Double brokering: what FMCSA records can and cannot tell you

1What double brokering looks like from your desk

You book a carrier under one MC number. The truck that shows up is registered to a different company, because the company you booked handed the load to someone else without telling you. The freight may still deliver. The problems come later: the record you checked belongs to a registration that is not on your load, the driver was never the one you confirmed, and if something goes wrong there is a company between you and the truck that you never looked up.

The only public facts in this story are registrations. FMCSA publishes which company has which USDOT and docket numbers, what authority and filings each has, and the contact details each filed. A check can compare those records. It cannot see the handoff.

2Three answers the record can give

The double-brokering check takes the MC from the rate confirmation and the USDOT or MC from the truck, and compares the two records in the files we load. It gives one of three answers.

1. Same registration. Both numbers belong to one USDOT record. The number on the truck is the number of the company you booked, and nothing more: the record does not know whose truck it is painted on.
2. Shared public-record contact. The two registrations are different companies, but a phone number, email address or address on one record also appears on the other. This is an indicator computed from FMCSA's own files. The page shows which field matched and lists both records.
3. No link found. Two different registrations with nothing in common in the fields we compare. This is not a finding either way. It means the files do not connect them.

Each answer carries the publication date it was read from.

3What a shared contact does and does not show

A shared phone or address is a question, not an accusation. Ordinary businesses share contact details: a dispatch service that works for several carriers, a registered agent's office, a factoring company's address, a family that runs two companies from one yard, an office building with many tenants. Where we know a value belongs to such a service, HaulVet says so instead of counting it; values still under review say "under review".

What a shared contact shows is only that the same value was filed on both records. It does not tell you who answers that number, who owns the truck, or whether the two companies are connected in any other way. It is a reason to ask before the freight moves: call the number FMCSA has on file for the company you booked and ask about the truck at the dock.

HaulVet never adds these up into a rating. The record shows the match, the field and the two records, and leaves the conclusion to you.

4What the record cannot tell you

• Who is on the phone. Nothing in the public files confirms that the person emailing or calling you is the person who registered the company. Where a phone, email or address you enter is on file, HaulVet shows which records list it (the double-brokering check marks it "on both", the shared-contact check gives a count), and nothing more.
• Whether the load was handed off. None of the files HaulVet loads records a re-brokered load.
• Anything after the publication date. HaulVet loads FMCSA's files once a day. A change FMCSA publishes after our load appears in the next publication.
• Whether a company is honest. A record with no shared contacts and nothing to act on in its reason lines is exactly that. It is not a character reference.

5What to write down

For every load, keep the MC you booked, the USDOT reported from the truck, the answer the check gave and its publication date, and who you called to resolve any difference. A snapshot on HaulVet stores the record as it was, with the date and a hash, so the answer cannot drift after the fact.

If the truck belonged to a different registration and you let the freight move, write down why: the dispatcher explained the lease, the shipper accepted it. That note is the difference between a decision and a guess when someone asks six months later.