Moving Broker vs Carrier: Two Rulebooks, One Call

A quote arrives and it looks like every other quote: line items, a total, a signature block at the bottom. What the page is not obliged to say anywhere on it is whether the company sending it will be driving the truck or shopping the job to somebody who does. One kind of company is a carrier and has to show up. The other is a broker and has to find someone who will.

Sorting out which one you are holding takes a single question. The answer to it is written down in more places than most people think to look, and it stops being negotiable the moment a bill of lading is issued in somebody's name.

One limit sits over all of it: the shipment has to cross a state line. Parts 371 and 375 are federal rules for interstate household goods moves, and a house packed and carried across town falls outside them completely — that move belongs to a state regulator, and the states do not answer alike.

Two rulebooks, and only one of them has a truck in it

The part everyone quotes at movers — estimates, inventories, the 110 percent rule, weight tickets, re-weighs — opens by naming exactly who it is talking to. Section 375.101: "You, a household goods motor carrier engaged in the interstate transportation of household goods, must follow the regulations in this part when offering your services to individual shippers." The definitions section narrows it again. In § 375.103, "You and your means a household goods motor carrier engaged in the interstate transportation of household goods and its household goods agents."

Agents, yes. Brokers, no. The part is explicit about that difference where you would least expect to find it — inside the section on agents. Section 375.205(a)(1) defines a prime agent as a company selling or arranging transportation for the carrier under a signed agreement, then adds one sentence: "A prime agent does not include a household goods broker or freight forwarder."

Brokers get their own rulebook, 49 CFR Part 371, with a subpart B written specifically for household goods brokers serving individual shippers. It is short — ten sections running to roughly a tenth the length of Part 375. Two absences in it are worth more than most of what it contains. The word arbitration does not occur in Part 371 at all. And the phrase bill of lading turns up in exactly two places: once as a number the broker copies into its own transaction record under § 371.3(a)(3), once as the file where a survey waiver gets stapled under § 371.113(c)(3). Neither makes the broker a party to your contract of carriage.

Part 371 draws the line at the other end too. Section 371.2 says motor carriers and their employees or bona fide agents "are not brokers within the meaning of this section when they arrange or offer to arrange the transportation of shipments which they are authorized to transport and which they have accepted and legally bound themselves to transport." A van line agent booking your move onto the van line's authority is not brokering. Worth holding on to, because "they used an agent" and "they brokered it out" get used interchangeably in reviews and they are not the same arrangement.

Everything a broker owes you before you have asked a single question

Subpart B front-loads disclosure, which is convenient, because most of it is sitting on the website you are already looking at.

Section 371.107 requires a household goods broker to display prominently, in advertisements and on its web homepage, the physical street address where it does business, its USDOT registration number and MC licence number, and — paragraph (c) — "your status as a household goods broker and the statement that you will not transport an individual shipper's household goods, but that you will arrange for the transportation of the household goods by an FMCSA-authorized household goods motor carrier, whose charges will be determined by its published tariff." Paragraph (e) closes a familiar trick: a broker may only show the names or logos of carriers it actually holds a written agreement with.

Section 371.109(a) goes further, and this is the disclosure that costs a phone call and nothing else. A broker "must provide to each potential individual shipper who contacts you a list of all authorized household goods motor carriers you use, including their U.S. DOT registration number(s) and MC license numbers." Paragraph (b) requires a plain statement that the broker is not authorised to transport your goods.

Read what that list is before treating it as an answer, because the wording gives it away. The rule asks for the carriers you use — every one of them. It is not a statement of who is moving you. It is a statement of who might be. A broker that hands over eleven carrier numbers has complied with 371.109 in full while saying nothing whatever about your shipment. The assignment surfaces later, and by then the truck is close.

Two more obligations, both checkable tonight. Section 371.111 makes the broker deliver the federal consumer publications — Ready to Move? and Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move — by copy or by hyperlink, obtain a signed dated receipt for them, and keep that receipt three years. Section 371.117(a) requires the broker to disclose prominently, on its website and in its agreements, its cancellation policy, its deposit policy, and its policy for refunding deposited funds if you cancel before a carrier has been scheduled to collect. Read that one precisely. The rule compels a published policy. It does not compel a generous one, and a policy saying deposits are non-refundable is disclosed, not prohibited.

