Nobody Picked Up. That Was My Answer.

The Call That Didn't Happen

I was reviewing a tender from a carrier — MC-1247893, DOT-3567102, 22 months of active authority, no active OOS orders, SAFER showing Satisfactory. Clean on paper. Their Unsafe Driving BASIC was sitting at the 76th percentile, elevated but not over the 65-percent threshold for property carriers. I'd seen carriers with worse get approved and run clean loads for years.

I was about to click approve when I noticed something in their L&I history. Three insurance filings in fourteen months — not lapses exactly, just carrier switches. Different insurers, one of which I'd never heard of. The second switch happened eleven weeks after the first one started. That pattern can mean nothing. It can also mean an insurer saw something in a claim history they didn't like and walked.

So I called. The number on FMCSA's record was a mobile. It rang six times and went to a generic voicemail that had never been personalized. Not "you've reached XYZ Trucking" — just the default carrier beep.

I waited two hours and called again. Same result.

That was my answer. I declined the load.

Did I know for certain they were running an unsafe operation? No. But I couldn't get a single person associated with that MC number on the phone on a Tuesday afternoon, and I had a $94,000 medical device shipment to protect. The call — or really the absence of one — told me something no database could.

What Databases Actually Know

Here's what SAFER, L&I, QCMobile, and every other screening tool have in common: they tell you what happened before today. BASIC percentiles are built on inspection data that's up to 24 months old, weighted toward more recent events. Insurance filings reflect what was active when the database last refreshed. OOS orders are posted when they're issued, but corrective action can lag.

That's not a knock on those tools. They're valuable. But they're backward-looking by design, and that's the gap.

A phone call is the one step in your vetting process that tells you about right now.

Is someone answering the phone during business hours? That tells you whether this is an active operation or a carrier that's essentially dormant between loads. Is the person who answers familiar with their SAFER record? A safety manager at a legitimate carrier knows they have an elevated Unsafe Driving BASIC. They know why. They either have a credible explanation or they're working on it. The ones who can't explain it — or who didn't know it existed — that tells you something about how they're actually managing their compliance program.

Can they tell you who their Part 382 testing consortium is? Under 49 CFR Part 382, every carrier operating CMVs in interstate commerce must have a drug and alcohol testing program. A small fleet uses a C/TPA — a consortium or third-party administrator. If the person you're talking to can't name theirs, they either don't have drivers who require testing (which should match their authority type) or they don't know basic facts about their own program. Neither is good.

None of that shows up in a SAFER pull.

The Post-Montgomery Argument for Calling

Before Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC dropped in May, the argument for a direct carrier call was mostly practical. Now it's also legal.

The Supreme Court held unanimously that FAAAA preemption doesn't block state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers. That means when you approved a carrier for a load that ended in a serious accident, a plaintiff's attorney can argue that your selection process was unreasonable — in state court, in front of a jury that has no idea what SAFER is.

What does "reasonable selection" look like to twelve people who've never heard of a BASIC score? Checking databases is a start. But databases don't demonstrate judgment. They demonstrate that you pushed a button. A phone call demonstrates that you made a decision.

When the file shows that you called the carrier at 9:47 AM, spoke with their safety director for six minutes, discussed the elevated Unsafe Driving BASIC, received an explanation that they'd had two citation events in a high-enforcement corridor and had implemented dash camera monitoring and a new speed policy since then — that's a file that shows judgment. That's a human decision, not an automated flag-and-clear.

The opposing attorney can cross-examine a decision. They can't cross-examine a checkbox.

What to Actually Ask

I'm not suggesting you spend thirty minutes on the phone with every carrier you've ever booked. For a carrier you've used multiple times without incident on standard freight, the call isn't always necessary. But for a new carrier with any elevated BASIC, any unusual insurance pattern, any OOS events in the last 12 months, or any load over $200K — I make the call.

Start with the basics. "Can I speak with someone in your safety department?" If there's nobody — no dispatcher, no safety manager, no owner — who can talk to you about compliance questions during business hours, that's signal. A one-truck owner-operator should be able to answer basic questions themselves. If they can't, that's a compliance knowledge gap that's bigger than it looks.

Ask about anything elevated. If their Vehicle Maintenance BASIC is at the 68th percentile, ask about it directly. "I see your Vehicle Maintenance BASIC is elevated — what's going on there and what are you doing about it?" A carrier running a real maintenance program will have an answer. They may push back on specific events ("that was a light out, not a brake defect"), but they'll know what's in their record. Silence or "I don't know what that is" is information too.

Ask about their Part 382 program. Who's their C/TPA? Ask. An owner-operator should know immediately — they signed up with a consortium when they got their authority. If they can't name it or seem confused about whether it applies to them, that's a flag worth noting.

Ask about their DQ file process. Under 49 CFR § 391.23, carriers are required to investigate a new driver's employment history for the previous three years before putting them behind the wheel. You're not conducting the investigation — but asking "what does your driver onboarding process look like?" tells you whether they understand their own obligations. Most carriers who take this seriously can explain it in two sentences.

For anything over $200K, ask about equipment. Not as an interrogation. Just: "What year is most of your power equipment? What's your PM schedule?" A carrier hauling a $600K surgical system in a truck that hasn't had a documented oil change since Q2 2024 is a risk profile that won't appear anywhere in your SAFER pull.

How I Document This

The call log goes in the carrier file alongside the SAFER snapshot, the ACORD 25, and the L&I screenshot. It doesn't need to be long.

Here's the format I use:

If nobody picks up, I log that too.

That second entry is still due diligence. It shows what I tried, what I found, and that I made a decision based on it.

The Call Also Changes How the Carrier Behaves

There's a second benefit to calling that doesn't get enough attention: it changes what the carrier expects from the relationship. A carrier who knows you called their safety manager before the first load knows you're a broker who checks. Carriers self-select. The ones running loose operations don't want that attention. The ones running tight operations don't mind it — they've got the answers.

I've had carriers push back. "We've been doing this for twelve years and we've never had a broker call like this before." That's probably true. That's also not my problem to fix. My file needs to show reasonable care on my end. What other brokers do isn't a defense in a negligent-selection case, and "everyone else was doing the minimum" isn't an argument that plays well to a jury in a wrongful death suit.

The carriers who push back hardest on a call are usually the ones who'd have given you the worst answers anyway.

What Plaintiffs' Attorneys Can't Get Around

In a negligent-selection case, the plaintiff's theory is that you didn't do enough before you handed a dangerous carrier the keys to a load. The defense is that you did — that a reasonable, experienced broker would have done what you did.

Database screenshots are table stakes. Every semi-functional broker runs a SAFER check. What separates a defensible file from a thin one is evidence that a human being looked at the data and made a decision. A documented call with a carrier's safety staff is the clearest way to show that.

I've seen carrier files in litigation that had every automated report you could want and not a single sign that anyone ever talked to a person at the carrier. Those files are hard to defend. The plaintiff's lawyer stands up and asks: "You had all this data, but did you ever once pick up the phone?"

Pick up the phone.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com