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Free carrier vetting

Free for every carrier. No account, no card.

Everything the federal government records about a motor carrier is scattered across separate systems: registration, operating authority, insurance filings, roadside inspections, crashes, safety measurement, equipment. The SAFER snapshot most brokers check reads just one of them. Nobody vetting a carrier has time to open all the rest, and the raw feeds are noisy. fleetfax pulls the public record together into one report, cleans it, and surfaces what matters.

The power is in how the data connects. fleetfax cross-references the sources: the trucks a carrier runs against the trucks it reports, its identity against carriers whose authority was already pulled, its safety against peer carriers. You see how the pieces line up, or don't, instead of one slice at a time.

fleetfax is powered by 40+ million federal records, updated daily: 2,174,293 carriers on the active federal register, 8.2M inspections, 4.9M crashes, 7.3M insurance records, plus authority changes, out-of-service orders, and safety-measurement records.

How to vet a carrier in three steps

Step 1

Search the carrier

Enter a USDOT or MC number, company name, phone, or email. fleetfax pulls the matching federal record.

Step 2

Read the report

Risk flags up top, then authority, insurance, safety vs peers, inspections, crashes, fleet detail, and an operating map.

Step 3

Save the record

Keep the report's permanent link for the compliance file. It always reopens that carrier, and the report states the date the federal data was pulled.

What the report looks like

One carrier, pulled together from the federal record. Illustrative composites: the carrier is fictional, its DOT number is unissued, and every figure in frame was authored for these images. The layout, the wording and the maths are the product’s own.

A fleetfax verdict card reading Blocking issues found, 3 blocking and 2 cautions. The blocking group names an inactive USDOT record, inactive operating authority and no active insurance on file, with the first one opened to its evidence. Below it a Serious issues found group names an officer also listed on a revoked carrier and a crash rate above the federal benchmark, and a Cautions group names more units observed than reported and a previous revocation. — fleetfax reads the public federal record for a carrier, reconciles it, and leads with what matters. Blocking issues are the hard ones — an inactive authority, no insurance on file. Serious issues are findings that are grave and still legal, so they get their own tier rather than reading as blockers. Cautions sit beneath both. Several findings here only exist because we cross-reference sources, like an officer who also appears on a carrier whose authority was pulled. **Reading it.** Blocking and caution describe the record, not a decision. Every finding opens to the data behind it, so you can judge it yourself.

fleetfax operating map drawn from 176 roadside inspections across 37 counties, with the I-44, I-49, I-70 and I-55 corridors traced along the real road geometry, a domicile marker on Springfield, Missouri, a toggle for showing inspections, crashes or both, and a 24-month bar chart of monthly activity — Every roadside inspection carries a location and a date. fleetfax plots them: bigger dots mean more inspections in a place, and the shading shows the carrier's real operating footprint over the window you choose. This one is built from 176 inspections across 37 counties, with the interstates the activity lines up along drawn in and recorded crashes on their own layer. **Reading it.** This is where the trucks were actually pulled in, which is hard to fake. Compare it to the address and lanes the carrier claims. One domiciled in a state but only ever seen far from it is worth a question.

The fleetfax FMCSA BASIC categories table: crash rate, unsafe driving, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, controlled substances and driver fitness, each with a percentile bar against the peer median and the alert zone, the 24-month violation count and the inspections behind it, and an outlined status chip. A line above states the date the safety data runs through. — fleetfax groups a carrier with others carrying a similar amount of inspection activity, counts violations per inspection from the public record, and shows where it lands as a percentile. These are fleetfax peer estimates, not the official CSA scores FMCSA keeps private. **Reading it.** A high percentile means more violations than most similar carriers, not a pass or fail. The alert zone marks roughly where FMCSA steps in. The counts and the inspections behind each bar are all there.

The fleetfax observed-equipment summary: power units averaging model year 2020 and newer than 61 percent of fleets their size, trailers averaging 2018 and about average, and the observed mix broken out as 38 power units, 34 dry vans, 14 flatbeds and 8 reefers against the carrier-declared general freight — fleetfax decodes the VIN of every truck and trailer seen in a carrier's inspections, then dates and classifies the equipment and compares its age to other carriers of the same size. It also lines the observed fleet up against what the carrier reports on its MCS-150. **Reading it.** This is the fleet on the road, not a number on a filing. Newer than peers often points to a real, invested operator. A mismatch, like equipment plated far from the carrier's base, is the kind of thing worth asking about.

