🚚 FMCSA Carrier Scraper

Search US trucking carriers and brokers from the official FMCSA / DOT open data with no API key. Filter 2M+ carriers by state, cargo, fleet size, operation class, safety rating and registration date, then enrich every row with CSA / SMS BASIC safety scores, the full authority and insurance history, crashes, roadside inspections and out-of-service orders.

Run a lifecycle-change monitor for daily alerts, or pull a complete safety profile for a list of carriers.

🎯 Who uses it?

🚛 Freight brokers

Find new interstate carriers in your lanes, with phone, email and officer names, the day their authority is granted.

🛡️ Insurance underwriters

Pull a carrier's CSA BASIC alerts, out-of-service rate, crash history and every past insurance cancellation before you quote.

💰 Factoring and risk teams

Monitor for insurance lapses and authority revocations, a lapse is a carrier to call, a revocation is one to stop funding.

📇 Equipment, ELD and fuel-card sales

Filter by fleet size and cargo type, keep the officers and contact details.

📊 Compliance analysts

Rank a set of carriers on out-of-service rate and BASIC scores.

✨ What it does

• Search: filter the census for a lead list, by state, cargo, fleet size, operation class, safety rating and registration date.
• Look up: resolve exact USDOT numbers, MC/MX docket numbers, or company names. An identifier that doesn't resolve comes back as its own error row, so the output always matches your input list.
• Monitor: carriers with a new registration, authority revocation, reinstatement, insurance lapse, or out-of-service order since a date, each tagged with the change type.
• Safety: the full safety profile (CSA BASIC scores, authority and insurance history, 24-month inspection and crash detail) for the carriers you name.
• Optional enrichment: CSA / SMS BASIC safety scores, full authority and insurance history, and per-inspection/crash detail, each added only when that data is actually found.

Missing source values are returned as null, never invented.

🏆 Why this scraper

• CSA / SMS BASIC safety scores. The seven Behavior Analysis categories with their raw measures and above-threshold alert flags, plus driver and vehicle out-of-service rates.
• Authority lifecycle, not just current status. Every grant, involuntary revocation and reinstatement with dates, so you can see a carrier that has been revoked three times, or one reinstated last week.
• Insurance history with coverage and lapses. Current insurer and liability limit, plus every past filing with its cancellation date, the signal an underwriter or a factoring company actually acts on.
• A real change monitor. Not just new carriers, an actual lifecycle feed: revocations, lapses and out-of-service orders are the events worth a phone call.
• Fast. Every enrichment is one batched query per dataset, not one request per carrier.

⚖️ How it compares

Capability	This actor	Other FMCSA scrapers on Apify
Census: identity, contact, officers, fleet, cargo	yes	yes
Filter by state / cargo / fleet size / registration date	yes	some
CSA / SMS BASIC safety scores + alert flags	yes	no
Authority history (grants / revocations / reinstatements)	yes	current status only
Insurance history (insurer, coverage, lapses)	yes	current only, if any
24-month crash + inspection out-of-service detail	yes	counts only
Lifecycle-change monitor (revocations, lapses, OOS)	yes	new-carrier delta only
One row per look-up input, error rows for bad ids	yes	rare

📦 What data you get

Entity	Useful fields
Carrier identity	DOT number, MC numbers, legal and DBA name, entity type, operation class, hazmat flag, registration date.
Contact	Phone, cell phone, email, officer names, physical and mailing addresses.
Fleet & cargo	Power units, truck units, driver counts, and every commodity type carried.
Safety	Safety rating, CSA BASIC measures and alerts, out-of-service rates, current out-of-service order.
Authority & insurance	Grant/revocation/reinstatement history, current insurer, liability coverage, and every past cancellation.
Crash & inspection	24-month crash counts by severity and inspection out-of-service rate.
Monitor	Change type (new registration, revocation, reinstatement, insurance lapse, out-of-service order).

