The Truck That Wasn't Theirs: Part 376 Leasing and the Insurance Gap Most Brokers Never Check

Three years ago a broker I know tendered a $280,000 electronics load to a carrier he'd used a dozen times. SAFER looked fine. BASIC scores were clean. Authority was 28 months old, satisfactory rating, no OOS orders. He pulled the ACORD 25 certificate, confirmed the liability limit, filed it, and moved on. Load picked up. Truck rolled. Then somewhere on I-70 in Kansas it didn't.

What happened in discovery was ugly. The truck that hauled that load wasn't owned by the carrier — it was an independent owner-operator who'd been dispatching under their MC for about eight months. There was no written lease. There was no Part 376 agreement. The carrier's commercial auto policy was a scheduled-unit policy listing three VINs, none of which was the truck that went down. The owner-op had a personal commercial policy with a "for-hire" exclusion. The shipper lost the load. A driver in the other vehicle got hurt.

The carrier had almost nothing to pay. The broker was left explaining why his screening consisted of an ACORD 25 and a SAFER print that didn't reflect how this carrier actually operated.

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What Part 376 Actually Says

49 CFR Part 376 governs the leasing of commercial motor vehicles to motor carriers. The short version: if a carrier dispatches a truck they don't own — an owner-op's truck — they must have a written lease that meets specific federal requirements. That lease, under § 376.12, has to include the equipment description and VIN (§ 376.12(c)(1)), the duration and geographic scope of the lease, and a clear statement that the carrier assumes full responsibility for the operation of the vehicle for the duration of the lease.

The insurance piece is in § 376.12(j): the carrier's public liability insurance must extend to the leased vehicle for the entire duration of the lease. Not the owner-op's policy. The carrier's policy. The carrier assumes liability by taking on the lease — that's the whole point of the federal leasing requirements. Without a proper lease, there's no legal mechanism to attach the carrier's insurance to that truck.

At load-tender time, that means this: if you're working with a carrier that runs owner-ops, and those owner-ops aren't properly leased under Part 376, you may be funding a move where the truck hauling your freight has no coverage under the carrier's policy. The ACORD 25 you verified? Covers the carrier's own units. Not this one.

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The Signal Hiding in SAFER

Here's the tell, and you can find it without asking anybody anything. Go to the SAFER company snapshot for your carrier. Look at two numbers: the reported power unit count from the last MCS-150, and the distinct VINs that show up in FMCSA inspection records.

If a carrier reports 4 power units on their MCS-150 but you see 14 distinct unit numbers across their inspection history over the last 18 months, they're running owner-ops. That's not inherently a problem — millions of loads move every year on properly-leased owner-op equipment. But it's a signal to ask harder questions about how those trucks are covered.

A carrier running a mixed fleet of owned and leased units should have blanket fleet language on their commercial auto policy, not a scheduled-unit policy. Blanket language typically reads something like "all owned, hired, leased, borrowed, and non-owned vehicles." A scheduled-unit policy lists VINs. If you ask for the declarations page and see VINs instead of blanket language, and the carrier dispatches more trucks than are listed, you have a coverage gap on every truck not on that list.

This isn't exotic. I'd estimate a majority of small carriers (under 10 power units) run at least some owner-ops. Many of them have scheduled-unit policies because those policies are cheaper and the carrier only pays premium for what's on the list. The flaw is obvious once you think about it; most brokers never do.

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The ACORD 25 Doesn't Show You This

The ACORD 25 certificate is a summary. It shows the named insured, the policy number, the effective and expiration dates, the liability limits, and the certificate holder. It does not show you the declarations page. It does not tell you whether the policy is scheduled-unit or blanket fleet. It does not tell you whether "hired and non-owned auto" coverage is included.

Hired and non-owned auto coverage is the specific endorsement that covers vehicles the insured doesn't own — including, in some policies, leased vehicles. Some commercial auto policies include it automatically. Many don't. It's a line item on the dec page, and it's commonly absent on smaller carriers' policies because it adds premium and the agent didn't push it.

