01
A web address younger than the company story
A carrier claiming years of runs on a domain registered three weeks ago is the single most common tell we see.
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Freight brokers & 3PLs: one score out of 1,000 in about 10 seconds
A load gets covered by phone or email, a setup packet comes back, and a settlement or quick-pay goes out days later — usually before anyone has looked past the paperwork.
Usually a dispatcher or a carrier-relations coordinator, in the same minute the setup packet lands. Paste the email address or the web address, read the reasons, and make the call. The first check needs no account.
Typical wire $3K – $60K · illustrative transaction size, not a loss estimate
What matters here
3 tells that carry the most weight
02
A near-copy of an established carrier's name
One swapped letter or an added word is enough to pass a busy read of an email signature.
03
Mail set up in a hurry
No sender rules on the domain means anyone can send mail that appears to come from it.
What a check reads
5 public record types, every time
For a carrier, the registration date and the archived history do the heavy lifting: a real fleet leaves years behind it, and a packet-only carrier does not.
How the score is built- Registration date
- When the web address was first registered, and who the registrar is, straight from the domain record.
- Mail setup
- Whether the domain can receive mail at all, and whether it has sender rules that stop other people sending as it.
- Site and archive history
- Whether the site answers today, what it says it is, and how far back an archived copy of it goes.
- Near-match names
- Whether the address is a one-character or one-word variant of a better-known name.
- Free and throwaway inboxes
- Whether a commercial quote arrived from a consumer provider or a disposable inbox.
Before the money leaves
5 steps a score cannot do for you
- 01Call the carrier on a number from their own site or the original load confirmation — never the number in the email chasing payment.
- 02Treat a new remit-to or factoring assignment as fraud until someone you already know confirms it out loud.
- 03Read the sending address character by character against the packet: one swapped letter is the whole scam.
- 04Check operating authority and insurance yourself in FMCSA before the load moves. A score does not do that.
- 05On a first settlement, keep the payment method with the most recourse you can.
A worked example
How one of these reads
The situation
A setup packet arrives from a carrier with a professional site and a matching email domain.
What the record says
The domain was registered 19 days ago, the site has no archived history, and the name is one letter off a long-running carrier.
The reading
Score in the critical band, with the registration date and the near-match spelling shown as the reasons.
Illustrative example built from the record types a check reads — registration dates, mail setup, site history, and near-match names. Not a real vendor.
Questions we get
4 questions, answered straight
How do I check if a carrier is legitimate before I cover a load?
Paste the email address or web address from the setup packet. In about 10 seconds you get a score out of 1,000 and the reasons behind it: how old the web address is, how its mail is set up, whether the site has any history, and whether the name shadows a better-known carrier.
Does a check include MC number, authority, or insurance?
No. Operating authority, insurance, and safety history come from FMCSA and are not part of a check. Look those up yourself. A check reads the digital record behind the email and the web address.
A carrier sent new remit-to details. What now?
Stop and treat it as fraud until a voice call on a number you found yourself confirms it. Then re-run the check on the sending web address so you can see whether anything about that record changed.
What does a three-week-old web address actually mean?
It means the record does not match the story. It is not proof of fraud on its own — plenty of real businesses are new — but on a carrier claiming years of runs it is the most common tell we see, and it earns a phone call.
What a score does not say
A score reads public records about an email address or a web address. It is an observation, not a guarantee, and it does not tell you whether a specific payment is safe. Operating authority, insurance, and safety history come from FMCSA and are not part of a check yet. A score is not an authority check. The manual steps still matter.
Built and run by a named person, not an anonymous site — who is behind this and how the score is built.
Building this into software your industry already uses? For platforms.
Paste the vendor's email address or website. About 10 seconds.
Run a free check