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On May 14, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC (No. 24-1238), holding that a state-law claim that a freight broker negligently selected a motor carrier is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA). Brokers can no longer count on getting those cases dismissed early on preemption grounds. This guide covers what the ruling changed and turns it into a practical vetting and recordkeeping workflow — it is a documentation guide, not legal advice.
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II (U.S. Supreme Court, May 14, 2026) held that state negligent-selection claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the FAAAA, because they fall within the statute's safety exception. In practice, brokers can now be sued in state court for hiring an unsafe carrier, and the question becomes whether the selection was reasonable. The practical answer is a written vetting policy, run on every load at tender, with a timestamped record of what you checked and what you decided.
The FAAAA preempts state laws "related to a price, route, or service" of a motor carrier or broker (49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1)), but it carves out a safety exception that preserves a state's "safety regulatory authority" with respect to motor vehicles (§ 14501(c)(2)(A)). For years, brokers sued after a crash involving a carrier they selected argued that negligent-selection claims were preempted and should be dismissed at the outset. The federal appeals courts split on that argument: the Ninth Circuit (Miller v. C.H. Robinson) and the Sixth Circuit (Total Quality Logistics v. Cox) let the claims proceed, while the Seventh Circuit (Ye v. GlobalTranz) and the Eleventh Circuit (Aspen American Insurance v. Landstar Ranger) held them preempted.
Montgomery came up from the Seventh Circuit, which had affirmed dismissal of a negligent-hiring claim against the broker on the load. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court reversed. It agreed the claim falls within the preemption provision but held that it is saved by the safety exception, because a rule about which carrier a broker may hire concerns the safety of the trucks that will haul the goods. The Court noted that state laws on broker prices, routes, and services with no relationship to safety remain preempted.
The Court decided the preemption question only. It did not create a federal vetting standard or decide whether any broker was negligent. Negligent-selection claims are governed by each state's negligence law, and a plaintiff still has to prove the elements. What changed is that the preemption defense that used to end many of these cases early is gone.
Because the claim is about whether the carrier selection was reasonable, the most useful thing a broker can do is run a consistent, written vetting workflow and apply it to every load. The checks below are the ones most commonly described in industry guidance on carrier vetting — they use public safety and registration data that is available to any broker at the time of tender.
Each of these maps to a KnowHaul check: the carrier check covers authority, safety, observed equipment, and fraud flags; the insurance check reads the filed liability and cargo limits; the contact-match and double-broker checks compare the details you were given against the carrier's public record.
A vetting workflow you cannot show later is hard to rely on. For every load, keep a record in the load file that ties the carrier check to that specific shipment: the load reference, the carrier's DOT and MC numbers, the date and time of the check, who ran it, the result of each check, the as-of date of the underlying data, and the decision with a reason. If a carrier was approved as an exception to your policy, record who approved it and why.
KnowHaul shows an as-of date next to the data it reports — safety scores, BASIC percentiles, fraud-flag evidence — so you can record what the public record said and when. Signed-in search history keeps your recent lookups for 90 days and can be turned off, so treat it as a convenience, not as your retention system. Save the vetting result to the load file in your TMS and keep it for as long as your counsel recommends for your claims exposure.
Some carrier profiles call for more than the baseline checks because the public record is thin or the signals point to elevated risk. Decide in your written policy what extra steps each one triggers, and record that you took them.
This guide describes vetting and documentation practices. It is not legal advice and does not describe the standard of care in any particular state. Talk to your own counsel about your carrier selection policy and record retention.
A written carrier selection policy turns individual judgment calls into a repeatable process: which checks run on every load, which results disqualify a carrier, which ones require escalation, and who can approve an exception. A policy that exists on paper but is not followed load to load can be worse than no policy, so build it around checks your team can actually run at tender in a minute or two.
Review the policy when the data or your freight mix changes, and re-check carriers you use often instead of relying on the day they were onboarded. Re-screening the carriers you keep working with on a regular cadence catches an authority, insurance, or safety change between loads, so a carrier that was fine last month is caught before the next tender.
On May 14, 2026, in No. 24-1238, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a state-law claim that a freight broker negligently selected a motor carrier is not preempted by the FAAAA. The claim falls within the statute's preemption provision but is saved by its safety exception, which preserves state safety regulatory authority with respect to motor vehicles. The decision resolved a split in which the Ninth and Sixth Circuits allowed these claims and the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits held them preempted.
The ruling is about whether a negligent-selection claim can proceed at all; it does not distinguish between spot and contract freight. In practice, the safest approach is to run the same documented vetting workflow on every load regardless of how it was booked. Spot loads are often booked under time pressure with carriers you have less history with, which makes a fast, consistent check at tender more important, not less.
Onboarding verification is necessary but not sufficient. Authority can be revoked, insurance can lapse, and safety data can change between the day a carrier is set up and the day you tender a load. A check run at tender, recorded against that specific load, shows what the public record said when you actually selected the carrier. Continuous monitoring between loads helps catch changes early.
Negligent selection is about whether the selection was reasonable given what the broker knew or should have known, so a carrier that passed a documented, reasonable vetting process is a very different situation from one that was never checked. Whether a particular broker is liable depends on the facts and the state's law, which is a question for counsel. The vetting record is what lets you show what you checked, when, and why you chose the carrier.
Yes. The Court noted that state laws related to broker prices, routes, and services that have no relationship to safety remain preempted. What Montgomery decided is that negligent-selection claims, which concern the safety of the trucks hauling the freight, fall within the safety exception and can go forward under state law.
No. It describes practical vetting and documentation steps based on public carrier data. The standard of care for carrier selection comes from state law and varies by jurisdiction. Talk to your own counsel about your carrier selection policy, exception process, and how long to keep vetting records.
Paste an MC, DOT, or VIN to verify a carrier in one card. Free, no signup.
Free, no signup. Paste a DOT, MC, or VIN — verify right away.
Authority, out-of-service status, safety profile, observed equipment, and fraud flags for any DOT or MC — with as-of dates you can record.
Read the carrier's filed liability and cargo limits on the day you tender the load.
Compare the phone, email, and address you were given against the carrier's public record.
A tight, repeatable pre-tender vetting workflow: the order to run the checks, the hard fails that stop a tender outright, and the soft signals that are judgement calls. Built for the moment before you dispatch.
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Open one of these profiles in a new tab to see how the checklist applies to a live carrier record.
Authority, insurance, safety, and identity in one check — with dates you can record in the load file.