What to Document When You Select a Carrier: A Checklist for Brokers

Since the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Caribe Transport decision, negligent selection claims against brokers can proceed under state law. Nobody can say exactly what "reasonable care" will mean to a given jury. But one thing is predictable: you'll be asked what you did, and memory won't be a good enough answer.

This is a working checklist for what to record. It isn't legal advice, and it isn't a safe harbor. Review it with your attorney and your liability insurer, who may have requirements of their own.

Start with a written policy

Before any individual carrier file, you need the rule the files are measured against. Keep it short enough that people will follow it:

• Which checks are required for every carrier, and which only in certain cases
• What automatically disqualifies a carrier
• Who can approve an exception, and how it gets recorded
• How often a carrier gets re-checked
• What your team does when something changes after approval

Make a policy you can keep. A short one that's followed every time is better than a long one your team ignores. As transportation counsel at Benesch put it, "The only practice worse than not having a policy in place is having a policy and routinely violating that policy."

The carrier file checklist

Authority and registration

• Legal name, MC and DOT numbers
• Operating status and authority status on the date you checked
• Date authority was granted
• Any out-of-service status
• A copy of what you saw, with the date

A screenshot taken today can't prove what the record showed last March. If the carrier is ever disputed, the date matters as much as the content.

Safety record

• Safety rating, if there is one
• Inspection and crash data you reviewed
• Your reasoning, if you approved a carrier with something negative on the record

That last one is easy to skip and may matter most. The carrier at the center of Montgomery was alleged to have a conditional safety rating. Whether a given rating should disqualify a carrier is still debated, but "we saw it, considered it and decided because of these reasons" is a better position than "we never looked."

Record changes

• Recent changes to phone, email, address or insurer
• Your follow-up on any of them

Changes are where identity theft shows up. We explain why in change history vs. a snapshot.

Identity

• How you confirmed you were dealing with the real carrier
• The phone number you used, and where you got it
• Who you spoke to, and when
• Who is authorized to dispatch and accept loads

Use the number on the federal record rather than the one in the email signature. Keep in mind that someone who hijacked the record may control that number as well, so it can't be your only check.

Insurance

• Insurer, policy number, and effective and expiration dates
• Named insured, compared with the legal name
• Coverage amounts compared with your minimums
• Where the document came from, and how you confirmed it

Write down the source. "Emailed by the carrier" and "received directly from the insurance source" are very different facts. See why emailed COIs prove nothing.

The driver and truck on the load

• Driver's name and license details, as your policy and privacy obligations allow
• Truck and trailer numbers, and the VIN
• Whether they matched what the carrier told you, and the insurance policy
• Any last-minute change, and what you did about it

Handle driver data carefully. Collect what you need, protect it, and follow the applicable privacy laws.

The decision

• Who approved the carrier, and when
• Any exception to your policy, who granted it and why
• What was known at that time

After approval

• When the carrier was last re-checked
• Any alerts on authority, out-of-service status or insurance
• What your team did about each one

An approval from last year says little about whether you acted reasonably on the day you tendered this load.

Common mistakes

Checking without keeping evidence. If it wasn't saved, it may as well not have happened.

Inconsistent exceptions. "It was urgent" repeated across fifty files stops being an exception and starts being your real policy.

Files spread everywhere. Email, a shared drive, a spreadsheet and someone's memory won't come together neatly when a request arrives two years later.

A policy that nobody reads. Train on it. Have new hires run real carriers through it.

A note on industry frameworks

Since the ruling, frameworks have started appearing. One example is the CAVRA Standard, a 54-page document released on June 18, 2026 by Cassandra Gaines, the CEO of a carrier-vetting company. It can be a useful reference. It isn't a federal rule or a court-approved safe harbor, so have your counsel review anything you adopt.

Doing this without adding a person

Run manually, this list takes time, and time is what a busy desk doesn't have. That's the real risk to your process: people skip steps when it's busy.

Happy Tactic was built to make the file a byproduct of the work. Steps are enforced by the server, so they can't be skipped. Evidence is collected as each one happens, and every decision ships with an Evidence Packet listing each finding. Verified carriers are monitored, and verifications expire, so "when did we last check?" always has an answer.

Whichever way you do it, the test is the same. Pick a load from eighteen months ago, and try to answer every question on this list in ten minutes. If you can't, you know where to start.