Why the Supreme Court Just Made Your CSA Score the Most Important Number on Your Truck

Reviewed by Cameron Pechia, Founder, WA Insurance License 71186
Last reviewed: 5/21/2026

Key takeaway: On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that freight brokers can be sued under state law for negligently hiring unsafe motor carriers. The ruling resolves a long-running circuit split and creates real freight broker negligent hiring liability for the first time. For fleets, the practical effect lands fast: brokers will start vetting your CSA scores, safety rating, inspection history, and crash record harder than they ever have, because if they book you and you crash, they’re now on the hook too. If your safety profile looks shaky on public FMCSA data, expect to lose loads, see your rates pressured, and face new insurance requirements from the brokers you work with.

You’ve probably already heard about the Montgomery ruling. It’s been the only thing freight news has talked about since May 14. Most of the coverage focuses on what it means for brokers. That’s the obvious story. The less obvious story — and the one that’s going to hit your dispatch board faster than most people realize — is what it means for the fleet on the other end of the broker’s phone call.

That fleet is you.

What the Supreme Court actually decided in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport

The case came out of a 2017 Illinois crash. Shawn Montgomery was stopped on the shoulder of Interstate 70 when a Mack truck driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena veered off the road and struck his tractor-trailer. Montgomery lost his leg. Varela-Mojena was hauling plastic pots for Caribe Transport II. The load had been arranged by C.H. Robinson — one of the largest freight brokers in the country.

Montgomery sued C.H. Robinson on a negligent-hiring theory. The argument was simple: at the time the broker hired Caribe Transport, the trucking company had a “conditional” safety rating from FMCSA with documented deficiencies in driver qualifications, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and crash rate. The broker either knew or should have known the carrier was a risk.

Why this ruling matters more to fleets than to brokers

The headlines are about brokers getting sued. The real story is what brokers do next to stop that from happening — and what they do next is vet you harder.

Here’s how the math works. A broker books a load. The fleet they hired causes a catastrophic accident. Under Montgomery, the plaintiff’s attorney can now sue the broker for negligent hiring in state court. To win, the plaintiff has to show the broker failed to exercise reasonable care in selecting the carrier. Discovery in those cases will pull every piece of public FMCSA data the broker had access to at the time of dispatch — SAFER reports, BASIC percentile scores, out-of-service violations, conditional ratings, authority age, crash history. If anything in that record looked bad, the broker has a problem.

So brokers are going to do one of two things, and most will do both. First, they’ll build a paper trail showing they checked every public safety data point before they booked you. Second, they’ll stop booking carriers whose data looks bad, because the cleanest defense to a negligent hiring claim is being able to show you only worked with carriers whose records came back clean.

If your CSA scores are elevated, your conditional rating hasn’t been upgraded, or your inspection history has open violations sitting in SAFER — you are going to feel this. Fast.

How brokers will start vetting your fleet differently starting now

Before Montgomery, broker vetting of fleets was inconsistent. Some did real homework. Most checked authority, insurance certificates, and maybe a quick SAFER snapshot. The rest booked the cheapest available truck and moved on.

That model is dead.

Post-Montgomery, every broker that wants to defend a negligent hiring claim needs a documented carrier selection process. The Restatement (Second) of Torts §411, which the Supreme Court cited in the opinion, imposes a duty of reasonable care when hiring a contractor for work carrying a risk of physical harm. In trucking, that translates to: did you check the public safety record before you handed this load to this carrier? The answer needs to be yes, and it needs to be on paper.

Within weeks, you’ll see brokers asking for things they never asked for before: a CSA score letter, a copy of your last DOT inspection report, an explanation of any out-of-service events in the last 24 months, signed attestations about your driver hiring practices. Some of the larger brokerages have already started rolling out these requirements internally. The mid-sized and smaller ones will catch up because their insurance carriers will force them to.

The data brokers will now pull on you before booking a load

Every piece of this is public and free. FMCSA SAFER pulls it in seconds:

• Your overall safety rating (Satisfactory, Conditional, or Unsatisfactory) and the date of the last compliance review
• Your seven BASIC percentile scores under CSA — Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Hazardous Materials Compliance, Crash Indicator.
• Out-of-service rates for drivers and vehicles compared to the national average
• Recordable crashes in the last 24 months
• Authority age and operating status
• Open enforcement actions

If a broker has access to that data and books you anyway when something on it looks bad, they have created their own liability. So they won’t.

What your CSA scores and safety rating signal after Montgomery

This is the part most fleet owners don’t fully understand. Your CSA scores aren’t just a regulatory issue anymore. They are now a commercial issue that determines whether brokers will book you, what rates you can command, and what insurance terms you’ll be offered.

A clean profile — Satisfactory rating, all BASICs under their public alert thresholds, no recent crashes, low out-of-service rate — becomes a sales asset. Brokers who are now liable for hiring unsafe carriers will steer freight toward fleets that make their own defense easy. If your CSA percentiles are below 65 across the board, your phone is about to ring more.

A messy profile is the opposite. One BASIC over the alert threshold, a conditional rating that hasn’t been upgraded, or a cluster of recent recordable crashes — and brokers will pass. Not because they think you’re dangerous. Because their lawyers told them to pass.

Here’s the part nobody is talking about: the BASIC percentiles are relative. As more fleets clean up to compete for post-Montgomery freight, the curve shifts. Fleets that stay where they are will see their percentiles get worse without doing anything wrong. The baseline is moving.

Does this change your insurance? Yes — and here’s where

The Montgomery ruling doesn’t change federal minimum liability limits (verify current limit — last meaningful update was 1985, $750,000 for general freight, $5 million for certain hazmat). What it changes is what brokers will require of you and how your existing coverage responds.

