Broker Transparency: Round Two

Happy Monday. FMCSA held off on finalizing its 2024 broker transparency proposal and instead prepared a supplemental one. That draft just landed at the White House.

Plus:

• Motus Errors Are Costing Carriers Real Money

• A Freight Forwarder Is Under Investigation

• Engine Rules Just Got Rewritten

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

FMCSA's original broker transparency proposal drew nearly ___ public comments.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

💸 Motus Errors Are Costing Carriers Real Money. More than 1,200 carriers are stuck in incorrect authority status after FMCSA's Motus registration system misfired, according to Overdrive. The bad data flows straight into the carrier-vetting platforms brokers use to check authority before booking a load. Fleet owner Kristin Crawford said a 40-day suspension error cost her business $23,000 in lost income last month, and trucks deadheading because brokers unfamiliar with her fleet couldn't get past what those platforms showed. Hotshot operator Jeffrey Crise, still fighting to fix his account after two weeks, said the real problem is basic customer service at FMCSA.

🚨 A Freight Forwarder Is Under Investigation. U.S. investigators are examining Apex Logistics, a Kuehne + Nagel subsidiary, over 47 shipments that may have routed Nvidia chips toward China, the first time federal export-control enforcement has targeted a freight company itself rather than the shipper or manufacturer. Two former Apex employees allegedly applied false shipping codes to the shipments, marking the hardware as exempt from export restrictions. Apex's stock dropped 4.2 percent on the news. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security says freight forwarders can be held liable for export violations even when they were relying on instructions from the parties that hired them.

🔧 Engine Rules Just Got Rewritten. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is scrapping Obama-era rules that regulated truck engines on their own, ruling the agency never had that authority to begin with — only to regulate complete vehicles. The interpretive rule, set to be published in the Federal Register today, cites the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision and gives manufacturers the freedom to meet fuel-efficiency targets through whatever mix of engine, aerodynamics, tires, or transmission works, rather than engine-specific mandates. NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the change will lower commercial truck prices.

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FMCSA’s Broker Transparency Rewrite Hits the White House

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration cleared its last internal checkpoint on August 27, sending its broker transparency rulemaking to the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for the final stage of executive branch review.

Reaching OIRA doesn't make the proposal public: the text stays confidential until that review concludes. It's the first confirmed movement on the file since a public comment period closed in March 2025.

The Backstory

The fight dates back to May 2020, when the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the Small Business in Transportation Coalition petitioned the FMCSA to require brokers to automatically share transaction records within 48 hours of a load's completion and to ban contract clauses that require carriers to waive their right to see them.

The Transportation Intermediaries Association, which represents brokers, countered by asking FMCSA to eliminate the transparency requirement entirely, arguing the conditions that justified it in 1980 no longer applied.

In March 2023, FMCSA sided with the carrier groups and rejected TIA's petition. It's the same underlying waiver-clause fight that put TQL in court over a $1,500 ice cream load from a 2023 shipment.

A Different Draft

FMCSA published its first proposal in November 2024, and it drew nearly 7,000 public comments over two comment periods.

After the administration changed, rather than finalizing that text, the agency chose to prepare a supplemental proposal, a decision that reopens public comment and adds at least one full comment cycle and one further round of review beyond the text now sitting at OIRA.

The draft has not been made public. Nothing confirms whether it's stronger or weaker than the 2024 version brokers and carriers already fought over.

The Small Business in Transportation Coalition, one of the two groups that petitioned for the rule, said the timing for Federal Register publication is now as uncertain for them as it is for anyone watching from outside.

Who Counts as Small

FMCSA's filing says small entities aren't affected by the rule, which exempts the agency from the usual review of impact on small business — a finding that, by the agency's own logic, is about small brokers, since brokers are the ones actually regulated here.

The filing also lists the rule's legal authority as not yet determined, an unusual gap for an action that's already produced one published proposal.

Executive Order 12866 gives OIRA up to 90 days to review the text, extendable once by 30 days, and outside parties can request meetings with the office while the review is open. Once OIRA clears the file, the next stop is the Federal Register and a new comment period.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

🛢️ U.S. Secures 100 Years of Venezuelan Oil. Washington now owns 55% of a new company that holds rights to 17 fields containing 65 billion barrels of oil, instantly making it the second-largest corporate holder of oil reserves on Earth.

🪪 Three More States Slam the Door on Non-Domiciled CDLs. Colorado, Idaho, and Michigan just stopped issuing them, joining a growing list scrambling to stay compliant after a federal audit found widespread violations.

🐔 Covenant Bets Big on Chicken and Bullets. The company is walking away from commodity freight growth, and its CFO just explained why chasing high-margin freight beats chasing volume.

💰 Some Companies Are Cashing In on the Iran War. UPS and FedEx fuel surcharges have nearly tripled since 2021, and one railroad collected $91.1 million more in surcharges than it spent on fuel.

🚨 Freight Sitting Out Over Labor Day Is a Target. Security firm Overhaul is warning brokers and carriers to confirm receiver hours before any load scheduled to deliver over the holiday weekend, when trailers sit unattended, and thefts take longer to discover.

✂️ A Major Shipper Plans to Cut Its Carrier Count by 70%. Advance Auto Parts is rebidding every contract, and CEO Shane O'Kelly says the consolidation should start generating tens of millions in savings by 2027.

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