Carrier vetting · Process

What Should Freight Brokers Check Before Every Load?

By the CarrierBasis team · Published Aug 2, 2026 · Not legal advice

Courts have not issued a carrier-vetting checklist, and any article claiming to publish "the legally required checks" is overselling. What the broker negligent-selection cases do reveal — through their allegations, rulings, and successful defenses — is which facts brokers may be expected to have investigated, evaluated, and documented. After the Montgomery decision, those expectations can be examined in court rather than dismissed at the threshold.

What follows organizes that information as a per-load review — because the decision a claim examines is a specific carrier assigned to a specific shipment. It's informational, not legal advice, and your own policy and counsel govern what your process requires.

1. Legal eligibility — the beginning, not the end

• Operating authority — active at the time of assignment, not just at onboarding. Authority can be revoked or suspended at any point.
• Insurance status and limits — coverage currently in force, sufficient for this shipment's cargo value, and valid through the load's dates. Coverage that expires between commitment and delivery is a gap worth catching before it matters.

A carrier's authority and insurance may be where the review begins. In the cases, they are rarely where it ends.

2. Safety performance — where the allegations live

• FMCSA safety rating — Conditional and Unsatisfactory ratings are obvious risk indicators, though a Satisfactory rating doesn't automatically end the inquiry. The Montgomery allegations centered on a Conditional-rated carrier.
• Crash history — the Montgomery complaint specifically alleged an elevated recordable crash rate.
• Unsafe-driving and hours-of-service history — speeding, moving violations, and hours-of-service or logbook concerns appear repeatedly in negligent-selection allegations, including the driver-qualification and hours-of-service deficiencies alleged in Montgomery.
• Maintenance and out-of-service history — inspection results and out-of-service rates, read against fleet size. Three inspections at a two-truck carrier mean something different than three at a five-hundred-truck carrier, and several recent related events mean more than one remote one.

3. Identity — is this actually the carrier you vetted?

Everything above is worthless if the truck that shows up belongs to someone else. Verify that the carrier's legal name and MC/DOT identity match the federal record, watch for signs of double-brokering or identity fraud, and confirm — during the load, not just before it — that the carrier and driver hauling the freight are the ones that were vetted.

4. Internal experience — what your brokerage already knew

In litigation, what the broker actually knew can matter as much as what public data showed. Prior loads, service failures, claims, safety complaints, and do-not-use decisions are all discoverable — and a selection that contradicts your own records is difficult to defend. Institutional knowledge should be part of the review, and past investigations that resolved a concern (a name discrepancy explained, a report reviewed and cleared) should carry forward with dates and authorship rather than being re-derived or forgotten.

5. Load suitability — appropriate for this shipment

Cargo type, value, equipment, lane, dates, and special requirements all bear on whether a carrier is suitable for a particular assignment. A carrier that's a fine choice for a $30,000 dry-van load may be the wrong selection for a $300,000 high-value shipment your policy says requires more coverage and a stricter review.

What to preserve — the part that gets skipped

For each load-time decision, the record worth keeping includes: the policy version applied; the sources consulted, with retrieval timestamps; the information they returned; every material concern found and its disposition; any exceptions and approvals; the reviewer's identity; the stated basis for the decision; and a snapshot of the complete record, preserved unaltered from the moment of commitment. On timing — which facts to refresh and when — see how often brokers should recheck a carrier.

Sources

• Opinion of the Court (PDF), Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238 (May 14, 2026) — supremecourt.gov. The allegations described (Conditional safety rating; deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service, and crash rate) are drawn from the Court's opinion and syllabus.
• On a broker's duty to review publicly available FMCSA safety data: Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., 976 F.3d 1016 (9th Cir. 2020).
• FMCSA carrier data referenced throughout is publicly available via the FMCSA's SAFER and QCMobile systems.

This article is a general discussion of process, not legal advice, and has not been reviewed by counsel. What your process requires is governed by your own policy and applicable law.