Five Questions. One Call. Why Your T-Call Is Now a Vetting Record.

A broker I know made the call. I have to say that upfront because most stories about T-calls end with someone who skipped it. She didn't. She called dispatch the morning of the load, talked to someone for about three and a half minutes, wrote "called dispatch, confirmed pickup" in her TMS notes, and moved on.

Eight months later, the driver — who had an open violation in the Clearinghouse the carrier's own annual query had missed — was involved in a rollover on I-57. Serious injuries. Suit filed against the carrier and the broker under the standard now established by Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC.

In deposition, plaintiff's counsel asked: "You called dispatch. What did you ask them?"

She said she confirmed the pickup time and got a driver contact number.

"Did you ask whether the driver had any open drug or alcohol violations?"

No.

"Did you ask anything at all about the driver besides how to reach him?"

She looked at her notes. "Called dispatch, confirmed pickup" doesn't answer that question.

The call existed. The documentation proved it. But the documentation also proved it was operational coordination — not a vetting step. That distinction matters in a deposition room, and it'll matter more as Montgomery cases start going to trial.

Why the T-call changed after May 14, 2026

The T-call has been standard in freight operations for decades. You book the load, you call dispatch to confirm the driver, the ETA at origin, and the truck number for the customer contact chain. Three minutes. You're not vetting anyone. You're making sure someone shows up.

That version is fine for what it is. It's not a vetting record.

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II held that the Airline Deregulation Act does not preempt state-law negligent selection claims against freight brokers. Brokers can be sued in state court for who they put on a load. Every gap in the due-diligence record is fair game in discovery — including the gap between "we made a call" and "we exercised judgment on a call."

If your T-call is operational coordination, say so. Just know that it contributes nothing to your vetting defense.

The version of the T-call I'm describing takes the same three minutes and produces something that does.

Question one: "Who's picking this up — driver name and cell?"

I ask this on every load, before the truck rolls, at the point of dispatch confirmation.

Not to introduce myself to the driver. To force dispatch to name one.

A dispatcher who can't name a driver at tender is running a carrier where loads get allocated later — maybe by another company, maybe to a pool they don't fully control. Small carriers sometimes say "we have a couple drivers and I'll know by morning who's available." That's a yellow flag. Not automatic grounds to kill the load, but something you note. What you're listening for is the difference between "we'll have [name] out of our Joliet terminal by 7 AM" and "we'll figure it out."

"We'll figure it out" is not a driver confirmation. It's dispatch telling you they don't know yet.

If the pickup happens with a completely different person than was named — different name, no prior notice — that's a double-brokering tell and a vetting failure you had a chance to catch. Write it down: who they named, whether they hesitated, whether the driver at pickup matched.

Question two: "What truck and trailer are they taking? Give me a unit number or plate."

This is the one that catches cargo operations faster than anything else.

I had a carrier — DOT-3847291 — give me a unit number on a T-call. The plate didn't match what showed up at the shipper. I know this because the driver mentioned it to the shipping manager when he pulled in, who flagged it to my operations team. The assumption was a last-minute equipment swap. The load moved anyway. Two days later it was gone.

The investigation concluded that the trailer actually present was operated by an entity connected to the brokered carrier through a shared officer name. The contracted carrier, MC-1874632, maintained they had no knowledge of the substitution. $148,000 in consumer electronics. I'll let you guess how that claims process went.

A mismatched unit doesn't always mean theft. Equipment gets swapped. Trailers get interchanged at terminals and drop lots all the time. But when you have the unit from the T-call and it doesn't match what's at the dock, you have a specific, documented question you can get answered before the gates seal. If you don't have the unit from the T-call, you have nothing to verify against.

The VIN or plate you get is also cross-referenceable against inspection history. A truck the carrier describes as "our best unit" sitting on fourteen OOS violations in eighteen months is telling you something about their maintenance culture you won't find on SAFER.

Question three: "Are you dispatching this under MC-[their MC number]?"

