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Last updated: General freight broker bond claims information — confirm current requirements with the licensing authority.
BMC-84 Claims — For Carriers Filing & Brokers Defending

How a Freight Broker Bond Claim Actually Pays Out

A carrier gets paid off a broker's BMC-84 bond in three possible ways: the broker agrees to pay, the broker stays silent past its 7-business-day response window and the surety pays anyway, or a court enters judgment against the broker (49 U.S.C. §13906(b)). Most claims resolve the second way. If the payout drops the broker's $75,000 security below the federal minimum, the surety must notify FMCSA within 2 business days, and the broker then gets 7 business days from FMCSA's notice to prove the security was restored or FMCSA suspends the operating authority (49 CFR §387.307(e)) — deadlines FMCSA locked in under the Broker and Freight Forwarder Financial Responsibility rule (88 FR 78656), now fully in force as of its January 16, 2026 compliance date. This page walks through both sides: how a carrier files and gets paid, and what a broker actually owes back once the surety does.

$75,000
Federal BMC-84 / BMC-85 penal sum
7 bus. days
Broker's window to contest a claim
7 bus. days
To prove security restored after FMCSA's notice
$0
Cap on the broker's indemnity repayment
I'm a carrier filing a claimI'm a broker defending one

Every citation on this page links to its official .gov source — confirm the current text there before relying on it. Deciding between a bond and a trust in the first place? See BMC-84 vs BMC-85.

Quick answer
A carrier gets paid from a broker's BMC-84 bond in one of three ways: the broker agrees to pay, the broker stays silent past its 7-business-day response window and the surety pays anyway, or a court enters judgment against the broker. If a payout drops the $75,000 security below the federal minimum, the surety must notify FMCSA within 2 business days.
  • Who requires it: FMCSA (49 U.S.C. §13906(b); 49 CFR §387.307(e)).
  • Amount: $75,000 federal BMC-84 / BMC-85 amount. After FMCSA's notice, the broker has 7 business days to prove the security was restored or FMCSA suspends the operating authority.
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What to Do Right Now, Depending on Which Side You're On

A carrier and a broker landing on this page are usually looking at the exact same claim from opposite ends. The next move looks nothing alike.

If You're a Carrier Filing a Claim

A broker didn't pay you for freight you hauled

  1. 1Confirm the broker's MC number and pull up its BMC-84 surety or BMC-85 trustee on the FMCSA licensing & insurance system. You need the surety's name to send notice.
  2. 2Assemble your rate confirmation, signed bill of lading or proof of delivery, and the unpaid invoice. Claims with a clean paper trail move through the 7-business-day response window without a fight.
  3. 3Send written notice of the claim to the surety (not just a phone call), and keep a copy. This starts the broker's response clock.
  4. 4If the broker doesn't respond in time — or the surety finds the claim valid anyway — expect payment from the bond or trust, capped at whatever remains of the $75,000 penal sum after any earlier claims.

If You're a Broker Defending One

Your surety or trustee just notified you of a claim

  1. 1Calendar the 7-business-day response window the moment notice arrives. Silence past the deadline is treated as non-response, not as a dispute.
  2. 2Pull the load file — rate confirmation, POD, any correspondence about a dispute, and proof of any prior partial payment or factoring already sent to a factoring company on the same invoice.
  3. 3Respond to the surety in writing within the window, even if only to say you need a few more days — a documented good-faith dispute is treated very differently from no response at all.
  4. 4If the claim pays, plan for replenishment before you plan for anything else — see “What a Broker Owes Back” below for the indemnity math and the 7-day suspension clock.

The Statutes That Actually Control a Claim

Not paraphrases — the operative statutory and regulatory language, with official links.

Official Federal — 49 U.S.C. §13906(b)(3) Requirements

"Each broker subject to the requirements of this section shall provide financial security of $75,000 for purposes of this subsection, regardless of the number of branch offices or sales agents of the broker."
Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives • 49 U.S.C. §13906(b)(3)

Official Federal — 49 CFR §387.307(a) Requirements

"A broker must have a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000 in effect."
Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (e-CFR) • 49 CFR §387.307(a)

Who can actually pursue the bond, and how

49 U.S.C. §13906(b) makes the $75,000 security “available to pay any claim against a broker arising from its failure to pay freight charges under its contracts, agreements, or arrangements for transportation” — carriers and other parties owed freight charges, not shippers with a cargo-loss complaint. Payment happens through one of three routes: the broker consents, the broker doesn't respond within its notice window and the surety determines the claim valid on its own, or the claim is reduced to a judgment against the broker.