Every record includes scraped_at (UTC) and a link to the carrier's public SAFER snapshot page. Download your dataset from Apify as CSV, JSON, or Excel.

💡 Use cases

🚛 New reefer carriers in Texas

{ "mode": "search", "state": ["TX"], "operationClass": "interstate", "cargo": ["coldfood"], "minPowerUnits": 5, "maxPowerUnits": 50, "registeredAfter": "2026-06-01", "includeSafety": true, "maxItems": 500 }

🔎 Look up a batch of carriers

{ "mode": "lookup", "identifiers": ["76830", "MC386188", "SWIFT TRANSPORTATION"], "includeHistory": true }

📡 Watch for revocations and insurance lapses

{ "mode": "monitor", "since": "7 days", "events": ["revocation", "insurance_lapse", "oos_order"], "maxItems": 1000 }

🛡️ Full safety profile

{ "mode": "safety", "identifiers": ["370617", "593107"] }

⚙️ How the input is organised

Section	What it's for
Mode	Search, Look up, Monitor, or Safety.
Filters	State, operation class, cargo, hazmat, safety rating, fleet size, registration date range, name, active-only.
Look up / Safety	DOT/MC numbers or company names to resolve.
Monitor	The date to watch changes since, and which change types to include.
Enrichment (Search, Look up)	CSA/SMS safety scores, authority and insurance history, and inspection/crash detail. Each only added when that data is found.
Advanced	An optional free DOT app token for very large runs.

Apify Free plan: every run is limited to a fixed 10-row sample. Upgrade your Apify plan to run your own settings.

💰 Pricing

Pay-per-event: a one-time 0.003 when the run starts, plus a price for each kind of record the run produces. You only pay for the kinds you turn on:

Charged for	Free	Bronze	Silver	Gold+
result	0.0215	0.0183	0.0154	0.012
Safety record	0.003	0.0026	0.0022	0.0017
History record	0.003	0.0026	0.0022	0.0017
Inspections record	0.003	0.0026	0.0022	0.0017

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

🚀 Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the FMCSA Carrier Scraper.
3. Fill in the input (or keep the prefilled example), set the maximum number of results, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python, and schedule it with Apify's built-in Scheduler.

🤖 Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to the FMCSA Carrier Scraper through the Model Context Protocol:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=normdata/fmcsa-carrier-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

🔧 Troubleshooting

Safety rating is empty for most carriers. Normal: most carriers have never had a compliance review, so FMCSA has no rating for them.

A DOT or MC number returned an error: "not found" row. Check the number, or try the company name. The output always has one row per identifier you passed.

Monitor mode returned nothing. No carrier matched a change of the selected types since that date. Widen Changed since or add more change types.

Runs are slow or rate-limited. FMCSA open data limits anonymous traffic. Add a free Socrata app token in the input to raise that limit.

❓ FAQ

Question	Answer
Where does the data come from?	FMCSA / DOT public open data, updated daily.
What do the extra charges cover?	Safety, history and inspection records are separate rows added only when you turn those options on and data actually exists.
Can I build a lead list of new carriers?	Yes, Search mode with Registered on/after, plus state, cargo and fleet size.
Does it include contact details?	Yes, phone, email when published, address, and officers.
Do I need an API key?	No. A Socrata app token is optional and only raises the rate limit.

🛡️ Limits & responsible use

This Actor reads only the FMCSA / DOT's own public open data. It never signs in and never accesses anything gated behind an account.

Most carriers have never had a compliance review, so a blank safety rating is normal, not missing data. An unresolved look-up identifier still writes one error: "not found" row rather than failing the run. The underlying data updates daily and runs roughly 24 hours behind live, it is not real-time.

📧 Contact

Need a scraper for a different site, or found something wrong with this one? norm.data.scrapers@gmail.com

🧪 Local development

bun install
bun test              # offline: normalisation + input logic
bun run src/main.ts   # reads storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
bun scripts/verify-live.mjs   # hits data.transportation.gov directly, checks every mode