You should already know their MC by this point. You're not asking because you forgot — you're asking to create a documented, direct statement from dispatch about which entity is moving your freight.

The reason: a double-brokered load involves a carrier who contracts with you and then re-tenders to a second carrier you've never seen. When dispatch at the contracted carrier confirms "yes, we're dispatching under MC-1874632" and the truck that shows up is running under a different MC entirely — that's a material misrepresentation, documented at the point of tender. It shifts the culpability picture considerably, both for the carrier's fraud exposure and for your defense on reasonable care.

If they say anything other than their own MC — "we'll use our sister company," "we sometimes file under a different DOT for certain corridors," "our sub-entity handles this region" — that's a conversation you need to have before the load commits, not after. It may be legitimate. It may not be. The point is that you asked directly and you know the answer.

Question four: "Any active DOT compliance issues I should know about?"

This one sounds naive. Nobody with an open compliance crisis is going to volunteer it on a T-call.

That's not why I ask it.

I ask it because a carrier who says "no, we're in good standing" and turns out to have had an OOS order issued eleven days prior has now made a specific, documented misrepresentation to me at the point of carrier selection. That's in my notes. That's evidence of carrier conduct that affects the liability picture post-Montgomery, particularly on the question of comparative fault and whether the broker reasonably relied on information the carrier provided.

I also listen for the response that isn't a flat no. "Well, we got flagged on a routine review last month but it's handled" is not the same as "everything's clean." If dispatch volunteers something like that, you follow up — you don't just note "said they're fine" and tender the load.

The question creates accountability. It doesn't guarantee honesty. But undocumented deception by the carrier is very different from a broker who failed to ask.

Question five: "Who's your liability insurer — who's your BMC-91 carrier?"

This is the hardest one for dispatch to answer off the top of their head. That's the point.

A well-run operation can tell you their insurer in about fifteen seconds. It's Progressive. It's Canal. It's Old Republic. It's on every document they file with FMCSA. Dispatch at a competent carrier knows this.

When they don't know, or when they give me a name that doesn't match what I pulled from FMCSA's L&I system earlier that morning, I don't tender until we get it sorted.

This catches a specific pattern that's becoming more common post-Montgomery: carriers who've been dropped by one insurer for claims or safety history and are in transition to a new policy. There's frequently a gap between when the new coverage binds and when the updated BMC-91 posts to FMCSA's system. SAFER still shows "active authority." L&I may show the prior policy as canceled with a pending replacement. The carrier might say "oh we just switched, the new card is coming." That's a carrier I'm going to call back when the L&I update reflects reality — not a carrier I'm going to put on a load at 7 AM on a Friday.

How I document this

I don't write paragraphs. In my TMS notes — or whatever load documentation field I'm working in — I write something like:

Sixty seconds. If something was off, I add a line about what I did about it. If everything checked, the note is short and clean.

Under 49 CFR § 371.3, brokers are required to maintain records of each transaction for three years, including the carrier name and the nature of the service provided. That's the regulatory floor for what you keep. The negligent selection standard established by Montgomery is the ceiling you're now being measured against — which means your file needs to show not just that you selected a carrier but how you evaluated them at the time of tender.

The T-call note is the evidence of real-time human judgment. A SAFER screenshot is a timestamp. A certificate of insurance is a document. The call record shows someone actually looked at this carrier as a decision, not a transaction.

If you can't say who you spoke to, when, and what they told you, the call doesn't exist for the purposes of your defense. Plaintiff's counsel will ask. If your notes just say "confirmed dispatch," they'll keep asking until the lack of specifics does the work for them.

What this actually costs you

Three minutes per load. Sixty seconds of notes.

I've had brokers tell me the T-call adds friction they can't afford, especially on high-volume days when they're booking forty loads and have two dispatchers on the phones. I understand the pressure. But the loads that end in litigation aren't typically the ones you were nervous about. They're the ones that looked fine on paper and moved without a second thought.

Five questions. One call. The documentation takes less time than entering the rate in your TMS.

If your carrier vetting doesn't include this yet, the next load is a good time to start.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com