You Approved This Carrier Eight Months Ago. A Lot Can Change.

I've told this story at a couple of industry events because it never gets less relevant. A broker I know — mid-size operation, decent processes, good intentions — tendered a $180,000 flatbed load to a carrier they'd used twice before. Not a stranger from a load board. A carrier sitting on their approved list with a signed carrier agreement, a COI on file, and a SAFER screenshot from the previous November.

Here's what happened between that November and the following July, while nobody was watching:

The carrier's Vehicle OOS rate climbed from 9.1% to 43%. A Maintenance BASIC alert fired in April. Three brake-system violations came up on a February roadside inspection — the kind that 49 CFR § 396.3(a)(1) says the carrier must repair and document before the vehicle operates again. Their cargo insurance policy was cancelled in January and re-bound through a different underwriter at a lower effective limit. And their MCS-150 hadn't been updated in 14 months.

None of that was in the carrier file. The November onboarding documents were clean, thorough, and totally irrelevant to what the carrier looked like in July.

The load moved. There was an accident. Someone got hurt badly enough to require surgery. The plaintiff's attorney subpoenaed the carrier file. The eight months of empty space between onboarding and load tender was the center of the case.

That gap — between "we approved this carrier" and "we tendered them this load" — is exactly where negligent-selection lawsuits live after Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II.

The Approved List Is Not a Vetting System

This is the misunderstanding that underlies most broker liability exposure: the idea that approving a carrier is the same as vetting a carrier.

It isn't. Not even close.

Approving a carrier says: on the date we approved them, they met our minimum threshold. Vetting a carrier for a specific load says: right now, before I tender this load, I've confirmed they're still the carrier they were when we approved them.

Those are two different acts. After Montgomery, the due diligence clock doesn't stop at onboarding. The Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that the FAAAA does not preempt state negligent-selection claims means a plaintiff's attorney doesn't need to prove you selected a bad carrier in November. They only need to prove you selected a bad carrier in July. If you'd looked in July, you'd have seen what happened in the months since November.

"We approved them months ago" is not a defense. It's a fact pattern that establishes you didn't check when it mattered.

What Changes in Eight Months

Carriers aren't static entities. The safety profile of a carrier can shift substantially in a matter of months because the things that make carriers dangerous aren't structural — they're operational.

A driver turns over. The new hire has a PSP history the carrier didn't screen carefully enough. Maintenance practices start sliding as the shop gets busier. Equipment ages without proper servicing. A principal leaves and the management quality drops without any change to the FMCSA filing. An OOS order comes down on one truck and the carrier just parks it and keeps running the rest of the fleet. Insurance costs spike at renewal and the carrier shops for cheaper coverage, sometimes trading effective limits or cargo policy quality to make the premium work.

None of this shows up in the carrier agreement you signed last November. None of it triggers a notification in your TMS. You only see it if you look.

The things worth watching between onboardings:

OOS rate movement. A 9% Vehicle OOS rate at approval that's now sitting at 43% is telling you something. The rate didn't spike overnight — it accumulated inspection by inspection while nobody at the brokerage looked. FMCSA publishes these numbers through SAFER and the BASIC system. The data is there. It just requires someone to pull it.

BASIC alerts. The Maintenance BASIC tracks brake systems, lights, tires, coupling devices — the mechanical failures most likely to cause a crash. A carrier can score fine at onboarding and deteriorate quickly if maintenance practices slip. A percentile over 75 in Maintenance warrants a conversation. Over 80, I'm calling before I tender anything.

Insurance status. Under 49 CFR § 387.9, carriers must maintain continuous insurance filings with FMCSA. When a policy lapses or gets cancelled, the insurer notifies FMCSA, and that lapse is visible in the L&I database. The ACORD 25 you collected at onboarding reflects the policy that existed when it was issued — not what happened in January when the carrier shopped for a cheaper premium.

MCS-150 currency. 49 CFR § 390.19 requires carriers to update their MCS-150 at minimum every two years and within 30 days of certain changes. A carrier who hasn't updated in 14 months isn't automatically a problem, but it's a signal about how seriously they're managing their regulatory obligations.

