. Shared registered address, shared officer of record, and a phone reused across authorities are the signals. A carrier whose authority is 60 days old and whose address belongs to a carrier revoked last year is the single highest-value catch in vetting.

2 · Authority — active, and the right kind

Operating status active, and the authority type appropriate: common, contract, or broker. Also read the history — a reinstatement following revocation is a materially different fact from continuous good standing, and only the history shows it.

3 · Safety record — and its date

The rating, and when it was issued. A conditional rating from four years ago and one from last quarter are not the same fact. Then the out-of-service percentage against the national average, and crash history. A conditional rating with documented driver-qualification, hours-of-service and maintenance deficiencies is precisely the pattern alleged in Montgomery.

4 · Insurance — required vs. on file

These are different columns and only one matters. Required is what the regulation says the carrier must carry. On file is what its insurer has actually filed. Check BIPD, cargo and any surety bond, and compare the filed amounts to the minimums your policy states.

5 · Re-brokering exposure

Two distinct checks. First: does this "carrier" itself hold active broker authority? If so it can legally re-broker your load. Second: does its dispatch phone or domain also belong to a separate entity that holds broker authority? That is the re-tender shell pattern. See double brokering.

6 · Record the decision

Who decided, at what time, on what signals, and — if a flag was passed — the stated reason. This is the step that is almost always skipped, and it is the only one that exists as evidence two years later.

A timed-out source is not a pass. If a source is restricted, unavailable, or returns nothing, that is a coverage gap and it should degrade the decision — not read as clean. A vetting process that treats silence as a pass converts "we don't know" into "we checked," which is the exact sentence you do not want read back to you in a deposition.

Bring the record to your desk.

A 20-minute scoping call — no cost, no commitment. Bring your current carrier-selection process and we will show you what it produces at claim time.

See if we can help

Detecting double brokeringThe shared-dispatch pattern, before you tender.Chameleon carriersHow a revoked authority comes back under a new MC.Carrier selection policyTurning this checklist into a written standard.

Carrier vetting checklist