FMCSA built the specific day-counts around that framework in the Broker and Freight Forwarder Financial Responsibility rule (88 FR 78656), published November 16, 2023 to implement §13906(b) and (c). FMCSA extended the original compliance date twice; the rule's claims-response, immediate-suspension, and eligible-trustee provisions became fully binding on January 16, 2026, so every deadline on this page is currently in force, not upcoming.

External links open in a new tab and use rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer". The claims-response and replenishment day-counts below are drawn from FMCSA's implementing rule and regulatory text, not from a single verbatim CFR quotation — confirm the current text at eCFR §387.307 before relying on it in a filing.

The Claim Clock, Day by Day

Every deadline below is set by 49 CFR §387.307 and the 88 FR 78656 claims-response provisions FMCSA finalized for brokers and freight forwarders — in force since January 16, 2026.

  1. 1
    Day 0

    Carrier files notice with the surety or trustee

    Written claim with supporting documentation (rate confirmation, POD, unpaid invoice) goes to the broker's BMC-84 surety or BMC-85 trustee.

  2. 2
    Days 0–~2 business days

    Surety notifies the broker of the claim

    The surety or trustee gives the broker written notice and starts the response clock — this is the point most brokers first learn a claim exists.

  3. 3
    7 business days

    Broker's window to contest the claim

    The broker can dispute validity, provide proof of prior payment, or flag a factoring conflict. No response within the window is treated as non-response.

  4. 4
    After the window closes

    Surety pays, or the trust draws down

    If the broker didn't respond, or responded and the surety still finds the claim valid, payment goes out — from the surety's funds (BMC-84) or straight out of the trust corpus (BMC-85).

  5. !
    If security drops below $75,000 — 2 business days

    Surety or trustee must notify FMCSA

    49 CFR §387.307(e)(4) requires the surety or trustee to notify FMCSA electronically within 2 business days of any payment that drops the bond or trust below $75,000.

  6. !
    7 business days from FMCSA's notice

    Broker must prove the security was restored

    FMCSA sends the broker written notice that authority will be suspended within 7 business days unless the broker shows the notice was an error, the bond or trust has been restored to $75,000, or the claims were satisfied without touching the bond (49 CFR §387.307(e)(5)).

  7. !
    Window missed

    FMCSA suspends operating authority

    Broker cannot legally arrange for-hire transportation until security is restored to $75,000 and FMCSA lifts the suspension (49 CFR §387.307(e)(6)) — a separate process from paying the claim itself.

BMC-84 Payout vs. BMC-85 Drawdown: Not the Same Event

Both satisfy the same $75,000 federal requirement, but a claim hits each one completely differently. This is the part the general BMC-84 vs BMC-85 comparison doesn't cover, because it's only visible once a claim actually pays.

What a Broker Actually Owes Back

The $75,000 caps what the surety pays a carrier. It does not cap what the broker owes the surety.

This is why a $9,500 claim can cost a broker more than $9,500: every dollar the surety spends investigating or defending the claim gets added to the indemnity bill, and the GIA typically binds every signing owner and officer personally, not just the business entity.

Defenses a Broker Actually Has

A claim notice isn't automatically paid — but the defense has to be raised inside the 7-business-day window to matter.

Proof the invoice was already paid

The single most common valid defense: a cancelled check, ACH confirmation, or factoring company payoff showing the freight charge was already satisfied. Keep remittance records — a paid invoice with no proof of payment on file looks unpaid to a claims examiner.

A factoring conflict

If the carrier factored the invoice and was already paid by the factoring company, the broker's payment obligation runs to the factor, not the carrier — a genuine defense if documented, but it has to be raised with the notice of assignment on file, not asserted after payment already went out.

A documented, unresolved rate or accessorial dispute

If the broker disputed detention time, a rate discrepancy, or a short-pay before the claim was filed — with dated correspondence to prove it — the surety has grounds to investigate rather than simply pay the full invoice amount. A dispute raised for the first time after the window closes carries far less weight.

The claim is for cargo loss or damage, not freight charges

The BMC-84 bond only secures “failure to pay freight charges” under 49 U.S.C. §13906(b) — it is not cargo insurance. A claim actually about damaged or lost freight is outside the bond's scope entirely, regardless of how it's framed in the notice.

