Why escrow at all
In the traditional broker model, the shipper pays the broker, the broker pays the carrier, and the broker holds the cash for 30–60 days in between. This is where most broker-side fraud lives — the broker takes the shipper's money, books the carrier, and then either delays payment beyond agreed terms, or in the extreme case, never pays.
FreightWaves estimates carriers wrote off $260M+ in unpaid broker invoices in 2023. The BMC-84 surety bond ($75K per broker) covers a fraction of total exposure across the industry.
Escrow eliminates this gap. The funds are held by a neutral third party (Stripe) from the moment the load is accepted. The broker never holds the cash; it goes from shipper → escrow → carrier directly.
How Stripe Connect works in practice
When a carrier accepts the load:
1. Stripe authorises the shipper's card for the load value the shipper posted — the 5% comes out of that, not on top of it. The funds are held on the card, not yet taken. Until capture the money is still in the shipper's account, blocked; Stripe is not holding a balance for anyone.
2. The shipper sees the hold on their own tracking row ("Payment held", then "Paid" after capture). The carrier is not shown that state today — if you are hauling and want to know the card was authorised before you roll, ask us and we will confirm it.
3. Once the shipment is marked **delivered**, the hold is captured and split:
- 95% to the carrier's Stripe Connect account (theirs)
- 5% to the GetHaulDirect platform account (the application_fee_amount)
The shipper can release it themselves from the tracking page; if they don't, it captures automatically 24 hours after delivery. Uploading the POD file is the evidence we keep, and it is not what triggers the capture — a delivery marked without a POD still pays out.
4. ACH from carrier's Stripe Connect to their bank typically settles in 2 business days.
If the load is cancelled before pickup, the authorisation is voided in full. Nothing holds the money once delivery is confirmed: you release it yourself, and the platform releases it automatically 24 hours after delivery. Raise a problem by email to support@gethauldirect.com inside that window — after the release the remedy is a card chargeback through your own bank.
What this protects against
**Broker non-payment**: not the failure mode here. The platform never holds the cash; Stripe routes it to the carrier's own account. What can still leave a carrier unpaid is a hold that was never placed — the authorisation is attempted after the carrier accepts, and a declined or missing card leaves the load at booked with nothing held. The 5% application fee comes off the same payment, not as a separate billing.
**Carrier no-show after acceptance**: nothing is captured until the shipment is marked delivered, so a truck that never shows costs the shipper nothing. A carrier who accepts but never picks up costs the platform a return-charge (small) but doesn't cost the shipper money.
**Double-brokering**: payout runs through a Stripe Connect account, and Stripe verifies the identity behind it before it can receive money. A double-broker would have to clear that twice with different identities — not a clean fraud path. Our own ID check adds to this, but it is not currently a hard gate on accepting a load.
**Cargo fraud (a delivery marked that did not happen)**: this is the residual risk, and it is larger than we used to describe. There is no POD review queue — the file is stored against the shipment for the record, and nobody checks it before the money moves. The controls are the 24-hour window in which the shipper can object, and the carrier's identity-KYC; a determined fraudster who's already passed our in-house identity verification has a much higher cost of doing the fraud than the typical broker-side schemes.
Comparison vs other payment models
| Model | Who holds funds | Carrier risk | Days to pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional broker | Broker | High (broker default) | 30–60 |
| Quick-pay broker | Broker | Medium (extra fee) | 1–3 |
| Factoring | Factor | Low (factor pays carrier) | 1 |
| Stripe Connect escrow | Stripe | Very low | 2 |
Factoring solves carrier cash-flow but adds a 1.5–3% fee on every invoice. Quick-pay solves it with a fee. Escrow solves it without an additional fee — the flat 5% platform fee is the only deduction from the payout.