Guide
It lands like a second theft. You factored the load, got paid most of the money weeks ago, spent it on fuel and a repair — and then the factoring company takes the advance back out of your account, because the broker never paid them. This guide explains the mechanics honestly, because almost nobody explained them at signup.
Most small-carrier factoring is recourse factoring. The factor advances you money against the invoice, then collects from the broker. If the broker does not pay — slow, disputed, or gone — the factor's deal says the risk comes back to you: the advance is charged back, or set against your next loads. It feels like being punished for the broker's crime, and in a sense it is: you sold the factor a promise that the invoice was collectible, and it was not. Some factors sell non-recourse cover — the factor eats a true broker failure — but it costs more, covers a narrower definition of failure, and is not what most carriers in this seat signed. Read your factoring agreement for the word 'recourse' and the chargeback clause; know which product you actually have.
Worth understanding, because it stings: the check your factor ran before the load measured whether they would fund the invoice — their limit on that broker, built from the invoices they themselves fund. A broker can sit inside that limit and still collapse next month; the check was never a payment guarantee, and recourse means the gap lands on you. This is nobody's fraud. It is the shape of the product — and it is exactly why the bond claim matters more, not less, for factoring carriers.
When the chargeback posts, the unpaid debt is back on your books, and the claim against the broker's bond goes with it. The road is the standard one — how to file on a freight broker's bond — with your factoring papers added to the file: the factor's assignment and notice, and the chargeback record showing the money came back to you. Those papers do double duty: they prove the broker never paid (the factor's whole file says so) and they prove the loss sits with you now. Watch your clocks from the delivery date, not the chargeback date — the 60-day window and the surety's filing span do not restart because your factor was slow to give up.
Everything above is the whole job, and it is yours. If the papers are in a shoebox and the clock is running, FileTheBond finds the surety, builds the package and files it for a flat $79, $129 or $189 by the amount owed — The fee buys the filing — prepared right, filed on time. It never buys a recovery.