Freight Broker Went Out of Business? You May Still Get Paid

The MC number is revoked, the phones are dead, the website is gone — and the broker still owes you for loads you hauled.

The short answer: a dead broker is not always a dead debt. Often the money is not gone — it has moved. Into a shipper that already paid the broker, into a bond that pays inside a published window, into a new LLC at the same address, or onto the people who signed for the old one. What doesn’t survive is time: two of the routes below close on federal clocks that run whether or not anyone tells you.

Which kind of shutdown this is decides which route is open: a quiet wind-down, a failure of the broker’s federal security, or a Title 11 filing. The third closes a door the second opens.

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Route 1 — The bond, and the window that opens once

Every registered property broker must keep $75,000 in security in effect — a BMC-84 surety bond or a BMC-85 trust fund, filed with FMCSA (49 CFR § 387.307(a), (d)(1)) — and that floor holds “regardless of the number of branch offices or sales agents of the broker” (49 U.S.C. § 13906(b)(3)). The regulation says what it is for: payments to shippers or motor carriers “if the broker fails to carry out its contracts, agreements, or arrangements for the supplying of transportation by authorized motor carriers.”

Section 13906(b)(2)(A) narrows that to the claim a carrier actually has — one “arising from its failure to pay freight charges” — and then gives three doors, and only three. The security pays if the broker consents, subject to the surety’s review; if the broker does not respond to adequate notice addressing the claim’s validity and the surety finds it valid; or if the claim goes unresolved for a reasonable period and is reduced to a judgment against the broker.

Read the third one again: a claim the broker or the surety contests is not paid on paperwork — it is paid on a judgment. A broker gone dark consents to nothing and answers nothing, leaving door two — silence plus a complete, documented claim — and door three, which runs through legal collections and a licensed collection attorney; collecting the judgment is separate work again.

One detail cuts your way: the security “may not be reduced by deducting attorney’s fees or administrative costs” (§ 13906(b)(8)), so the fight over the fund does not shrink it.

Claim against the right surety, too. Replacing a bond does not affect the retiring surety’s liability for damages from transportation the broker arranged “prior to the date such termination becomes effective” (49 CFR § 387.307(d)(2)(ii)) — so pull the filing in effect the day your load was arranged, not today’s.

The 60 days, and what starts them

Once a broker actually fails, the sequence is fixed. The surety initiates cancellation (49 CFR § 387.307(f)(3)), FMCSA publishes written notice of it in the FMCSA Register on its public website, and the surety “must accept claims … for 60 calendar days … following FMCSA’s public notification of the financial failure or insolvency” (§ 387.307(f)(4)). Within 30 days after that window closes it pays the uncontested claims — “or a pro rata share … if the total amount of such claims exceeds the financial security available” (49 U.S.C. § 13906(b)(6)).

Three things follow, and they are the practical heart of this.

One bond, divided — not a $75,000 payout per carrier. That $75,000 is the whole fund for everyone who files, and in a real collapse the claims can exceed it many times over, so each carrier takes a pro rata share of what remains. The share is of “the financial security available,” and a bond that already paid earlier claims sits below the floor — which is why falling below the required amount triggers immediate suspension of the broker’s registration (§ 13906(b)(5)). Treat the bond as a partial recovery, not the number on your invoice.

The clock starts on a publication nobody mails you. The public record is the notice, and filing late forecloses everything the fund would have paid.

Only uncontested claims are paid inside the window. A thin claim invites a contest, and a contest routes you back to door three, which does not fit in 60 days. Rate confirmation, bill of lading, proof of delivery, invoice, accessorial backup — every load, one package. (This is the current § 387.307, effective January 16, 2026.)

Route 2 — The entity isn’t as empty as it looks

A broker that “went out of business” often still has receivables — including from the shipper that owes it for the loads you hauled — plus bank accounts and sometimes a wind-down paying whoever shows up organized. Silence reads as forfeit. A documented, escalating claim reads as a liability.

You also have a federal right to see part of its file. Under 49 CFR § 371.3(a), a broker must keep a record of every transaction showing, among other items, “the amount of any freight charges collected by the broker and the date of payment to the carrier.” Those records are kept three years, and “each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of the transaction required to be kept by these rules” (§ 371.3(b), (c)).

Read that twice: the broker’s own record is supposed to show whether it already collected on your load.

Money that left on the way down has its own statute. Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 24.005(a) reaches a transfer made “with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud any creditor of the debtor,” and subsection (b) lists the badges a court may weigh — an insider transfer, concealment, a transfer after the debtor “had been sued or threatened with suit.” Counsel brings that action; your record of who got what decides whether it is worth bringing.

Route 3 — The fold-up game

The version carriers run into most often isn’t a death — it’s a shed skin. Same people, same desks, new LLC, new MC number. FMCSA’s Licensing & Insurance system searches by USDOT number, by MC, FF, or MX docket number, and by legal name, DBA name, and state. Search the people and the addresses, not the dead docket number.

