LTL freight brokers: what a broker does, what it does not, and what to check before you tender freight

The query has the highest cost per click of anything this site has measured, which tells you how badly brokers want the booking and how little of the bidding is spent explaining what you are buying. A broker is a legitimate and often better way to ship LTL. It is also an intermediary, and an intermediary is only as good as what it holds and what it puts in writing. Here is what an LTL broker does, what it cannot do, and the checks that take a few minutes and remove most of the risk.

What an LTL broker actually does

A broker holds rates with several carriers, quotes your shipment across them, books the one that fits, and stays on the shipment until it is delivered and invoiced correctly. In LTL that last part is most of the job, because the network is built to move trailers rather than shipments and the exceptions are where the value sits: the missed pickup, the re-rate, the pallet that stopped moving at a hub, the claim. The broker also carries the accumulated record of which networks run which lanes well, something a shipper moving a few pallets a month can never build alone, as the article on judging carriers explains. Whether to use one at all, against booking direct, is the subject of direct or through a broker.

What a broker does not do

A broker owns no trucks and drives none. The freight moves under the carrier’s tariff, in the carrier’s trailer, handled by the carrier’s people, and the carrier’s rules about class, dimensions, accessorials and liability apply to it whoever sold the booking. A broker cannot make a pallet lighter, a class lower or a transit shorter than the carrier will honor, and a broker who implies otherwise is quoting a number that will not survive the invoice. Nor can a broker determine your freight class from a form; the class comes from the published tariff by commodity, and density is only part of it. What a good broker does is establish all of that before booking, so the carrier has nothing to correct.

Authority: check the number, not the logo

Arranging freight for compensation requires brokerage authority from the federal regulator and financial responsibility on file behind it. Both are public. Any broker can give you an authority number, and the register will tell you whether it is active, whether it belongs to the company you are talking to, and whether the bond or trust behind it is in force. This takes less time than reading a testimonial and is worth more. Ask any broker for those details, us included, and check them yourself before you tender anything; a broker who hesitates has answered the question.

Written terms: what the confirmation has to say

A verbal quote is not a booking. The confirmation should name the carrier that will move the freight, the service level, the accessorials included, the class and weight the price was built on, and what happens if any of those turn out to be different at the dock. It should say how disputes over the invoice are handled and within what time. If the confirmation is a price and a pickup date and nothing else, the terms that will actually govern your shipment are the carrier’s tariff and the broker’s own conditions, neither of which you have read, and the correction machinery in the re-rating article will run with nothing to slow it down.

Who is liable for the freight

This is the question shippers forget to ask until a pallet arrives crushed. In a brokered LTL shipment the carrier is the party in possession of the freight and the one whose liability terms apply, usually limited by class and by weight in ways that sit well below the value of most freight. The broker is not the carrier and does not carry the carrier’s liability, though some offer or arrange additional coverage as a separate service. Before booking, ask what the carrier’s liability limit on this freight is, whether the broker offers anything above it, and who files and chases the claim if there is one. The last answer tells you what the margin is really paying for.

The margin question

Ask what the broker earns on the shipment. Some work on a disclosed margin, some on a spread between what they buy and what they sell. Neither is wrong, and the answer is less important than the willingness to give one. A broker who will tell you the margin will also tell you when direct is the better answer, and that second honesty is the one worth paying for.

What our role is

A broker holds rates with multiple carriers, quotes a shipment across them, books it, and stay on it through delivery and invoice. We say which network we would put the freight on and why, and when a shipment sits near the edge between LTL and partial, quote both. We own no trucks, and we say so. Who we are is on the about page; ask us for the details behind it and check them, exactly as you would with anyone else asking for your freight.