Carrier vetting is the verification a broker performs before trusting a carrier with freight. Cross-border it is a different discipline: Mexican carriers have no FMCSA-style public registry, so vetting runs on SAT documents, permits, insurance, and verified track record.
Carrier vetting is the diligence that stands between a load and a stranger with a truck. Domestically, U.S. vetting leans on public infrastructure: FMCSA registries expose authority, insurance, and safety history in seconds. Cross-border vetting has no such shortcut, because Mexican carriers have no MC or DOT number unless they operate in the U.S., and Mexico offers no equivalent public safety database.
Mexican carrier vetting therefore runs on fiscal and legal artifacts: the RFC tax identity, a recent Constancia de Situación Fiscal showing active status and transport activity codes, the SICT operating permit, insurance policies read for what they actually cover, the corporate charter establishing who can legally sign, plus references, physical verification, and equipment review.
Vetting depth is the real product difference among cross-border networks and brokers. Doing it well is slow, bilingual, document-heavy work, which is why vetted, invite-only carrier networks emerged as the alternative to open boards for Mexico freight. Whatever you build or buy, insist on re-vetting over time (documents expire, fleets change, companies get sold) and on entity-level precision: dual-entity carriers must be vetted as the entity that will actually haul. The cost of skipping this discipline arrives as the cross-border version of double brokering and theft, at the exact moment you can least afford it.
Cargado connects 250+ brokers with 2,000+ vetted carriers moving Mexico and Canada freight every day.