Digital Carrier Packets
Everything a freight broker needs to onboard a carrier — paperwork, signatures, COIs, FMCSA authority — collected through a single link the broker controls. Here's how the category evolved, who runs it today, and where CarrierPacket.Link fits in.
What is a digital carrier packet?
A digital carrier packet is the online version of the stack of paperwork freight brokers used to fax (and many still do) when they bring on a new motor carrier. Instead of printing a packet, mailing it, and chasing signatures, the broker sends the carrier one link. The carrier fills in their profile, uploads required documents, and signs the broker-carrier agreement — all from a phone, tablet, or laptop. The broker gets back a clean record they can route into their TMS.
Underneath, a packet is a workflow that combines four jobs in one place: data collection (legal name, MC#, DOT#, W-9, mailing address, equipment, lane preferences), document gathering (Certificates of Insurance for general liability, auto liability, and cargo; voided check; tax form), compliance verification (pulling FMCSA authority status, safety scores, and operating insurance from public sources), and e-signature (the carrier-broker agreement and any addenda). Done right, the broker turns a process that used to take days into something that finishes inside an hour.
What's inside a carrier packet
The exact mix varies by brokerage and by lane, but a typical packet collects the same handful of documents and data points. Brokerages tune the COI requirements, agreement terms, and addenda to their own compliance posture.
- Carrier-broker agreement. The contract terms (payment, claims, liability allocation, dispute resolution) the broker requires every hauling carrier to accept.
- MC certificate / operating authority. Confirms the carrier holds active FMCSA authority to haul interstate freight.
- Insurance certificates (COIs). Auto liability, motor truck cargo, and general liability — verified against the carrier's insurance agent or directly from FMCSA records.
- W-9. Tax identification details so the broker can issue 1099s correctly at year-end.
- Notice of Assignment (NOA). Required if the carrier uses a factoring company — directs payment to the factor.
- Signatures. Digital, time-stamped, audit-logged. The signed PDF becomes the legal record of the carrier's acceptance.
From fax machines to the cloud
Carrier onboarding looked the same way for decades. A broker built a packet in Word, printed it, faxed it to the carrier, then waited for a return fax — sometimes for days. Insurance certificates came back blurry. Signatures came back missing. The W-9 came back next week. Brokers tracked carriers in spreadsheets and filing cabinets, and a single onboarding could take a week of back-and-forth.
The mid-2000s replaced fax with email — better, but still manual review of attached PDFs. The next wave was SaaS: standalone web apps that hosted the packet, ran FMCSA lookups, and stored signed records. By the late 2010s those products had matured into compliance-and-monitoring platforms, and by 2020 the bigger TMS vendors were either acquiring them or partnering with them. Today the leading-edge problem isn't building the packet workflow — it's verifying that the carrier filling it out is actually who they say they are, the focus of the most recent generation of platforms.
The companies that shaped the market
A handful of platforms have done most of the work to digitize the packet category. The market has consolidated noticeably in the last few years — two of the biggest acquisitions land at the bottom of this list.
RMIS Now Truckstop
Registry Monitoring Insurance Services was founded in 1996 by Hayden Landon and built one of the earliest insurance-monitoring-and-onboarding services for brokers. Its CRS+ platform automates carrier compliance — pulling DOT/FMCSA data, monitoring authority changes, and storing the largest publicly-known database of carrier insurance certificates.
Truckstop.com (the load board) acquired RMIS in March 2021, and the product now operates as "RMIS, a Truckstop company." It's the onboarding spine of the Truckstop broker suite.
MyCarrierPortal Now Descartes
Originally launched as MyCarrierPackets by Assure Assist, Inc. and rebranded to MyCarrierPortal around 2018 to reflect a broader feature set (vetting, identity verification, ongoing monitoring). By the late 2010s the product had become one of the most widely-used onboarding platforms in North American brokerages.
Descartes Systems Group, the publicly-traded supply-chain software company, acquired MyCarrierPortal in September 2024 for approximately $24 million, and the product now sits inside Descartes' transportation suite.
Source: Transport Topics — Descartes acquires MyCarrierPortal
Highway Carrier identity
Founded in 2022 and led by CEO Jordan Graft, Highway is the standalone "Carrier Identity" platform — the company positions itself as the category creator for verifying that the carrier hauling a load is the same carrier that signed the packet. Highway integrates with McLeod PowerBroker, Samsara, Motive, Tai TMS, and BrokerPro, and in 2025 received a growth-equity investment led by FTV Capital. Despite both products operating in the carrier-compliance space, Highway is not affiliated with RMIS.
