Most freight fraud that reaches a small carrier does not look like fraud. It looks like a good load from a broker you had not worked with, at a rate slightly better than the board, moving today.
The mechanism is simple. A load is tendered to one party, who re-brokers it to you without authority to do so, collects from the shipper, and does not pay you. You delivered the freight correctly and have no contract with whoever actually holds the money.
Signals in the load itself
- A rate noticeably above what the lane is paying, offered without negotiation. Fraud does not need to protect margin.
- Unusual urgency, and pressure to move before paperwork is settled.
- The contact reaches you from a free email domain, or a domain registered very recently, while claiming an established company name.
- Phone numbers that do not match the ones on the public record for the company being claimed.
- Reluctance to put terms in writing, or a rate confirmation that arrives incomplete.
Signals in the paperwork
- The company named on the rate confirmation does not match the authority you verified, or the entity that appears on the shipping documents.
- The pickup number or reference belongs to a different party than the one who hired you.
- The facility has no record of your carrier name at check-in, only of someone else's.
- The delivery receipt names a carrier that is not you.
The last two are worth noticing while you are standing there, because that is the last moment where the situation is still recoverable.
If you suspect it mid-load
Do not abandon the freight. You have obligations regardless of who defrauded whom, and walking away from a loaded trailer converts someone else's fraud into your liability.
- Document everything: the confirmation, all correspondence, the numbers you called, who you spoke to.
- Get the shipper's identity and contact details from the paperwork, not from your contact.
- Deliver, and get a clean signed receipt naming YOU as the carrier.
- Then pursue payment with everything documented — and notify the shipper directly, because they usually do not know their load was re-brokered.
The habit that prevents most of it
Verify the party, not the load. Check authority and the operating name against the public record, confirm the contact details independently of the email you were sent, and be suspicious of a rate that is better than it should be.
It costs a few minutes per new counterparty and it is the only part of this you fully control.