Freight fraud, double brokering, and chameleon carriers are the biggest risks in trucking today. Here is the standard we apply — in writing — before any carrier touches a load with BKE's name on it.
Anybody can say they "vet carriers." Most brokers mean they glanced at authority and an insurance certificate. That stopped being enough years ago. Today's freight moves through a market where stolen carrier identities, unauthorized re-brokering, and cargo theft rings are everyday problems — and the load that pays for it is the one nobody checked.
BKE Logistics was built by someone who spent 15 years on the carrier side of this business. We know what a good carrier looks like, what a bad one costs, and how fraud actually happens at the dock. So we put our vetting standard in writing, where our shippers can hold us to it.
Our process is aligned with the CAVRA Standard — Carrier Assessment, Verification, Risk, and Accountability — the carrier-vetting framework published by transportation attorney Cassandra Gaines as an industry benchmark for reasonable carrier selection. We've adopted its principles and tailored them to the full-truckload freight BKE actually moves.
Active FMCSA operating authority is the floor, not the bar. We also look at how long the authority has been continuously active, and whether it's been recently granted, reinstated, or interrupted. A carrier with brand-new or patchy authority gets extra scrutiny, not a pass.
Our baseline is $1,000,000 auto liability and $100,000 cargo coverage, verified as active and actually applicable to the load — not just a certificate PDF in a folder. Scheduled-auto language, reefer breakdown exclusions, and commodity exclusions get checked when the load calls for it.
A carrier with a Conditional or Unsatisfactory safety rating doesn't haul for BKE, period. Beyond the rating, we review FMCSA safety data — unsafe driving, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, driver fitness, and controlled substances indicators — against thresholds we don't bend load by load.
Real trucks on real lanes get inspected. Our baseline is at least one completed roadside inspection in the past 24 months. A carrier with zero inspection history — especially one whose authority age or claimed fleet size doesn't match — is treated as elevated risk, not ordinary capacity.
Vetting means nothing if the company you approved isn't the one hauling the freight. We contact carriers through their FMCSA-reported phone and email — not whatever number a dispatcher called from. Mismatched contact info, virtual addresses, and recent ownership or contact changes get questioned before tender, not after.
Some "new" carriers are old problems wearing a new MC number. We screen for related entities — shared principals, addresses, phone numbers, and factoring — connected to fraud, theft, revoked authority, or do-not-use history.
Unauthorized re-brokering defeats every other check on this list. Pickup details are released only to the verified carrier, and we confirm the truck showing up matches the carrier we hired — MC/DOT verification at pickup where practical, and paperwork checks (BOL, POD, payment documents) that would expose a different carrier after the fact.
Approval isn't universal. A carrier fine for general dry van freight may not be right for temperature-controlled, high-value, or theft-sensitive loads. Reefer, electronics, food-grade, and similar freight get heightened review — equipment, coverage, and track record for that kind of haul.
An unproven carrier doesn't get volume — they get a trial load. Clean pickup, tracking, delivery, paperwork, and payment first. Then we talk about more freight.
Authority, insurance, and safety status change. Carriers we use get re-checked, and red flags spotted during dispatch, transit, or delivery — a driver who can't identify the load, equipment that doesn't match, a payment change request — trigger a stop and investigation, not a shrug.
Some things are not judgment calls. A carrier with any of these does not haul for BKE, no matter how tight capacity is or how good the rate looks:
Capacity pressure is not an exception process. If the safety rule ever needs to change, it changes in the written policy — not on a Friday afternoon because a load is hot.
When BKE covers your load, the carrier on it has passed every check above. If we can't verify something, we don't tender — we'd rather tell you a load is delayed than gamble your freight on a carrier we can't stand behind.
Want to check us the same way we check carriers? Look up BKE Logistics LLC — MC# 1588065, USDOT# 4141583 — on FMCSA SAFER. That's the kind of verification we think every shipper should do, including on us.
Shipper checklist: the five questions we recommend asking any flatbed carrier before you book a load are in our latest blog post — 5 Questions to Ask Any Flatbed Carrier Before You Book.
A shipper checklist: MC authority, insurance certificate, FMCSA SMS, securement fit, and double-broker checks — the five things that actually matter before you tender.
Tell us your load — flatbed, dry van, or reefer — and get a straight answer from the person who covers it.
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