You hauled the load. The proof of delivery is clean. And the broker has gone quiet — calls roll to voicemail, emails go unanswered, and the promised “net 30” is now net 90 and counting.
Here’s the short answer: a carrier owed by a broker has more leverage than most realize — the paperwork you already hold, a federal bond the broker is required to carry, and collection pressure that doesn’t depend on the broker’s goodwill. But every one of those tools weakens with time, so the worst move is waiting another billing cycle.
Why brokers don’t pay
Knowing the reason shapes the pursuit:
- Cash-flow squeeze. The broker got paid by the shipper and used your money to float other loads. The money exists; it’s a priority problem.
- Double-brokering. Your load was re-brokered without authority, and now everyone points at everyone else. The paper decides who owes you.
- Dispute games. A vague “claim” on the freight, or a paperwork technicality, used to stall.
- The fold-up. The broker winds down, stops answering, and a similar operation opens under a new MC number (collecting from a broker that went out of business).
First, confirm who you actually contracted with
The name at the top of a rate confirmation is often not the entity that holds the authority and the bond. The entity you name in a demand, a bond claim, or a suit has to be the right one, and federal rules are explicit: a broker “shall not perform or offer to perform any brokerage service (including advertising)” in any name other than the one its registration was issued in (49 CFR § 371.7).
The check is free. FMCSA’s Licensing & Insurance public search (li-public.fmcsa.dot.gov, then Carrier Search) returns the registered legal name and DBA, the authority and its status, and an insurance history naming the surety and the policy number. Note one change: FMCSA moved registration and insurance filings into its Motus system and says Motus filings are not reflected in L&I, so confirm the current record. Compare three names — rate confirmation, remit-to, registration — and when they don’t match, find out why before you spend anything.
Step 1 — Lock down the file
Freight debt is some of the most provable commercial debt there is. Assemble, in one place:
- The rate confirmation (signed, with the broker’s MC number)
- The bill of lading and proof of delivery
- Invoices and any accessorial documentation (detention, layover, lumper receipts)
- Every email and text about payment — promises, excuses, and silence all matter
- The broker-carrier agreement, where setoff rights, notice requirements, and venue live
Step 2 — Send a real demand, on a real deadline
Not another polite reminder. A dated demand stating the amount, the supporting documents, and the specific date you escalate. Brokers triage payables by consequence — a carrier with organized paper and a deadline moves up the stack.
Date the demand — Section 38.002 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code requires presentment and a 30-day window before attorney’s fees are available (the mechanics).
Step 3 — Know about the broker’s bond
Property brokers registered with FMCSA must keep $75,000 in surety bond or trust coverage in effect — the BMC-84 bond or the BMC-85 trust fund on file with the agency (49 CFR § 387.307). The statute behind it is 49 U.S.C. § 13906: a broker is registered only on filing a surety bond, proof of a trust fund, or other security the agency finds adequate, and only while it stays in effect (§ 13906(b)(1)). The minimum is $75,000 regardless of branch offices or sales agents (§ 13906(b)(3)), and freight forwarders carry the same figure (§ 13906(c)).
Unpaid carriers can present claims against that security — and here is the part that gets oversold to them. The $75,000 is a single fund shared by every carrier the broker owes — not $75,000 set aside for you — and nothing in it promises a payout on your load. The statute conditions payment on the broker consenting; the broker failing to respond to adequate notice with the surety then finding the claim valid; or the claim going unresolved and being reduced to judgment (§ 13906(b)(2)). A broker that disputes your invoice in writing can push you onto that third path.
Two things follow:
- The bond is small, and moving early still matters. $75,000 doesn’t go far when a broker collapses owing dozens of carriers. While the broker is still operating, claims get resolved as they come — wait, and the coverage can be gone before you file. Once a broker hits financial failure or insolvency, the process changes: the surety files notice to cancel the security, advertises for claims for 60 days from the date FMCSA publishes that cancellation notice, and within 30 days after the window closes pays the uncontested claims — pro rata if they exceed the available security (49 U.S.C. § 13906(b)(6)). Late has no upside.
- A bond claim is leverage even when you don’t collect from it. It threatens the broker’s authority and its relationship with its surety — which is often what finally produces a check.
That second point has statutory teeth. If available security falls below the required amount, FMCSA must immediately suspend the registration (§ 13906(b)(5)), and the surety must notify FMCSA within two business days of a payment that drops it below $75,000 or of a determination of financial failure or insolvency (49 CFR § 387.307(e)).
Notice to the surety. Take the surety’s name and bond number off the FMCSA record, send it the per-load package you sent the broker, and copy the broker. The surety must respond within 30 days and give written grounds for any denial (§ 13906(b)(2)); the prevailing party in a suit against the surety recovers costs and fees, which cuts both ways — claim what your paper supports.
What a cargo claim is — and what it is not
“There’s a claim on that load” is the usual reason a broker gives for sitting on freight charges. Sometimes it’s true; often the word is doing work the file can’t support.
