The freight brokerage model broke carrier selection

On March 4, 2026, the Supreme Court heard oral statement successful Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, a lawsuit that originated from a December 2017 road collision successful which Shawn Montgomery was severely injured aft a tractor-trailer veered disconnected the roadworthy and struck his stopped conveyance connected the enarthrosis of an Illinois highway. Montgomery sued not lone the bearer and the operator but besides C.H. Robinson, the freight broker that arranged the shipment, alleging that Robinson negligently selected Caribe Transport and its driver.

The question the Supreme Court is being asked to resoluteness is whether 49 U.S.C. Section 14501(c), the national preemption proviso of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, preempts a authorities common-law assertion against a broker for negligently selecting a centrifugal bearer oregon driver. The Seventh Circuit said yes, brokers are preempted. Montgomery appealed. A determination is expected by the extremity of June.

This is simply a lawsuit that the brokerage manufacture desperately wants to triumph and that plaintiff attorneys desperately privation to lose. Understanding wherefore requires knowing however bearer enactment really works successful the existent freight market, due to the fact that the ineligible statement and the operational world are moving successful wholly antithetic directions.

There is nary azygous modular for however brokers prime carriers. There is nary national regularisation that specifies what vetting criteria a broker indispensable use earlier tendering a load to a centrifugal carrier. There is nary minimum request for however a broker evaluates a carrier’s clang history, out-of-service rate, usurpation patterns, oregon security prime earlier deciding to determination freight. Every broker successful America maintains its ain procurement criteria, bearer support standards, and explanation of what constitutes capable vetting. Some are rigorous. Many are not.

The satisfactory information standing has go the de facto minimum modular for broker bearer selection, adjacent though it is astir meaningless arsenic a existent indicator of bearer safety. According to Jack Van Steenburg, erstwhile enforcement manager and main information serviceman of the FMCSA, astir 19,000 centrifugal carriers clasp satisfactory information ratings among the astir 750,000 carriers with progressive operating authorization successful the United States. That is astir 3 percent of the bearer population. The remaining 97 percent of carriers person nary information rating.

A information standing is issued lone aft a compliance review, an on-site introspection of centrifugal bearer operations. The FMCSA lacks the resources to behaviour compliance reviews for 750,000 carriers, which is wherefore 97 percent of those carriers person ne'er been rated. When a broker says their bearer procurement argumentation requires a satisfactory information rating, they are efficaciously saying they volition usage immoderate of the 750,000 progressive carriers successful America, but for the tiny fig that person undergone a compliance reappraisal and received a conditional oregon unsatisfactory finding. That is not bearer vetting. That is authorization verification with an further filter that eliminates little than 1 percent of the bearer population.