A&A’s newly released Freight Broker Carrier Vetting & Compliance Guide and Tools takes center stage at the 14th annual 3PL Value Creation North America Summit, where the “Navigating Uncertainty” panel will examine how the 2026 standard of care is reshaping domestic transportation management, brokerage, and carrier compliance.

Brookfield, WI, July 8, 2026, Armstrong & Associates, Inc. (A&A) will host its 14th annual 3PL Value Creation North America Summit on October 13-15, 2026, at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile in Chicago, Illinois. This year’s program puts a spotlight on one of the most consequential shifts facing freight brokers and 3PLs: the changing legal and regulatory standard of care for carrier selection.

On Thursday, October 15, from 8:50 to 9:35 a.m., the Summit will feature the panel “Navigating Uncertainty: Domestic Transportation Management, Brokerage & Carrier Vetting and Compliance.” The session will explore how recent legal and regulatory developments are forcing freight brokers and 3PLs to rethink how they evaluate, document, and defend their carrier-selection programs.

The discussion arrives at a pivotal moment. After Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, freight brokers can be sued in state court for negligent carrier selection, and the new FMCSA broker financial-responsibility rule, combined with rising insurance scrutiny, has made documentation no longer optional. The question is no longer “did you verify authority and insurance?” It is whether a broker can prove, with documented evidence, that it took reasonable steps to select a safe carrier.

To help the industry respond, A&A recently released the Freight Broker Carrier Vetting & Compliance Guide and Tools, a practitioner-grade resource for building, documenting, and defending a carrier-selection program against the 2026 standard of care. The Guide will provide a real-world framework for the issues the “Navigating Uncertainty” panel will discuss, including:

  • FMCSA authority and insurance verification, plus carrier identity validation.
  • Fraud and double-brokering prevention and pre-tender screening.
  • Continuous carrier monitoring and TMS compliance-enforcement architecture.
  • Negligent-selection risk mitigation with documented per-load selection rationale.
  • An 8-section, Level 1 to 4 scoring framework with a fillable self-audit workbook, composite scorecard, and remediation roadmap templates.

“The standard of care for carrier selection has fundamentally changed, and many brokers do not yet have the documented, defensible programs the new environment demands,” said Evan Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong & Associates. “The Summit panel and our new Guide give 3PLs and freight brokers a practical roadmap for getting ahead of this risk rather than reacting to it after a claim.”