Signing Owner Op To My Company

You can do it. You need to make sure you do all the right stuff with door signs and Dot numbers and all of that.

You leaIse him on to your MC and he keeps his authority by paying his own insurance for his authority separately from any costs incurred under your MC.

 

The owner of the truck can lease it on to multiple carriers legally.

Or you can do a trip lease, per load. Legally.

However Insurance companies may say "No" due to complexity. Trip leases was very popular in the past.

Your lease, or trip lease agreement must be iron tight as to who,when,where he is operating under, who's authority. And specifically when he is not.

As mentioned Door signs, numbers are a all factor. Must be spelled out as a requirement when switching from one to the other. All of this is why Insurance companies dislike it.


Next you can do a "Transfer of Frieght". You can broker him loads legally with no brokerage authority in emergency situations, or not for profit.

All legal, but the insurance company has a right to refuse coverage. You do not want to experience a accident where the name on the truck doesn't match the authority which it is hauling for. Everyone will be named in court proceedings, and you will have 2 insurance companies arguing not to pay loss.

About 2004 the company I worked for had a O/O retire. Sold his truck. 2 years later it was involved double fatal head on collision.

That company was named in a wrongful death suit for over a year. They had a canceled lease and was found innocent. But that vinyl sticker cost them alot of money.

If you cancel a lease, document the unit with no signage, or remove it yourself.

 

In this situation you would be in the broker’s role. You have the loads without the capacity to move them, so you are using other carriers to move them instead of your own trucks.

Technically if you decided to stop paying your friends you have no bond or anything for them to try and get their money back.

 

Would be the same if they were hauling directly from the customer. I agree though, no smart carrier would pull his loads for his customer without him having a broker MC with bond. It's one of the best things about using a broker. It's a lot easier to file a claim then going to court to get paid.

 

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/faq/what-...der-who-engages-interstate-operations-without

If you do not have a equipment lease with those owner ops, you are engaging in brokering or freight forwarding without authority.

May never get caught. But also expect the insurance to deny a freight damage claim or loss. You will be responsible for your customers freight when lawyers get involved.

 

Had a carrier that did a lot of loads each week for us. One day he had another carrier pick up one and bring it across town to him. Accident and cargo damage. Big cluster with the insurance. In the end he had to close up to pay the cargo. A lot of liability when you do that.

 

I do have a contract with each truck. They do have recourse if they're not paid. 28 years I've never not paid a truck. We've had many insurance claims all where paid.

And by the time 100 carriers file claim on that bond, what do you get out of it?

 

It's divided up among all the claimants and paid equally among them. Fortunately, I've never had to deal with a bankrupt broker. Just the slow paying or agreement breaking deadbeat losers.

Are those trucks running under your authority?

 

I grew up in a rural area. Lots of people helping each other and trading work. Never mind we were dealing with exempt commodities, but all of us submitted our own paperwork for payment for whatever we were hauling. We all got paid directly from whoever was paying the freight. Our friends didn’t get one big check and then cut payment to all the carriers that helped. We also didn’t take a cut from the other trucks when we all helped each other out.

Being a broker without the proper MC is one of those things that isn’t an issue until it is. And I wasn’t saying you wouldn’t pay, just that court is the only recourse for people to chase their money if you do ride off into the sunset, especially if you’ve already been paid before someone lets your customer know how you’re running. Your contract likely has verbiage very similar to a broker/carrier agreement, except it’s carrier/carrier and probably wouldn’t go very well if things ended up in a lawsuit for one reason or another. For example, a carrier hauling a load for you is involved in a fatality, except whatever contract they have with you makes it look like they’re working for you since you’re not a broker, and suddenly you’re involved in a fatality accident.

 

It looks like you haven't read the whole thread.