Moving brokers collect deposits then subcontract to unknown companies, creating an accountability vacuum where neither party takes responsibility for damage or delays

Moving brokers advertise as moving companies but own no trucks and employ no movers. They collect an upfront deposit (often non-refundable), then sell the job to the lowest-bidding carrier the customer has never vetted. On moving day, a completely different company arrives with different pricing, different equipment, and no obligation to honor the broker's original quote. Why it matters: the customer loses leverage because their deposit is non-refundable and already paid to the broker, so when the actual carrier demands a higher price the customer has no negotiating power, so disputes fall into a jurisdictional gap where the broker says 'we don't move things' and the carrier says 'we never quoted you that price,' so the consumer cannot get resolution from either party or FMCSA (which only added broker-specific complaint categories in October 2025), so thousands of families each year absorb financial losses with no effective recourse. The structural root cause is that FMCSA historically regulated carriers but not brokers with the same rigor, and consumers cannot distinguish brokers from carriers because brokers are legally permitted to market themselves using language nearly identical to actual moving companies, with no prominent disclosure requirement at the point of sale.