Someone posing as a broker: six checks before you book

The most common trick is not a fake company. It is a real broker’s name and MC number on a rate-con that came from someone else. Checking that the authority is active will not catch it: the authority is real. These six checks do.

1. Call the number on the broker’s FMCSA record

Not the number in the email, the load posting or the rate-con. Those are what a scammer controls. The number in the federal registry is the one the real broker gave FMCSA. Our broker check shows it with a call button.

Have a phone number from the rate-con? Type it into the broker check. It shows which FMCSA registrations list it as their phone or fax — or that none do. If the broker named on the rate-con is not among them, the number is not on its record — as far as the data we read shows; the registry can lag behind a recent change.

Do the same after booking. If a call or text asks you to change the delivery address or hand the load to another truck, confirm it on the FMCSA-listed number before you move.

2. Compare the email domain with the FMCSA record

A real broker usually writes from its own company domain. A free address (gmail, yahoo), or a domain one letter, digit or dash away from the broker’s — that is the classic fake. When the domain looks like the broker’s but is not the same, our load check also asks the public domain registry how old it is: a domain registered weeks ago is a strong warning.

3. A real broker does not charge you to haul

A deposit, a fee for a “dedicated lane”, a setup or insurance fee paid to the broker — every one of these is a reason to stop. The broker pays the carrier, not the other way round.

4. FMCSA and Motus live on .dot.gov

If a message asks you to log in or “verify” on a site called FMCSA or Motus, look at the address. The official sites are fmcsa.dot.gov and motus.dot.gov. Anything else is not the government.

5. Look at the rate-con file itself

Open the PDF in our rate-con reader. On your device, without uploading it, it says when the file was last saved in an online PDF editor, or had changes added after it was first made. Signing or filling a form does that too, so it is a reason to compare with the broker’s original email, not proof by itself.

6. Who is actually going to haul the load

If the MC on the rate-con belongs to a carrier, not a broker, that company has no broker bond, and handing on a load it cannot haul is double brokering. When that carrier lists zero trucks in its MCS-150, it cannot haul the load itself. Our check says both.

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