There's a simple ask that takes this from a gap to a documented control: request the declarations page, not just the certificate. This is industry-standard for any load where the per-load exposure is meaningful. The dec page will tell you in about 30 seconds whether you're looking at blanket or scheduled, and whether hired/non-owned is endorsed.

If the carrier pushes back on sharing the dec page, that's information too.

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What This Looks Like After Montgomery

Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC changed the legal landscape for this kind of screening gap. The Supreme Court held in May 2026 that the FAAAA doesn't preempt state-law negligent-selection claims against brokers. State tort law applies. And in most state negligent-selection cases, the question comes down to whether the broker knew or should have known something material about how this carrier operated.

The SAFER snapshot showing 14 VINs against a 4-unit MCS-150 report is constructive notice that this carrier runs owner-ops. Once a plaintiffs' attorney shows the jury that number and explains what it means, "I pulled the ACORD 25 and it looked fine" becomes a very uncomfortable answer. Your selection record either shows you noticed and addressed the leasing model — or it shows you didn't look.

This is why I keep hammering that the ACORD 25 alone isn't enough for meaningful insurance verification. It's a starting point. The dec page, the endorsements, and for owner-op-heavy carriers, a direct conversation about their Part 376 compliance — that's the screening. The certificate is just proof you bothered to start.

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Carriers That Do This Right

This isn't a case against working with owner-op carriers. Some of the best small carriers I've worked with run one or two trucks they lease from independent operators. When it's done correctly, the carrier has:

• A written Part 376 lease agreement for each unit, signed before dispatch, specifying the VIN and the lease period.
• A blanket fleet policy or explicit "hired auto" endorsement covering leased units.
• A clear MCS-150 that reflects their actual fleet size, or an explanation for the discrepancy.

That carrier is fine. I've tendered freight to carriers like that plenty of times. The vetting is just two extra steps: ask about their leasing arrangements, and ask for the dec page. Takes ten minutes. It's the carriers who can't answer those questions coherently where you have a problem.

One honest signal: a carrier who's thought about this will have a straight answer. "We run three owner-ops under written leases, all covered under our blanket fleet policy through [carrier]. Here's the dec page." That response, timestamped, is an exhibit in your favor if something goes wrong. The carrier who stumbles over the question, or who produces a dec page showing three VINs for a carrier you know runs ten trucks, is telling you something.

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How I Document This

For any carrier where SAFER's inspection VIN count doesn't match the MCS-150 power unit count — or where the carrier is known to run owner-ops — I add the following to the carrier file:

1. SAFER snapshot print with the power unit count and inspection summary highlighted, timestamped.

2. Request for declarations page (not just ACORD 25) — logged as a sent request with response.

3. Note on whether the policy is blanket fleet or scheduled-unit. If scheduled, confirm that any owner-op units are listed.

4. Confirmation that hired/non-owned auto coverage is endorsed, or a carrier attestation that all dispatched units are owned.

5. If the carrier confirms Part 376 leases are in place — note that, with the date of the conversation.

In DOTScreener, I run the insurance verification through the COI review and add the dec page confirmation as a note on the carrier file. The screening timestamp is locked. If anything in their policy changes, Continuous Monitoring flags it. The point isn't to be perfect — it's to have a documented record showing I asked the right questions.

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The Bottom Line

The ACORD 25 is a receipt for a conversation you still need to have. If a carrier's inspection history shows more trucks than their MCS-150 reports, they're running owner-ops. If they're running owner-ops, their insurance needs to explicitly cover those units, either through blanket language or a hired-auto endorsement. That coverage is governed by 49 CFR Part 376, and absent a proper lease agreement, there's no legal mechanism to attach the carrier's policy to the truck that's actually hauling your load.

After Montgomery, this is a documented screen, not an optional one. Ask for the dec page. Ask about the leasing model. Log the answers. The ten minutes it takes isn't protection against every bad outcome — but it's the difference between a carrier file that holds up in discovery and one that hands the other side their closing argument.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com