How Do You Prove You Vetted a Carrier Two Years Ago? Descartes AuditLog

What happens when a plaintiff's attorney asks what you knew about a carrier at the time you approved them?

Most freight brokers would have to pull together emails, spreadsheets, and internal notes. That fragmented paper trail was never designed to hold up in litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II exposes freight intermediaries to negligent hiring claims, putting the burden on brokers and 3PLs to demonstrate they exercised reasonable care when selecting a carrier. Descartes responded with AuditLog, a new capability built directly into Descartes MyCarrierPortal that automatically transforms carrier review management into defensible documentation without adding steps to existing workflows.

Why verbal approvals and TMS notes won't survive discovery

Ask most freight brokers how they currently document a carrier approval decision, and the answer tends to involve a combination of systems. Risk assessment might run in one platform while a compliance issue gets flagged in an email thread. Managers often still give verbal approval for various vital tasks, and dispatchers are still typing notes into TMS fields that weren't built for legal recordkeeping. None of this is adequate when a plaintiff's attorney starts asking what the broker knew about a carrier.

"As the U.S. transportation industry evaluates the implications of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, documenting carrier vetting activities, establishing consistent review practices and demonstrating reasonable care in carrier selection is coming under greater scrutiny," said Dan Cicerchi, EVP, Corporate & Operations Development at Descartes.

AuditLog addresses that gap by embedding documentation directly into the carrier vetting workflow inside Descartes MyCarrierPortal. When a carrier is reviewed, the assessment results, reviewer actions, management decisions, and onboarding outcomes are automatically captured as an auditable record without requiring users to take any additional documentation steps.

Snapshot-based documentation: what you knew at the time you approved them

One of AuditLog's most consequential design choices is what Descartes calls snapshot-based documentation. When a carrier risk assessment is completed and an approval decision is made, AuditLog captures the carrier's profile, safety record, authority status, and risk factors exactly as they existed at that moment.

This matters because carrier profiles change. A carrier that's approved today might receive a safety violation six months from now. Without a time-stamped record of what was known at the point of approval, organizations have no way to demonstrate that their decision was reasonable given the information available.

If a carrier's profile changes after approval, AuditLog retains the original review record while also triggering a re-review notification, which ensures that ongoing monitoring remains part of the documented governance process.

Management escalation path for flagged carriers

AuditLog also introduces a structured management escalation path for carriers that require additional scrutiny. Rather than leaving the decision to approve a flagged carrier to whoever is running the load, AuditLog allows organizations to require management review for specific risk scenarios and documents that review as part of the permanent record.

"Companies need more repeatable, defensible review practices to document the information reviewed, decisions made and oversight applied throughout the carrier onboarding process," said Ken Wood, EVP Product Management at Descartes.

Once a management review is completed, approved carriers can move forward through existing TMS onboarding workflows without additional manual intervention, preserving speed while staying compliant with the new legal exposures.

Consistency problem at scale

AuditLog's centralized review workflow also addresses the consistency problem that tends to emerge at scale. Different reviewers apply different standards to similar risk scenarios in organizations that manage large carrier networks across multiple users and teams. AuditLog creates a single, documented process that applies across the organization, all of which reduces the variability that can undermine both operational quality and legal defensibility.

"As a long-standing Descartes customer, we're pleased to see the ongoing commitment to expand the carrier vetting capabilities available within the platform," said Holly Phillips, Director of Accounts Receivable at Bridgeway. "In the wake of the Montgomery decision, the ability to leverage customizable carrier risk assessments and conduct deeper carrier reviews directly within the carrier profile will be increasingly valuable as organizations look to strengthen and document their carrier selection processes."

Beyond litigation defense, AuditLog is designed to support the broader compliance and governance initiatives that shippers and enterprise 3PLs increasingly require from their logistics partners. As carrier networks grow more complex and shipper expectations around carrier vetting accountability rise, having a centralized, standardized audit record becomes a competitive differentiator as much as a legal safeguard.

The window to get documentation practices in order is not indefinite

AuditLog is available for all Descartes MyCarrierPortal customers. The capability integrates into existing carrier onboarding workflows without requiring platform reconfiguration, and supports both broker and shipper use cases across a range of carrier network sizes.

Freight intermediaries across the country are still figuring out how they're going to navigate the post-Montgomery landscape. The window to get documentation practices in order is not indefinite. Claims take time to surface. By the time a broker is asked to produce records of a carrier vetting decision, that decision may be 12 or 24 months in the rearview mirror. That means the time to start building those records is now.

For small carriers, the takeaway is this: when you're vetting a new broker, ask how they document their carrier approval decisions. If the answer involves verbal approvals, email threads, or TMS notes, that broker is not prepared for the post-Montgomery world. That lack of preparation may signal broader operational risk. Brokers who can't document their own vetting process are less likely to have the systems in place to pay you on time or protect you from double-brokering schemes.