Guide
A broker who stops paying rarely owes one carrier. He owes twenty. And behind all twenty stands a single bond of $75,000. This guide says exactly how that arithmetic works — including the part plenty of sales pages dress up, and we will not.
Add up every valid claim filed against one broker inside the windows. If the total fits inside $75,000, each claim can be paid in full. If the total passes $75,000 — the normal case when a broker goes down owing real money — the pot is divided among the claims in proportion to what each carrier is owed. Owed $6,000 in a pool of $150,000 of claims, and your share of the pot is four cents on the dollar before the surety finishes its work: the worked examples in carrier stories land exactly there — one small carrier owed $42,000 across loads took home $6,800 after eight months, eleven carriers sharing one broker's bond.
Sureties commonly hold a waiting period — up to about 60 days — to let claims arrive before dividing and paying, precisely because the split cannot be done fairly one claim at a time. That hold is not the surety stalling; it is the pool filling.
What it never buys is first place. You will read 'first come, first served' in this business, usually on a page selling urgency. Under a shared bond with claims held and divided, being early does not move you ahead of a carrier who files later but inside the windows. Anyone who promises you first-paid is promising something the bond does not contain. Early is still right — for the two real reasons above, which need no dressing 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.