Sureties have their own reason not to drag out a weak claim: 49 CFR part 386, Appendix B imposes a civil penalty (adjusted annually for inflation) on any surety or financial institution that violates 49 U.S.C. §13906(b)/(c) or §387.307's claims-handling requirements, plus a three-year disqualification from providing broker or freight-forwarder financial security. That cuts both ways — brokers who ignore a notice get paid against quickly, and carriers with a legitimate claim aren't stuck waiting indefinitely for a surety slow-walking a response.

What a Paid Claim Does to Next Year's Bond

Replenishing the bond satisfies FMCSA. It doesn't erase the claim from your file with the surety market.

Renewal underwriting looks at claims history

A BMC-84 is underwritten annually, and a paid claim becomes part of the loss history the surety (or a new surety, if yours declines to renew) reviews at the next term. One small, promptly-indemnified claim rarely moves the needle much. A claim the broker didn't respond to, disputed and lost, or took longer than 7 days to replenish reads very differently to an underwriter than a clean file.

Brokers with a recent paid claim should expect closer underwriting scrutiny at renewal — see freight broker bond cost by credit tier for how credit and risk profile drive premium generally.

A surety can exit — with 30 days' notice

A surety uncomfortable with a broker's claims history can decline to continue the bond, but it can't simply disappear: cancellation requires 30 days' written notice to FMCSA on the prescribed form, with the notice period running from actual receipt at FMCSA (49 CFR §387.307). That 30-day window is real time to line up a new BMC-84 before authority is at risk — but it's not time to spend deciding whether to act.

Coordinate the new bond's effective date to overlap with the old one's cancellation — a gap in financial security, even a brief one, exposes the broker to the same suspension risk as a missed replenishment.

None of this means one claim ends a broker's ability to get bonded. It means the file a new or renewing surety underwrites includes the claim, the response time, and how quickly the security was restored — the three things this page is built to help a broker get right the first time.

Filing a claim, defending one, or starting fresh?

Tell us which side of a claim you're on and where it stands. A claims-aware producer routes carrier filings and broker defense very differently — and can also just get you a new BMC-84 if no claim is involved.

Questions From Both Sides of a Claim

Mixed on purpose — some of these come up from carriers, others from the brokers responding to them.

Does a BMC-84 bond claim require a lawsuit, or can the surety just pay me directly?
A lawsuit is one path, but not the only one. Under 49 U.S.C. §13906(b), a surety pays a claim in one of three situations: the broker consents to payment, the broker fails to respond to the surety's notice within the applicable response window and the surety independently determines the claim is valid, or the claim has been reduced to a judgment against the broker. Most carrier claims resolve through the second path — the broker simply doesn't contest a well-documented unpaid-invoice claim within the window, and the surety pays without anyone going to court.
What's actually different between filing against a BMC-84 bond and a BMC-85 trust?
Who fronts the money and when. On a BMC-84, the surety pays the claim out of its own funds first, then bills the broker back under the General Indemnity Agreement (GIA) signed at issuance — the broker's own cash isn't touched at the moment of payout. On a BMC-85 trust, there's no separate payer to bill later: the trustee draws the payment directly out of the broker's own $75,000 deposit, so the broker's working capital drops the instant a claim is paid, and the broker has to personally refill the trust — not just reimburse a third party. See the comparison table below for how that plays out across a claim.
If a broker doesn't respond to the surety's notice, how fast do I actually get paid?
The broker's window to contest is 7 business days under the claims-response provisions FMCSA adopted in the Broker and Freight Forwarder Financial Responsibility rule (88 FR 78656), now in force as of the January 16, 2026 compliance date. That 7-business-day clock is the broker's response window, not a guaranteed payment date — the surety still has to review documentation (rate confirmation, proof of delivery, invoice, any dispute correspondence) before it pays, and a clean, undisputed claim moves faster than one where the broker raises a partial dispute right at the deadline.
Does the freight broker bond cover cargo damage, or only unpaid freight charges?
Only unpaid freight charges — this is the most common misconception carriers have about the BMC-84. The statute limits the security to "any claim against a broker arising from its failure to pay freight charges under its contracts, agreements, or arrangements for transportation" (49 U.S.C. §13906(b)). A damaged or lost shipment is a cargo claim against the motor carrier's cargo insurance (or the broker's contingent cargo coverage, if it carries one) — it is not a claim you file against the broker's $75,000 BMC-84 bond.
As a broker, what actually happens if I miss the 7-business-day response window?
The surety can determine the claim's validity on its own and pay it without further input from you — and once it pays, you owe the full amount back under your indemnity agreement regardless of whether you agreed the claim was valid. Missing the window doesn't just cost you the argument on that one claim; it also removes your best chance to flag a duplicate invoice, a factored receivable already paid to a factoring company, or a dispute over detention or accessorial charges before money moves. Respond in writing within the window even if you need more time to gather documentation — silence is treated as non-response.
Can FMCSA suspend my broker operating authority over a single unpaid claim?
Yes, if the payout drops your financial security below $75,000 and you don't fix it in time. Under 49 CFR §387.307(e), once a claim payment reduces your bond or trust below $75,000, your surety or trustee has 2 business days to notify FMCSA. FMCSA then sends you written notice that your operating authority will be suspended within 7 business days of that notice — unless you show the notice was sent in error, that the bond or trust has been restored to $75,000, or that the claims were satisfied without touching the bond. Miss that 7-business-day window and FMCSA suspends your operating authority registration, meaning you cannot legally arrange for-hire transportation as a broker until the security is restored and the suspension is lifted. A single mid-sized claim on a bond or trust that was already thin from a prior claim is the most common way brokers end up here.

