Broker Transparency Rule Still Not Final: What Applies Now

The proposal would give you the broker's record within 48 hours of asking. It is still not final, so the 1980 text applies: you may review the record, on nobody's clock.

You already have the right to see what the broker made on your load. You have had it since 1980. What you do not have is a deadline, a format, or a rule that stops the broker from asking you to sign that right away — and the rulemaking that would fix all three is still not finished.

What the rule says today

The section that governs brokered freight is 49 CFR 371.3, and it is short. A broker must keep a record of each transaction, and that record has to show six specific things:

• The name and address of the consignor.
• The name, address and registration number of the originating motor carrier.
• The bill of lading or freight bill number.
• The amount of compensation the broker received for the brokerage service, and who paid it.
• A description of any non-brokerage service performed on that shipment, what it paid, and who paid it.
• The amount of any freight charges the broker collected, and the date the carrier was paid.

Those records have to be kept for three years. And then comes the sentence that the whole industry argument sits on: each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of that transaction.

Read the verb, not the headline

The current rule gives you a right to review. It does not impose a duty to deliver. There is no clock, no requirement that the record be electronic, and no language about where or how the review happens. A broker who takes three weeks to schedule a look at a paper file has not obviously broken the rule as written.

That gap is exactly what two carrier groups petitioned the agency about, and what the proposal published in November 2024 set out to close.

The four proposed changes

The proposal would amend 371.3 in four places: require the records to be kept in electronic format, revise what the records must contain, state plainly that brokers must provide the records on request, and require that they be provided within 48 hours of the request.

Two things the proposal deliberately left out are worth knowing, because they are the ones operators usually assume are coming:

• No ban on waiver clauses. The petitions asked the agency to prohibit contract language that waives your access to the record. The agency considered it and declined to include it.
• No automatic disclosure. An earlier request would have made brokers send the record automatically within 48 hours of the load delivering. The proposal only covers records provided on request.

Where it actually stands

The comment period closed on January 21, 2025, then reopened for another 30 days and closed again on March 20, 2025. As of August 4, 2026, no final rule has been published under this rulemaking. That is roughly sixteen months of silence after the record closed, and until something publishes, the 1980 text is the text.

What to do before you sign

None of this changes what is enforceable this week, which is why the practical work sits in the contract, not in the docket.

• Search the broker-carrier agreement for the waiver. It is usually one sentence, often near indemnity or confidentiality, and it is the single clause that decides whether your right survives the signature.
• Ask in writing and cite the section. A dated email requesting review of the record under 49 CFR 371.3 creates a record of its own. A phone call does not.
• Know the two lines that matter on the record. Broker compensation and the date the carrier was paid are what turn a rate dispute into an arithmetic problem instead of an argument.
• Keep your own paper. Rate confirmation, bill of lading number and delivery proof are what let you match the broker's record against yours.
• Three years is the retention window. A request about a load from four years ago has no rule behind it.

The honest limit here: a right you have to litigate is worth less than a duty with a deadline, and that is precisely what is still pending. But carriers who read the clause before signing are in a very different position than carriers who find out about it during a dispute. Practical guidance for owner-operators and small fleets is collected at thetrucksavers.com, and the compliance dates that actually move go out in the free Truck Savers News weekly newsletter.

Original source

Rule status and proposed amendments confirmed in the published rulemaking documents: Transparency in Property Broker Transactions, notice of proposed rulemaking, Federal Register, November 20, 2024 and the reopening of the comment period, February 18, 2025. The text in force is quoted from 49 CFR 371.3.