How to Verify a Carrier’s Insurance for Your Load

Describe what needs to be covered

Write down the cargo, declared value, equipment, route and any handling conditions that could affect coverage. Give the person confirming insurance a specific shipment to consider.

Keep public-liability and cargo coverage separate. FMCSA’s filing requirements vary by entity and operation. Its cargo-insurance requirement applies to specified household-goods operations; the absence of a federal cargo filing is not, by itself, proof that an ordinary property carrier has no cargo policy.

Sources: FMCSA: Insurance filing requirements; FMCSA: Who is required to carry cargo insurance?

Confirm the document through a separate route

Compare the insured legal entity with the carrier that will haul the load. Check the policy dates and identify who issued the certificate. FMCSA warns that insurance certificates can be fraudulent.

Obtain confirmation from the insurer or authorized agent through contact details you establish independently. A phone number printed on the document under review should not be the sole basis for trusting the document.

Ask for confirmation of the facts your brokerage needs, including relevant limits, deductibles, exclusions and conditions. Refer coverage interpretation to the appropriate insurance professional.

Sources: FMCSA: Broker and carrier fraud and identity theft

Check shipment-specific conditions

For an illustrative refrigerated load, confirm the relevant temperature-control conditions with the insurance professional. Evidence that a policy exists may leave those conditions unresolved.

Assign unresolved coverage questions to a named reviewer before approval.

If a later filing change appears, examine its details and effective dates. A missing record, a pending cancellation and a confirmed lapse are different findings; a monitoring notification should not collapse them into one.

Keep the basis for the next booking

Save the confirmation, its date, the shipment assumptions and any restrictions attached to the decision. That gives the next broker a way to decide whether the earlier check still applies.

A different commodity, value or operating arrangement may require another review even if the carrier’s public record is unchanged. Monitoring can identify changes in the data it covers; it cannot know every change in the work you ask a carrier to perform.