50% of Carriers Have Been Stiffed by a Broker. No One Tracks This for Household Goods.

In early 2026, Overdrive and Fusable surveyed approximately 500 owner-operators, small fleet owners, and drivers about their experience with freight brokers. The results are the most detailed portrait of broker-carrier economics available in the trucking industry.

Every finding has a direct parallel in household goods. The same $75,000 bond. The same commission structures. The same nonpayment dynamics. The difference: the freight industry has the data. The HHG industry does not.

50% of surveyed owner-operators reported being stiffed an entire payment by a broker. Another 30% reported partial nonpayment. Only 30% said they had never been stiffed.

Among those who experienced fraud, 28% reported documented losses of $10,000 or more.

The prevalence of what the industry calls 'hit it and move on' scams has increased since COVID. Fraudulent brokers move as many loads as possible through load boards, collect payment from shippers, fail to pay carriers, and vanish. Some watchers describe this as an evolution of double-brokering rings, with fake carrier entities and broker-authority hubs used to rebroker loads booked by legitimate carriers.

The parallel in HHG is exact. HHG brokers collect consumer deposits, dispatch to carriers, and keep the spread. When the broker takes 60% (as documented in Safe Ship's court-filed carrier agreement), the carrier receives 40% or less of what the consumer paid. When the broker fails to pay at all, the carrier is left with a truck full of someone's belongings and no revenue to cover the delivery.

The $75,000 surety bond required of all FMCSA-licensed brokers is widely seen as inadequate. 93% of surveyed owner-operators said the minimum should be higher:

- 46% said it should vary according to the size of the broker's business - 40% said it should be 'a lot higher for all brokers' - 7% said it should be 'a little higher' - Only 7% said the current minimum is sufficient

The bond claim experience confirms why. Among carriers who filed or threatened to file a bond claim:

- 28% were never paid at all - 9% received payment 'enough to visit a gumball machine three times' - 9% had the surety actually pay the claim - 12% saw the broker pay after the claim was filed - 19% saw the broker pay after the threat alone

The most common outcome of filing a bond claim is getting nothing. The $75K minimum was set more than a decade ago as a significant increase from the former $10K requirement. Survey respondents indicated it is time for another increase.

High-profile broker failures have reinforced these views. The Convoy digital brokerage collapsed in 2023, leaving hundreds of carriers to fight over their share of a single $75K bond. AGX Freight halted operations in 2026, leaving hundreds of trucking service providers unpaid. In each case, the bond covered a fraction of the losses.

The same $75K bond applies to HHG brokers. Safe Ship Moving Services, with 404 consumer complaints and an estimated $1 million per week in advertising spend, is protected by a $75,000 bond. That bond is meant to cover claims from carriers AND consumers. It would not cover a single month of the complaints the company generates.

The survey documents a multi-layered vetting ecosystem freight carriers use to screen brokers:

- 46% use their factoring company for broker credit and compliance checks - 46% use load board tools (days-to-pay data, reviews, ratings) - 37% use FMCSA's tools for bonding, authority, and compliance history - 6% purchase credit reports - 13% use other methods including direct calls to the broker's bonding company and cross-checking phone numbers with FMCSA records

Only 1 in 10 owners reported never or rarely checking a broker's credit before booking a load. The freight industry has normalized broker vetting as a routine business practice.

HHG carriers have none of these tools. No factoring company tracks HHG broker payment patterns. No load board publishes HHG broker days-to-pay data. BrokerCreditCheck.com, the free broker credit lookup that has served the freight industry since 1995, returns no data for HHG brokers. The entire freight verification ecosystem, Highway, FreightValidate, BrokerCreditCheck, NMFTA threat-sharing, has zero HHG coverage.

An HHG carrier considering whether to accept a dispatch from Safe Ship or Menards has no way to check whether those brokers pay their carriers, how fast they pay, or how many carriers they have stiffed. The carrier's only option is to haul the load and hope.

59% of surveyed carriers reported taking actions beyond bond claims when brokers failed to pay:

- 27% left a bad review on the broker's load board profile - 18% sought payment directly from the shipper (unsuccessfully) - 14% hired a freight debt collection firm - 13% reported the broker to FMCSA or the DOT OIG hotline - 12% sought payment from the shipper (successfully) - 11% reported the nonpayment to a transportation credit bureau - 6% filed suit in small claims or other court

The most common recourse action is a load board review, a tool that does not exist in the HHG space. The second most common is going directly to the shipper. In freight, this sometimes works because shippers have legal liability for carrier payment. In HHG, the consumer (the 'shipper') has already paid the broker and has no obligation to pay the carrier separately.

Some carriers reported creative approaches: writing to the broker's state attorney general, reporting military brokering fraud to the Pentagon's Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, or as one respondent put it, going to the broker's office and sitting on his desk until he paid.

The freight industry built its broker accountability infrastructure over decades. Factoring companies, load boards, credit bureaus, and verification platforms all contribute data. The result: a carrier can check a broker's credit, read reviews from other carriers, verify the bond is active, and make an informed decision before accepting a load.

For household goods, none of this exists. Trunk is building the first broker accountability database for HHG carriers. If you haul for an HHG broker, report your experience at trunk.lorea.ai/report-broker. Were you paid? What commission did the broker take? Did the broker's estimate match reality?

The more carriers who report, the more useful the data becomes. The freight industry proved that carrier-reported broker data changes behavior. The same can work for household goods.