Is this MC number a broker or a carrier?
It matters more than it looks. If the number on your rate confirmation belongs to a carrier rather than a broker, the bond that would pay you when the money does not arrive does not exist.
Why the question comes up
A broker arranges freight and cannot be registered without $75,000 of financial security on file — either a BMC-84 surety bond or a BMC-85 trust fund. That is what a carrier claims against when a broker does not pay. A carrier hauls freight and files liability and cargo insurance instead. Different job, different paperwork, different protection for you.
When a carrier takes a load it cannot haul and hands it to you, that is double brokering. It does not come labelled. What you see is an ordinary rate confirmation with an MC number on it — and that number is the tell.
What goes wrong. You deliver, you invoice, and nobody pays. The company that hired you had no bond because it was never a broker. The company whose freight it actually was already paid someone else. Neither owes you, and the claim you would normally file has nothing to file against.
How to tell them apart
Both kinds of company appear in the same public FMCSA registry, and the registry shows what each one actually filed. You are looking at three fields.
| What you see | Broker | Carrier |
|---|---|---|
| BMC-84 bond (or BMC-85 trust) on file | Yes — registration depends on it | No |
| Power units (trucks) | None, or very few | One or more |
| BIPD liability insurance | No | Yes |
A company with trucks and liability insurance and no bond is a carrier. A company with a bond and no trucks is a broker. A company with a bond that is smaller than the $75,000 required, or no bond at all while calling itself a broker, is the case worth stopping over.
Some companies hold both: they run their own trucks and also have an active broker authority with a bond on file. That is legal. For them the registry shows trucks, insurance and a bond together, and the question is not which kind of company it is, but whether this particular load is being brokered under that broker authority — ask, in writing.
What to do when the number is the wrong kind
- Call the phone number in the FMCSA registry, not the one on the rate confirmation. If the load is real, the company on file will know about it.
- Ask, in writing, who holds the freight and who is paying you. A legitimate arrangement survives that question.
- Check whether the authority is active and whether the MCS-150 registration is current. A dormant registration next to a fresh rate confirmation is worth a pause.
- If you take the load anyway, know that you are extending credit without the bond behind it, and price the risk.
Checking a number, for free
Our broker check reads the same public registry and tells you plainly which kind of company the number belongs to, whether the authority is active, whether a bond or trust fund is on file and meets the $75,000 minimum, when the authority was first granted and whether it was ever revoked, how many complaints are recorded, and whether the registration is current. It is free, it needs no account, and it takes nothing from your load.
Check an MC or DOT number →You can also read the rate confirmation itself — detention, TONU, late fees and payment terms, each quoted from your own document.
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