Auto liability and umbrella limits

Most for-hire interstate fleets carry $1 million primary auto liability because that’s what the load-side market demands. After Montgomery, expect to see brokers require higher minimums on certain freight, particularly anything high-value or high-hazard. A $1 million primary with no umbrella is going to start looking thin on certain loads.

If you haven’t priced umbrella coverage in the last 18 months, do it. The umbrella market has tightened, but $2 million to $5 million in excess limits is still buyable for most clean fleets at a reasonable cost. Walking into a tough load conversation with a broker who’s nervous about post-Montgomery liability is a lot easier with a $5 million umbrella sitting behind your primary auto.

What brokers will require from your certificate of insurance

Watch for three things changing on broker COI requests:

• Additional insured language. Expect brokers to start asking to be named as additional insureds with primary and non-contributory wording on auto liability. Some already require it. More will. This shifts defense costs and may impact how your auto policy responds.
• Higher minimum limits. $1 million primary auto, $100,000 cargo, and $1 million general liability has been the standard floor. That floor is moving.
• Specific endorsement requirements. Some brokers will start asking for MCS-90 endorsement copies, broadened pollution endorsements, and proof of trailer interchange coverage where applicable.

If you haven’t reviewed your COI against current broker requirements in the last six months, that review is overdue.

What to do in the next 60 days if you’re a fleet owner

Three things, in order of urgency:

1. Pull your own SAFER record and read it the way a broker’s lawyer will. Go to safer.fmcsa.dot.gov, enter your DOT number, and look at what’s public. If anything is wrong, file a DataQ. If anything is bad, start working on it now. The cleanup window is short.
   
2. Get a coverage review. Not a renewal quote. A real review. Look at limits, additional insured language, MCS-90 status, cargo limits and exclusions, contingent coverages, and trailer interchange. If your broker can’t walk you through how each of those responds to a post-Montgomery loss scenario, you have the wrong broker.
   
3. Tighten your driver hiring and qualification file. This was already a CSA issue. It’s now a Montgomery discoverability issue. If you ever end up in litigation, plaintiff’s attorneys will pull your DQ files. Treat them like exhibits. PSP reports, MVR pulls, road test documentation, drug and alcohol clearinghouse queries — make sure every file is complete and the process is consistent across every driver you hire.

How this ripples through to small fleets and owner-operators

If you’re an owner-operator running under your own authority or a small fleet with one to ten trucks, you might be reading this thinking it’s a problem for the big guys. It isn’t. Small operations get hit hardest by this kind of shift, because brokers can be selective.

Here’s what I’ve seen in the field over the last ten days. Brokers who used to take a quick look at insurance and authority and move on are now asking for full safety packets before they’ll send a rate confirmation. Owner-operators with one or two recent inspections that didn’t go well are getting told their data “needs cleanup” before a load gets booked. None of this is in writing yet — it doesn’t have to be. The behavior is moving faster than any policy memo.

If you’re a single-truck operator with a clean record, this is good news. Brokers will want you. Your rates have leverage they didn’t have two weeks ago.

If you’re a small fleet with one truck running hot on hours-of-service violations or two recent crashes that haven’t aged out yet — assume some doors are about to close. Your priority for the next 90 days is fixing what’s in the public record before the broker community fully adjusts to Montgomery.

Now is the time to look at your existing coverage, your CSA profile, and your broker relationships together — as one connected commercial picture, not three separate operational tasks. The fleets that get ahead of this will pick up freight share from the ones that don’t. If you want a coverage review built around what brokers will actually be asking you for over the next 12 months, get a quote at Valley Trucking Insurance and we’ll walk through your DOT profile, current policies, and what needs to tighten up before the next renewal.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Montgomery v. Caribe Transport actually decide?
On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the FAAAA does not preempt state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers. Brokers can now be sued under state law when an unsafe motor carrier they hired causes an accident.

Does Montgomery mean brokers are automatically liable for every truck crash?
No. The legal standard is ordinary care. A plaintiff still has to prove the broker failed to exercise reasonable care in selecting the carrier and that the failure contributed to the harm. Brokers who vet carriers properly and document the process will still have defenses.

How does the Montgomery ruling affect my trucking company if I don’t broker freight?
It changes how brokers will vet you before booking loads. Expect deeper review of your CSA scores, safety rating, inspection history, and crash record. If your public FMCSA data looks shaky, expect to lose load opportunities and see new insurance and documentation requirements.

What is freight broker negligent hiring liability?
It’s a tort theory under state law holding that a broker has a duty to use reasonable care when selecting a motor carrier for a load. If a broker hires a carrier it knew or should have known was unsafe, and that carrier causes an accident, the broker can be held liable for the resulting harm.

Do I need higher insurance limits now because of Montgomery?
You may. Federal minimums haven’t changed, but broker requirements are tightening. Many fleets will see brokers ask for higher primary auto limits, umbrella coverage, and specific additional insured language on certificates of insurance.

Will Montgomery affect my insurance rates?
Indirectly, yes. Insurers writing trucking and broker accounts are reassessing exposure. Fleets with clean safety records may see stable or improving terms. Fleets with elevated CSA scores or recent crashes will likely face harder rate environments because brokers and insurers will both be more selective.

What’s the first thing I should do after the Montgomery ruling?
Pull your SAFER record at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov and review it the way a broker or plaintiff’s attorney would. Address any inaccuracies through DataQs. Fix what’s broken before brokers fully adjust their vetting practices over the next 60 to 90 days.

Does this ruling apply to small fleets and owner-operators?
Yes. The ruling applies to every carrier a broker hires, regardless of fleet size. Smaller operations may feel the impact faster because brokers can be more selective, and a single conditional rating or recent crash can disproportionately affect a small carrier’s ability to book freight.