Guide · Freight
Every dispatcher knows carrier vetting matters. Almost nobody has it written down as a gated process, which is why it gets skipped at 4:45pm on a Friday when a load needs covering and the only truck available has an MC number nobody recognises.
This is an operational guide, not legal advice. Regulations, filing requirements, and liability standards change, and they differ by jurisdiction and by contract. Verify anything here against the current FMCSA rules and your own counsel before it becomes policy.
A load goes missing. Not stolen off a lot at gunpoint, just: picked up on time, never delivered, phone disconnected, MC number now showing a different address. The customer wants the freight or the money. The insurance certificate on file turns out to be a PDF that was edited in a text layer. The carrier you paid is not the carrier that hauled. Nobody at your desk did anything obviously stupid, and you are still holding the bill.
That sequence is not exotic and it is not rare. It is the predictable outcome of a vetting process that lives in a dispatcher's head rather than in a file, and it is the reason the checklist below reads like a bureaucracy: the point of a gate is that a person under deadline pressure cannot walk past it.
Authority is the cheapest check and the one most often done badly. A DOT number existing is not the same as a carrier being authorised to haul your freight for hire, and "the MC number came back active" is not a verification, it is a glance.
The name-match rule catches more fraud than the safety score does. Impersonation works by putting a real, clean carrier's MC number on paperwork with a different phone number and a different remit-to. If the remit-to bank details do not match the entity on the authority record, you are almost certainly not talking to that carrier.
The COI is the document people wave at each other and nobody reads. It is also the only evidence you will have that cargo coverage existed on the day of the loss, because auto liability filings are visible in the federal system while cargo coverage generally is not filed there for motor carriers. If the certificate is wrong, you find out during the claim.
| What the COI must show | Why it matters | What a bad one looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Named insured, matching the carrier's legal name exactly | The policy covers that entity, not the one that hauled your load | A DBA on the certificate that appears nowhere on the authority record |
| Your brokerage as certificate holder | Confirms the agent issued it for this relationship, not recycled from another broker | Another broker's name in the holder box, or the holder box left blank |
| Auto liability limit, commonly $1,000,000 | Covers damage the truck does to others; also the number your customer contract requires | A limit below your customer contract's minimum, discovered after the fact |
| Cargo coverage limit, commonly $100,000 | Covers the freight itself; high-value loads need a higher limit or a rider | $100k on a $340k load of electronics, unnoticed until the claim |
| Effective and expiry dates covering the pickup date | Coverage on the onboarding date is irrelevant if the policy lapsed before the load | A certificate that was valid when filed six months ago |
| Producer / agent name, phone, and email | The only way to verify the certificate is real | No agent contact at all, or an agent email on a free consumer mail domain |
| Exclusions and endorsements, read in full | Reefer breakdown, unattended vehicle, theft, and commodity exclusions void the coverage you thought you had | A reefer exclusion on a load of frozen product; a radius restriction on a coast-to-coast run |
| Schedule of covered vehicles, where the policy is scheduled rather than blanket | A truck not on the schedule is not covered | One tractor listed, four trucks operating |
A COI is a PDF. Editing a PDF is a solved problem for anyone with fifteen minutes and free software. The version emailed by the carrier is the version most likely to have been improved. Ask for it directly from the producer listed on the certificate, or use the carrier's insurance agent's portal, and treat a carrier who resists that request as having told you something.
Insurance lapses are ordinary. Premiums go unpaid, policies get non-renewed, and none of that sends you a notification. A carrier vetted cleanly in January can be uninsured in April with nothing visible on your side. The check that matters is valid on the pickup date, which means expiry dates have to be monitored as data rather than remembered as a habit — the same category of problem covered in the back-office guide.
Safety data tells you about roadside performance, not about fraud. Read it for what it is: an indicator of how likely this carrier is to be put out of service mid-load, and a number your customer or your own insurer may ask about later.
Set your thresholds once, in writing, and apply them the same way at 9am Monday and 4:45pm Friday. A threshold that gets waived under pressure is not a threshold, it is a preference.
Double-brokering is when the carrier you contracted with re-brokers your load to a third party without authorisation. The commercial risk is specific and painful: if you pay the entity you contracted with, and the actual hauling carrier never gets paid, that carrier can pursue your customer and, in practice, you. You can end up paying for the same load twice — and that is the good outcome, since the bad one is the freight vanishing entirely.
| Red flag | What it usually means | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Remit-to or factoring details differ from the carrier of record | Impersonation or an unauthorised re-broker | Hard stop |
| Payment details changed mid-load, by email | Business email compromise, one of the most common freight frauds | Hard stop; call the number on the authority record, not the one in the email |
| Contact email on a free consumer domain, or a domain registered weeks ago | A shell built for this season's fraud | Hard stop unless the carrier is otherwise long-established and verified by callback |
| Phone number does not match the FMCSA record | Somebody is using a real carrier's identity | Verify by calling the number on file; never the number given |
| Dispatcher will not give a driver name and truck number | There is no driver, because the load is being re-brokered | Hard stop |
| Instant acceptance of an above-market rate, no negotiation | Either fraud or a carrier who will re-broker at the real market rate | Manager approval |
| Authority reactivated after a long dormancy | A purchased or hijacked MC number | Manager approval, with a callback and a physical-address check |
| COI sent by the carrier rather than the agent | Possible document alteration | Request from the agent directly |
| Address is a residence or a mailbox store | Not disqualifying on its own; very common in combination | Note it, and weight it with everything else |
| Carrier asks whether they can "give it to a partner" | They are telling you what they intend to do | Hard stop, and remove them from the list |
None of these are individually conclusive. A legitimate one-truck operation can have a residential address and a personal-looking email. The rule that works is arithmetic rather than intuition: one flag is a question, two flags is manager approval, three flags is a decline, and the count is written on the load file so the decision is auditable later.
