Since Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the preemption defense brokers leaned on for decades is gone. Negligent-selection claims now run into full discovery, and they target your selection process. CarrierMark seals what you knew about a carrier on the day you chose it, so your defense is an exhibit instead of an argument.
This page showcases the product. Run the two scores on a real carrier inside the live app.
This file would mostly clear an audit but carries high litigation exposure. That gap is what a plaintiff’s lawyer attacks.
Illustrative scores, not carrier data
Would this file survive a DOT audit? Whether the record would pass a compliance review under 49 C.F.R. Part 385. The regulator’s question.
How does it play after a crash? How strongly the file supports a negligent hiring, retention, or entrustment case. The plaintiff’s lawyer’s question.
Without a decision-date file, your defense is testimony about what your process would have shown. CarrierMark makes it a document.
The carrier’s public FMCSA record and the selection you made, bound in a timestamped, tamper-evident file.
Whether the carrier survives an audit and how the file reads after a crash, kept separate, captured on the record.
Plaintiff firms publish their target lists. The vetting file, flag history, and override trail are already in order.
Illustrative promo, not carrier data
One system of record for every company the FMCSA touches.
Define your selection criteria once: operating authority, insurance on file, safety rating, out-of-service history, whatever your standard requires. Policies are versioned, so you can prove which rules were in force on any given date.
At selection, Vault pulls the carrier’s public FMCSA record and seals it: a timestamped snapshot of exactly what was knowable on the day of your decision. Raw data preserved as pulled. Nothing summarized away.
When business requires an exception, it runs through a structured override with a documented justification and an approver. No free-text landmines. No silent workarounds.
One click produces the decision-date record: the sealed snapshot, the policy version in force, the decision trail, bound in a tamper-evident chain proving nothing was altered after the fact.
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What you decide is sealed the moment you decide it: the carrier’s public FMCSA record and the decision you made, bound in a timestamped document with a cryptographic hash and a verified chain. The file proves on its face that nothing was altered after the seal, so years later the answer to what you knew and what you did is a document, not a memory.
On May 14, 2026, a unanimous Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that federal law does not preempt state negligent-selection claims against freight brokers. The preemption argument brokers leaned on for decades is no longer a reliable way out of these cases. Negligent-selection claims now proceed into full discovery, anywhere your loads run.
Discovery in these cases targets your selection process. What your software showed. What your monitoring logs recorded. Whether your own system flagged the carrier, and what your team did next. Plaintiff firms publish these target lists openly.
Here is the problem: the public record moves every day. Authority status, insurance filings, inspection history, safety ratings, all of it changes. The lawsuit arrives years after the decision. Without a decision-date record, your defense becomes testimony about what your process “would have shown.” An argument, where an exhibit should be.
In Montgomery itself, the plaintiff alleged the carrier held a “conditional” safety rating from FMCSA when the broker hired it. The case turned on what the broker knew, or should have known, that day.
As even plaintiff’s counsel stressed, brokers should be able to successfully defend against state tort suits if the brokers have acted reasonably and arranged transportation with reputable trucking companies.— Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238, slip op. at 5 (U.S. May 14, 2026) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring)
Even the plaintiff’s own lawyer told the Supreme Court a broker “is not going to have a problem if it’s asking the hard questions of the carrier.” Id. (quoting Tr. of Oral Arg. 45).
The Court did not make brokers the insurers of every truck on the road. It made your selection process the question. Reasonable care, documented when it happened, is a defense. Undocumented care is a story.
Vault is the record of asking the hard questions.
Vault is not an onboarding packet tool. It is not a monitoring subscription. It is not a carrier safety predictor. Keep the platforms you use to find, onboard, and track carriers. Vault sits alongside them as the evidence layer.
And one thing we will never do: tell you a carrier is “safe.” Nobody can promise you a carrier is safe, and a vendor who does is drafting a plaintiff’s exhibit. Vault documents the thing the law actually asks of you: reasonable care, exercised with the information available, recorded when it happened.
We are onboarding a founding cohort of 8 operations before general availability.
Enter a DOT number and get a free snapshot of the carrier’s current public FMCSA record, formatted the way Vault seals it.
Founding cohort applications are open. The free snapshot tool is live now.