Authority is what makes you a carrier
Active FMCSA operating authority and your own insurance are what let you legally haul freight for compensation under your own name. Without it, nobody — including us — can legally dispatch you.
Industry facts
What the trucking industry doesn't put on a billboard.
No sales pitch on this page — just the operating realities that decide whether a truck makes money in a given week. If you already know all of this, you've been doing this a while.
Authority & compliance
Your authority is the whole business.
New authority gets watched closely
Brokers and shippers routinely treat carriers under roughly 18–24 months of authority as higher scrutiny, sometimes with tighter payment terms or lower initial credit limits, until a track record builds.
A safety rating follows the MC number, not the truck
Inspection history, out-of-service orders and CSA scores attach to your authority. A clean record is worth real money in the loads and rates you get offered.
Rates & the market
The freight market moves in cycles, not a straight line.
Rates are seasonal
Produce season, pre-holiday retail freight and weather-driven capacity crunches push spot rates up. The first quarter of the year is typically the softest stretch for van and reefer freight.
Spot and contract rates diverge
Contract rates move slower than the spot market in both directions. In a tightening market, spot can run above contract; in a soft market, the reverse is often true.
Deadhead is the hidden cost
A rate per mile that ignores the empty miles to get to the load, or the empty miles to get to the next one, isn't the number that actually decides whether the week was profitable.
Detention & accessorials
The money that gets left on the table.
Detention has to be requested
Almost no broker pays detention automatically. It has to be logged with timestamps and requested — silently eating the delay is the single most common way carriers give away money they're owed.
Read the rate confirmation's fine print
Detention thresholds, layover pay and lumper reimbursement terms are usually spelled out on the rate con itself. What isn't written down there is much harder to collect after the fact.
Documentation wins disputes
A timestamped BOL, arrival and departure photos, and a signed accessorial log settle a payment dispute in a phone call. Without them, it's a carrier's word against a broker's.
Cash flow
Fuel goes out weekly. Freight pays in weeks.
Standard broker terms run 30+ days
Most brokers pay on 30-day terms unless you've negotiated quick-pay or you're using a factoring company. Plan fuel and maintenance cash around that gap, not around invoice value.
Factoring shifts the wait, not the math
Factoring turns a 30-day invoice into cash in a day or two, for a fee. It solves a timing problem — it doesn't change what the load actually paid. See our factoring page for how it works.
Quick-pay is a broker-by-broker option
Some brokers offer a discounted quick-pay directly, separate from third-party factoring. Whether it's worth taking depends on the discount versus what you'd otherwise pay a factor.
Broker vetting
The load that never pays costs more than the load you turned down.
A bond doesn't guarantee payment
Brokers are required to carry a surety bond, but the bond is a small pool shared by every claim against that broker. It is not insurance that makes a slow-paying broker pay you specifically.
Days-to-pay history is public information
Credit and payment-history services track how fast a broker actually pays, not just what their rate con promises. Checking it before you commit to a load is worth the two minutes.
A rock-bottom rate is a red flag, not a deal
A rate noticeably under the market for that lane usually means the broker got turned down at the fair price first, or a spread was hidden somewhere in the load.
Knowing this is half the job. Having someone act on it is the other half.
This is exactly what a dispatcher is supposed to be doing on your behalf, every load — vetting the broker, logging the detention, reading the fine print before you sign it.