Need a clean BMC-84, or help with a claim already in motion?

Our licensed agents place BMC-84 bonds and route claims-side questions to a producer who understands both the FMCSA deadlines and the underwriting side.

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More on BMC-84 Bonds, Trusts, and Broker Authority

If your question is really about choosing a bond, what it costs, or renewing or reinstating one, these guides go deeper on those questions specifically.

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Annual premiums by credit tier — and how a claims history affects them.

Guide
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Step-by-step FMCSA registration for brokers starting fresh.

Guide
Surety bond claims — the general process

Cross-bond-type claims mechanics, loss ratios, and the GIA in general terms.

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How the GIA works across every bond type, not just freight.

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Prevention strategies that apply across every bond category.

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How claims differ across contractor, dealer, and other bond categories.

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Freight Broker Bonds by State

State-specific guidance for filing your $75,000 BMC-84 and securing FMCSA property broker authority.

Alaska Freight Broker Bond

BMC-84 cost & barge/AlCan rules

California Freight Broker Bond

BMC-84 filing for California property brokers

Texas Freight Broker Bond

Laredo & Gulf-corridor brokerage bonding

Washington Freight Broker Surety Bond

Pacific Northwest broker authority

Pennsylvania Broker Bond

Northeast freight broker BMC-84 filing

Arizona Freight Broker Bond

Southwest property broker bonding

Georgia Freight Broker Bond

Atlanta & Savannah-corridor BMC-84 filing

Montana Freight Broker Bond

BMC-84 requirements & cost for Montana brokers

Wyoming Freight Broker Bond

Fast BMC-84 filing for Wyoming-registered brokers

Freight Broker Bond Resources

Freight Broker Bond GuideNational $75,000 BMC-84 overviewFreight Broker Bond CostAnnual premiums by credit tierHow to Get Broker AuthorityStep-by-step FMCSA registrationBMC-84 vs BMC-85Surety bond vs. trust fund comparedAuto Transport Broker BondVehicle-shipping broker requirementsFreight Forwarder BondForwarder BMC-84 filing guidanceFreight Broker Excess BondCoverage above the $75,000 BMC-84

Eric Drummond

Licensed Surety Producer

State Licenses:
  • Nevada: License #4222379 (Property & Casualty)

Verify licenses at your state insurance department

Specialty Areas:
BMC-84 & BMC-85 Broker Financial SecurityFreight Broker Bond ClaimsIndemnity Agreement ReviewFMCSA Broker Authority
Contact Eric

All content is researched from official state and federal sources (.gov) and reviewed by surety bond specialists. Bonds are placed with Treasury-listed surety carriers; approval and pricing are determined by the issuing carrier.

Whichever side of the claim you're on, talk to someone who handles both

Carrier chasing an unpaid invoice, or broker facing an indemnity demand — the same producer can route your file to the right claims contact and explain what to expect next.

  • Treasury-listed BMC-84 carriers, FMCSA-accepted bond forms nationwide
  • We explain your indemnity exposure before a payout happens, not after
  • Fast routing once a 7-day response or replenishment clock is already running
  • Not a law firm — no charge to talk through where your claim stands

Freight broker bond claims help