A quiet customs change has taken full effect in 2026 that can strand your freight at the Canadian border even when your truck, your driver, and your paperwork are perfect. Under CARM — the Canada Border Services Agency’s Assessment and Revenue Management system — the old shortcut of clearing your goods under your customs broker’s bond is gone. If the importer of record is not registered and has not posted its own financial security, the shipment does not move. “No CARM, no clearance” is now the rule at the line.
Alpha Trans has moved cross-border freight between Canada and the US since 2002, and we clear loads through CBSA every day, not occasionally. CARM is the single biggest change to how freight enters Canada in a generation. Here is a plain read on what it is, what changed, and what shippers and carriers each have to get right so loads keep rolling.
What CARM actually is
CARM is CBSA’s digital system for assessing and collecting duties and taxes on commercial goods imported into Canada. It replaces a paper-and-patchwork process with a single online portal — the CARM Client Portal — where importers register, classify goods, see what they owe, and pay. It rolled out in stages: importers of record, including US companies acting as Non-Resident Importers, were required to register back in October 2024, and the transition measures that softened the early months have now closed. In 2026, CARM is fully in force.
The headline for anyone shipping into Canada: CARM moved the compliance burden onto the importer of record, and it made that compliance a precondition for the goods to cross.
The change that catches shippers
For years, many importers — especially smaller ones and US shippers — leaned on their customs broker’s bond to clear goods under Release Prior to Payment (RPP), the program that lets freight be released before duties are paid. That workaround is over.
Under CARM, every importer must:
- Have its own CARM Client Portal account. A broker can act for you, but the goods clear under your account, not the broker’s business number.
- Post its own financial security for RPP. That means a surety bond or a cash deposit — a cash deposit runs about 50% of your highest monthly duties and taxes, sometimes cheaper than a bond for low-volume importers.
- Stay current. Miss the accounting window and you face Late Accounting Penalties; lapse on security or registration and your release privileges stop.
The consequence is blunt. If the importer of record is not registered or has not posted security, the cargo is held at the border until it is. This applies equally to Canadian importers and to US businesses acting as the importer of record.
What CARM means at the primary inspection booth
CARM is an importer system, but it lands on the carrier. Pre-arrival processing into Canada is now strictly digital, and every link in the chain has to line up before the truck reaches the primary inspection booth.
If the digital customs entry is not properly linked to the carrier code before arrival, the driver gets waved to secondary — and that is where the hours disappear. The common causes of a CARM-era delay are familiar to any dispatcher:
- An importer that is not CARM-registered or has lapsed on security
- A customs entry the broker has not successfully filed
- A PARS barcode that has not cleared in the digital system
- A clearance confirmed too late to reach the driver before the line
None of those are the driver’s fault, and none can be fixed at the booth. In a CARM world, the load is cleared — or delayed — long before the truck arrives.
What shippers should do now
- Confirm your importer of record is fully CARM-registered with active financial security. If you ship under a Non-Resident Importer arrangement, verify who holds that role and that it is current.
- Know your numbers. Pull your duty and tax exposure so you size your bond or cash deposit correctly and are not caught short on RPP.
- Tighten broker coordination. The entry has to be filed and accepted digitally before the truck arrives — build that into your booking lead time, not your border-day scramble.
- Move freight with a carrier that checks compliance before it dispatches, so a registration gap is caught in the yard, not at the booth.
How Alpha Trans keeps CARM loads moving
CARM rewards carriers who treat the border as a paperwork problem solved before the wheels turn. Our dispatch confirms the broker’s entry is filed, the importer is CARM-compliant, and the PARS barcode is accepted in the system — then pushes the digital clearance to the driver before they reach the line. It is the same discipline we have run on Canada-US lanes for over two decades.
That discipline sits on top of the credentials that already speed our trucks through the border. Alpha Trans holds CT-PAT, FAST, PIP, SmartWay, HAZMAT, and CSA certifications and is bonded in both countries. FAST-qualified loads use the expedited lanes at Windsor-Detroit, Fort Erie-Buffalo, and Sarnia-Port Huron — which matters even more when CARM friction is pushing wait times up. Our 200-tractor fleet is committed capacity, with expedited and team-driver options when a CARM hold on someone else’s load has tightened the market.
CARM is not going away, and the shippers and carriers who treat it as routine are the ones whose freight keeps moving. Make sure your next load clears before it rolls — request a quote or reach live dispatch.