DAT OnBoard Load-board bundle
DAT (the load-board operator) sells DAT OnBoard as part of its broker software suite. The product is marketed as a mobile-first onboarding tool — carriers complete their profile on a phone, the broker reviews online — and integrates back into the DAT load-board ecosystem brokers already use to source capacity.
Source: DAT — OnBoard product page
Carrier411 Compliance monitoring
A long-running carrier-monitoring service led by founder and CEO Darren Brewer. Carrier411 focuses on continuous compliance checking — safety ratings, BASIC scores, authority changes — and is best known for FreightGuard Reports, a broker-submitted incident database. The company reports approximately 4,500 broker customers.
Carrier Assure Performance scoring
Founded in 2022, Carrier Assure scores carriers on an A-through-F scale based on real-time data from FMCSA, tracking systems, and user reports. It's not a packet platform itself — it integrates into the onboarding flow at platforms like Truckstop/RMIS and Descartes/MyCarrierPortal, providing a vetting layer carriers must pass before booking loads.
The trend across the last five years is consolidation. Truckstop, primarily a load board, owns RMIS. Descartes, a publicly-traded supply-chain software conglomerate, owns MyCarrierPortal. Newer entrants like Highway have grown quickly by focusing on identity verification, the problem that's gotten harder as carrier-fraud has spiked. The category is more mature than it's ever been — and most of the leading platforms now serve a similar enterprise customer profile.
Where CarrierPacket.Link fits
The category leaders are mostly built for medium-and-large brokerages — companies with their own IT teams, multi-seat licenses, and TMS rollouts. We built CarrierPacket.Link for the rest of the market: the independent freight agent, the two-person brokerage, the regional house that wants a real digital packet without the per-seat pricing and procurement cycle. Three concrete differences:
Hosted on your domain
Drop a snippet on your own site so the packet lives at broker.com/packet. Carriers land on your URL, not a vendor's. Your logo, your color, your brand all the way through to the signed PDF.
Flexible by default
Your agreement, your COI requirements, your signature flow — packet contents are configured per-broker rather than locked to a vendor template. Add a custom addendum without filing a support ticket.
See the data modelBuilt for independent agents
Flat per-broker pricing — one account covers your whole operation. No per-seat fees, no add-on modules, no procurement cycle. Sign up online, build your first packet today.
See pricingHow a packet flows on CarrierPacket.Link
From the moment you create a packet to the moment your TMS receives the signed PDF, the whole cycle is five steps. Most brokers complete steps 1-2 in under ten minutes the first time; subsequent packets reuse the template.
- 1. Create. Define your packet — agreement text, required documents, COI minimums, who signs. Reuse one template across every carrier, or fork it per lane.
- 2. Distribute. The packet is available at a clean URL you control. Email it, paste it in a rate confirmation, or embed it on your site so prospects find it organically.
- 3. Carrier fills. The carrier completes the packet on their phone or laptop — auto-fill from MC#/DOT#, document upload, e-signature with audit trail.
- 4. Webhook fires. The moment a carrier signs, an HMAC-signed webhook posts to your TMS or automation tool. No polling, no manual export.
- 5. Record lands. Your TMS picks up the signed PDF, the carrier profile, and every document. Auditable, time-stamped, and ready for dispatch.
Frequently asked questions
Is a digital carrier packet legally binding?
What's in a typical carrier packet?
How is a digital carrier packet different from a TMS?
Can independent freight agents use a digital carrier packet?
Do I have to verify FMCSA authority myself?
How does carrier-identity verification fit in?
Sources cited
- PR Newswire — Truckstop.com Acquires Registry Monitoring Insurance Services (RMIS) (March 2021)
- Transport Topics — Descartes Acquires MyCarrierPortal for $24 Million (September 2024)
- Descartes Systems Group — MyCarrierPortal acquisition press release
- Highway — Strategic growth-equity investment led by FTV Capital
- DAT — OnBoard product page
Spin up your first packet
Sign up in two minutes. Build a packet, set your COI minimums, drop the link on your site — no credit card to start, no procurement cycle.
Try CarrierPacket.Link free