On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that a company who negligently hires another to haul goods falls within the safety exception to FAAAA preemption. The defense brokers had leaned on for years is gone.
Nobody became automatically liable overnight. But everyone who picks a carrier now has a paperwork problem, and legal observers read the principle as reaching well past brokers to 3PLs, retailers, and shippers.
Six weeks after this ruling, NHDA launched the Accredited Final Mile Professional program. Board President James Betz, who is also VP of Spirit Logistics, stated that documented industry-backed vetting is “becoming a basic risk-management necessity.” The timing tracks, and so does the fact that background checks and drug testing show up as named requirements rather than implied ones.
AFMP sets standards for final-mile carriers across training, compliance, operations, and performance.
It fills a real gap. The final mile is often a customer's only face-to-face contact with a retailer's brand, and it's simultaneously the least standardized link in the chain. A single retailer might use dozens of regional carriers, each with its own hiring bar, its own training, and its own idea of what "we screen our drivers" actually means.
The National Home Delivery Association is the logical organization to develop this program. Ten white-glove delivery companies founded NHDA in 2013, and it now counts more than 70 members who together move over 70% of U.S. residential bulky goods, including furniture, appliances, electronics, exercise equipment, and more. No vendor invented this credential; the trade association representing most of the category built it.
Eligibility is broad enough to cover both independent carriers and retailers running their own delivery operations. Enrollment opened on July 21, 2026, with badges issued on a rolling basis.
Taken together, the program requirements describe an operating discipline that most carriers have only partly or informally implemented. NHDA spells out the details of the program in the AFMP Policies & Procedures Handbook.
Carriers rarely skip screening altogether; more often, they built a program for the wrong regulatory category. Final mile sits in an awkward middle.
FMCSA counts any vehicle at 10,001 pounds or more in interstate commerce as a commercial motor vehicle under 49 CFR 390.5, while a CDL is generally required only at 26,001 pounds.
Most final-mile fleets live between those two numbers. Operating a 24-foot box truck rated at 25,900 pounds doesn’t require a CDL, but the moment it crosses a state line, that driver is operating a CMV. At that point, you need a driver qualification file under Part 391: MVR at hire and annually; three years of employment history; a road test or accepted equivalent; and medical certification.
Federal drug and alcohol testing under Part 382 works differently, attaching only to CDL drivers — so below that line, there is no federal mandate at all.
So you can be federally regulated for driver qualification and unregulated for testing at the same time. Two predictable failure modes follow:
Assume "no CDL, no DOT" and keep no qualification files at all.
Run full DOT-style random pools for non-CDL drivers, absorbing costs you never owed and sometimes colliding with state law.
AFMP won't sort any of this out for you; it simply asks you to prove that you already have.
The final mile is not parcel delivery. Furniture, appliance, fitness equipment, and mattress crews enter occupied homes and work around residents, including kids and older adults. That changes what a defensible criminal history program has to look like.
A single-county check or a bare database sweep isn't enough when your driver is carrying a sectional through someone's living room. A defensible program includes:
County-level criminal searches in every jurisdiction of residence, pulled from courts rather than a database alone
A national database search with primary-source verification before anything gets reported
Sex offender registry screening, which speaks for itself in a home-entry role
MVR review at hire and annually, per Part 391, where it applies
SSN trace and identity verification, so you know where to search
Employment verification across the three-year lookback
Each of these is a consumer report, so the FCRA applies in full: disclosure, authorization, and the two-step adverse action process. State and local fair chance ordinances then control when you can ask and how you weigh what comes back. A carrier operating in Los Angeles County, Philadelphia, and Chicago is running three different assessment regimes at once.
Much of final-mile capacity runs on independent contractors and owner-operators, and it's tempting to assume the screening obligations ride along with the contracting entity.
They don't. If you order the report, you're the end user under the FCRA, with every obligation that it carries. And on negligent selection, the exposure Montgomery just opened, the contractor label is thin cover. A plaintiff won't ask who signed the W-9; they'll ask what you knew, what you checked, and what you wrote down.
Contractor networks need screening built for that structure, with clear contractual allocation of responsibility and one consistent standard applied across the network. It's worth noting that NHDA lists reduced misclassification risk among the benefits 3PLs get from accredited carriers, since how you onboard and document ends up as evidence in both analyses.
