What do brokers ask for?

No disrespect BUT you don't have the experience to do this so don't! Go learn to drive someone else's truck and make the mistakes on their truck. Track the expences and then think about it. You're 3-5 years ahead of yourself.

 

A lot have a free trial period. 7-30 days. Do you have your own authority or will be leasing to someone? Also a lot of the bigger brokers have their own web based load boards now.

 

If you are serious about being an Owner Operator with so little experience the first thing you should do is join OOIDA and take the classes they have to offer. Other then that I wish you luck.

 

You can go to the individual broker's websites and get their setup packages and it will typically tell you all that's needed. For Landstar it's $1 million general liability and $100,000 cargo or they'll put you on a load by load basis for less cargo insurance and you have to be approved to move it every time. Past that, I know they look hard at safety records and CSA scores so you have to be on top of your game if you're going to rely on pulling for them on a regular basis. They get a Saferstat download every night at midnight and if you've been nailed by DOT the day previous you'll automatically become unapproved and it can take 6 months to a year to get reapproved once your score goes down.

 

This thread is where someone else asked the question "what do I say when I call on a load?" Not exactly what you're asking, but a good rundown of how that call will go.

If you don't already have a carrier agreement in place with them, they will usually qualify you by asking your MC number. With that they can usually figure out the rest (safety, active, time with authority, etc) without asking, but some do anyway.

If they're happy with what they see, and you are able to verbally agree on the load, they will usually fax or email you a carrier setup package that must be completed before they will confirm the load. It will certainly have a carrier agreement, usually some sort of profile sheet (info about your business), and their qualifications, bond, and references. You return the completed pages, along with your authority letter, W9, and references. You will have to get your insurance company to issue them a certificate.

On the insurance certificate, I accelerate the process by emailing a request to my agent as soon as I get the set up package from the broker. By the time I fill that out and return it, they usually already have the certificate from my agent.

All of this assumes you are a carrier with your own authority, and not leased to some other carrier.

 

I've only had a few brokers make a fuss over the fact I'm a new carrier, and two of them set me up anyway when I provided them with industry references. It's a shame in this day and age that the load boards don't provide us a way to view and sign the contract digitally and verify authority and insurance without sending faxes all over the place.