FMCSA Carrier Vetting - Authority, Insurance, Revocations and Risk Flags

Check a US trucking carrier or freight broker before you hand it a load. Give a USDOT number, an MC number or a company name and get one record per carrier built from the official FMCSA open data on data.transportation.gov. No scraping, no API key.

This is a vetting tool, not a sales-lead list: phone numbers, emails and contact names are deliberately not returned.

What you get (one row per carrier)

Section	Fields
Identity	usdotNumber, mcNumbers, legalName, dbaName, address (city, state, ZIP), operationType, powerUnits, drivers, registeredOn, lastUpdatedOn
Authority	authorities[]: docket, type (motor carrier / broker / freight forwarder), status (Active, Inactive, Pending, Withdrawn), date and reason of the last status change
Insurance	insurance.requirements[] (required vs on-file liability, cargo, bond), activePolicies[] (insurer, coverage limit, effective date), recentHistory[] (cancellations and replacements)
Sanctions	sanctions.records[]: suspension and revocation orders with dates
Risk flags	riskFlags (codes) and riskFlagDetails[] - every flag lists the dataset and the column/value that triggered it
Freshness	dataAsOf (last update time of each FMCSA dataset used), disclaimer

Risk flags

Simple rules, each with its evidence in riskFlagDetails[].evidence:

AUTHORITY_INACTIVE, AUTHORITY_SUSPENDED, AUTHORITY_REVOKED, AUTHORITY_PENDING, AUTHORITY_WITHDRAWN, AUTHORITY_STATUS_CHANGED_RECENTLY (last 90 days; administrative corrections are ignored), SUSPENSION_OR_REVOCATION_ON_RECORD, INSURANCE_NOT_ON_FILE, INSURANCE_BELOW_REQUIRED, CARGO_INSURANCE_NOT_ON_FILE, BOND_NOT_ON_FILE, INSURANCE_CANCELLATION_SCHEDULED, INSURANCE_CANCELLED_RECENTLY, NEWLY_REGISTERED (under 90 days), USDOT_INACTIVE, PRIOR_REVOCATION_FLAG, BOC3_NOT_ON_FILE, NO_OPERATING_AUTHORITY_ON_FILE, SHARED_ADDRESS, SHARED_BUSINESS_NUMBER, DATA_MISMATCH, PARTIAL_DATA.

A flag is a reason to look closer, not a verdict. Many are normal for some carriers (for example a private fleet has no operating authority, and a large company can share an address with its subsidiaries).

No silent failures

• An input that matches nothing is returned as found: false with a reason.
• If FMCSA could not be queried at all, the row has found: null and an error - it does not claim the carrier does not exist.
• If only some datasets fail, the row is still returned, the failed section carries an error, sectionErrors lists it, and the PARTIAL_DATA flag is raised. A missing insurance section is never read as "no insurance".
• Related-registration checks that cannot be run say not checked.

Input

{
  "usdotNumbers": ["80806"],
  "mcNumbers": ["MC-135797"],
  "companyNames": ["j b hunt"],
  "state": "AR",
  "maxResults": 10
}

All fields are optional. With an empty input the Actor checks an example carrier (USDOT 80806). state only narrows company name searches. maxResults caps the carriers returned per name. Set checkRelatedRegistrations to false to skip the same-address / same-business-number lookups.

Pricing

Pay-per-event, event name carrier-record (one carrier returned). Inputs that are not found are not charged. Suggested price: $0.004 per record.

Data sources

Company Census File (az4n-8mr2) and the FMCSA "Motus" operating-authority datasets in their "All With History" form: Carrier (inys-ebih), Insur (c5y8-a4uz), InsHist (3uet-3z4i), AuthHist (yu5v-wbh6), RevokeSuspend (wb4f-neki), BOC3 (6snj-ed7q). The daily Motus files are refreshed each morning, so records can be up to a day old - see dataAsOf.

Optional environment variable SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN raises the rate limit; the Actor works without it and retries with exponential back-off when throttled.

Limits

• FMCSA public data only; it does not include safety scores, crash or inspection data.
• Insurance filings show what FMCSA has on file, not whether a policy is truly in force today.
• FMCSA public data, provided for informational purposes only; not legal advice; verify with FMCSA before relying on it.