The three documents I read before I dispatch a carrier I haven't used.
Authority and insurance certificates are table stakes. The MCS-150, the inspection history, and the cargo policy declarations page are where you actually learn what you're dispatching to.
Document one: the MCS-150
Every interstate motor carrier files this biennially with the federal regulator. It is a public document, and it contains more useful information than ninety percent of the carriers who file it realize. The fields I read, in order:
- Power units. How many trucks do they say they operate? A two-unit carrier claiming to run nine-car haulers in three regions simultaneously is not doing that.
- Drivers. The driver-to-power-unit ratio tells you whether this is a team operation, a solo-driver fleet, or — most commonly — a family-owned three-truck shop running husbands, sons, and one hired wheelman.
- Cargo classifications. Does the carrier claim "motor vehicles" as a primary classification? If they check the box but the ratio of auto transport to general freight looks off, they are a general carrier dabbling in cars, and they are going to tie down like they tie down a pallet.
- Operating areas. Regional vs. national. A regional carrier taking a transcontinental load is either a great story or a disaster in the making, and the difference is in the next document.
Document two: the inspection history
Every roadside inspection a carrier has been through in the last two years is a matter of public record. The summary numbers — out-of-service rates for driver, vehicle, and hazmat — tell you the carrier's operational health at a glance. Below industry average on all three is the minimum. Below on two but above on one is a conversation. Above on all three is a pass.
What I look for beyond the headline numbers: the pattern. Fifteen clean inspections and then three violations clustered in the last sixty days means something is happening at the carrier right now. A steady trickle of minor lighting violations means the equipment is old and the pre-trips are sloppy. Zero inspections in two years on a carrier claiming seventy thousand miles a year means either they're lucky or they're running lanes that don't get inspected, and both are information.
Document three: the cargo policy declarations page
This is the one almost nobody checks properly. The certificate of insurance a carrier sends with a rate confirmation proves coverage exists. The declarations page tells you what the coverage actually is. The four things I need to see:
- Per-load limit. $100,000 is the standard minimum for open, $250,000 for enclosed. A carrier running a nine-car open with $100,000 in cargo coverage has about $11,000 per vehicle in a total-loss scenario. That is fine for daily drivers. It is not fine for a load of CPO sedans averaging $38,000 apiece.
- Deductible. Who pays the first $2,500 of any claim? If the carrier carries a $5,000 deductible and the claim is $4,800, the carrier pays it out of pocket — which means the carrier may fight the claim harder than if insurance were picking it up. This is knowable in advance.
- Named insureds. Is the carrier on the rate confirmation the carrier on the policy? This sounds paranoid until you hit the situation where it isn't, and then it sounds like the most important question on the page.
- Exclusions. This is where the surprises live. Common exclusions: vehicles over a stated value, vehicles over a stated age, vehicles with aftermarket modifications, vehicles transported during named weather events, and — the one that catches people — vehicles that were inoperable at tender. An inop clause in the cargo policy means the carrier is uninsured for the exact load they just picked up. Case file 23-088 covers a carrier I walked away from for exactly this reason.
The twenty-minute vet
All three documents together, for a carrier I have never used, takes me about twenty minutes. That is not nothing — if I'm dispatching ten loads a week to new carriers, that's three hours — but I am not dispatching ten loads a week to new carriers. I run the same two dozen carriers, repeatedly, and I vet a new one maybe twice a month. The twenty minutes pays for itself the first time it surfaces something the certificate of insurance would have hidden.
What the vet doesn't catch
Driver quality. The documents tell you about the business; they do not tell you whether the wheelman on this specific load is the owner's careful son or the guy they hired yesterday because the season got busy. For that, I rely on two things: the call with the dispatcher before I commit (a five-minute conversation tells you more than the paperwork), and the history. The carriers on my list are there because I've watched their drivers handle cars across ten or fifteen loads. The paperwork gets you onto the list. Performance keeps you there.
— Filed under Carrier vetting. Next: how I read a rate confirmation, the four clauses I always amend, and the one I will kill a load over.