Carrier411 is a 2003 Yellow-Pages bulletin board at $35/mo. CarrierCrusher is a litigation-weighted score with a post-Caribe Transport audit trail at $349/mo.
No login required for the free scorecard.
Carrier411 is a broker-submitted report aggregator. Brokers post FreightGuard credit and service complaints; other brokers read them. It's a community bulletin board with 20 years of memory, and at $35/mo it's a useful one.
CarrierCrusher is a scorer. We read primary federal data — FMCSA SMS, NHTSA, OFAC, FARS — every 24 hours, run the locked, litigation-weighted CarrierCrusherScore (with a one-click Real-Exposure lens), and ship a Decision Record built to be the discoverable artifact when a plaintiff lawyer subpoenas your vetting file after Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II (SCOTUS 9-0, May 14, 2026).
Different inputs. Different output. Different category. Both can be the right answer — the rest of this page is about when.
Brokers submit FreightGuard reports about carriers (credit, service, fraud). Other brokers search the database. Value comes from 20 years of community submissions. No score, no federal-data refresh, no audit trail beyond the report log.
A locked engine that ingests FMCSA SMS, NHTSA, OFAC, FARS every 24h, runs peer-cohort percentiles, and produces a Decision Record (CLEARED / MONITOR / REVIEW / DO NOT TENDER) with hard stops, reasoning, and a court-discoverable audit trail.
The honest comparison. Carrier411's facts come from its public marketing and public court records; CarrierCrusher's come from the locked engine and shipped product.
| Carrier411 | CarrierCrusher | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Broker-submitted FreightGuard report aggregator | Litigation-weighted FMCSA score + Defense File |
| Primary data source | Brokers submit FreightGuard credit / service / fraud reports | FMCSA SMS, NHTSA, OFAC, FARS — direct federal APIs |
| Refresh cadence | When users submit updates | Every 24 hours from federal feeds |
| Score model | No score — pass/fail report flags | Litigation-weighted CarrierCrusherScore, one-click Real-Exposure lens, peer-cohort percentiles |
| Years in market | 20+ (since ~2003) | Launched 2025; engine versioned and locked |
| Customer base | ~4,500 brokers (incl. Walmart, Coca-Cola) | New entrant — early broker / insurer / carrier adopters |
| Defamation risk to user | Crowd-sourced FreightGuard model has produced multiple defamation judgments against carriers and the platform — public court records include $208K, $250K, and $612K verdicts | None from our scoring — outputs are derived from federal records, not user-submitted claims about other parties |
| Post-Montgomery audit trail | None — there's a report log, but no decision-record artifact tied to your tender | Yes — append-only Decision Record per tender, time-stamped, court-discoverable; persists to Defense File |
| Closed-loop fix engine | None — flag the carrier, that's the end of the loop | Yes — Get-to-Green Roadmap: the same engine that rejects also hands the carrier the fix |
| Chameleon / reincarnation detection | Indirect (community memory of bad actors) | Yes — shared phone / address / officer / VIN matching across DOT numbers |
| Pricing | $35/mo flat | $349/mo (Broker · Defense File tier) |
Carrier411 pricing and category description per its public marketing. FreightGuard defamation judgments ($208K, $250K, $612K) are public court records and reflect a documented category risk of broker-submitted-claim products — not a smear against Carrier411 as a company. CarrierCrusher pricing reflects the Broker · Defense File tier in src/lib/billing.plans.ts.
If your tender volume is low, your loads are routine, and the question you need to answer is "did anyone in the broker community get burned by this carrier recently?" — $35/mo Carrier411 is a fair tool for the job. Twenty years of community memory is real value, and the price reflects it.
If a single bad tender wouldn't be a balance-sheet event for your firm, and you're not the broker of record on a freight segment that draws plaintiff attention, the bulletin board is probably enough. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
Since Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II (SCOTUS 9-0, May 14, 2026), every broker carries discoverable negligent- selection exposure on every load. The defense bar's first subpoena asks for your vetting documentation for the date of loss. A FreightGuard report log isn't that artifact.
If you tender high-value or hazmat loads, work with shippers whose insurance carrier requires documented carrier vetting, or simply can't afford to defend a single bad tender without paper — the math on $35/mo versus $349/mo stops being about price and starts being about the artifact in your audit trail.
Free public scorecard — no login. If you're already using Carrier411 today, run one USDOT here and put the two outputs next to each other. The category gap is the answer.