Start a Freight Claims Recovery Service for Mid-Market Shippers

1. 1

   Master the claims rulebook cold

   Freight claims run on specific legal frameworks, documentation standards, and unforgiving deadlines that differ by mode, with concealed-damage windows measured in days. Learn the rules, the carrier-specific quirks, and the denial patterns, and know where the line sits between claims processing and legal practice: disputed claims that escalate to litigation go to transportation attorneys you partner with, not you.

2. 2

   Build intake that makes clients passive

   The client's job should be forwarding documents and photos, or granting system access to their TMS and carrier portals; yours is everything else. Extraction from bills of lading, delivery receipts, and invoices into properly formatted claims, with a checklist that catches missing evidence while it is still gettable, is the operational core.

3. 3

   Run the deadline machine

   Every claim tracks its filing window, carrier acknowledgment clock, and response deadlines, with escalation cadences when carriers slow-walk. Persistence is the actual product; carriers deny and delay because most claimants give up, and your business model is being the claimant that never does.

4. 4

   Add the overcharge audit as the second engine

   Beyond damage claims, auditing freight invoices against contracted rates, accessorial charges, and duplicate billings recovers money on clean shipments too. It uses the same document pipeline and doubles the recoverable pool per client.

5. 5

   Price on contingency and report loudly

   A percentage of recovered funds in the twenty-to-thirty-five range, no recovery no fee, makes the sale nearly frictionless. A quarterly recovered-dollars report, with the write-off baseline they had before you, is the renewal argument and the referral artifact.

6. 6

   Fish where freight pain concentrates

   Shippers in damage-prone categories, furniture, appliances, food, building products, and the 3PLs and brokers who serve them are the channel. One warehouse manager's referral to a peer at another shipper is how this niche actually grows; earn it with responsiveness.

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