A cargo claim has a defined minimum form. Under 49 CFR § 370.3(b) it is a written communication, filed with a proper carrier within the applicable time limits, that identifies the shipment, asserts liability for the alleged loss, damage, injury, or delay, and claims payment of a specified or determinable amount of money. Section 370.3(c) rules out what brokers most often wave at carriers: bad order reports, appraisal reports of damage, and notations of shortage or damage on a freight bill or delivery receipt are not, standing alone, enough. An exception on the POD is not a claim, and neither is an email saying the consignee is unhappy. A claim names a number.
Cargo liability also runs against the carrier — 49 U.S.C. § 14706 addresses carriers and freight forwarders, not brokers — while the broker’s security under § 13906 covers the broker’s own failure to pay freight charges. Whether a broker may net an alleged loss against your line haul turns on the setoff clause you signed, and is a question for a lawyer. A real claim runs on its own track: a carrier that receives a written claim must pay it, decline it, or make a firm compromise settlement offer within 120 days of receipt (49 CFR § 370.9). One disputed load should not hold up eleven clean invoices.
When the load was double-brokered
The fact pattern: one party tendered you the load, you hauled it, and now the entity you billed says it isn’t the one that owes you.
Start from the paper. The entity on your rate confirmation contracted with you, and that doesn’t evaporate because someone upstream rearranged the deal. Then use the record-keeping rule: a broker must keep a record of every brokered transaction, for three years, identifying the consignor, the originating motor carrier, the bill-of-lading number, and any freight charges it collected with the date it paid the carrier. And § 371.3(c) is the sentence to quote: “Each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of the transaction required to be kept by these rules.” You are a party; ask in writing, by field.
Then the authority question, where double-brokering stops being a billing dispute. A person may provide interstate brokerage services only if registered under § 13904 and in compliance with § 13906’s financial-security requirement (49 U.S.C. § 14916(a)). Anyone who knowingly authorizes, consents to, or permits a violation, directly or indirectly, is liable to the United States for a civil penalty not to exceed $10,000 for each violation and to the injured party “for all valid claims incurred without regard to amount” (§ 14916(c)) — jointly and severally as to any corporate entity or partnership involved and the individual officers, directors, and principals of such entities (§ 14916(d)).
Read that last clause again: individuals. Where an unauthorized party moved your freight, the statute reaches people, not only an LLC with an empty account. Whether your facts support it is for counsel; building the record is collection work — skip tracing the principals, documenting who was paid what and when.
Step 4 — Mind the clock
Interstate carriers generally face a federal 18-month window to bring a civil action to recover unpaid freight charges — far shorter than the four-year window most commercial debt gets under state law. That clock has a defined start: a claim accrues on delivery or tender of delivery by the carrier (§ 14705(g)), so count from the delivery date, not the invoice date. The specifics depend on the facts, so confirm deadlines with counsel, but do not assume you have years.
| Clock | Length | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Surety’s response to a bond claim | 30 days, written grounds for a denial | § 13906(b)(2) |
| Claims after a cancellation notice on financial failure | 60 days from FMCSA’s published notice, then payment within 30 days | § 13906(b)(6) |
| Suit to recover freight charges | 18 months from accrual at delivery | § 14705(a), (g) |
State limitations periods run separately and are often longer (the state-by-state table); a bankruptcy filing substitutes a harsher set of dates (a creditor’s deadlines).
When the bond is gone — what’s actually left
The bond is a mechanism, not the claim. The claim is the contract, and it outlives the fund.
Each unpaid load is a contract claim: the rate confirmation is the agreement, the signed POD is your performance, the invoice is the amount. In Texas, where the record supports it, that claim can be pleaded as a suit on sworn account under Tex. R. Civ. P. 185 — a procedural device, not a separate cause of action, that makes a properly sworn account prima facie evidence until the defendant files a timely written denial under oath. The rule’s condition is a claim “on which a systematic record has been kept,” and a carrier billing load by load out of a dispatch system usually has exactly that. Whether your claim fits the rule’s categories, and whether the affidavit holds, is a Texas litigator’s call (mechanics and traps).
Two adjacent problems: a forfeited charter changes who you can pursue (a forfeited Texas LLC), and a judgment is paper until someone enforces it (judgment collection). One boundary: Alexander, Strauss & Associates is a collection agency, not a law firm — it does not file suit, file liens, or give legal advice. Litigation goes through a network of licensed collection attorneys.
Step 5 — Escalate before the trail goes cold
If the demand deadline passes, hand it off. On a broker file, a trucking collection agency confirms the bonded entity, puts notice on the surety, traces and demands on the principals as well as the entity, makes a field visit where the office is reachable, and escalates to licensed collection attorneys.
An account that came back quiet from elsewhere is a second placement question; a balance already written off is bad debt recovery (the arithmetic). On any commercial account, the work is on contingency and the fee is agreed before you place anything.
The pattern we see over and over: carriers wait out of loyalty to a “good broker relationship.” The brokers who intend to pay, pay. The ones who don’t are counting on your patience.
Owed by a broker who’s gone quiet? Get a free case review — we’ll tell you where the account stands and what the record supports.
General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.