The trucking industry has always been a wild ride, from the free-rein chaos prior to 1935, to overbearing regulation from 1935 to 1980, which ultimately gave way to deregulation in 1980. Following deregulation, trucking has endured never-ending battles over fraud, double-brokering, and disputes over who is actually getting paid what.

As the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) repeatedly focuses on 'transparency' rules, I can't help but wonder: are we addressing the right problems? Transparency has its merits, but with fraud surging due to low entry barriers and a history of weak enforcement that is only now beginning to shift, the FMCSA would achieve far more by cracking down on bad actors than by revising a 45-year-old recordkeeping rule.

In 1949, the Interstate Commerce Commission's Ex Parte MC-39 ('Practices of Property Brokers,' 49 M.C.C. 277) established the initial recordkeeping guidelines when brokers were essentially commissioned sales agents for regulated carriers. With only approximately 70 active licenses nationwide at the time, brokers earned straight commissions paid by the carrier from freight charges that the carrier billed and collected directly from shippers at filed tariff rates. The ICC mandated detailed records for every shipment, including commodity, weight, origin/destination, rates, and crucially, who paid the broker and how much. This was explicitly intended to prevent rebating, double-charging, or carriers pocketing 'free' traffic.