Will the company you called actually move you?
Two companies. Same kind of website, same photographs of smiling people carrying a sofa, same promise. One of them owns trucks. The other one will sell your job to a company you have never heard of, and you will meet that company on the morning of your move.
Both are legal. Both are licensed. And there is a federal rule requiring the second one to tell you which it is, on its homepage, in so many words — which means you can check in about fifteen seconds, once you know the rule exists. Almost nobody does.
This matters more in a divorce than in an ordinary move, for a reason at the bottom of this page. But the test is the same for everyone, so here it is first.
The difference, in the government’s own words
A motor carrier
Holds authority to transport household goods. Owns or operates the trucks. Employs or contracts the crew. Signs the bill of lading with you — the document that is actually your contract for the move.
Bound by the consumer rules in Part 375: the estimate rules, and the one that limits what can be demanded at delivery.
A broker
Federal regulation defines a broker as a person who, for compensation, arranges, or offers to arrange, the transportation of property by an authorized motor carrier.
Arranges the move. Does not perform it. You pay them a deposit; a carrier you have not chosen turns up; your contract for the move itself is with that carrier, not with the company whose advertisement you answered.
49 CFR § 371.2, definition of “broker.” Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
Brokering is a legitimate, licensed business and this page is not an argument against it. A good broker knows which carriers actually have capacity on your dates, which is a real service. The problem is never that a company is a broker. It is that you did not know.
The rule nobody tells consumers about
There is a regulation titled, in the federal government’s own plain-English style, “What information must I display in my advertisements and Internet Web homepage?” It is addressed to household goods brokers, and it says this.
49 CFR § 371.107
“(a) You must prominently display in your advertisements and Internet Web homepage(s) the physical location(s) (street or highway address, city, and State) where you conduct business.”
“(b) You must prominently display your U.S. DOT registration number(s) and MC license number issued by the FMCSA in your advertisements and Internet Web homepage(s).”
“(c) You must prominently display in your advertisements and Internet website(s) your status as a household goods broker and the statement that you will not transport an individual shipper’s household goods, but that you will arrange for the transportation of the household goods by an FMCSA-authorized household goods motor carrier, whose charges will be determined by its published tariff.”
49 CFR § 371.107(a)–(c), quoted in full. Paragraphs (d) and (e) cover estimates and the use of carriers’ logos. Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
And a second rule, two sentences long, which is the one with teeth:
49 CFR § 371.7, “Misrepresentation”
“(a) A broker shall not perform or offer to perform any brokerage service (including advertising), in any name other than that in which its registration is issued.”
“(b) A broker shall not, directly or indirectly, represent its operations to be that of a carrier. Any advertising shall show the broker status of the operation.”
49 CFR § 371.7, quoted in full. Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
Read those two together and the fifteen-second test writes itself. The disclosure is supposed to be on the homepage. Not in the terms and conditions, not on a page called Consumer Information reachable from a small link in the footer. The homepage.
The test
- Open the homepage and search the page for the word “broker.” Control-F, or the browser’s find-on-page on a phone. If a company arranges moves rather than performing them, that word is supposed to be there.
- Look for a USDOT number and an MC number. Usually the footer. Both are required to be displayed, and both let you check the company yourself.
- Look for a street address — a real one, with a city and a state. Required. A form and a telephone number is not an address.
- Then check the number rather than the words. Put the USDOT number into the checker on the moving page. It reads the federal record live and tells you Carrier, Broker or Freight forwarder, whatever the website says.
- If it is a broker, ask the one question that matters: which carrier will actually be doing this, and what is their USDOT number? You are entitled to an answer — see the next section — and the answer is checkable in thirty seconds.
A company failing the first three points is not necessarily doing anything wrong. A motor carrier is not required to say “we are not a broker,” so a page with no mention of brokering may simply be a carrier. That is exactly why step four exists: the federal record settles it and the marketing does not.
What a broker owes you, which most people never ask for
Two things, both required, both almost never requested:
49 CFR § 371.109
“(a) You must provide to each potential individual shipper who contacts you a list of all authorized household goods motor carriers you use, including their U.S. DOT registration number(s) and MC license numbers.”
“(b) You must provide to each potential individual shipper who contacts you a statement indicating that you are not a motor carrier authorized by the Federal Government to transport the individual shipper’s household goods, and you are only arranging for an authorized household goods motor carrier to perform the transportation services.”
49 CFR § 371.109. Paragraph (b) is quoted to its operative end; the full text continues “and, if applicable, additional services.” Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
The list of carriers is the useful one. Ask for it in writing, by email, before you pay a deposit. You will learn three things at once: whether they have one, whether they will send it, and — when you check the names against the federal record — who is actually going to be in your driveway.
