Without question, in event of a company closure or bankruptcy where the indebted party is walking away from 100s of thousands of dollars of unpaid invoices, a measly 75K surety bond will not go very far in satisfying all of the unpaid claims. However as mentioned by many posters, the surety bond can be invaluable when you are trying to collect on one specific, unpaid invoice. The surety bond provision of the FMCSA broker registration was never intended to discourage or prevent double brokering. It is strictly a vehicle or form of guarantee, that unpaid carriers can use to collect their debt. It has been my experience that the majority of double brokering occurs within the carrier community. When a carrier accepts a load from a broker or one of his own customers and then for whatever reason, decides to sell that shipment to another carrier, he has become a broker, registered as one or not and if the load originated from a freight broker, is participating in a double brokering scheme. Yes, some freight brokers will knowingly, or unknowingly, offer their freight to another freight broker, which in turn will be offered to a carrier, but I believe that is less common than carrier to carrier to carrier brokering. I don’t have the latest statistics at hand, but just a short while ago, LoadLink said that on any given day, the majority of available loads posted on their system, were offered by carriers, not brokers. One has to wonder just how many of those carriers had broker FMSCA broker registration?
