The broker transparency rule that won't die

It's April 2026. The transparency rule that was supposed to settle one of the loudest fights in trucking is sitting where it has been sitting for thirteen months. Comments closed. Final rule pending. No issuance date on the schedule.

If you've been waiting for this thing to drop, this issue is a status check. If you've stopped caring, this issue is why you should pay attention again.

What the rule actually proposes

On November 20, 2024, FMCSA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled Transparency in Property Broker Transactions (89 FR 91648, docket FMCSA-2023-0257). The proposal does three things.

First, it requires brokers to provide an electronic copy of each transaction record to the carrier or shipper involved within 48 hours of a written request. Paper-only is out. Email is in.

Second, it bars brokers from using contract waivers to opt carriers out of their right to see those records. The rule says that right is nonwaivable. You can't sign it away.

Third, it directs brokers to retain the records in a way that lets carriers actually retrieve them. The current regulation, 49 CFR 371.3, has been on the books for decades and is widely treated as toothless because it doesn't say much about format, timeliness, or remedy.

OOIDA and the Small Business in Transportation Coalition petitioned for the rule. Their core argument: carriers can't tell whether a broker is taking a 5% margin or a 50% margin without seeing the rate confirmation against the bill of lading, and the existing reg gives brokers too many ways to stall.

Where it sits today

The original comment period closed in January 2025. SBTC asked for it to be reopened, citing the volume and complexity of comments filed. FMCSA agreed and published a 30-day reopening on February 18, 2025 (90 FR 9712). Comments closed again around March 20, 2025.

That was thirteen months ago. Since then, the docket has been quiet. The Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 Unified Agendas listed the rule as in proposed-rule stage with a final rule projected, but the projection dates have slipped repeatedly. As of the latest agenda, no firm final-rule date is published.

Translation. The rule is alive. The rule is not moving.

Why the delay matters

Two things changed between when carriers petitioned for this rule and now.

One. The market shifted. In 2022 and 2023, when the petitions were filed, spot rates were collapsing and carriers were watching brokers post loads at numbers that bore no visible relationship to what shippers were paying. Carrier appetite for transparency was high because carriers were losing money on every move. By late 2025, the market had tightened. Spot dry van averaged $2.29 per mile in December 2025 and climbed to $2.52 by March 2026 per DAT's national rate view. The contract-spot gap closed to its narrowest level since March 2022. When the spread is tight, the urgency drops. Nobody screams about a 6% margin the way they scream about a 40% margin.

Two. The administration changed. The Trump administration's regulatory posture has been to slow, modify, or withdraw pending rules across DOT, especially rules that impose new compliance costs on small businesses. Brokers, especially small brokers, are exactly the constituency that gets the most relief from a slow walk. There is no public signal that this rule is being killed. There is also no public signal that it is being prioritized.

The result is regulatory limbo. Carriers don't get the visibility they asked for. Brokers don't get the certainty of knowing what the new rule actually requires. Everybody plans against the version they fear most.

What the broker side actually wants

The Transportation Intermediaries Association has been on the record since 2020 saying the rule as proposed would cause real operational harm. TIA's main objections.

The 48-hour window is too short for brokers running on legacy systems, especially smaller brokerages without TMS automation.

Mandatory disclosure of broker margin would, in TIA's reading, undermine the broker business model by exposing the spread on every transaction to shippers and carriers who can then squeeze it from both sides.

The nonwaivability provision strips brokers of the ability to negotiate contract terms that carriers freely agreed to in exchange for other concessions, like quick-pay or volume commitments.

None of those objections are unreasonable. They are also exactly the objections you would expect from the side of the table that benefits from opacity. The carrier side reads them as a tell.

What I think is going to happen

My read, sitting where I sit, is that the rule comes out in some form by Q3 or Q4 2026. The 48-hour window probably gets stretched to five or seven business days. The nonwaivability language probably stays, because that's the piece OOIDA and SBTC will not accept losing. The format requirements probably get loosened to give legacy brokers room to comply with email or PDF rather than a structured electronic record.

That version of the rule is something a competent brokerage can absorb. It is not the carrier-empowering reset that the petitioners wanted, but it is also not the existential threat TIA framed in 2024.

If you are a broker and you have been treating this as a problem for some other broker to solve, stop. Build your record-retention process now. Decide what your transaction record looks like, where it lives, how fast you can pull it, who is allowed to ask for it. The brokers who have that figured out by the time the rule lands will spend the compliance window doing customer work. The brokers who don't will spend it on the phone with their compliance vendor.

What this means at my desk

Carolina Expressways already commits to providing rate confirmations and supporting transaction documents to carriers on request, in writing, by email, within one business day. That is not because we're virtuous. It is because the carriers we want to keep working with are the carriers who ask for that, and the carriers who ask for that are the carriers worth keeping.

If the rule lands and forces every broker to do that, it pulls the floor up. It does not change anything about how I run loads. It changes the comparison set.

Carriers reading this. Ask your brokers what their transaction-record process is right now. The ones who answer cleanly are the ones to keep. The ones who hedge are telling you something.

Sources

FMCSA, Transparency in Property Broker Transactions, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 89 FR 91648, November 20, 2024 (docket FMCSA-2023-0257).

FMCSA, Transparency in Property Broker Transactions; Reopening of Comment Period, 90 FR 9712, February 18, 2025.

DAT Freight and Analytics, monthly Trendlines reports, December 2025 and March 2026 (national rate averages).

OOIDA petition for rulemaking, May 2020. SBTC petition for rulemaking, May 2020.

TIA public comment, FMCSA-2023-0257-0023 and successor filings.

Watch the spread. Ignore the noise.