AFMP renews once a year, but driver risk doesn't keep that schedule.
Say a driver picks up a DUI in February. He or she looked clean on January's MVR and, depending on state reporting policies, that person will look clean again the following January, which leaves an eleven-month blind spot spent in your customers' driveways. Continuous MVR monitoring closes that window by flagging license changes and new violations as states report them, which is what makes an annual attestation true on all the days in between.
Getting this wrong creates the exact liability the program exists to reduce.
NHDA is blunt about it. Accreditation guarantees nothing about any carrier's or any employee's competence, qualifications, or fitness, and it goes to organizations rather than people. Finishing the training does not accredit a driver. NHDA's own position is that accreditation is one factor in evaluating a carrier, not a replacement for independent due diligence.
Anyone selecting carriers post-Montgomery should sit with that, because a badge is evidence a standard was met — not the diligence a court will ask you about.
Carriers should read the same sentence in reverse. If accreditation is one factor among several, the records underneath it are exactly what a customer asks for once the evaluation gets serious. The badge starts the conversation; the documentation survives it.
Fees are waived through the end of 2026; carriers accredited during the pilot keep that status through December 31, 2027, and NHDA will set a fee structure after that.
The process runs in five steps. Your primary contact submits the interest form, NHDA opens your LUMA account, and you upload documentation. The review runs 7-10 business days, and approved carriers then release training to their personnel with 60 days to finish. Accreditation follows from there and is maintained through ongoing reporting and annual renewal.
The bottleneck isn’t usually training; it's paperwork. NHDA's Applicant Readiness Checklist asks for a current certificate of insurance, your MCS-150, licenses and permits, fleet and dashcam details, and a learner roster with email addresses. It also wants a full quarter of metrics: customer service, on-time delivery, damage, plus insurance, property, and vehicle claims with out-of-pocket costs.
That last item is the one that catches people, because claims data with out-of-pocket costs isn't something most carriers keep in a format they can hand over on short notice. Pull the checklist and the full requirements before you start.
As an NHDA partner, AccuSourceHR advised on background screening and drug testing best practices while the program was being built. We're also a PBSA Founding Member, a distinction held by a small fraction of providers, with an in-house, attorney-led compliance team.
For carriers going after accreditation:
Program design should be matched to your actual regulatory posture, CDL or not, so you're neither exposed nor over-built
MVRSource™ and DOT Program Management — MVRs, continuous monitoring, CDLIS, Clearinghouse verifications, and PSP access in one audit-ready workflow
Criminal history and drug testing built for home-entry roles and distributed crews, including in-house C/TPA-accredited testing management
Contractor and vendor screening for IC networks
Documentation that holds — the packet you hand NHDA, a customer, or your insurer
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Preparing for AFMP accreditation? Talk to an AccuSourceHR transportation specialist about a screening and testing review before the December 31, 2026 deadline. |
Accredited Final Mile Professional — the National Home Delivery Association's accreditation program for final-mile carrier organizations.
Nothing through December 31, 2026. Carriers accredited during the pilot hold that status through December 31, 2027. NHDA expects to announce a fee structure before the waiver expires.
No. It's awarded to organizations, not individuals, and NHDA doesn't certify, vet, or verify drivers. Accredited carriers must demonstrate that they follow recognized best practices, including background checks and drug testing — but 3PLs, retailers, and shippers should still conduct their own due diligence.
It depends on weight and whether you cross state lines. At 10,001 pounds or more in interstate commerce, the FMCSA classifies the vehicle as a commercial motor vehicle under 49 CFR 390.5, which triggers driver qualification file requirements under Part 391. Federal drug and alcohol testing under Part 382 generally applies only to CDL drivers, typically 26,001 pounds and up. Many final-mile fleets fall in between — qualification rules apply; federal testing rules don't. State law and company policy fill that gap.
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC held that the FAAAA doesn't preempt state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers. It addressed brokers, not carriers, and created no automatic liability. The practical effect is more scrutiny on how carriers get vetted and selected — raising the value of documented standards and the cost of skipping them.
Yes, annually. You'll need current training compliance, active insurance and licensing, submitted performance data, and continued best practices. Applications are reviewed in 7-10 business days, and training must be completed within 60 days of release.