The statute that lets you ask for it in writing

Consumer guidance tends to stop at "ask whether they are a broker." There is a better version of the question, and a statute standing behind it.

49 U.S.C. 13901(c): "For each agreement to provide transportation or service for which registration is required under this chapter, the registrant shall specify, in writing, the authority under which the person is providing such transportation or service." Not may specify on request. Shall specify, in writing, per agreement.

The subsection above it explains why the answer is a number rather than an adjective. Section 13901(b)(1) has the Secretary — FMCSA, by delegation — issue "a distinctive registration number to the person for each such authority to provide transportation or service for which the person is registered," and (b)(2) requires that number to carry "an indicator of the type of transportation or service for which the registration number is issued, including whether the registration number is issued for registration of a motor carrier, freight forwarder, or broker." One company can hold both kinds. Holding both is ordinary and lawful. What it means for you is that a company name settles nothing on its own — the registration doing the work on your shipment is the thing to get named.

Then check that name against FMCSA's own records rather than against the sales pitch. The federal booklet reproduced as Appendix A to Part 375 puts this ninth in its closing list: "You should know if the company you are dealing with is a household goods motor carrier (mover) or household goods broker, and if they are registered with FMCSA. Go to www.protectyourmove.gov for this information." The same booklet is blunter a few pages earlier — "You should avoid brokers and movers that are not registered with FMCSA or refuse to perform a physical survey of your household goods."

Operating without that registration is not a paperwork foot-fault. 49 U.S.C. 14916 makes a person who knowingly authorises or permits unregistered brokering liable for a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation and "to the injured party for all valid claims incurred without regard to amount." Then subsection (d) attaches that liability jointly and severally to the individual officers, directors and principals — not only to the company that may be dissolved by spring.

Where a broker's estimate stops being the broker's problem

A broker can quote you. The conditions attached are strict, and they are the reason a brokered estimate is not automatically worth less than a carrier's.

Section 375.409(a) speaks to the carrier: brokers may provide estimates "provided there is a written agreement between the broker and you, the motor carrier, adopting the broker's estimate as your own estimate," and where that agreement exists the carrier "must ensure compliance with all requirements of this part pertaining to estimates, including the requirement that you must relinquish possession of the shipment if the shipper pays you no more than 110 percent of a non-binding estimate at the time of delivery."

From the broker's side, § 371.113 requires the estimate to be in writing, to rest on a physical survey conducted by the authorised carrier rather than by the broker, and to be built on that carrier's published tariff. Paragraph (c)(2) carries the oddly literal requirement people half-remember: a physical survey waiver must be explained in plain English, printed on the estimate itself, "at no less than 7-point font size and with the font typeface Universe."

The provision worth actually using is § 371.115. It sets out what the broker-carrier agreement must contain — both companies' registered names, addresses, USDOT and MC numbers, signatures of an owner or officer on each side, and the statement at (a)(3)(iii) that the broker's estimate "will serve as the authorized household goods motor carrier's estimate for purposes of complying with the requirements of part 375 of this chapter, including the requirement that the authorized household goods motor carrier relinquishes possession of the shipment upon payment of no more than 110 percent of a non-binding estimate at the time of delivery." Paragraph (b) then says the useful part outright: "The signed written agreement required by this section is public information and you must produce it for review upon reasonable request by a member of the public."

So you can ask to see it. A brokered estimate with no such agreement behind it is an estimate no carrier has adopted, which means the 110 percent obligation has nobody standing behind it either — and that obligation is what decides whether delivery day turns into a standoff. The arithmetic of it is in Binding, Non-Binding, Not-to-Exceed: Delivery Day Math.

Seventy-five thousand behind the arrangement, five thousand behind the truck

Both kinds of company file security with FMCSA. The two filings do completely different jobs, and neither one is your coverage.

