FMCSA Says the Broker Transparency Proposal Is Coming This Month. It Could Be the Most Important Rule for Owner-Operators in Years, or It Could Change Almost Nothing.

The regulation at the center of this fight is not new. It has been sitting in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1980. 49 CFR 371. 3 requires property brokers to keep a record of each transaction, and it gives each party to that transaction the right to review the record.

On paper, an owner-operator who hauls a load for a broker already has a federal right to see what the broker billed the shipper. That right has existed for the entire working lives of most people reading this. In practice, it has gone largely unenforced for four decades. Carriers say brokers evade it in two ways: by writing a waiver of 371.

3 rights into the carrier agreement as a condition of doing business, or by simply declining to produce the records and daring the carrier to do something about it. The result is a right that exists in law and mostly does not exist on the ground. That is the gap FMCSA has been trying to close since 2020, and according to the U. S.

Department of Transportation’s 2026 regulatory agenda, the agency is targeting this month for a supplemental notice of proposed rule-making on “Transparency in Property Broker Transactions.” The previous agenda said May.

For owner-operators who have spent years waiting on this, the temptation is to treat the coming proposal as the moment the balance of power shifts. It might be. It also might not be, and understanding why requires taking both sides of this argument seriously.

How the Fight Got Here The current push started in May 2020, when the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association petitioned FMCSA to amend 371. 3. Rates had collapsed in the early pandemic, and carriers accused brokers of widening margins while paying less.

OOIDA asked FMCSA to require brokers to provide an electronic copy of each transaction record automatically within 48 hours of the load being completed. SBTC asked the agency to prohibit brokers from coercing carriers into waiving their review rights as a condition of doing business, and to bar contract clauses that exempt brokers from compliance.

The Transportation Intermediaries Association, which represents brokers and third-party logistics companies, responded with a counter-petition asking FMCSA to eliminate 371. 3(c) entirely, arguing the market conditions that justified the rule in 1980 no longer exist. FMCSA granted the carrier petitions in March 2023 and rejected TIA’s.

In November 2024 the agency published a notice of proposed rulemaking that drew close to 7,000 public comments. Then the administration changed, and rather than finalize that version, DOT chose to start over and write a new proposal. That new proposal is what is now expected.

The November 2024 version proposed four changes: requiring brokers to keep transaction records electronically, modernizing what those records must contain, reframing transparency as an affirmative regulatory duty on the broker rather than a passive right the carrier must invoke, and requiring the broker to provide the records within 48 hours of a request.

Nobody knows yet how much of that survives into the new draft. The Case That This Matters Enormously The carrier argument rests on a point that is difficult to dismiss: this is not a request for a new right. It is a request that an existing one be made real. OOIDA has been consistent on this.

In comments responding to TIA, the association wrote that truckers “want brokers to reasonably comply with existing federal regulations” and are “not asking for anything more than their right to transparency, which is used to help them differentiate good brokers from unscrupulous ones.”

OOIDA explicitly rejected the characterization that its recommendations are an attempt to control rates. The practical arguments carriers make fall into a few buckets. The first is the waiver problem. A right that a broker can require you to sign away before you get access to their freight is not much of a right.

OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh, urging members to file comments during the 2024 docket, framed it in those terms: tell the agency “how brokers are making you exempt your rights from 371. 3, or not showing you or threatening to blacklist you.” If the new rule prohibits waivers, that changes the contract every small carrier signs.

The second is claims defense. When a broker deducts money from a settlement for an alleged shortage, damage, or service failure, the carrier is often arguing against a number they cannot see the basis for.

Access to the transaction record, including charges, payments, dates, and claims documentation, changes what a carrier can dispute and what they simply have to eat. The third is fraud and double brokering.

In an environment where stolen authority and double brokering have become genuine operational risks, a documented, electronic record of who brokered what to whom has value beyond rate visibility. The fourth is negotiation. Carriers argue that a party negotiating without knowing what the freight actually pays is negotiating at a structu