Why Freight Brokers Are Quietly Scrambling After Recent Court Decisions

Publicly, the freight industry's reaction to *Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II* has been calm and measured — trade-association statements about "continuing to prioritize safety," carefully worded LinkedIn posts, a lot of "we've always vetted our carriers."

Privately, it's a different scene. In the week since the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that brokers owe a duty of ordinary care in selecting carriers, the brokers I talk to have been doing something closer to scrambling — quietly, urgently, and rationally. This is a look at what's actually happening behind the measured statements, and why the people who understand the decision best are the ones moving fastest.

What "recent court decisions" means

Let me be precise about what triggered this, because "recent court decisions" is doing a lot of work. The headline event is Montgomery, decided May 14, 2026: the Supreme Court held, unanimously, that the FAAAA does not preempt state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers, and that brokers owe a duty of ordinary care when they choose carriers. That removed the single best defense brokers had — the argument that these claims were federally preempted and should be thrown out before anyone examined the merits.

But Montgomery didn't come from nowhere. It capped a multi-year trend in the lower courts that had been chipping away at broker preemption, against a backdrop of nuclear verdicts that made every solvent defendant in the chain a more attractive target. Montgomery just made the trend official, national, and unanimous. The shield brokers had been hoping the Supreme Court might reinforce, the Court instead removed. *That's* the decision people are reacting to.

What the scramble actually looks like

Here's what's happening in the back offices, based on what brokers are telling me and what I'm seeing across the industry:

1. Calls to insurance brokers and underwriters. The first move for a lot of brokerages was to get on the phone with whoever writes their contingent and primary liability coverage and ask the obvious questions: are we covered for negligent-selection claims, what are our limits, what are the exclusions, and are premiums about to move? The answers are not always comforting — underwriters are reassessing exposure across their books, and "we'll get back to you" is doing a lot of work in those conversations.

2. Frantic policy archaeology. Brokerages are pulling their own carrier-selection policies out of the drawer to see what they actually say — and many are discovering the policy is either nonexistent, aspirational ("we use reasonable efforts to select safe carriers" with nothing behind it), or wildly out of step with what they actually do day to day. The gap between the written policy and the real practice is exactly what a plaintiff's attorney lives to exploit, and brokers are realizing it.

3. Auditing the back catalog. The harder question keeps surfacing: *what about the loads we already moved?* Negligent-selection claims can arrive years after a load, near the statute-of-limitations edge. Brokers are realizing that crashes already in the system — loads tendered months or years ago — could mature into claims, and they're discovering they have little or no contemporaneous record of what they checked on those carriers. You can't retroactively create a tender-date screening record. That one stings.

4. Rewriting onboarding and tender procedures. The smarter shops are moving past anxiety to action: writing an actual carrier-selection standard, building screening into the *tender* step (not just onboarding), and figuring out how to capture and retain records. This is the productive end of the scramble.

5. Compliance hires and tooling. Some larger brokerages are creating or expanding compliance roles and shopping for tools that produce defensible records. The phrase I keep hearing is some version of "we need to be able to *prove* it now," which is the correct lesson.

Why the scramble is rational, not panic

It would be easy to dismiss this as overreaction. It isn't, and here's the clear-eyed reason: Montgomery didn't change what good brokers were *supposed* to do — careful carriers were already screening. It changed the *consequences of not having proof.* Before, a broker facing a negligent-selection claim could often get it dismissed on preemption before the merits. Now the merits get reached, which means the case turns on the factual question of whether the broker exercised reasonable care — and that question is answered by *documents.*

So the brokerages scrambling are responding to a real and specific shift: the legal system is now going to ask them, in discovery and at deposition, "show me what you checked on this carrier on the day you tendered this load." Brokers who can answer that with a clean, dated record are fine. Brokers who can only answer with "we always check" and an onboarding packet are exposed — and they know it. The scramble is the rational response of people who just realized their actual exposure exceeds their documented diligence.

Who's *not* scrambling — and why

Worth noting the other group: a minority of brokerages are notably calm, and it's not because they're ignoring the decision. It's because they were already screening carriers at tender, against a written standard, with timestamped records and carrier attestations retained for years. For them, Montgomery is a validation, not a fire drill. They built the evidence machine before they needed it, and now they need it, and it's already running.

That's the whole lesson in one contrast. The difference between the brokers scrambling and the brokers shrugging isn't how much they care about safety — both groups care. It's whether they were *generating evidence of their care* before the law forced the question. One group has to retrofit a documentation practice under pressure (and can't fix the back catalog). The other group just keeps doing what it was doing.

If you're in the scramble, here's the prioritized list

For brokerages reacting to Montgomery right now, in order of urgency:

1. **Start screening at tender, today.** Every load, capture the carrier's current FMCSA safety profile against a written standard, with a timestamp. Stop the bleeding first — make sure every *new* load generates a record, even before you've perfected the policy.

2. **Write the standard down.** One page defining what you check and what disqualifies a carrier. This defines "reasonable care" on your terms.

3. **Capture attestations and retain records.** Tie the carrier's signed representations to the load; keep everything for years.

4. **Talk to your insurer honestly.** Understand your coverage, limits, and exclusions for negligent-selection claims now, not after a crash.

5. **Make peace with the back catalog and look forward.** You can't create tender-date records for loads already moved. Focus your energy on never having that gap again.

The brokers scrambling after Montgomery are right to scramble — the exposure is real and the preemption shield is gone for good. But the scramble has a clear destination: a documented, per-load screening practice that turns "reasonable care" into evidence. That's the entire reason I built DOTScreener, and it's why the brokers who already had it are the ones quietly going back to work this week while everyone else is on the phone with their underwriter.

The decision is done. The shield is gone. The only thing left to decide is whether your diligence is provable. Decide it before the next crash, not after.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com

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Sources

• *Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC*, 608 U.S. ___ (2026) — unanimous opinion (Barrett, J.)
• [49 U.S.C. § 14501(c) — FAAAA preemption and the motor-vehicle safety exception](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/14501)
• [American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) — Nuclear Verdicts in Trucking (2020)](https://truckingresearch.org/2020/06/understanding-the-impact-of-nuclear-verdicts-on-the-trucking-industry/)
• [Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 — Negligent Selection](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/negligent_hiring)
• [Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) — broker carrier-selection guidance](https://www.tianet.org/)