A broker keeps a $75,000 surety bond or trust fund in effect under § 387.307(a), filed on Form BMC-84 or BMC-85. The figure is not the agency's to trim: 49 U.S.C. 13906(b)(3) fixes broker financial security at $75,000 "regardless of the number of branch offices or sales agents of the broker," and the operative text of 387.307 — the version headed "This section is effective January 16, 2026" — carries it through. The section states what the money is for: payments "to shippers or motor carriers if the broker fails to carry out its contracts, agreements, or arrangements for the supplying of transportation by authorized motor carriers." Money for transportation that was arranged and never supplied. It is not a damage fund, and a single bond stands behind every claimant a broker has.

A household goods carrier files cargo security instead, and those numbers are smaller than people expect. Under § 387.303T(c) it is $5,000 for loss of or damage to household goods carried on any one motor vehicle, and $10,000 for losses "occurring at any one time and place." (The parallel § 387.303 sets out the same two figures, but its effective-date note records that at 84 FR 51433 it was "again suspended indefinitely," which is why the T-section is the one to read.) Those figures are floors for staying registered, not a measure of what a carrier owes you. What it owes you is set by the valuation election made on the estimate and repeated on the bill of lading, a much larger question that Released Value vs Full Value Protection: Do the Math runs on a real household.

The document that settles it, three days ahead of the truck

Everything above is a way of finding out early. The answer itself is a legal requirement of one document, and it arrives before load day rather than on it.

Section 375.505(b) lists 17 items a bill of lading must contain. The first two are what this whole question resolves into: (b)(1), "Your legal or trade name (i.e., doing business as name) as it is registered with FMCSA, to include your physical address"; and (b)(2), "The names, telephone numbers, addresses, and U.S. DOT numbers of any motor carriers, when known, who will participate in transportation of the shipment."

Plural, deliberately. Long hauls get interlined and shipments change trucks, and the rule wants every participating carrier named where it is known.

Then paragraph (h), which is why this need not be a delivery-day discovery. The bill of lading "must be provided to, signed, and dated by the individual shipper at least 3 days before the shipment is scheduled to be loaded," and the carrier must give you "the opportunity to rescind the bill of lading without any penalty for a 3-day period" after you sign. A name you did not expect on line one, three days out, is a name you can still walk away from without paying for the privilege. The other three documents that harden around it are laid out in Four Documents in an Interstate Move: What Each Fixes.

If it is already loaded

Suppose the question got asked too late — a broker booked it, an unfamiliar company arrived, and the furniture is on a truck somewhere in Ohio. The answer still changes what you do next, because the remedies sort themselves by whose registration the shipment moved under.

Loss and damage go to the carrier. The claim rules in Part 370 run against the company that held the goods, and the arbitration programme you were told about at estimate time exists because § 375.211 obliges a carrier to have one, give notice of it before the bill of lading is executed, and stay bound by the outcome for claims of $10,000 or less when you are the one requesting it. Part 371 imposes no such programme on brokers. The deadlines and the format that decide whether a claim survives at all are in Filing a Damage Claim: Two Clocks and One Format Rule.

Money taken for transportation that never happened points at the broker instead — its 371.117 policy, its 371.3 transaction record, and behind both the 387.307 bond. Section 371.3(c) is worth reading before you write anything: "Each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of the transaction required to be kept by these rules," and the record under (a)(4) includes "the amount of compensation received by the broker for the brokerage service performed and the name of the payer." The section does not spell out whether an individual shipper counts as a party for that purpose, so treat it as a request worth making rather than a right worth threatening over.

Complaints about either go to FMCSA's household goods complaint database at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov, which wants the same two things this article has been circling: the company name with its USDOT number, and which of the two things it was.

None of this is advice about your particular move: nobody here holds operating authority, arranges shipments, or has seen the estimate on your table. What the page offers is the section number beside the rule, so the two can be held against each other. The standing disclosure is on the about page.

The word that starts most of this trouble is our. Our trucks, our crews, our warehouse outside Dallas. It costs nothing to say on a phone call and it is not what a bill of lading is allowed to say. Line one of that document names one company, as registered, with a street address behind it. Get that name early and the move is at least happening between the parties you thought it was.

Parts 371, 375 and 387 were read through the eCFR on 23 August 2026, against the title 49 issue dated 19 August 2026 and current through 20 August 2026; 49 U.S.C. 13901 and 14916 the same day. These sections are amended more often than the consumer booklets are reprinted, so open the linked text before relying on a quotation of it here.