Carrier response time on a freight claim is not a matter of how busy the claims desk is. Under 49 CFR 370.5, a carrier must acknowledge your claim in writing within 30 days of receiving it, record the date it arrived, and assign it a claim file number. Under 49 CFR 370.9, it must then pay, decline, or make a firm written compromise offer within 120 days. If it cannot do any of those three things by day 120, it owes you a written status report explaining why, and another one every 60 days after that until the claim is resolved.
That is the whole framework. Most shippers and brokers never invoke it, which is why claims sit. A claim with no acknowledgment at day 45 and no disposition at day 130 is not stalled, it is out of compliance, and saying so in writing changes the tone of the file.
Two honest caveats before the detail. These rules govern the carrier’s claim-handling process. They do not decide whether you win, they do not set a penalty for missing a deadline, and they do not turn silence into payment. What they give you is a schedule you can hold a carrier to and a paper trail that gets a claim in front of a supervisor.
The two clocks that govern carrier response time
Everything runs from one date: the day the carrier received a valid written claim. That is why what makes a claim valid in the first place matters so much. A note that reads “we had damage on PRO 1234567, please advise” is not a claim under 49 CFR 370.3, so no clock starts, and you can spend two months believing you are inside a process you never entered.
| Day | What the carrier owes | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Receipt of a valid written claim | 49 CFR 370.3 |
| By 30 | Written acknowledgment, date of receipt recorded, claim file number assigned | 49 CFR 370.5 |
| Ongoing | Prompt and thorough investigation, assembling the BOL, freight charge evidence, and value documentation | 49 CFR 370.7 |
| By 120 | Pay, decline in writing, or make a firm written compromise offer | 49 CFR 370.9 |
| At 120, if unresolved | Written status report giving the reason the claim is still open | 49 CFR 370.9 |
| Every 60 days after | Another written status report, until disposition | 49 CFR 370.9 |
The one exception to acknowledgment is worth knowing: 370.5 excuses the acknowledgment letter if the carrier has already paid the claim or declined it in writing inside that same 30-day window. Fast action satisfies the rule. Silence does not.
What “acknowledge” actually means, and why the file number matters
An acknowledgment is administrative, not substantive. Sending one concedes nothing. It confirms three facts: your claim arrived, here is the date we log as receipt, and here is the number we filed it under.
Chase all three. The receipt date is the anchor for every later deadline, and if the carrier logs it a week or two after your send date, every downstream calculation shifts. If you filed by email, your sent timestamp is your evidence. If you filed by mail, delivery confirmation is.
The claim file number is what makes follow-up work. Claims desks are queue-driven, and a follow-up that leads with a claim number gets routed. A follow-up that leads with a PRO number and a paragraph of narrative gets read by whoever opens the inbox. Put the claim number in the subject line of every message on the file after that.
If day 30 passes with nothing, send a short note that states the filing date, notes that no acknowledgment has been received, and cites 370.5. You are not accusing anyone of anything. You are creating the record that shows the carrier’s own timeline started when you say it did.
The 120-day decision and the three outcomes
By day 120 the carrier must do one of exactly three things under 370.9.
Pay the claim. Full amount, or the amount it agrees is owed with an explanation of the difference.
Decline it in writing. This is not a bad outcome procedurally, even though it feels like one. A written disallowance is a dated document, and dated documents start other clocks. Under 49 U.S.C. 14706(e)(1), a carrier cannot impose a period shorter than two years for filing suit, running from the date it gives written notice of disallowance. A vague “we’re still looking at it” at day 200 leaves you nowhere. A clean denial at day 100 tells you exactly what you are dealing with and when your outside deadline runs.
Make a firm compromise offer in writing. “Firm” and “in writing” are both doing work. A claims adjuster saying on the phone that they could probably do 60 percent is not a compromise offer under the rule. A letter offering a specific dollar figure is, and you can accept it, counter it, or reject it and keep the file open.
Note what is not on the list: asking you for more documents. A carrier can and should request documentation as part of the investigation 370.7 requires, but a document request is not a disposition and it does not restart the 120 days. Send what is asked for, promptly, and say in the cover note that you are treating the request as part of the investigation rather than as a reset of the clock.
The status reports nobody asks for
The 60-day status report obligation after day 120 is the least used provision in the whole part, and it is the most useful one for an AP or claims desk that is carrying twenty open files.
Once a claim passes 120 days without disposition, you are entitled to a written explanation of why, and to another one every 60 days. Ask for it by name. A request that says “please provide the written status report required at 120 days under 49 CFR 370.9” does something a general follow-up cannot: it asks for a specific document, on a specific rule, that someone has to actually write. It also produces a dated artifact for your file showing the claim was live and being pursued, which matters if the dispute later moves anywhere formal.
Practically, this is where most stalled claims move. Not because the carrier fears a regulator, but because a named-document request escalates out of the queue.
The investigation the carrier is supposed to be running
While those clocks run, 49 CFR 370.7 requires the carrier to promptly and thoroughly investigate, and to obtain the bill of lading, evidence of freight charges, and the invoice or certified statement of value. On a full-loss claim it must also get a certified statement of non-receipt from the consignee.
Two things follow from that.
First, the carrier is required to go get some of this itself. That does not mean you should sit on your hands: a claim supported by a complete package moves faster than one the adjuster has to assemble. But when a claim is being held solely because the carrier has not pulled its own delivery record, you can point at 370.7.
Second, it tells you what a complete package looks like. Match it and you remove the easiest reason to delay. The document discipline is the same one that decides accessorial disputes, and the evidence set that carries a detention dispute overlaps heavily with what a claims adjuster wants: the shipment documents, the timestamps, and the money.