What skip tracing and asset investigation documents:

• The principals behind the old authority, and where they surfaced next
• The successor operation — same address, same phones, same customer list, and loads moving under a brand that matches no live registration, which is itself a problem: a broker “shall not perform or offer to perform any brokerage service … in any name other than that in which its registration is issued” (49 CFR § 371.7(a))
• Transfers out of the failing entity on the way down

Be realistic, because Texas does not hand this over. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 21.223(a)(2) bars alter-ego liability for an entity’s contractual obligations unless the creditor demonstrates, under § 21.223(b), that the person caused the entity to be used to perpetrate — and did perpetrate — “an actual fraud on the obligee primarily for the direct personal benefit” of that person; § 101.002(a) applies the section to LLCs. And under § 10.254(b), except as another statute expressly provides, a buyer of a domestic entity’s property “may not be held responsible or liable for a liability or obligation of the transferring domestic entity that is not expressly assumed by the person.”

So successor liability is not a label you assert in a demand letter. It is a fact pattern somebody has to prove, under tests that vary by state, and the investigative record turns it into a question counsel can answer.

Route 4 — The people behind a forfeited Texas corporation

One Texas route asks nothing about fraud.

Under Tex. Tax Code § 171.255(a), when the corporate privileges of a corporation are forfeited for failing to file a franchise tax report or pay the tax or penalty, each director or officer is liable for each debt of the corporation “created or incurred in this state after the date on which the report, tax, or penalty is due and before the corporate privileges are revived.” Subsection (b) measures that liability “as if the director or officer were a partner and the corporation were a partnership,” and subsection (d) closes the obvious exit: reviving the charter does not affect liability that already attached. Forfeiture also denies the corporation “the right to sue or defend in a court of this state” (§ 171.252(1)).

Read the limits with it. Subsection (c) gives a director two outs — a debt created over their objection, or without their knowledge where reasonable diligence would not have revealed it. The statute is written in corporate terms, so whether it reaches an LLC’s manager is a contested question for counsel. And it is keyed to when each debt was created or incurred, not when it went past due. Still, a folded broker has often stopped filing with Texas too, which is why the Comptroller’s record is an early pull — see collecting from a forfeited Texas entity.

What bankruptcy changes

If the broker files, your posture changes first. The petition “operates as a stay, applicable to all entities,” of continuing an action against the debtor, of enforcing a pre-petition judgment, of “any act to collect, assess, or recover a claim against the debtor that arose before the commencement of the case,” and of setoff (11 U.S.C. § 362(a)(1), (2), (6), (7)). The claim moves onto the court’s calendar — 70 days after the order for relief in a voluntary chapter 7, 12, or 13 case, 90 days in an involuntary chapter 7 (Fed. R. Bankr. P. 3002(c)), with the bar date court-set in chapter 11 (Rule 3003(c)(3)). The sequence is in the four deadlines after a customer files.

Then the part almost nobody tells carriers. A bankruptcy filing is not, by itself, the “financial failure or insolvency” that opens the bond’s 60-day claim window. 49 CFR § 387.307(f)(2) is explicit: “a filing related to the broker pursuant to Title 11 of the United States Code does not constitute financial failure or insolvency.” And § 387.307(e)(2) switches off the surety’s notification duty once a broker has filed to initiate a Title 11 proceeding. So a petition can arrive with no bond window opening — and whether a claim against the surety can be presented during the stay is a question for bankruptcy counsel.

The clocks, on one page

The clock that governs is the shortest live one, not the longest — and the state-by-state picture is a starting point, not advice.

What to do this week

1. Freeze the file — rate confirmations, BOLs, PODs, invoices, accessorial backup, and every communication, load by load.
2. Identify the surety on file for each load, by the date that load was arranged, and build one complete claim package per load, not a summary.
3. Pull the public record — FMCSA authority and insurance history under the old name and the DBA; Secretary of State and Comptroller status; any new registration at the old address.
4. Date everything from delivery, since the 18-month federal window accrues on delivery or tender of delivery — well inside the four-year Texas commercial window.
5. Don’t sign anything from a “settlement administrator” or the successor without knowing what you are releasing.
6. Place the account with a trucking collection agency that knows this pattern.

The honest framing: not every collapsed broker yields a recovery, and no one should promise you otherwise. But carriers routinely walk away from money that was findable, because the fold was built to make them walk away. The real question is whether to write it off or place it — two separate decisions.

ASA works carrier files against folded brokers as B2B commercial collection and aged bad-debt recovery, including accounts another agency already returned through second placement: skip tracing, in-person visits to the business, negotiation, and escalation through a network of licensed collection attorneys. ASA is a collection agency, not a law firm — it does not file suit, file liens, or give legal advice. The fee is agreed before you place anything. If a broker went dark owing you, send the file.

General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.