Carrier Setup: The 8 Steps a Freight Broker Runs Before the First Load

What are the steps to onboard a new carrier as a freight broker?

A freight broker onboards a new carrier in 8 steps: identify it, confirm operating authority, check out-of-service status and safety rating, verify insurance, collect a W-9, confirm who gets paid, sign the agreement, and file each check with its date. The federal texts cited here bind the carrier on authority, safety fitness and insurance. None of them prescribes how a broker verifies those things, so the order and the thresholds are each broker’s own policy.

1. Identify the carrier. Record legal name, DBA, USDOT number, MC number, physical address and a named contact. 49 CFR 371.3 requires a broker’s record of each transaction to show the “name, address, and registration number of the originating motor carrier”, and lets the broker keep the carrier’s address and registration number on a master list. Setup is where the master-list entry is made.
2. Confirm operating authority. 49 CFR 371.2 defines a broker as a person who arranges transportation “by an authorized motor carrier”. Write down the status you saw: active, pending or inactive.
3. Check out-of-service status and safety rating. Record both results. 49 CFR 385.13 names the FMCSA Safety and Fitness Electronic Records System (SAFER) website as the place where carrier information, “including their most current safety rating”, is available.
4. Verify insurance. Record the insurer, policy number, auto liability limit, cargo limit and expiration date, and compare them with the minimums in your agreement.
5. Collect a W-9. The IRS describes Form W-9 as the form used to give a correct Taxpayer Identification Number to a person required to file an information return.
6. Confirm who gets paid. Ask whether the carrier factors its invoices. If it does, get the notice of assignment (NOA) and copy the remit-to address from the NOA, not from an invoice.
7. Sign the broker-carrier agreement. It goes first, before any rate confirmation, because the agreement holds the terms every later load moves under.
8. File every check with its date and time. Note who ran the checks.

What is carrier onboarding?

Carrier onboarding, also called carrier setup, is the vetting and paperwork a freight broker completes before tendering a first load to a motor carrier. It produces two documents. The first is the carrier file, the broker’s record of who the carrier is and what was checked. The second is the signed broker-carrier agreement.

The carrier file should have five sections: the carrier, the checks, insurance, who gets paid, and notes. The checks section pairs each result with the date and time it was run: authority checked at, out-of-service status checked at, safety rating checked at, and who ran them. A check with no time on it cannot show what the broker knew when it awarded the load.

The broker-carrier agreement should cover the parties, a re-brokering clause with a stated consequence, insurance minimums, payment terms, the cargo claim window and governing law. Neither document looks anything up for you; both record what someone else verified.

catuh builds AI agents that do the recording side of this work for brokers: they read the packet, insurance certificate and W-9 as they arrive by email and write their fields into the carrier record, and they capture the verification itself with the time it was run.

What does federal law require, and what is left to the broker?

The federal rules cited here set what the carrier must hold; none of them says how a broker verifies it. Each row gives the text and the party it binds.

Three details in those texts change what a broker should ask for.

The proof 387.7 lists is not the certificate. 49 CFR 387.7 opens: “No motor carrier shall operate a motor vehicle” until the minimum financial responsibility is in effect. Paragraph (d) lists the proof kept at the carrier’s principal place of business: the Form MCS-90 endorsement, a Form MCS-82 surety bond, or an FMCSA authorization to self-insure. A certificate of insurance is not on that list. Paragraph (e) makes the proof public information, to be “produced for review upon reasonable request by a member of the public”.

Unrated is the absence of a finding. 49 CFR 385.3 defines an unrated carrier as one to which FMCSA has not assigned a safety rating. An unsatisfactory rating also does not stop a carrier the day it is proposed. For carriers other than passenger and placarded hazardous materials carriers, 385.13 starts the prohibition on the 61st day after the notice of the proposed rating.

The NOA rule is state law. UCC 9-406 is a uniform text that applies as each state has enacted it, and its notification rule is subject to subsections (b) through (i). One of those says a notification is ineffective if it does not reasonably identify the rights assigned.

What do brokers publish as their own carrier requirements?

Published requirements differ by broker, and each one below is that company’s term, not a federal rule or an industry standard. The three were read on the companies’ own pages on 2026-10-05.

All three set auto liability above the $750,000 row in 49 CFR 387.9. That gap is contract, which is why step 4 compares the policy with your agreement and not with the regulation.

C.H. Robinson’s post on its certification criteria adds terms of its own: carriers with a Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating “will not be certified”, and the carrier’s USDOT number must not be authorized as a property freight broker, because “C.H. Robinson does not co-broker”. Those are one company’s thresholds; a brokerage that sets its own should write them down.

Why does the date on each check matter?

Because a negligent-hiring claim against a broker is not preempted by the FAAAA, and the claim in that case alleged what the broker knew, or should have known, when it chose the carrier. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, decided May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court took up whether such a claim falls within the FAAAA’s safety exception and answered: “It does.”

The opinion says negligent-hiring claims “impose a duty of reasonable care in employing a contractor for work carrying a risk of physical harm”. The plaintiff alleged the broker knew, or should have known, from the carrier’s safety rating that hiring it was reasonably likely to cause an accident. The Court reversed and remanded. It did not decide whether the broker was negligent, and it did not list the checks that satisfy reasonable care.

Our reading, which the opinion does not state: a broker asked what it knew on the day it awarded a load can answer from a record or from memory. A carrier file that shows the status seen and the time it was checked is a record. A checkmark is closer to memory, because authority, ratings and insurance all change after setup.

When does this process fall short?

Carrier setup describes one day; it does not cover carriers outside the federal rules cited, and it goes stale.

• Insurance can lapse. 49 CFR 387.7 lets the insurer or the carrier cancel a policy on 35 days’ written notice. An expiration date in the file is not a promise the policy runs to that date.
• Authority can be lost. Under 49 CFR 392.9a a carrier found operating without required authority “shall be ordered out of service”. A check dated at setup says nothing about the day of a later tender.
• The liability row has a scope. The $750,000 line in 387.9 covers for-hire carriage of nonhazardous property in interstate or foreign commerce at 10,001 pounds or more. The same table sets other amounts for hazardous materials.
• 387.9 is public liability, not cargo. The cargo limit in a carrier file is measured against the agreement.

After setup, the record that matters moves from the carrier file to the load: the times and updates covered in what automating the check call does not fix. This page reads regulation and court text and is not legal advice on a specific claim.