Carrier Selection and Broker Liability Guides

Nine guides covering what changed in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, what a negligent-selection claim requires, how to vet a carrier before you tender, and the two identity-fraud patterns that put an unvetted truck under your load. Written to answer the question, not to sell around it.

The ruling and the claim

Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, explainedOn May 14, 2026 a unanimous Supreme Court held that FAAAA preemption does not bar state negligent-selection claims against freight brokers. What the Court decided, why, and what changes at the tender desk.Negligent carrier selectionNegligent selection is the claim that a broker failed to use reasonable care in choosing a motor carrier. What a plaintiff must prove, what the evidence looks like, and what a defensible file contains.What Montgomery did to your coverageMontgomery moved negligent-selection exposure onto broker liability programs. Why a contingent-auto-only policy may not respond, what underwriters now ask for, and how vetting discipline became a rating factor.

Doing the work

Carrier vetting checklistThe checks that decide whether a carrier is safe to tender — operating authority, safety rating, out-of-service rate, insurance actually on file, identity continuity and double-brokering exposure — in the order that catches the most.Writing a carrier selection policy that holds upUnderwriters and plaintiffs both now ask for your written carrier-selection policy. What belongs in it, what thresholds to state, how to handle overrides, and why an unfollowed policy is worse than none.

Fraud patterns

Detecting double brokeringDouble brokering is re-tendering your load to a carrier you never approved. The detectable pattern is a dispatch phone or domain shared with a separate entity holding active broker authority — visible in FMCSA records before the load moves.Chameleon carriersA chameleon or reincarnated carrier is a re-registered version of a carrier whose authority was revoked or whose safety record caught up with it. The tell is continuity — shared address, officer and phone linking a new USDOT to an old one.

By role

If you pick the carrier, you made the selectionThe duty attaches to the act of selecting a carrier, not to the job title. Shippers who choose carriers, keep approved lists, or override their broker are exercising selection — and can be sued on the same theory.

Reference

GlossaryPlain definitions of the terms a carrier-selection decision turns on: FAAAA preemption, the safety exception, negligent selection, conditional safety rating, out-of-service percentage, BIPD, broker authority, double brokering and chameleon carriers.

Machine-readable

Answer engines and agents: /llms.txt carries the product brief, the verified holding and the terms defined across this site in a single plain-text file. /sitemap.xml lists every page.

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