For freight shippers
When something goes wrong, here's exactly what happens.
Any carrier can move the easy load. What separates carriers is the bad day — so here's ours, published: how claims work, what to do at the dock, and how to verify the driver on your freight.
Cargo claims · 49 CFR Part 370
The claim process, with the deadlines federal law sets.
Cargo claims against interstate carriers are governed by federal rule — cited here the same way our driver pages cite Truth-in-Leasing. No claims portal, no maze: the desk, in writing, on the clock the regulation sets.
01
Your move
File it in writing
Call the desk first if you like — a person answers — but a cargo claim itself must be in writing. Email what happened with the load number, your bill of lading, the delivery receipt, and the amount claimed. Those documents drive everything that follows.
Your bill of lading sets the filing deadline. Federal law requires carriers to allow at least nine months from delivery to file (49 U.S.C. §14706(e)) — but don't sit on it; fresh claims resolve faster.
02
Our move
Acknowledgment within 30 days
Federal rule, not courtesy: a carrier must acknowledge a written cargo claim within 30 days of receiving it (49 CFR §370.5). You'll know your claim was received, who has it, and what's missing if anything.
If any carrier ever leaves your claim unacknowledged past 30 days, that silence is a regulatory violation — and information.
03
Our move
Investigation
The claim gets investigated against the paper: rate confirmation, bill of lading, delivery receipt, driver records, photos from the dock. This is why the exceptions you note at delivery matter so much — they're the evidence.
We may come back with questions. Answering them quickly is the single biggest thing a shipper can do to speed up a claim.
04
Our move
Resolution within 120 days
Within 120 days of receiving the claim, a carrier must pay it, decline it with the reason, or make a firm settlement offer (49 CFR §370.9). If a claim somehow runs longer, the same rule requires written status updates at regular intervals until it's resolved.
That's the floor federal law sets — the same way our driver pages answer to 49 CFR Part 376, this page answers to Part 370.
Where to file: the 24/7 desk · +1 (571) 619-8115 · onboard@arrow-truckers.com — full text of Part 370 at ecfr.gov
At the dock
Protect your claim before the truck leaves.
Most claim disputes aren’t about what happened — they’re about what got documented. Four habits at receiving, with any carrier, decide whether a loss is a paperwork exercise or a fight.
- Note every exception on the delivery receipt before signing — damage, shortage, wet cartons, broken seals. A clean signature is a clean delivery, legally speaking.
- Photograph what you see, at the dock, before the freight moves again. Timestamped phone photos are the cheapest claim insurance that exists.
- Don't refuse the whole shipment over partial damage without talking to us first — refused freight racks up storage and often makes the loss bigger, not smaller.
- Call the desk the same day. A claim that starts while the trailer is still traceable resolves faster than one reconstructed a month later.
Breakdowns & delays
Trucks break. Docks run long. The phone still answers.
We won’t print a notification promise we haven’t proven — carriers that advertise “proactive alerts” are usually describing a portal. What we run is simpler: every truck on an ELD, and a dispatch desk staffed around the clock with the load in front of them. When something on your freight changes, the person who knows is the person who picks up.
The whole protocol
+1 (571) 619-811524/7. A dispatcher, not a callback queue. Ask for status on a covered load and you’ll get pickup, transit, or delivery — from the record, not from a script.
Freight security
The biggest freight risk isn’t damage. It’s not knowing who has your load.
Double-brokering — your freight quietly re-sold to a carrier you never vetted — is the dominant fraud problem in trucking today. When Arrow Truckers covers your load, a carrier is accountable for it: our authority, our compliance file, drivers running under our name — not a middleman re-brokering it. And you shouldn’t take that on faith either. Run this check on us and on every carrier you use:
01
Verify the authority
Before the first load: look up MC #1800150 on the FMCSA's SAFER system. Authority status, safety record, insurance on file — public, free, two minutes.
02
Confirm the driver and truck
Before loading: call the desk and confirm the driver's name and truck against our dispatch record. If who's at your dock doesn't match who we dispatched, don't load — call us.
03
Match the paperwork
The carrier name on the driver's paperwork should be the carrier you hired. A different MC number on the truck than the one you tendered to is the signature of a re-brokered load — with any carrier, anywhere.
Want the subcontracting policy in writing before you tender? Ask the desk — that’s a normal request, and the answer belongs on paper. It’s the same standard we tell drivers to hold every carrier to: if it isn’t written down, it isn’t a promise.
That’s the bad day, in writing. The good days are easier.
More questions — detention, tracking, setup — live in the shipper FAQ. Or skip ahead to the part where freight moves.