Compliance guides

Step-by-step checklist for vetting any motor carrier before tendering a load — operating authority, insurance, safety scores, inspection history, and identity flags.

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.

The carrier packet checklist: which documents to request from a new carrier, what each one verifies, and the cross-checks that turn a stack of paper into actual fraud protection.

Authority types in plain English — Common, Contract, Broker, and Freight Forwarder. What each allows, when carriers hold more than one, and what 'revoked' actually means.

Decode the FMCSA L&I insurance register: BMC-91 liability, BMC-34 cargo, BMC-32 household-goods cargo, effective and cancellation dates, and the gotchas brokers miss.

Confirm a Motor Carrier number is live and authorized before tender — every status value the federal registry returns, the fields brokers actually read, and the 60-second workflow.

The 'authority pending' status decoded — what it means, why it can take weeks, what carriers can and cannot do under it, and the patterns brokers should never accept on a tender.

The BOC-3 filing decoded — what a process agent does, why federal authority cannot be granted without one, the per-state designation rule, and the patterns brokers should read into a missing or stale BOC-3.

Every property broker must keep a $75,000 surety bond (BMC-84) or trust (BMC-85) on file. Learn how to read the bond-on-file record, what the $75,000 floor protects, and the lapse signals that expose a broker who can't pay.

An out-of-service order is a federal enforcement action that prohibits a whole carrier from operating until it fixes a serious deficiency. Learn how it differs from a revocation, how to read its status, and why it's a hard stop.

Step-by-step guide to filing a complaint against a freight broker — federal vs state channels, what each one can actually do, evidence to gather, and realistic outcomes (including when the surety bond pays out).

The federal Safety Rating is the regulator's official verdict on a carrier's safety management. This guide explains the four ratings (Satisfactory, Conditional, Unsatisfactory, Unrated), what triggers each, and how brokers should treat each in a tendering decision.

What FMCSA's new entrant program means for freight brokers: how to identify new entrant carriers, what the mandatory safety audit covers, and how to adjust your vetting workflow for carriers in their first 18 months of authority.

What FMCSA's crash record actually shows, how to calculate the crash rate that matters, and which combinations of signals should make you pause before tendering a load.

The MCS-150 is the federal carrier census form brokers see on every SAFER lookup. Learn what it contains, how often carriers must update it, and what a stale filing date signals about dormancy and fleet credibility.

What the FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse actually tracks, who is allowed to query it, the difference between a limited and a full query, and what a broker can (and can't) see from it.

How the Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list works, why brokers face strict liability for dealing with a sanctioned carrier, and how to read a 'potential match' flag without over- or under-reacting to it.

A carrier that clears onboarding or a pre-tender check is clean at that instant, not forever. Here's what changes after the first check, how often to re-screen carriers you keep working with, and how to build a monitoring cadence that doesn't rely on remembering.