The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that freight brokers can be sued under state negligence laws if they hire unsafe trucking companies (ones with bad safety records) that later cause accidents, crashes or bodily harm. {Ruling pdf Here}
Freight brokers are the middlemen in the transport system matching available loads with available truckers. Freight brokers have notoriously chosen the cheapest truckers and carrier companies to move freight. However, as of this ruling, federal law no longer shields the broker from liability and insurance claims anymore. Victims can now go after the broker’s insurance in addition to the Truck driver’s and/or carrier.
All of those illegal alien truckers who were hired by sketchy carrier companies will now carry a liability risk for the freight broker who might contract the haul. Ultimately, it is the insurance companies who will drive the change by raising insurance rates on those who would contract with sketchy drivers.
VIA AP – WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed a man to sue a major logistics company after he lost part of his leg in a semi tractor-trailer crash, a decision that could have big ripple effects across the trucking industry.
The justices ruled unanimously in favor of Shawn Montgomery, whose parked vehicle was hit by a speeding truck driver on an Illinois highway in 2017. He wants to sue C.H. Robinson, the country’s largest freight broker by size, over its role in putting the driver on the road despite what he called “serious red flags.”
The decision does not mean Montgomery will necessarily win the lawsuit, which the company is contesting. But the ruling opens the door to increased liability for freight brokers, a key part of the industry.
The Trump administration and companies such as Amazon had argued that letting the suit go forward would expose logistics companies to liability under a “patchwork” of state laws.
[…] The company argued the suit, filed under state law, must be tossed out because brokers rely on the federal government to regulate carriers and federal law trumps state law.
But in an opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court disagreed. The justices found Montgomery’s claims can move forward because they fall under an exception for safety regulations. The high court overturned a lower-court ruling in the company’s favor.
The decision could increase insurance costs for freight brokers that eventually “cascade through the economy” and result in higher prices for consumers, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence joined by Justice Samuel Alito.
Still, “truck safety is a matter of life and death,” Kavanaugh wrote. (read more)
The bottom line is that safe truck driving practices, operated by safe and well-trained truckers, are in everyone’s best interest. Unfortunately, in the past several years this has become a problem as sketchy truck drivers have been recruited by sketchy carriers. The ruling today returns the issue of liability to each of the participants in the trucking sector.
Everyone on the road should have a reasonable expectation of safe driving practices.
3 more years of Trump is going to be epic.
I so look forward to it!!! 😎
We gotta win the midterms first.
We gotta get rid of Thune before the midterms.
McConnell’s POS acolyte.
Gracias Dios 🙏
Amen! And Amen!
Actually, brokers don’t carry and heretofore have not been required to carry liability insurance. They will now have to find an insurance carrier that will underwrite coverage.
Could individual brokers f orm a corporation and then declare bankruptcy if sued?
The first paragraph of the article states; ..if they hire unsafe trucking companies (ones with bad safety records).
Two key phrases;
Unsafe Trucking Companies
Bad Safety Records
I just now posted a TLDR comment that covers the safety record of any DoT number holder.
Sundance also pointed out;
Freight brokers have notoriously chosen the cheapest truckers and carrier companies to move freight.
I have been in the room when a trucking company owner accepted a phone call from a broker needing a load moved. When he found out what they were paying he told them where they could put their cheap offer. Then explained to me that cheap haulers are either new to the business and will learn to not accept cheap loads or it was a company that did not care what they drivers were like.
The cheapest carriers are foreign owned. They pay their drivers dirt cheap wages and have electronic logging devices that they have root access to where they can manipulate the driver’s hours of service. They put solo driver’s on team loads and just manipulate their clock.
Vetting the carrier is straightforward. There’s a federal website called SaferSys. Put a USDOT number in the search bar and you can see their safety score (which, by the way 94% of carriers do not have one) and view individual inspections for the last I believe its 2 years. You can see driver and equipment out of service rates and indidual inspections. 10 minutes can give any broker a good snapshot of a carriers operations.
“Market Pressures”
If you can’t force morality in judgement… what other choice is there?
I wonder how much of the increased shipping volume over the past several years, certainly since Covid, can be traced to the current U.S. customer expectation for [near] next-day shipping almost anywhere, and a lot of stuff shipped ‘free’ of charge (e.g., Amazon Prime). Did the old model of goods procured more locally and transported more in bulk to local brick & mortar stores require less U.S. freeway truck volume than today’s direct ship model [with much of the shipments originating from China/AsiaPac]?
One factor countervailing that is that big corporations like Amazon now have “fulfillment centers” spread all the US. Your widget arriving in South Carolina no longer needs to be trucked cross-country, but instead from a center closer to you.
Same for other big companies
They’ve built an intermediate-distribution system to fill in some of the space
“The Trump administration and companies such as Amazon had argued that letting the suit go forward would expose logistics companies to liability under a “patchwork” of state laws.”
The Trump administration was on the wrong side of this case. SCOTUS ruled against the administration’s position.
