Few court decisions have the power to reshape how freight moves in America. Montgomery v. Caribe is one of them. At the heart of this Supreme Court case is a question the trucking industry has wrestled with for years — where does a broker’s responsibility end and a carrier’s begin when something goes wrong on the road?
The answer matters to everyone in the supply chain. For brokers, it could redraw the line on liability exposure and change how carrier vetting, contracts, and insurance requirements are handled going forward. For carriers, it raises the bar on what shippers and intermediaries will demand before a load ever gets tendered. And for shippers, it forces a hard look at who they trust to move their freight and what happens when that trust breaks down.
This isn’t just a legal story. It’s an operational one. The ruling touches negligent selection claims, federal preemption, contractor relationships, and the everyday decisions made at freight desks across the country.
FreightWaves is following every development — the arguments, the ruling, the fallout, and what it all means in practical terms for the people actually moving freight. If you broker loads, run trucks, or ship product in the United States, this coverage belongs on your radar.
The 9th Annual Modernization of Cross-Border Trade conference highlighted how legal and operational risks are changing freight movement between the U.S. and Mexico.
(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) On May 15, 2026, the Texas Supreme Court issued an important decision in In re Home DepotU.S.A., Inc. The court ruled that Home Depot cannot be held liable for a fatal motorcycle crashinvolving a Werner […]
The Texas Supreme Court has taken some wind out of the sails of the sudden debate over shipper liability.
A notice has been going out to carriers in the C.H. Robinson network, and it is worth reading carefully because of what may sit behind it. The message, branded under C.H. Robinson and titled “Changes to carrier eligibility,” tells the recipient that their company “exceeds intervention thresholds for C.H. Robinson’s scoring model based on data […]
Spot rates hit $3.55 a mile yesterday — a clear signal that capacity is not flowing in to relieve the tightness we saw during road check week. And we’re heading into Memorial Day, which historically creates a surge as shippers push product out ahead of the holiday and carriers take time off with their families. […]
