Originally published at: New legislation could upend truck broker margins - FreightWaves
The Kowalski Freight Brokers Safety Act establishes new federal civil penalties and oversight for brokers who hire motor carriers with existing safety violations.
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SCHNEIDER . SWIFT . JB HUNT . WARNER WOULD be OUT OF BUSINESS.. SCHNEIDER has 1400 out service VIOLATION JB HUNT 2399 SWIFT 2500 out service violations WARNER over 1000 OUT OF SERVICE VIOL JB hunt has 49 casualties..IGNORANT IS NOT A BAD WORD ..
There are always newer trucking companies gets into the game. Those companies you’ve mentioned were not small fishes. Therefore, they could easily change their names and overhaul their entire department.
H.R.6884 - To amend title 49, United States Code, to establish a penalty for a freight broker that contracts with an unsafe carrier, and for other purposes.
Great idea, but it will be unenforceable at FMCSA’s current rate of auditing anything. Further, it should be extended to all shippers. Otherwise, you get Amazon and its subcontractors. Illegitimate carriers hauling Amazon freight, and Amazon hiding behind “It’s a subcontractor. Amazon has nothing to do with this.”
H.R. 6884 sounds tough, but in practice it risks becoming symbolic. FMCSA audits only a tiny fraction of carriers. Over 93% have no safety rating at all, and CSA data is explicitly disclaimed as a fitness determination. Penalizing brokers for contracting with “unsafe” carriers presumes the government can clearly and consistently identify who is unsafe. Right now, it can’t.
That doesn’t mean brokers should be immune — but it does mean Congress is aiming at the wrong choke point. If FMCSA lacks the capacity or data integrity to police carriers directly, shifting liability downstream to brokers won’t fix safety; it will just reshuffle risk and drive defensive behavior, higher costs, and market consolidation.
Also, excluding shippers breaks the logic entirely. If only brokers face penalties, large shippers can insulate themselves through layers of subcontracting. Amazon isn’t an edge case — it’s the model. Freight moves because powerful shippers design networks that diffuse responsibility. Any safety regime that stops at brokers but ignores shipper control is incomplete by design.
The FreightWaves article exposes the contradiction: TIA wants a bright-line federal standard, while this bill imposes penalties based on data FMCSA itself admits is unreliable and incomplete. You can’t have both. Either FMCSA restores meaningful carrier oversight — ratings, audits, real-time fitness determinations — or Congress admits it is outsourcing enforcement to private actors without giving them enforceable tools.
Safety doesn’t improve by adding surcharges to a broken system. It improves when operational control, enforcement capacity, and legal responsibility actually align. Until then, bills like H.R. 6884 risk becoming another well-intended fix that collapses under the weight of regulatory reality.
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Let’s add to the facts. I cannot speak for every state but in California the only Law Enforcement Agency that reports to DOT is the Highway Patrol. Those collisions and citations handled by the city cops are not reported unless the CHP allows that agency to do so.
Good lawyers/ambulance chasers, will dig up information with a subpoena that brokers would never be able to find or have lawful access to.
Further, how is a broker to know the safety and qualifications of the driver? Does the driver have numerous pending citations? A drug arrest with pending charges? Remember you are not guilty until the court says you’re guilty so drivers may have warrants for failure to appear but that won’t show up on a safety record until the truck is impounded and the driver is found guilty.
This is typical of legislators not knowing enough about an industry they are trying to regulate.
Hank Reardon warned us about this. Instead of the DOT responding directly to unsafe drivers, they push off the responsibility onto the industry. Same thing happened with big pharma - oh wait, they got a lucrative loophole. You get the picture.
Are all violations treated equally? For example: The DOT officer felt the stock window tint on the windshield was too dark and issued a violation? We’ve had this happen twice. All this bill would do is incentivize chameleon carriers, then those would be the only carriers hauling freight. This will only make the system more broken. This is what happens when people who don’t understand trucking and what is truly happening beneath the surface attempt to pass new legislation.
Here’s an idea- why don’t they (the government) establish new rules that simply prohibits carriers from operating until they come into compliance with said rules?
Oh wait…they already have it. Enforce it, maybe?