Legal Question in Business Law in Virginia

I work for a company that sells products online. We used to pay the manufacturer to ship the items to our clients but recently we began to handle the freight ourselves. We don't have goods shipped to our location and re-ship, we have the goods shipped directly from the manufacturer to the client on our freight accounts.

My question is: Are we in violation of the law because we are not licensed as a freight broker under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration? As I understand it, we are acting as a freight broker since we are selling freight to our clients and we are not the shipper.

I've done the research and getting licensed as a freight broker under the FMCSA is a simple task. I just don't want to have to pay the extra cash if it's not needed.

Thanks!

-Jason


Asked on 2/16/10, 12:50 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

No, I do not necessarily agree with your assessment that under the circumstances described that you "are selling freight to (your) clients" but rather are merely arranging for someone else (the manufacturer) to ship the item(s) ordered by your customer directly to the customer and then billing your account for the cost(which presumably is then passed along to the customer in some way, shape or form).

And under this kind of arrangement, you are not involved as a middleman in

transshipments to customers, reshippments or in handling these items as freight apparently in any way, and therefore I would doubt that you would need to be licensed specifically as a freight broker under the referenced Federal Act.

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Answered on 2/28/10, 8:55 pm


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