🎣 This Ruling Could Break Brokerage

Happy Monday. Nine justices are deciding right now whether freight brokers can be sued for the carriers they choose, and the answer lands by end of June.

Plus:

• New York Sues Over $73M CDL Freeze
• A Dozen Carriers and Brokers Go Under in April
• Thieves Are Getting Hired as Your Drivers

...and more.

🍳 What's Cookin' In Freight

🚨 New York Takes The CDL Fight To Federal Court. New York AG Letitia James filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging DOT's decision to withhold $73.5 million in highway funding, becoming the second state after California to sue rather than comply. A federal audit found 107 of 200 sampled non-domiciled CDLs violated federal law, a 53% failure rate. New York refuses to revoke its 32,606 unexpired licenses, arguing they were valid under rules in place at the time. This is now a two-state standoff, and the outcome determines whether roughly 33,000 CDLs stay on the road.

💸 A Dozen Carriers And Brokers Went Under In April. Twelve small trucking and logistics companies filed for bankruptcy in mid-to-late April, FreightWaves reports, and for the first time this cycle, brokers and asset-light providers are in the mix alongside carriers. Most have fewer than 10 trucks, liabilities that dwarf their assets, and filed Chapter 7 liquidations, not restructurings. Driver costs running 30-40% of total expenses while spot rates lag is the math killing these companies. For brokers, the downstream exposure is unpaid invoices and a shrinking carrier base, right as the market is supposed to be turning.

🚛 Cargo Thieves Are Getting Hired As Your Drivers. The Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) is warning the industry about the Trojan Driver Scam: theft ring operatives get hired at fully-vetted carriers, wait for a high-value load, park it at a prearranged location during a "routine break," and let a separate crew take the freight. The carrier fires the driver for a protocol violation, exactly as planned, and the operative moves to the next company. TAPA recorded $725 million in cargo theft losses last year. The fix for brokers: require drivers to have six months tenure before handling high-value loads.

Presented By Augment

The fastest-growing brokerages aren’t adding overhead—they’re adding AI with Augie.

Augie is the AI teammate that automates freight’s daily chaos—building, booking, tracking, collecting, repeating—and learns from every load. Augie connects across every workflow and system so your team can focus on growth, not grind.

Built for logistics by Augment, Augie helps ambitious brokerages move faster, scale smarter, and become harder to catch.

The Ruling That Could Break Brokerage

Every broker in America is about to find out if the last 30 years of how they've done business is legally defensible. The Supreme Court's decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II is due by end of June, and what comes back could fundamentally change carrier vetting, broker liability exposure, and the cost of doing business in this industry.

Here's what happened. In December 2017, a truck driver named Shawn Montgomery pulled to the shoulder of I-70 in Illinois with a mechanical problem. A tractor-trailer drifted off the road and hit him. Montgomery lost a leg. The load had been booked by C.H. Robinson. Montgomery sued the carrier and the broker.

The question the Supreme Court is now answering: does federal law protect brokers from being sued under state tort law for negligently selecting a carrier?