FMCSA Carrier Lookup & Authority Watch
Pricing
from $2.00 / 1,000 carrier records
FMCSA Carrier Lookup & Authority Watch
Look up a US motor carrier by USDOT, MC/MX/FF docket, or name and state, and watch authority, insurance, revocation, and out-of-service changes. Not affiliated with FMCSA.
Pricing
from $2.00 / 1,000 carrier records
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0.0
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Developer
Mike Berckmoes
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
2
Total users
1
Monthly active users
20 days ago
Last modified
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Look up a US motor carrier by USDOT number, MC/MX/FF docket, or legal/DBA name and state. List carriers newly added to the FMCSA census. Or watch a list for authority, insurance, revocation, and out-of-service changes since the last run.
This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or the US Department of Transportation.
What you get
Lookup and new-carrier rows include dotNumber, legalName, dbaName, statusCode, addDate, mcs150Date, carrierOperation, classdef, powerUnits, trucks, totalDrivers, hazmat, physicalAddress, safetyRating, safetyRatingDate, authorities (docket, type, normalized status, last reason, status-change date), insurance (insurer, policy, type, BIPD max, effective date), bipdOnFile, bipdRequired, activeRevocations, oosOrder, authoritySource, freshness, sourceUrls, and retrievedAt.
A USDOT that is not in the census, Motus, or the legacy files is returned as notFound: true and is not charged.
Watch mode emits one change row per difference: dotNumber, changeType, field, before, after, detectedAt, sourceDataset. Change types include AUTHORITY_GRANTED, AUTHORITY_INACTIVE, AUTHORITY_REINSTATED, INSURANCE_ADDED, INSURANCE_REMOVED, INSURANCE_CANCEL_SCHEDULED, REVOCATION_NOTICE, OOS_ORDER, OOS_RESCINDED, NAME_CHANGED, ADDRESS_CHANGED, and PHONE_CHANGED.
How to use it
- Lookup (default). Pass USDOT numbers, docket numbers (
MC1760297orMC-1760297), or a name plus state. - New carriers. Set mode to
newCarriers. Filter withsince,states,carrierOperation(A/B/C),minPowerUnits, andentityType. An emptysincemeans the last 30 days. - Watch. Set mode to
watch, pass the DOT or docket list, and schedule the Actor with a stablewatchlistId. The first run stores a baseline and charges nothing. Later runs emit only changes. The same change is not alerted twice.
Phone, email, and officer names are omitted unless includeContacts is true.
Motus and the frozen legacy files
Authority and insurance are read from FMCSA's Motus datasets, which refresh daily. Each row is labeled authoritySource: motus and freshness is the newest :updated_at used for that carrier.
Carriers that are not in Motus fall back to the legacy authority and insurance files. Those files were last refreshed on 2026-05-14 and are no longer updated. Those rows are labeled authoritySource: legacy-frozen-2026-05-14 and freshness: 2026-05-14. The Actor downloads only the missing DOTs, stores a compact index in the named key-value store fmcsa-legacy-index, and does not download those DOTs again.
Requests always send $select (only the columns this Actor uses) and a server-side $where. Pages are at most 1,000 rows. Watch runs ask for :updated_at after the cursor saved with that watchlist, then re-read the current row only for DOTs that showed up in that delta.
The watch snapshot is one gzipped record per watchlist in fmcsa-watch-state: a hash per DOT, plus the comparable fields (not the full census row). A failed dataset does not move the cursor. An alert that does not fit in the buyer's charge limit is not marked as sent, so the next run can deliver it once.
How much does it cost?
Pay per event, with no start fee: $0.002 for each carrier-record (a lookup or new-carrier row) and $0.004 for each change-alert. A row that is not stored is not charged. Runs use 128–256 MB and do not use proxies. A one-DOT lookup is a handful of small Socrata requests.
No API key is required. An optional Socrata app token uses your own pool instead of the shared unauthenticated one, which can be throttled.
Data source and licence
Source: FMCSA open data on data.transportation.gov. The Socrata metadata licence field points at project-open-data.cio.gov/unknown-license. DOT Order 1351.34 says:
34.4.26 DOT will clearly indicate that data and information it produces is free from copyright protection within the United States.
34.4.27 DOT will avoid establishing restrictions or regulations, including the charging of fees or royalties, on the reuse, resale, or redissemination of DOT data.
Commercial reuse of this public data is allowed. The QCMobile API is not used.
Census legal names include sole proprietors, because that is the carrier's registered name. Phone numbers, email addresses, and officer names are personal data and stay off unless you set includeContacts.
FAQ
Do I need an API key? No. A Socrata app token is optional.
Why do some carriers say legacy-frozen? They are not in the Motus registration files yet. Their authority and insurance are the 14 May 2026 snapshot, not today's filing.
What does the first watch run return? Nothing. It stores the baseline. The next run returns changes.