A broker may also only place your move with a carrier that holds valid, active authority for household goods. That is a rule about them, not a promise to you, but it is the reason the list is worth having: you can check every name on it yourself.
49 CFR § 371.105. Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
Why the distinction costs money, not just clarity
Here is the part that surprised us, and it is the strongest reason to care.
The consumer protections people know about — the written estimate rules, and the limit on how much more than a non-binding estimate can be demanded before your things come off the truck — live in Part 375. And Part 375 opens by saying exactly who it binds:
49 CFR § 375.101, “Who must follow the regulations in this part?”
“You, a household goods motor carrier engaged in the interstate transportation of household goods, must follow the regulations in this part when offering your services to individual shippers.”
49 CFR § 375.101. Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
So the protections attach to the company you did not choose
The estimate rules bind the carrier. If you booked through a broker, your bill of lading is with a carrier you did not select, did not research, and did not negotiate with. The company you actually talked to, trusted, and paid a deposit to is not the company those rules govern.
That is not a loophole anybody is exploiting. It is how the scheme is built. But it is the reason the answer to “who is actually moving me” is worth having before you hand over money rather than after.
The second practical consequence is the money behind the promise. A broker must maintain a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000, in the flat words of the regulation: “A broker must have a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000 in effect.”
49 CFR § 387.307(a). Read at ecfr.gov, 8 September 2026.
That is the pool behind all of that broker’s customers, not yours alone. It is a real protection and it is a finite one, and it is worth knowing which of those two facts is doing the work in your case.
The thing the rules do not cover, said plainly
We looked for a rule prohibiting a broker from being named like a carrier — from calling itself Something Van Lines, or Something Movers, when it owns no trucks at all.
There is no such rule. Section 371.7 requires a broker to operate under the name its registration was issued in, and requires its advertising to show broker status. Neither says anything about what words the name may contain. We checked, because we expected to find one, and the regulation is simply silent.
So a company lawfully named Van Lines may hold broker authority only, may own nothing, and may be entirely compliant with every rule on this page. Which is the whole reason to check the number rather than read the name. The name is marketing. The authority type is a fact.
What happens to a company that gets this wrong
Not much, quickly, from your point of view — enforcement is federal and it is not a remedy you can invoke on moving day. But the amounts say how seriously Congress took it, and they are worth quoting because they are larger than people expect.
- A person who provides broker services without being registered is liable to the United States for a civil penalty of not less than $25,000 for each violation.
- A broker who gives an estimate before it has an agreement with a carrier to do the move is liable for not less than $10,000 for each violation.
- A carrier that fails to comply with the household goods consumer regulations is liable for not less than $1,000 per violation, and for each additional day it continues.
49 U.S.C. § 14901(d)(1)–(3). Read at uscode.house.gov, 8 September 2026. These are the statutory minimums. Federal civil penalties are adjusted for inflation every year, so the figures actually assessed today are higher than the numbers in the statute. We are not publishing this year’s adjusted table because we could not confirm it at source, and a number we cannot stand behind is worth less than none.
Notice the second one. A broker giving you a price before it has any agreement with a carrier to actually do the move is not a grey area or a sales technique. It has its own penalty provision, with its own number, written by Congress.
Why this is worse in a divorce
Three reasons, and they compound.
- You are booking under time pressure, which is the condition the whole industry is priced for. A move with a court date behind it is a move where you will take the first company that says yes to your dates. That is exactly when nobody checks anything.
- The inventory matters more than usual. A mover produces a dated, itemized, third-party list of everything that left the house — which, as the moving page explains, is the most useful free document in the process. A broker does not produce one. The carrier does, and only if it turns up and does the job properly.
- If it goes wrong you are disputing with a company you never chose, while also conducting a divorce. The single worst version of this — a load held for a payment above the estimate — is a dispute with the carrier, under rules that bind the carrier, about a contract you signed on the day.
The fix is fifteen seconds and it is the same fifteen seconds for everyone. Search the homepage for the word broker. Then put the USDOT number into the checker and let the federal record tell you what the website did not.
And the disclosure that belongs here, because this page names a category we sell advertising to: moving and storage companies can pay for a labeled placement on this site. That is disclosed in full on how we make money. It buys no ranking and no exemption from anything on this page — the checker applies the same federal test to an advertiser as to anybody else.
And we have made the test on this page our own entry requirement. A moving company cannot buy a listing here unless its federal authority is active and, if it is a broker, its homepage carries the disclosure section 371.107(c) requires. That is the only thing we check about an advertiser, we have looked at nothing else about them, and a company can pass it and still be a bad company. We are telling you the size of it so you can see the edge of it.