What these rules do not do
This is where writers usually oversell, so plainly:
- There is no automatic payment. Missing the 30 or 120 day mark does not mean the claim is deemed allowed. It means the carrier is out of compliance with its claim-handling obligations.
- There is no fee to you. Part 370 sets no penalty payable to a claimant for a late acknowledgment or late disposition.
- They do not decide liability. Whether the carrier owes the loss is a Carmack question, and it turns on the condition of the goods at tender, the condition at delivery, the amount of damages, the carrier’s defenses, and the liability limit that applies to your freight class. Timelines do not touch any of that.
- Coverage is not universal. Part 370 sits in the motor carrier regulations. Parcel carriers, freight forwarders operating under their own terms, and cross-border or ocean moves may run on different contractual claim procedures. Read the tariff or the transportation agreement before you assert a rule against a party it may not reach.
What the rules do give you is leverage of a specific kind: the ability to describe the carrier’s own process back to it, with dates, and ask for the document that process requires next. That is usually enough.
Overcharge claims are a different clock, and a faster one
Do not confuse a loss and damage claim with a billing claim. They run on separate rules and separate timelines.
If you were billed wrong, or paid twice, or paid on a rate that was not the contracted rate, that is an overcharge claim under 49 CFR 378, and the response time is much shorter. Under 49 CFR 378.8, the processing carrier must pay, decline, or settle a written overcharge claim within 60 days of receipt unless you agree in writing to extend for extenuating circumstances. Under 49 CFR 378.5, the carrier must promptly begin investigating any claim it receives, written or not, but only a written claim starts the 60-day clock.
There is also a self-reporting duty on the carrier side. Under 49 CFR 378.9, when a carrier itself discovers an overpayment, duplicate payment, or overcollection, it must refund within 30 days. That is the rule sitting behind why a duplicate freight invoice you already paid is recoverable rather than written off.
So when a shipment produces both a damage claim and a billing error, file two claims, on two clocks, with two claim numbers. Merging them into one email gets you the slower of the two timelines and a muddled file. The full set of freight billing and claim windows lives in the deadline reference for every freight clock that can cost you money.
Your deadlines, not just theirs
The carrier’s clocks only matter if you are inside your own.
- Nine months to file. Under 49 U.S.C. 14706(e)(1), a carrier may not impose a claim-filing period shorter than nine months. Most bills of lading use exactly that floor, measured from delivery, or from the scheduled delivery date on a full loss.
- Two years to sue. Same statute, and it runs from the carrier’s written notice of disallowance. This is the practical reason to push for a written denial rather than tolerate open-ended silence.
- Eighteen months on freight charges. Under 49 U.S.C. 14705, a carrier must sue to collect freight charges within 18 months of accrual, and a shipper must sue to recover overcharges within 18 months, with claims accruing on delivery or tender of delivery.
- 180 days to contest a bill. Under 49 U.S.C. 13710, you must contest an original or subsequent bill within 180 days of receiving it to preserve your right to challenge it, and a carrier must bill additional charges within 180 days of your receipt of the original bill to preserve its right to collect them.
A claim you file in month eight of the nine is technically timely and practically fragile. The evidence has aged, the people who worked the load have moved on, and you have surrendered the one thing you controlled.
The follow-up sequence
Run the same cadence on every open claim. It takes ten minutes a week and it is the difference between a claims log and a graveyard.
- Day 0. File a claim that satisfies 370.3: written, identifies the shipment, asserts carrier liability, demands a specific or determinable amount. Log the send date and keep proof of delivery of the claim itself.
- Day 30. No acknowledgment, no claim number? Send a one-paragraph note citing 49 CFR 370.5 and asking for the recorded date of receipt and the file number.
- Day 45 to 60. Confirm the investigation is live. Ask which documents the adjuster still needs, send them same week, and note in writing that document requests are part of the 370.7 investigation.
- Day 100. Send a short pre-disposition note referencing the 120-day mark. This is the single highest-yield touch in the sequence, because it lands while the file can still be closed on time.
- Day 120. No payment, denial, or firm written offer? Request the written status report required by 49 CFR 370.9, by name.
- Every 60 days after. Request the next status report. Keep each one.
- On any denial. Record the date of the written disallowance. That date, not the claim date, is what your two-year suit window runs from.
- Quarterly. Review every open claim against the nine-month and 180-day windows, and against the 18-month overcharge window if there is a billing component.
The mechanics of this belong in your AP calendar, not in someone’s memory. If a claim is worth filing it is worth a diary date at 30, 100, and 120 days, the same way a mismatch between the rate confirmation and the carrier invoice belongs in an exception queue rather than in an inbox. Claims do not fail because the rules are against you. They fail because nobody sent the day-100 email.
Sources
- 49 CFR 370.3, Filing of claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 370.5, Acknowledgment of claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 370.7, Investigation of claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 370.9, Disposition of claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.2, Definitions of overcharge, duplicate payment and overcollection (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.5, Investigation of overcharge claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.8, Sixty-day disposition of overcharge claims (Cornell LII)
- 49 CFR 378.9, Unidentified payments and carrier-discovered overpayments (Cornell LII)
- 49 U.S.C. 14706, Carmack liability and minimum claim and suit periods (Cornell LII)
- 49 U.S.C. 14705, Limitation on actions by and against carriers (Cornell LII)
- 49 U.S.C. 13710, Billing and contesting windows (Cornell LII)
- Freight claim time limits, practitioner summary (FreightClaims.com)