The courtroom fights hanging over freight brokers started with human loss: three people killed in a 2021 Mississippi crash that produced a $604 million jury verdict against C.H. Robinson, and a child injured in a separate crash that dragged a shipper and a warehouse operator into the lawsuit. Craig Fuller delivered the industry keynote Nov. 2 at Optym’s Convergence 2026 conference in Frisco, Texas, where the FreightWaves founder and CEO called this the most transformative period in trucking since 1980 deregulation, with brokers and small carriers set to absorb the shock.
Don’t expect a change in administration to soften trucking enforcement, Fuller said, because the biggest fleets are now the ones pushing for it. The largest motor carriers, joined by the American Trucking Associations and the Truckload Carriers Association, now see tighter driver standards as “desperately needed” for their own survival, he said, and that backing holds whichever party wins. His advice: “Follow the money.” FMCSA’s final rule on non-domiciled CDLs took effect March 16, and Fuller has estimated the earlier interim rule could pull 5% to 7% of drivers out of the market. When the D.C. Circuit paused the interim rule in November 2025, the court’s majority cited FMCSA data showing non-domiciled CDL holders made up about 5% of CDL holders but only about 0.2% of fatal crashes.
Fuller traced the capacity squeeze to how freight buying changed. Brokers handled about 6% of freight in the early 2000s and probably more than 30% today, he said, as shipper procurement teams took over transportation buying. Low barriers to entry pushed new drivers toward small fleets living on brokered loads, access he credited with keeping carriers alive through the freight recession that began in 2022: a carrier covering its variable cost per mile can run for years without bankruptcy as long as the miles keep coming. Remove a slice of those drivers, and the cheap capacity brokers leaned on gets thinner.
On May 14, a unanimous Supreme Court decided in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that state negligent-hiring claims against brokers are covered by the safety exception in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, so the brokers’ preemption defense failed. In July, a Dallas County jury gave C.H. Robinson 23% of the blame for the Mississippi crash and concluded the driver was, in effect, a C.H. Robinson employee, adopting the plaintiffs’ theory, which rested on his use of the broker’s app. The verdict was confirmed in October; with interest, Overdrive puts the total near $711 million. C.H. Robinson says the carrier had a Satisfactory FMCSA rating both at hiring and after a federal crash review, and it plans to appeal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that brokers who act reasonably should be able to beat such suits, but FMCSA’s own safety site warns readers not to judge a carrier’s overall safety from its data alone, which, as Fuller put it, leaves brokers on their own. Since late May, C.H. Robinson has been shifting carriers into non-certified status by safety score, though it has not publicly connected that move to the ruling.
The exposure reaches shippers and warehouses. The amended complaint in the injured child’s case targets not just C.H. Robinson but also Unilever and warehouse operator United States Cold Storage, alleging failures to verify the carrier that collected the load. Fuller wagered that at least 20% to 30% of warehouse pickups happen without anyone confirming that the truck at the door is actually the assigned carrier, a security problem turned litigation problem.
Shippers managing that liability may lean toward large asset-based carriers in future bids, Fuller said, since handing freight to a carrier that employs and vets its own drivers puts the shipper on the firmest ground. “The asset carriers are going to win this round,” Fuller said.