To file a claim against freight broker bond, look up the defaulting broker's bond or trust filing, contact the surety (BMC-84) or trustee (BMC-85) that filed it, and submit the rate confirmation, signed BOL or POD, unpaid invoice, broker-carrier agreement and your record of collection attempts. First confirm your company is a claimant the bond exists to pay. In our operation, which runs both a brokerage and trucks, the filing itself has often done in one day what weeks of calls and emails could not.

Does your brokerage qualify to file?

The $75,000 required under 49 CFR 387.307 is not a general fund for anyone a broker owes money. The regulation says the bond or trust fund provides for payments to shippers or motor carriers if the broker fails to carry out its contracts, agreements, or arrangements for supplying transportation by authorized motor carriers. That wording decides whether your claim gets read at all.

For a broker, the clean case is a company that also holds carrier authority and ran its own truck on another broker's load. On that rate confirmation you are the motor carrier, and the unpaid invoice is a carrier invoice. The less clean case is a co-broker arrangement, where you just arranged the freight and handed it to another broker. The rule names shippers and motor carriers, not brokers, so read the current text of the section and ask the surety's claims desk how it treats your position before you spend an afternoon assembling a packet.

The bond is also not the place to fight over service. A law firm that handles these claims notes that the process is not a remedy for disputes over service quality. If the other broker is short-paying you for a late delivery or a claimed damage deduction, expect the surety to compare your invoice against the rate confirmation and the POD line by line. Pull the rate confirmation and check two fields: the agreed linehaul and accessorials, and the name in the carrier block. If your company is not named there as the carrier, adjust your expectations before you file.

The silent broker: when to stop calling

Most bond claims we filed did not start with a dispute. They started with silence. Some brokers ignored every phone call and every email, with no argument about the amount and no explanation. At some point I stopped calling, found the broker's bond provider, and filed the claim.

What happened next was consistent. Within a day, one of two things occurred. Either the broker called me, asking why I had filed a claim, and I explained that he had not answered a single call or email. Or the amount he owed simply landed in our bank account, with no call at all. Brokers delay payment often, and not every carrier knows the right way to get the money out of them.

Decide where you stop calling before the load is late, not in the middle of frustration. Keep a running log for each unpaid load: date and time of each call, the contact dialed, whether anyone picked up, and every email sent with its subject line and the invoice reference in it. Then send one final written demand that states the invoice reference, the amount, the payment terms printed on the rate confirmation, and a specific date after which you will file on the bond. When that date passes with no reply, file the same day; a written demand with a dated deadline turns your call log into evidence the surety can use.

How to file the claim against a freight broker bond

The filing is paperwork, and order matters: each item gives you what the next one needs.

  • Find who holds the bond. The broker's FMCSA authority record shows whether its active filing is a BMC-84 surety bond or a BMC-85 trust fund, and who filed it. Per FMCSA's compliance guide, a surety provider files a BMC-84 and a trustee files a BMC-85, so the name on that filing is the party you are claiming against.
  • Get the provider's claim intake. Call the surety or trustee and ask for its claims department and its claim form or required format. For trusts handled through Federal Services Corporation, Bryant Surety describes submitting a Carrier Claim Inquiry, after which a claim application is emailed within 48 hours.
  • Assemble the packet. A claims handler expects the rate confirmation, the POD or signed BOL, the unpaid invoice, the broker-carrier agreement, and your communication records.
  • Write a one-page cover statement. Include the load ID, pickup and delivery dates, invoice date, payment terms from the rate confirmation, amount owed, and a short summary of your collection attempts with the dates of your final demand.
  • Send it in a way you can prove. Use the provider's portal or email with a transmission record, and save the confirmation with the load file.

A handler reading dozens of claims will look for the signed POD and the agreed rate first; if either is missing or the consignee signature is illegible, the claim stalls while they ask you for it. Build one PDF per load with the documents in the order listed above and the cover statement on top, so the reviewer can match rate, POD and invoice without hunting.

Why the money often lands the next day

The next-day payments in our experience are not a coincidence. They follow from how the bond is built. A BMC-84 is not insurance for the broker. According to Bryant Surety, if a claim is valid the surety pays up to the bond amount and the broker then owes the surety reimbursement under its indemnity agreement. A broker who lets the surety pay you still owes the full amount, now to a surety, with a paid claim on its file.

Since January 16, 2026, the effective date shown in the current text of 387.307, letting a claim get paid has become costlier. Per FMCSA's compliance guide, the surety or trustee must notify FMCSA within two business days of a drawdown below the $75,000 requirement. If the broker does not replenish within seven business days of FMCSA's notice, FMCSA issues a notification of suspension of operating authority. FMCSA's industry presentation lists immediate suspension of authority among the areas the rule changed.

So from the defaulting broker's chair, paying your invoice directly the morning after you file is the cheapest way out: no reimbursement to the surety, no drawdown report, no seven-business-day clock on its authority. That is exactly the call I used to get. When it comes, do not withdraw the claim on a promise. Tell the broker you will notify the surety once the funds clear. Check the bank account first, then send the surety a written withdrawal referencing the claim and the payment date.

When the bond is short, slow, or says no

The $75,000 is a total, not a per-claim limit. A collection agency that files these claims notes that the surety divides it proportionally when multiple carriers file. A broker that has gone silent on you has usually gone silent on others, and a five-figure load can come back as a fraction if the claims pile up. Filing early does not guarantee a bigger share, but filing late, after the broker's authority is suspended and everyone has noticed, puts you in the largest pool.

Timing has no single published figure you can lean on. A law firm page gives 30 to 60 days as a typical window for the surety to notify the broker and approve or deny, but that is a general statement, not a regulatory deadline. The provisions in these sources do not set a period running from the date of nonpayment within which to file. Where a broker is insolvent or in bankruptcy and FMCSA publishes a notice, a claim window runs from that notice; check the current text of 49 CFR 387.307 and the provider's instructions for the exact period as soon as you see the notice.

Trust funds carry their own wrinkle. Per FMCSA's FAQ, if a BMC-85 trust provider is found ineligible, the brokers relying on it get 30 days to obtain a replacement filing. Trust assets are limited to cash, irrevocable letters of credit from a federally insured depository institution, and Treasury bonds, and need to be liquidable to cash within seven calendar days, so a trust that is in good standing should be able to pay. If the broker's record shows its filing changing providers while your claim is open, call the original trustee and confirm in writing that your claim was received before the change.

If the surety denies the claim, ask for the reason in writing and which document it found lacking. A denial over a missing signature or a rate mismatch can sometimes be cured by resubmitting with the right paper. A denial on the merits moves you to the other routes: an FMCSA complaint and, if the amount justifies it, a lawsuit, which we cover in how to report a freight broker who won't pay. Put the denial letter, your original packet and your call log in one folder the day it arrives, because whoever handles the matter next will ask for all three.