A decoded equipment table: one row per truck or trailer seen in a roadside inspection, with its type, plate and plate state, make and model, model year, trailer length, weight class, the VIN each was decoded from, and when it was last seen — fleetfax decodes the VIN of every truck and trailer seen in a carrier's inspections, then dates and classifies the equipment and compares its age to other carriers of the same size. It also lines the observed fleet up against what the carrier reports on its MCS-150. **Reading it.** This is the fleet on the road, not a number on a filing. Newer than peers often points to a real, invested operator. A mismatch, like equipment plated far from the carrier's base, is the kind of thing worth asking about.

What's in every report

Free, for any carrier, with the records behind each line.

Status and operating authority

Whether it's active and which authority types it holds, with the full history of grants, revocations, and reinstatements. An authority revoked once and reinstated looks active today, but reads differently with the history attached.

Insurance on file

The filings on record, with a routine annual term-end told apart from a real cancellation, so a normal renewal never reads as a lapse. No active insurance on file surfaces as a blocking issue.

Safety vs peer carriers

Out-of-service and crash rates as percentiles against peer carriers, with the trend over time and the individual inspections and crashes behind every number.

Where they're observed to operate

A map drawn from where the carrier's trucks were actually inspected, so you can see where it really runs. A lot harder to fake than the address on a filing.

Fleet, reconciled

The trucks reported on the MCS-150 against the trucks actually seen in inspections, plus equipment age vs peers. When the reported fleet and the observed fleet don't line up, that surfaces as a flag.

Cross-referenced risk signals

The identity-overlap patterns behind double-brokering and reincarnated carriers, surfaced by reconciling a carrier's record against the rest of the federal data. Each one is a named flag with the evidence behind it.

Vetting that surfaces facts, not a pass or fail

Fraud and double-brokering are the industry's biggest worry right now, and a carrier built to scam is built to pass a quick glance. Reports to the Transportation Intermediaries Association rose 65% in the six months ending February 2025, and 22% of respondents reported more than $200,000 in losses in a single six-month period. (Those are TIA survey figures, not a full census.) Reading deeper is the whole point: authority granted last week with no inspection history, an open out-of-service order, no insurance on file, or an identity reused from a carrier whose authority was already pulled. fleetfax surfaces each of those as a named flag with the record attached.

The exposure isn't only financial. In May 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that brokers can face state negligence claims over the carriers they select. That makes a carrier's federal record matter more than it used to.

fleetfax is descriptive by design. It tells you what the record shows (blocking issues found, a count of cautions, or nothing flagged as of the day you check) and links every claim to its evidence. It will never call a carrier safe or clear to book. A clean report is one input to your decision, not a replacement for your process.

Free carrier vetting FAQ

Is carrier vetting on fleetfax really free?

Yes. Every carrier report is free at full depth: no trial, no credit card, no account. The single-carrier vetting report will always be free.

What does fleetfax check when vetting a carrier?

Operating authority and status, insurance filings on file, roadside inspections and out-of-service rates, crashes, fleet and equipment detail, a map of where they are observed to operate, and named risk flags including the identity-overlap patterns behind double-brokering, all read from the public FMCSA datasets.

Does fleetfax decide whether to book the carrier?

No. fleetfax gives you the facts and the patterns: the public record, the cross-referenced signals, and the evidence behind each one, so you can make an informed call. The decision to book is always yours. fleetfax never says safe-to-book or do-not-book, and it computes no single score.

Do I need an account or a credit card?

No. There is no signup, no card, and no login. Search a carrier and read the report. A Chrome extension brings the same check to wherever you find carriers.

How is free fleetfax different from other vetting tools?

fleetfax goes deeper on the single-carrier read. The data is public, so we ingest the federal record ourselves and reconcile it: safety against peer carriers, a map of where the carrier is observed to operate, the fleet checked against what it reports, and the identity-overlap signals behind double-brokering. The full report is free, with no account.

Start from a number with the free MC number lookup or free DOT number lookup, run a free FMCSA safety check, check is this carrier legit, or browse the carrier directory.

fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. A clean report is not legal cover or a substitute for your own process or policy.

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