How these figures are computed
Where the data comes from
Two FMCSA sources, both public and both free: the Licensing & Insurance files, which hold operating-authority history and insurance filings, and SAFER, which holds the carrier census. The daily capture reads the USDOT open data portal feeds for the same records. We read them in full and store them locally rather than querying a third-party mirror, so every published figure can be recomputed from a known snapshot.
The current snapshot was retrieved on and covers roughly 333,000 authority and insurance rows across 361,057 carriers with active primary coverage on file.
How current a page is. The FMCSA feeds are captured every day at 13:00 UTC, once FMCSA has finished publishing the previous day. Republishing these public pages is a separate step and does not yet happen automatically, so a page can be older than the newest data we hold. Each carrier page states the date its own data was read — trust that date over the capture schedule, and check FMCSA directly before you tender a load on a record that matters.
How a carrier page is classified
Each carrier is placed in one state — active and insured, insurance cancelled while authority still reads active, suspension order served, authority not active, and so on — by comparing the newest row per authority type against the live and cancelled insurance filings on the same USDOT number. The classifier is checked against fixtures on every build; a page is never generated from a classifier that fails those checks.
What the data does not tell you
- Filings lag reality. An insurance filing is made by the insurer, not the carrier, and the gap between a policy ending and the filing appearing is real. A record showing coverage is evidence of a filing, not proof of a policy in force today.
- Authority status and insurance status live in separate files and are not updated together. That gap is the subject of several of the guides below.
- Filings can contain errors, and cancellations are sometimes reversed.
- We report what is on file. We do not rate, score, or recommend carriers, and nothing here is legal advice or an insurance verification. Confirm coverage with the insurer or a certificate before you tender a load.
Corrections
If a page misreads a record, we want to know — the underlying FMCSA data is the authority, and where we disagree with it, we are wrong.
Guides
- Active authority does not mean insured
- Broker authority and the $75,000 bond — how to tell a broker from a carrier
- Cargo insurance vs liability — why the FMCSA record will not tell you if your freight is covered
- Vetting carriers with a spreadsheet — what it catches and what it misses
- Looking for a Carrier411 alternative
- Certificate of insurance vs FMCSA filing — which one to trust
- FMCSA changed its data in May 2026 — your carrier script may have quietly stopped working
- FMCSA insurance filings explained — BMC-91X, BMC-84, BMC-34 and the rest
- How long after an insurance cancellation does FMCSA suspend authority?
- How to check whether a carrier is legitimate before you tender
- How to read an FMCSA carrier record, field by field
- How to spot a double-brokered load before it moves
- MC number vs USDOT number — what each one actually tells you
- New carrier red flags — what to check when there is no history
- Operating authority status explained — Active, Pending, Inactive, Withdrawn
- What happens when a carrier's insurance is cancelled
- What insurance limits to require from a carrier, and why $750,000 is not enough
- What a BOC-3 filing is, and why it can suspend authority on its own
- Why carrier insurance gets cancelled, and what each reason actually means