Authority status changes. Authorities can be placed out of service, go inactive, or get revoked. They can also be reactivated after a lapse. Sometimes a carrier reactivates authority that went inactive during a hard patch. Sometimes the principals are the same as a carrier that previously lost authority. This doesn't happen to most carriers — but when it happens, it happens fast, and it doesn't come with a notification to the brokers using that carrier.

That's five data points. Checking all five manually takes 15-20 minutes per carrier if you're doing it properly — SAFER, L&I, BASIC system, cross-referencing. For a broker running 30 loads a day to 30 different carriers, the math on manual checks doesn't work. So most brokers re-check carriers they haven't used in 90 days, or do annual reviews, or just keep running the approved list until something goes wrong.

I understand the math. I also understand what that math produces in discovery.

The Friction Problem

The honest reason per-load checks don't happen isn't laziness — it's that checking takes too long for how often it needs to happen. If it takes 15 minutes to check a carrier and you're tendering 20 loads a day, that's five hours of checking before you've dispatched anything. Something gets cut. What gets cut is almost always the check on the carrier you've used before, because it feels redundant.

This was the specific problem I was trying to solve when I built Text-to-Screen into DOTScreener.

Text-to-Screen works the way the name says: you text an MC number to DOTScreener and you get back a vetting summary in about 30 seconds. Authority status. Current OOS rates. Key BASIC flags, if any. Insurance filing status. Carrier age. Red flags surfaced at the top of the message so you see the important stuff first.

You don't need a browser tab. You don't need to be at a desk. I've run checks mid-phone call with a shipper, walking between meetings, waiting for a connection at O'Hare. The point is to make the check fast enough that the friction stops being an excuse.

The broker in my November story could have texted MC-1183974 before confirming that July dispatch. Thirty seconds. They'd have seen the 43% OOS rate, the April BASIC alert, the January insurance re-bind. They might have called the carrier to understand what was happening. They might have pulled the load and found a different truck. Either way, they'd have made a decision with current information instead of eight-month-old information.

I'm not claiming technology prevents accidents. I'm saying that removing the friction from checking is what makes people actually do it.

Per-Load Checks Don't Have to Be Full Onboarding Reviews

One thing I want to be clear about: "vet before every load" doesn't mean "run a full onboarding review before every load." For a carrier already on your approved list, the pre-load check is an abbreviated confirmation, not a deep dive.

What I'm looking for before tendering to an approved carrier:

• Authority still active?
• OOS rate moved significantly since last check?
• Any new BASIC alerts since onboarding?
• Insurance filing still current?
• Any active OOS orders?

That's a 30-second check. If five come back clean, the load moves and I document the confirmation. If any of them come back dirty, I make a decision — call the carrier to understand what happened, require updated documentation, redirect the load to a different carrier, or hold the dispatch until I know more.

The documentation is as important as the check itself. "We verified authority, OOS rates, and insurance status before tendering this load" is a sentence that belongs in your carrier file, with a timestamp, before the truck pulls out. After Montgomery, the paper trail for the specific load matters — not just the paper trail for the onboarding.

A judge or jury that sees a timestamped carrier check from the morning of the accident sees a broker who did their job. A judge or jury that sees an eight-month-old onboarding packet sees a broker who coasted on approval and got caught.

How I Document This

For every load tendered to a carrier on my approved list, I run a Text-to-Screen check before dispatch confirmation. The output — carrier name, MC/DOT, authority status, OOS rates, any flagged BASICs, insurance status, timestamp — goes into the load record tied to that carrier.

If everything comes back clean, that confirmation becomes part of the dispatch documentation. If anything is flagged, I note what I found, what I did next, and why I made the call I made.

For carriers I haven't used in more than 90 days, I do a fuller review before the next load: re-pull the SAFER snapshot, check the L&I filing history for any policy changes or lapses, re-verify COI currency. That goes in the carrier file too, with a date.

The discipline isn't complicated. It's just checking the carrier the same way you check everything else about a load — before it moves, every time, with something in writing that proves you did it.

Approved lists go stale. Carriers change. The only thing that doesn't change is what a plaintiff's attorney will do with eight months of nothing in your file.

Don't give them nothing.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com