Carrier Vetting MCP — FMCSA Risk Verdicts

Vet any US motor carrier before you tender a load: authority history, insurance lapses, safety record, and chameleon-carrier detection — from official FMCSA data, in one MCP call.

Double-brokering and carrier-identity fraud cost the freight industry billions a year, and the incumbents that screen for it (Highway, RMIS, Carrier411) are seat-licensed platforms priced for enterprises — $1.25+ per raw lookup, $500+/month commitments. The underlying data is free and public. This hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server sells the judgment, per call: connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, n8n, or any MCP-capable agent and ask:

• "Who is USDOT 264184 and are they active?"
• "Has this carrier's authority ever been revoked?"
• "Is their insurance on file, and has it been cancelled recently?"
• "Should I onboard this carrier?" → one vet_carrier call returns a scored risk verdict with evidence.

Tools

Tool	What it answers	Event charged
lookup_carrier	USDOT → legal name, DBA, status, address, officers, fleet, docket	carrier-lookup
authority_history	Every grant / revocation / reinstatement with dates and reasons	history-check
insurance_status	Public liability/cargo filings + full cancellation history	history-check
safety_snapshot	24-month inspections, out-of-service rates vs national averages, crashes, federal safety rating	safety-check
vet_carrier	The flagship: all of the above + chameleon cross-reference → LOW / MODERATE / HIGH / CRITICAL verdict with evidence-backed flags	carrier-vetted

The chameleon check cross-references the carrier's address, phone, and officers against all 4.4M FMCSA registrations, surfaces FMCSA's own prior-revocation links, and distinguishes corporate families (Schneider's nine registrations at one Green Bay address are not fraud) from reincarnation patterns (a 6-month-old carrier sharing a phone number with two revoked ones is).

Outputs are compact structured JSON built for agents — every flag carries a severity, a plain-English explanation, and the evidence behind it.

Connect

Use the Actor's MCP endpoint (Standby mode) with any MCP client:

https://<this-actor>.apify.actor/mcp

Authenticate with your Apify token (Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>). Example Claude Code config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "carrier-vetting": {
      "url": "https://<this-actor>.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Batch mode

Running the Actor directly (non-standby) vets a list of USDOT numbers from the input into the dataset — useful for screening an existing carrier roster. Each carrier charges one carrier-vetted event.

Who uses this

Freight brokers and dispatchers (pre-onboarding checks, tender-time re-checks), factoring companies (carrier risk before buying invoices), shippers running direct-carrier programs, insurtech underwriting flows, and AI agents that book freight.

Data & disclaimer

All data comes from official FMCSA (US Department of Transportation) public sources: the SAFER Company Snapshot, the Company Census File, and the Motus-era Licensing & Insurance datasets on data.transportation.gov. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by FMCSA.

This is a pre-screen, not identity verification. Public data can lag reality by days-to-weeks; a LOW verdict is not a guarantee, and a HIGH verdict deserves human review, not automatic blacklisting. Always verify a current certificate of insurance directly with the insurer before tendering. Crash counts represent involvement in reportable crashes without any determination of responsibility (per FMCSA policy).