The single highest-value habit in this entire guide takes ninety seconds: when anything about a carrier changes — payment details, contact person, trailer type, or the driver assigned — call the number listed on the FMCSA record, not the number in the email that told you about the change. Impersonation collapses immediately under an outbound call to a number the impersonator does not control.
Vetting is what you do before the load. The file is what you can produce afterwards, and the two are not the same job. A claim, a chargeback, a negligent-selection allegation, or an audit all ask the same question in different words: what did you know, when did you know it, and can you prove it?
| Document | Captured when | What it protects |
|---|---|---|
| Signed broker-carrier agreement | Once, before the first load | Anti-re-brokering clause, insurance minimums, indemnity, and the terms every rate confirmation then incorporates |
| Authority record snapshot | At onboarding and re-checked per load | Evidence the carrier was authorised on the pickup date, not merely at some point |
| Certificate of insurance from the agent | At onboarding, monitored to expiry | The only proof cargo coverage existed on the day of loss |
| W-9, matched to the legal name and TIN | Once, before first payment | Correct 1099 reporting and a second confirmation of entity identity |
| Factoring notice of assignment, plus any release letter | At onboarding and on any change | Prevents paying the wrong party; a change of factor without a release is a classic double-pay trap |
| Signed rate confirmation, per load | Every load, before dispatch | The rate, the accessorial terms, the free time, and the commodity — the document arguments are settled with |
| Signed bill of lading with exceptions noted | At pickup and at delivery | Establishes condition at both ends, which is the entire fight in a damage claim |
| Check-call log with timestamps | Continuously | Detention evidence, and proof of reasonable oversight |
| Proof of delivery | At delivery | Payment, and the end of the carrier's liability window |
| The email thread itself | Automatically | What was actually communicated, in what order, by whom |
Retention is not optional and the windows are longer than people assume. Cargo claims under interstate motor-carrier liability rules generally have a minimum nine-month window to file a claim with the carrier and a minimum two-year window to bring suit after a claim is denied. Litigation over broker liability can arrive later than that. Keep the whole file for years, not months, and keep it retrievable by load number rather than by whichever inbox it happened to land in.
Everything above is knowable. The failure mode is never ignorance, it is a person covering a load at the end of a long day deciding that this one carrier looks fine. The fix is structural.
Time budget, honestly: a first-time onboarding done properly runs about twelve minutes. Per-load re-verification against an existing structured file runs about ninety seconds. The version that feels faster — glancing at an MC number and moving on — takes fifteen seconds and costs a load.
Authority lookups, insurance expiry monitoring, name and remit-to matching, document collection, and flagging the mechanical red flags in the table above are all structured, repetitive, deadline-driven work — exactly the profile that automates cleanly. That is the same category of task covered in the small-business automation guide, and it is the part of the workflow FreightDesk is built around: watching the documents and the dates so the exceptions come to a human instead of the whole queue.
What does not automate: the judgement call on a carrier with two flags and a ten-year relationship, the phone call that confirms a driver exists, and the decision to walk away from a load rather than cover it badly. Automation should make the gate impossible to walk past. Deciding what is on the other side of it is still the job.
The arithmetic on what a lost or re-brokered load actually costs — margin, deadhead, and the accessorials that ride along with it — is worked through in the margin and rate-per-mile guide and in the detention and accessorials guide. The free calculators are on the freight tools page.
FAQ
Pull the record yourself from FMCSA's public Licensing and Insurance system or the SAFER snapshot rather than accepting a screenshot from the carrier. Confirm the operating status is authorised for the correct type of freight, check for any pending revocation, read the authority date, and confirm the legal name matches the W-9 and the insurance certificate exactly.
The named insured matching the carrier's legal entity, your brokerage as certificate holder, auto liability and cargo limits that meet your customer contract, effective and expiry dates that cover the pickup date, the issuing agent's contact details, and the full exclusions list. Reefer breakdown, unattended vehicle, and commodity exclusions are the ones that void coverage exactly when you need it.
Because a certificate is a PDF, and editing a PDF takes minutes with free software. Requesting it directly from the producer listed on the certificate, or through the agent's portal, removes the opportunity for alteration. A carrier who resists that request has given you useful information.
Remit-to or factoring details that do not match the carrier of record, payment details changed mid-load by email, a dispatcher who will not provide a driver name and truck number, instant acceptance of an above-market rate, recently reactivated dormant authority, and a contact domain registered only weeks ago. One flag is a question, two is manager approval, three is a decline.
If you pay the entity you contracted with and the carrier that actually hauled never gets paid, that carrier can pursue your customer and in practice you, so the same load can be paid for twice. The worse outcome is the freight disappearing entirely, at which point the certificate of insurance on file is the only thing standing between you and the full value of the cargo.
Longer than most people assume. Interstate cargo claims generally allow a minimum of nine months to file a claim with the carrier and a minimum of two years to bring suit after a denial, and broker-liability litigation can arrive later still. Keep the full file for years, indexed by load number rather than by whichever inbox it landed in.
Make it a form with required fields rather than a habit, and gate dispatch so a load cannot be marked covered until authority, insurance, the agreement, and the W-9 all read valid for that pickup date. Define who can override, require a written one-line reason, and review overrides weekly.
About twelve minutes for a first-time onboarding done properly, and roughly ninety seconds for per-load re-verification if the file is structured rather than scattered across email. The version that feels faster, glancing at an MC number and moving on, takes fifteen seconds and occasionally costs an entire load.