← All field notesAugust 14, 2026

You Have a Federal Right to See What the Broker Was Paid

Asking a dispatcher to show you the rate con is a courtesy they can refuse. Federal law gives carriers something stronger: the right to go straight to the broker’s own payment record — one almost nobody uses, because it’s usually signed away before the first load.

Fortuna Dispatch Desk, reviewed by David White

Three things carriers get told about protecting themselves on a load: read the rate con, ask your dispatcher to show it to you, and don’t sign with anyone who stalls when you ask. All three are good advice, and none of them is a legal right. Each one depends on someone else agreeing to cooperate. There’s a fourth option that almost never comes up, because it doesn’t run through your dispatcher at all. Federal regulation gives any party to a brokered transaction, including you as the carrier, the right to go straight to the broker and pull the actual record of what they were paid. It’s real, it’s specific, and by most accounts almost nobody uses it.

What the regulation actually says

The rule is 49 CFR 371.3, and it’s short enough to read in full. Under 371.3(a), every broker has to keep a record of each transaction that includes the consignor’s name and address, the carrier that hauled the load, the bill of lading number, and then the part that matters here: “the amount of compensation received by the broker for the brokerage service performed and the name of the payer.” Brokers have to hold that record for three years under 371.3(b). And 371.3(c) does the actual work, in sixteen words: “Each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of the transaction.” Not a summary. Not a number your dispatcher relayed to you. The broker’s own record, including what they were paid and by whom.

That right isn’t new and it isn’t proposed. It traces back to the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, the same deregulation-era law that opened trucking up to brokers in the first place, and it already applies, right now, to any load a broker arranged.

Why this is a different tool than “ask to see the rate con”

We’ve written separately about reading a rate con line by line and about the difference between a dispatcher and a broker, and both pieces land on the same practical advice: ask to see the document, and treat hesitation as an answer. That’s good advice, but it’s a courtesy, not a right. It depends on your dispatcher actually having the paperwork, being willing to hand it over, and being honest about what’s on it. If a dispatcher is skimming the load, showing you a doctored copy costs them nothing.

371.3(c) skips the dispatcher entirely. It’s a right against the broker, held by the carrier, and it exists whether or not your dispatcher ever shows you anything. If you run under your own operating authority, you become a party to that brokered transaction the moment the broker tenders you the load. You can then ask the broker directly for its own record of what it billed and what it paid, rather than a figure relayed to you secondhand.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this right runs to the carrier: the entity holding the operating authority the load actually moved under. If you’re leased on to another carrier instead of running your own authority, the party to that brokered transaction is generally the carrier you’re leased to, not you individually. That doesn’t make the right useless to a lease-on driver, but it does mean the request has to come from that carrier, not from you directly to the broker. More on that relationship in our piece on lease agreement red flags.

Why almost nobody actually uses it

If a real, decades-old federal right existed to check whether you were paid honestly, you’d expect it to come up more than it does. Trucking advocates have been saying why for years: brokers routinely write a waiver of 371.3 rights into the standard carrier-broker agreement, or bury it in the onboarding packet a new carrier signs just to start getting loads. Sign the packet without reading it closely, and you may have signed away the right to ever ask. FreightWaves has reported that this exact pattern is what pushed the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC) to petition FMCSA about it back in 2020: a right that’s real on paper and close to unusable in practice, because carriers rarely exercise it given the contractual barriers brokers build around it. OOIDA has pointed to chargeback disputes as a typical case this right exists to settle: a broker docking a carrier’s pay weeks after delivery over a claim the carrier was never shown documentation for.

Not everyone in the industry wants that fixed. The Transportation Intermediaries Association, the trade group representing brokers, has argued FMCSA’s enforcement energy belongs elsewhere, on highway safety and cargo fraud, and has called stronger transparency requirements a solution in search of a problem. Worth knowing both sides of that argument are actually being made, rather than assuming this is settled.

The fix that’s been proposed, and hasn’t landed

FMCSA published a formal proposal, “Transparency in Property Broker Transactions” (Docket FMCSA-2023-0257, RIN 2126-AC63), in the Federal Register on November 20, 2024. It would convert today’s “right,” something a broker can get you to waive, into an affirmative duty the broker has to meet regardless of what any contract says, require the record to be kept electronically instead of in a filing cabinet, itemize charges, payments and claims with dates and amounts instead of a lump total, and set a hard 48-hour deadline for handing the record over once a party requests it. The proposal drew close to 5,000 public comments, and FMCSA reopened the comment period once already, in early 2025, to let more drivers weigh in.

None of that has become final rule. Rather than finalize the November 2024 version, FMCSA set it aside in favor of a follow-up supplemental proposal, and that supplemental proposal has already missed at least one target date on the agency’s own regulatory agenda in 2026. We’re not going to hand you a firm date for when any of this becomes enforceable, because FMCSA hasn’t kept one itself. What’s true today, and stays true regardless of when the supplemental rule eventually lands, is that 371.3(c) already exists and already gives you the right to ask. The pending rule would just make it harder for a broker to get you to sign that right away before you ever get the chance.

What that means for you right now

Until the rule changes, here’s what actually works on a real dispute today:

Read your carrier-broker agreements before you sign, not after. A waiver of 371.3 rights is usually a single clause, not a page. Check the section on records, audits or dispute resolution closely.
Put a request in writing, citing 371.3(c) by name, when you have a real reason to doubt what a broker paid on a load: a chargeback with no documentation, a rate that doesn’t match what you were quoted, a payment that’s short with no explanation.
Don’t expect a 48-hour answer today. That deadline isn’t law yet. A broker can currently take its time, or push back, without violating anything — that’s exactly the gap the pending rule is meant to close.
If you’re leased on, route the request through your carrier, since it’s the party of record on the transaction, not you individually.
Treat this as a backstop, not a habit. You’re not going to formally invoke 371.3 on every load. It exists for the one where something looks wrong and a dispatcher’s word isn’t enough anymore.

None of this is legal advice, and a real dispute over what a broker actually paid on a specific load is a conversation for an attorney who can read your own carrier-broker agreement, not a blog post. What this article can tell you plainly: the right to see a broker’s own record of what it was paid isn’t a favor anyone is doing you. It’s federal regulation, it predates most of the dispatchers currently in business, and the reason you’ve probably never used it has more to do with what you signed on the way in than with whether the right exists.

At Fortuna Trucks you see the broker’s real rate confirmation on every load before you commit — not a summary, not a number relayed secondhand. That’s most of what 371.3(c) is trying to guarantee you anyway, just without needing to invoke a federal regulation to get it. See what Fortuna does or talk to a dispatcher.

Common questions

Can carriers legally see what a broker was paid?

Yes. Under 49 CFR 371.3(c), any party to a brokered transaction, including the carrier, has the right to review the broker's own record of the deal, including the compensation the broker received and who paid it. Brokers must keep that record for three years. It's a federal right that predates most dispatchers currently in business.

Why do so few carriers use their right to broker records?

Brokers routinely write a waiver of these rights into the standard carrier-broker agreement, or bury it in the onboarding packet a new carrier signs just to start getting loads. Sign without reading closely and you may have signed the right away. Read the records or dispute-resolution section of any agreement before you sign it, not after a payment looks wrong.

Does a lease-on driver have the right to see broker pay?

The right runs to the carrier holding the operating authority the load moved under. If you're leased on rather than running your own authority, the party to that transaction is generally the carrier you're leased to, not you individually. The request has to come from that carrier. Your lease agreement is where that relationship gets spelled out.

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