How much do freight brokers make? Salary, commission and margins

Three different questions hiding in one

“How much do freight brokers make” usually means one of three things. What does an employee at a brokerage earn? What does an independent agent earn? And what does the brokerage itself make on a load? The answers are connected, because every salary and commission comes out of load margin, but the numbers are very different.

Legally, the broker is the company registered with FMCSA. Under 49 U.S.C. 14916, a person may provide interstate brokerage services only if registered and in compliance with the financial security requirements, which for property brokers means a $75,000 surety bond or trust fund. The people who sell freight and cover trucks are brokerage employees or freight agents working under that authority.

Freight broker salary: what BLS data shows

The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t publish a “freight broker” occupation. The closest is cargo and freight agents (occupation 43-5011), which BLS defines as workers who “expedite and route movement of incoming and outgoing cargo and freight shipments” and “take orders from customers and arrange pickup of freight and cargo.”

BLS released its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics on May 15, 2026. For cargo and freight agents, O*NET OnLine reports a 2025 median wage of $25.13 an hour, or $52,260 a year, from that BLS wage data. The Department of Labor’s My Next Move shows a range of $38,340 to $79,810 from the same data.

Where these people work matters. In the May 2023 BLS release, 61,510 of the 105,220 cargo and freight agents worked in freight transportation arrangement, the industry that includes freight brokerages, with an annual mean wage of $53,260 in that industry.

Why the BLS number is only a starting point

The category is broad. It includes terminal agents and routing staff at airlines, railroads and shipping companies, as well as brokerage sales and carrier reps.

It does count commissions. BLS says the wages it reports include “incentive pay, including commissions and production bonuses,” and exclude overtime pay and nonproduction bonuses. So a commissioned rep’s pay is in the data, as long as they’re an employee.

It leaves out owners and many agents. The survey does not include “the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms.” Independent agents paid as contractors and brokerage owners taking profit aren’t in these figures. Those are often the highest and lowest earners in freight.

Who earns what inside a brokerage

Pay follows how directly a role touches margin. Roles are named differently from shop to shop, but most brokerages have some version of these:

• Carrier sales or capacity reps cover loads. Their pay often mixes base salary with a bonus or commission tied to margin on the loads they buy.
• Account managers and sales reps own shipper relationships. They’re more likely to be paid heavily on commission, because they bring in the freight.
• Operations and track-and-trace staff keep loads moving after dispatch. Pay is usually salary or hourly, sometimes with team bonuses.
• Billing and carrier pay staff close out loads and collect cash. Usually salary or hourly.

In small brokerages one person often does all of it, and pay follows whoever brings in the customer.

How broker commission plans are usually built

Most brokerage pay plans pay on gross margin, not revenue, because margin is what the brokerage keeps. Common building blocks:

• Base salary plus commission. A fixed base, with a percentage of the margin a rep books or manages, sometimes after a monthly margin threshold.
• Draw against commission. An advance that later commissions pay back. Useful for new reps building a book.
• Split roles. Account managers and carrier sales reps each take a share of the same load’s margin.
• Chargebacks. Some plans take commission back when a customer doesn’t pay or a claim eats the margin.

Independent agents usually keep a larger share, because they bring their own customers and often cover their own costs. Trinity Logistics, an agent-based brokerage, wrote that industry standards “range from around 50 to 70 percent of gross margins paid to you.” Treat that as one brokerage’s published view, and read any agent contract for what’s deducted before the split.

How much a freight broker makes per load

A brokerage makes the difference between what it bills the customer and what it pays the carrier. Public companies show what that looks like at size. In its second quarter 2026 results, C.H. Robinson’s North American Surface Transportation segment reported $469.4 million of adjusted gross profit on $3.59 billion of revenue, about 13.1 percent by our math. Adjusted gross profit is a non-GAAP measure.

RXO reported a brokerage gross margin of 10.7 percent for the second quarter of 2026, down from 14.4 percent a year earlier. RXO’s gross margin subtracts direct operating expenses as well as transportation costs, so it isn’t directly comparable to C.H. Robinson’s figure.

Those are large, diversified brokerages in one quarter. Your margin depends on your freight mix, how much is spot versus contract, and how the market moved. Margins also tend to squeeze when truck rates rise faster than customer contracts reprice.

What eats the margin before anyone gets paid

Brokers usually pay carriers before customers pay them, so cash costs money. If you factor receivables or offer carriers quick pay, the fees come out of the margin on that load.

Accessorials leak margin too. Detention or a TONU you pay the carrier but can’t bill the shipper turns a $350 load into a $200 load. Our accessorial charges guide covers how to close that gap.

Then there are carrier fall-offs that force a more expensive recovery truck, bad debt from a customer who never pays, cargo claims, fraud losses, insurance and the bond. And software: count any per-load fees in your cost per load along with the monthly subscription.

Example math for a rep’s month: 100 loads at an average $350 margin is $35,000 of gross margin. At the example 20 percent commission, that’s $7,000 of commission for the month, before base pay. Change the load count or average margin and the paycheck moves with it, which is why reps watch both.

Where a TMS fits in the math

A TMS won’t set your rates, but it decides how fast you see margin. In the FreightVero broker TMS, reports cover volume, margin, on-time performance and tracking coverage (live), and the billing queue shows every delivered load that hasn’t been billed yet (live). FreightVero plans have no per-load fees. See pricing for plan details.