08/12/2026
Landstar just cut 35,000+ carriers from its network. Here's why that's not a red flag — it's a preview of where freight brokerage is headed.
From 100,000+ approved carriers in 2022 down to ~64,600 by Q2 2026. That's a 35% reduction, and it wasn't a one-time purge — it's a multiyear shift toward safety, identity verification, and fraud prevention.
Here's the thing: this isn't about 35,000 "bad" carriers. It's about a fundamental rethink of what makes a brokerage strong.
For years, the pitch was "we have access to 100,000 carriers." Bigger database = bigger advantage.
Not anymore.
A carrier with active authority and insurance can still be a risk — a compromised email, a spoofed dispatch contact, a hijacked identity. Authority and insurance are the floor, not the whole picture.
Add in the Supreme Court's Montgomery decision, which opened the door to state negligent-selection claims against brokers, and "we approved this carrier once" is no longer good enough. Brokers need to show how and when they verified a carrier — and that verification has to continue after onboarding, not stop at it.
The new question isn't "how many carriers do you have access to?"
It's: "How many were verified recently? How many can you actually defend?"
A network of 20,000 continuously verified carriers beats a database of 100,000 stale records.
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