You are 100% Correct.
I have already posted two TLDR comments about how the safety records of a DoT holder is basically public information and that Safety trucking companies are not the cheapest.
As the saying goes;
You can have it;
Good
Fast
Cheap
But you cannot have all three, so you pick what is important to you.
Amazon Relay is one of the biggest brokerages in the country. Every Amazon trailer you see going down the road is pulled by an independent carrier, not Amazon owned truck. And a very high percentage of those drivers are not English proficient.
I used to sell these tractors and trailers (dry van, flatbed, reefers, dump, and such) along with trucks (tow, flatbed, dry van, reefers, landscape, even a mobile pizza oven, and such) and I can tell you that there is a Department of Transportation website that I went to very frequently to do Open Source Reconnaissance on any DoT registered (CDL required) company that had tractors and CDL trucks. There is also another one for towing companies.
I have been retired since 2015 and I cannot remember where those website are, but they are open and free to use.
Once you get into the trucking (tractor & trailer rigs and CDL required trucks) website, enter the company name or the DoT Number. When the date for that company comes up it will show you;
Owner(s)
Address
Year, Make, and VIN of every vehicle that required a CDL to drive
And, And it showed their accident rating, along with the most recent accident(s)
So, Yes! The person who owns one tractor(1) only or a small, medium, or large fleet has their safety record available for anyone to view.
1) Personal Footnote:
Even if you only have one tractor, in order to get a license plate and legally haul a load, you have to apply for a DoT number, and display that number on both sides of the tractor.
SaferSys.gov
Correction….
https://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/query.asp?searchtype=ANY&query_type=queryCarrierSnapshot&query_param=USDOT&query_string=53754
No more drivers who can’t read road signs. Hard to believe this had to go all the way to the Supreme Court. Thank you God for common sense.
Everyone on the road should have a reasonable expectation of safe driving practices.
AMEN.
About a year ago, I stopped at a mega truck stop in the middle of nowhere, west Texas. There were dozens of big rigs parked and being fueled.
When I went into the store to get snacks and sweet tea I thought I was in a foreign country.
I wonder how many were illegals and/or incompetent to be driving 18-wheelers?
I support this SCOTUS ruling.
A LOT
Historically truckers had fair driving records. The last decade many semi-truck drivers don”t speak English. I have observed semi-trucks driving unsafe on the interstate highways…bill
I hope he gets another 4 when the election fraud is confirmed beyond doubt.
Grrrreat news!
The middle men make the bucks whether its groceries or steaks or load brokerage firms.
In today’s internet and AI world no brokers are actually necessary and they are parasites which increase the total cost of any shipped item. Brokers themselves make demands on a load that they know a company or independent trucker cannot meet without breaking the DOT laws and/or regulations.
A total review of the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its regulations governing interstate and intrastate commerce should be done yesterday.
A big point of being a middle man in a lot of industries is to exact pass thru fees.
Not to add value to the product or service, just the rent seeking.
Speaking of which, just about everything has been commoditized to the extent that Americans pay more for identical things made in the same factories that pretty much anyone else in the world pays a mere fraction for.
I’m glad to see this. My wife works in a firm that is handling a case against a freight broker. One of the drivers, Russian, hit a car on an expressway and killed the driver. The trucker couldn’t speak English. This happens too often. Make Truckers American Again.
“Unfortunately, in the past several years this has become a problem as sketchy truck drivers have been recruited by sketchy carriers.”
…and illegal aliens have been given CDL’s by sketchy blue state governors.
I bet not just blue states.
I had no idea such structures existed. They make sense that they exist but this is yet another drop in the bucket of things I didn’t know.
The brokers are booking “turban truckers” that aren’t qualified for the work.
But the fact that they were shielded from liability for these decisions? Floored. Just floored. Things I never imagined because morality makes these things unimaginable.
Nothing like hitting someone in the wallet to get their attention. That’s why I see this as a tremendous incentive plan for the industry to clean up it’s practices. What intrigues me most is that this gives the industry a chance to make improvements on their own, without the traditional method of “fixing” things where the government blindly steps in with a long list of onerous rules and regulations, and the introduction of a new or expanded bureaucratic agency to enforce these new regulations that wind up simply shoveling money at the problem without actually fixing it.
I live about 20 miles from the Port of Chastising, so I see a lot of 18 wheelers hauling cargo containers to and from the port. Might I suggest that in addition to the truck drivers following the law and being safe that it wuld behoove the drivers of other vehicles to stop cutting them off while everyone’s doing 70+ miles an hour. If you want to make that exit, trying slowing down a couple mph and get in line behind the truclk rather than speed up so you can get off from the center lane, cutting in front of a truck. I saw it again today with a person driving a Ford F350.
I’m not saying all truck drivers are innocent but dang some of the other drivers are idiots.
How about the drivers and trucks from Mexico that are allowed to drive loads inside the US under the USMCA?