35,000 Carriers Gone: What Landstar's Network Purge Tells Every Broker About the New Standard of Care

On July 28, 2026, during Landstar System's second-quarter earnings call, Chief Safety and Operations Officer Matt Miller delivered a number that should stop every freight broker in their tracks: Landstar's approved carrier network has shrunk from over 100,000 carriers in Q2 2022 to just over 64,000 at the end of Q2 2026 — a 35% reduction representing more than 35,000 carriers cut from the network.

This wasn't a routine housekeeping exercise. It was a deliberate, multi-year purge driven by fraud detection, safety screening, and an increasingly hostile liability environment. And the sequence matters: the cuts started with cargo fraud, not courtrooms.

It Started With Fraud, Not Lawsuits

Miller was direct on the earnings call about what triggered the initial contraction. The rise of freight fraud in the post-pandemic years was the catalyst that prompted Landstar to invest in automated identity checks, advanced vetting technology, and stricter compliance protocols. The Supreme Court's May 2026 ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II — which eliminated preemption protections that had previously shielded brokers from state-level negligent-hiring claims — accelerated urgency around the cuts but did not start them.

This sequence is critical for brokers to internalize. Landstar didn't tighten its network because a court told it to. It tightened because cargo fraud had already exposed the flaw in treating a carrier's FMCSA active-authority status as a clearance. Active authority is a threshold, not a verdict.

Miller also noted something equally instructive: carriers that fail to operate honestly around cargo theft and fraud tend to carry questionable safety records as well. The fraud signal and the safety signal cluster together. A carrier with elevated out-of-service rates, recent authority gaps, or a pattern of shell-company registration often shows both. That overlap is not a coincidence — it is a structural feature of how fraudulent operators build and discard identities.

What the Montgomery Ruling Changes for Everyone Else

Prior to Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, many brokers operated under the assumption that confirming active FMCSA authority was sufficient to establish reasonable carrier selection. The Supreme Court's ruling unwound that assumption. Brokers can now face state-law negligent-hiring claims regardless of whether the carrier held active authority at the time of dispatch.

Landstar CEO Frank Lonegro publicly called for federal clarity on carrier vetting standards, stating the industry needs a predictable framework for what constitutes ordinary care in carrier selection. The Transportation Intermediaries Association filed a formal rulemaking petition with FMCSA in June 2026 demanding a Motor Carrier Safety Selection Standard and the public release of a High-Risk Motor Carrier list.

Until that federal standard exists, brokers bear the burden of documenting their own due diligence — and a court will evaluate whether that diligence was reasonable. A static onboarding packet collected once at setup is not a defensible record. It is a timestamp.

What Landstar's Standard Implies for Smaller Brokers

Landstar has scale, proprietary technology, and a dedicated safety and operations function. Most brokers do not. But the vetting signals that drove Landstar's cuts are the same ones available to any broker who knows where to look:

• Authority age and gaps: A carrier registered 60 days ago with no operating history is not equivalent to one with four years of continuous authority. Age of registration, prior revocations, and gaps between revocation and re-registration are all checkable through FMCSA records.
• Identity consistency: The name, address, phone number, and email on a carrier's FMCSA filing should match what they present to you at onboarding. Discrepancies between the Company Snapshot and the carrier's outbound contact information are a documented pattern in impersonation schemes.
• SOS officer records: The individuals listed as officers in a state's Secretary of State registration should align with the people authorizing the carrier relationship. A carrier whose SOS officers share names, addresses, or phone numbers with other recently formed or revoked carriers is a red flag the FMCSA database alone will not surface.
• Shared identifiers across carriers: Phone numbers and email addresses reused across multiple MC numbers are a core chameleon-carrier signal. A single phone number appearing on three separate carrier profiles — especially profiles with different authority ages — is not a coincidence.
• Prior-revoke DOT links: Carriers that reincarnate under new MC numbers after revocation frequently retain one or more identifiers from the prior entity. A new DOT number with the same EIN, address, or contact as a revoked carrier is a structural link that points to a chameleon operation.

The Checklist Every Broker Should Run Before the Next Load

• [ ] Confirm FMCSA active authority and check for any prior revocations under the same DOT/MC or associated entities
• [ ] Verify that the carrier's SAFER Company Snapshot address, phone, and contact match what the carrier provided directly to you — flag any mismatch
• [ ] Check authority age: treat carriers with fewer than 12 months of continuous, uninterrupted authority as elevated risk requiring additional verification steps
• [ ] Run SOS officer names against state business registries to identify links to dissolved or revoked entities
• [ ] Search the carrier's contact phone number and email address across other carrier profiles to detect shared-identifier patterns
• [ ] Confirm cargo insurance is active, in-force, and issued by a carrier licensed by your state's department of insurance — not a photoshopped certificate
• [ ] Document every step with a timestamp: post-Montgomery, your vetting record is your legal defense

The Broader Signal

When one of the largest brokerage networks in the country removes more than a third of its approved carriers over four years and attributes the starting point explicitly to cargo fraud, the industry has a data point it cannot ignore. Landstar's purge is not a proprietary strategy — it is a leading indicator of where the minimum standard of care is heading.

Smaller brokers will not get cover from scale or legal resources if a load goes wrong. What they will get asked, in a deposition or in a claim, is: What did you check, and when did you check it?

The answer to that question needs to be more than "we looked them up on SAFER."

For a deeper look at the specific vetting signals the Montgomery ruling puts at the center of broker liability, see Montgomery Changed the Rules. Here's What Your Carrier File Needs to Show a Jury.