New Authority: Why Brokers Won't Book You
The 90 day rule is underwriting custom, not regulation. What brokers and their insurers are actually checking, and the four things that move you past it faster.
By Movik Editorial ·
There is no federal rule requiring a carrier to hold authority for 90 days before a broker may book them. It is an underwriting convention, applied unevenly, and it exists because brokers and their cargo insurers price the risk of a carrier with no track record. What actually opens the door is a record they can verify: active authority and filed insurance, a clean safety picture, completed loads and a reference or two.
Why does the convention exist at all?
Because the broker is taking a risk they cannot easily price on a carrier with no history.
If your truck fails to deliver, the broker owns that failure with their shipper. Their cargo insurance and their own contracts push them toward carriers with a verifiable record, and a new authority has nothing to verify. The 90 day figure is a proxy for "has survived long enough to have a track record".
It is a crude proxy, which is why it gets applied inconsistently. Understanding that it is a proxy is what lets you offer the underlying thing directly.
What are they actually checking?
Five things, and the age of the authority is only one of them.
| What they check | Why | What you control |
|---|---|---|
| Authority active and correct type | Permission to haul for hire | Fully, and it must be active not pending |
| Insurance filed at their required limits | Their exposure if freight is lost | Fully, including limits above the minimum |
| Safety record and inspection history | Their liability and their shipper's | Over time, starting immediately |
| Operating history length | A proxy for reliability | Not directly |
| References and completed loads | Evidence that replaces the proxy | Fully, and this is the fastest lever |
Four of those five are things you can produce or improve. Only the fourth is purely a function of the calendar, and it is the one carriers focus on.
- Carrier packet
The set of documents a broker collects before booking you: your operating authority, a certificate of insurance naming them where required, a W-9, your signed carrier agreement, and often a voided check or ACH form. Assembling it once as a single clean PDF turns a multi-day back-and-forth into one email, and brokers notice the difference.
What moves you past it faster?
Four things, in rough order of effect.
Insurance above the minimum. Many brokers require cargo coverage higher than the regulatory floor. A carrier already at the level a broker requires removes their most common objection.
A complete carrier packet, sent before it is asked for. It signals an operation rather than a hopeful phone call, and it removes the delay that makes a broker move on to the next carrier.
A first load that is small. Ask for something low-value and short. A broker who will not give you a $40,000 load of electronics may give you a light load in-region, and one completed load starts the record.
References. A shipper, a smaller broker, a dispatcher who has used you. Two verifiable references outweigh several weeks of calendar.
What about the money side?
Solve it before the first load, not after, because the first loads are the tightest cash position the business will ever be in.
You will deliver, invoice, and wait. That gap is at its most dangerous when there is no reserve behind it, which is exactly the position a new authority is in. Decide in advance how you will fund it and what that funding costs.
Factoring is available to new authorities in a way bank credit generally is not, because the underwriting looks at the broker's ability to pay rather than yours. It is not free, and what it costs per load is worth knowing before you need it rather than during the first slow-paying invoice.
What should I not do?
Two shortcuts create problems that outlast the wait.
Do not haul for hire while the authority is pending. Pending is not active, it voids most insurance, and it creates a compliance record that follows you. If you are unclear on where your application stands, the stages and what gates each one sets out how to check.
And be careful with loads that arrive too easily at rates that look too good. A new authority is a target, because the party posting the load knows you are short of options. Double brokering concentrates on carriers who cannot afford to be choosy.
What do carriers get wrong here?
Treating the 90 days as law. It is custom, and asking what a specific broker actually requires often produces a shorter answer.
Carrying only the minimum insurance. It satisfies the regulator and fails the broker's own requirement, which is the requirement that decides whether you get the load.
Waiting instead of building a record. Time alone produces an older authority with no history. Loads produce history, and history is what the 90 days was standing in for.
Chasing large loads first. The high-value freight has the strictest vetting. The first load should be the one that is easiest to say yes to.
Before your first load, know what the payment gap will cost you and run the numbers on a specific rate.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 90 day rule an actual regulation?
No. There is no federal requirement that a carrier hold authority for any particular period before a broker may book them. It is an underwriting convention, and it is applied unevenly: some brokers enforce it strictly, some apply it only above a cargo value threshold, and some do not apply it at all. Because it is custom rather than law, it is negotiable in a way a regulation would not be.
Do smaller brokers have looser requirements?
Often, though not always, and the trade tends to be payment terms rather than paperwork. A smaller broker may book a new authority that a large one will not, and pay at day forty-five rather than day thirty. That is a real trade to weigh rather than a free pass.
How long does it actually take before this stops being a problem?
It stops being about time once you have a record. Brokers relax when they can see completed loads, a clean safety picture and references, and the carriers who assemble those deliberately get there faster than the calendar would suggest. Waiting produces time; hauling produces a record, and it is the record that changes the answer.
Movik Editorial
Freight finance desk
The Movik editorial desk covers freight payment, factoring and carrier compliance. Posts are reviewed against the underwriting and document-processing work the team does daily.
Written and fact-checked by the team that underwrites carrier funding applications at Movik.
