What Household Goods Brokers Actually Keep: Every Documented Fee Split

In general freight trucking, broker margins are visible. DAT, Truckstop, and FTR publish weekly spot rate indices. Shippers and carriers can see what loads pay. Brokers compete on transparency.

In household goods moving, broker fees are classified as confidential. Safe Ship's broker-carrier agreement (Section 5) designates all financial information, including brokerage rates and amounts received, as trade secrets. The consumer who pays $7,000 for a move has no way to know that the broker kept $4,200 and the carrier received $2,800.

There is no weekly index. No public benchmark. No regulatory disclosure requirement. The broker's cut is invisible to both the consumer and, in many cases, to the carrier who hauls the freight.

Trunk has compiled every documented case where the fee split became visible, through court filings, broker-carrier agreements entered as exhibits, consumer documents, and direct testimony. This is, as far as we can determine, the only published compilation of actual HHG broker fee data.

Case 1: Safe Ship Moving Services. Court-filed broker-carrier agreement (Safe Ship v. Bee Line Moving, Safe Ship v. Best Price Moving, Palm Beach County). The agreement states the carrier shall pay Safe Ship 'brokering services and related services at a rate of up to 60% of the discounted line haul charges, excluding any fuel surcharge.' In addition, Safe Ship retains the entire binding estimate fee, typically $1,500 to $4,500 per move. On a $5,000 consumer bill with a $2,000 binding estimate fee and $3,000 line haul, Safe Ship keeps $2,000 (BEF) plus $1,800 (60% of line haul) = $3,800. The carrier who loads, drives, and delivers gets $1,200.

Section 4G of the same agreement states: 'BROKER shall have the right and authority to make any tariff rate adjustments, and such determination shall be binding on CARRIER.' The broker does not just take 60%. The broker controls the carrier's tariff rates.

Case 2: Retired transportation attorney's personal move. Paid $1,805 deposit to a broker against a $1,519 line-haul estimate. None of the deposit was paid to the carrier. The broker fee was 84% of the estimated line-haul rate and 50% of total estimated charges. The attorney documented this in a September 2026 petition to the Surface Transportation Board proposing rules to limit excessive broker fees.

Case 3: Menards Moving / Immaculate Moving (Donna L. report, 2026). Menards' binding estimate shows an 'Origin/Destination' line item of $3,315 on a $6,930.20 total estimate. Immaculate Moving's Bill of Lading shows the identical $3,315 as a 'Binding Estimate fee' under 'Split pickup/delivery.' The broker fee is passed through to the consumer as a carrier charge, relabeled on the BOL. The consumer pays the broker fee without knowing it. Documents submitted by Immaculate Moving through Trunk's corrections process.

Case 4: Hercules Moving Solutions / Peterfai v. USA Logistics Inc. Court-filed estimate (Exhibit 2 to 12b6 Motion). The binding estimate fee is $4,500 on a basic estimate price of $3,654. The BEF is 123% of the basic price. The fee is not a percentage of the move cost. It exceeds the move cost. After the BEF, tariff discount, and fuel surcharge, the total estimate was $6,597.49. On moving day, the carrier revised the estimate to $17,500 (volume inflated 84% from 812 cf to 1,496 cf).

Case 5: AB Moving / JCS Moving (Elizabeth B. report, 2026). AB Moving (broker, Cherry Hill NJ) quoted $3,927.61. Two days before the move, the price doubled to $7,975.55. On moving day, JCS demanded an additional $4,000 plus $1,000 cash extorted by the driver. Total paid to the scam pipeline: approximately $12,000. Payment was directed to 'Logistic Moving Services LLC,' a dissolved Georgia company connected to the JCS operator. The broker's initial estimate suggests the carrier was expected to perform the move for significantly less than what the consumer paid.

General freight brokers operate on margins of 10% to 20%. This is well-documented in public filings, industry surveys, and the weekly spot rate data that makes the broker-carrier spread visible to both parties.

The documented HHG broker fees range from 48% to 84%. The midpoint of the documented range is roughly 60%, which is the contractual rate in Safe Ship's court-filed agreement.

A retired transportation attorney's September 2026 petition to the Surface Transportation Board cited these figures in proposing three regulatory limits: cap broker fees at levels comparable to freight (10-20%), limit binding estimate fees to 10% of total charges when retained by the carrier or ban them as junk fees when retained by the broker, and prohibit carriers from delegating tariff rate authority to brokers.

FMCSA declined to co-sponsor the rulemaking. The STB pathway remains open.

68 FR 35064, 35103 (June 11, 2003) provides the only federal benchmark for HHG pricing: the approximate cost of Full Value Protection is '$8.50 for each $1,000 of declared value.' No equivalent benchmark exists for broker fees.

Three mechanisms keep HHG broker margins invisible.

First, confidentiality clauses. Safe Ship's broker-carrier agreement classifies all financial information as trade secrets. Carriers who disclose the fee split risk contract termination and litigation.

Second, 49 CFR 371.3 obstruction. Federal regulations give carriers the right to inspect broker transaction records showing what the broker charged the shipper versus what they paid the carrier. In Pink Cheetah Express v. Total Quality Logistics (DC Circuit, Case 25-7141, oral arguments September 11, 2026), TQL used contractual waiver clauses to prevent carriers from accessing these records. FMCSA found TQL violated 371.3 and sent a directive in November 2023 ordering TQL to remove the waiver language. TQL ignored the directive. The case is pending.

Third, no regulatory disclosure requirement. FMCSA does not require brokers to disclose their margins to consumers or to the agency. The consumer's estimate shows a total price. It does not show how much goes to the broker and how much goes to the carrier.

The result: the only time broker fees become visible is when they appear in court filings, when a broker sues a carrier and the agreement is entered as evidence, or when a consumer or attorney pieces together the split from matching broker and carrier documents. Every case in this article became public through one of those channels.