Broker Insurance Costs Are Tripling and Carriers Are Next in Line

A Supreme Court ruling from May is now showing up on broker insurance bills

Transport Topics published a report by Gary Frantz on August 31 on how the freight brokerage business has repriced its liability coverage since the Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II on May 14, 2026. The Court held that state negligent hiring claims against brokers who select motor carriers are not preempted by the federal law that had been shielding them, so a broker can now be sued directly over the carrier it chose. Brokers told Transport Topics they are seeing double and triple digit percentage increases on their liability policies, and one broker's limits dropped from $10 million to $5 million while its deductibles doubled. Chris Vogel of Cottingham and Butler called the ruling one of the most significant decisions in his 25 years in trucking.

FreightWaves reported the same squeeze on August 26. John Kingston wrote that a top ten freight broker saw its liability premium triple at renewal, that only about ten underwriters write broker auto liability at all, that two have already exited, and that the count is expected to fall to eight. With the top 100 brokers controlling about 84 percent of the market, a shrinking underwriter panel is pushing a lot of freight through a very narrow door.

Brokers are not going to absorb this quietly

C.H. Robinson chief executive David Bozeman told analysts the cost will end up in the freight rate environment where the consumer eventually pays. That works at the very top of the market. Further down, where the premium is not a rounding error, the cheaper move is to lower the odds of getting sued at all, and that means being far more selective about which carriers get the load.

The approved carrier list is where this reaches an owner operator

Transport Topics reported that Schneider has gone from about 60,000 carriers in its network in 2022 to fewer than 14,000 today, and Schneider chief executive Jim Filter said the company had never used carriers rated conditional or unsatisfactory. Greg Feary of the Scopelitis firm told the outlet that broker liability insurers are expected to raise rates simply because they anticipate a higher frequency of allegations. Both of those point the same way. Brokers are reassessing how they vet and monitor the carriers they hire, and the reporting is candid that the Court never defined what reasonable care actually requires, so every broker is drawing that line for itself.

Before Montgomery, the article notes, brokers largely picked carriers on price, service, and a minimum indemnity requirement. That was a short checklist and it was easy to clear. Whatever replaces it is longer, and it reads your public safety record, which means your CSA scores and safety rating now sit between you and the load, not only between you and your renewal.

The $750,000 federal minimum has turned into a screening line

Transport Topics reported that carriers holding only the $750,000 federal minimum are being weighed against carriers with higher limits. That changes what the minimum means. It has always been the legal floor for interstate for hire authority, and it is becoming the number that sorts you out of a lane. A broker now personally exposed for the carrier it hired has an obvious reason to prefer the one whose commercial auto liability limit reads a million dollars or better, because that limit is the first thing an attorney checks before deciding who else to name.

What to look at on your own policy this week

Start with the liability limit. If you are still at $750,000 and you run broker freight, price the move to a million. It is usually a smaller step than owner operators expect, and it now buys access as well as protection. Ask your agent whether your policy will add a broker as an additional insured and whether it can be written primary and non contributory, because those terms appear constantly in broker agreements and not every policy grants them the same way.

Read the indemnity language in the agreements you already signed. An obligation you took on by contract is not automatically the same thing your policy pays for, and that gap is where a broker under pressure will push. Then look at the part of your file a broker can pull without asking, meaning your safety rating, inspection history, and crash record. Those take months to move, so the work starts well before the load board does. Confirm your motor truck cargo limit matches the loads you book today, and if higher limits change your budget, our guide to what commercial truck insurance costs breaks down what moves the number.

Clearing the new bar is worth freight

A shorter approved list is bad news only if you are on the wrong side of it. Fourteen thousand carriers still haul Schneider freight. The screening is built to remove risky carriers, not small ones, and a one truck operation with a clean record and a million dollar limit can read better than a twenty truck fleet carrying a conditional rating.

If a broker has already told you your limits are short, or you want to see what a higher limit prices out at before your renewal comes due, we can run it. Get a truck insurance quote in under a minute and we will come back with real numbers from carriers that write owner operators and small fleets. Call or text 423-264-4255, or start on our quote form.