Glossary
Compliance review (safety audit)
A compliance review is FMCSA's direct examination of a carrier: investigators look at driver qualification files, hours-of-service records, vehicle maintenance, drug-and-alcohol testing programs, and crash registers, on site or remotely. It is the only process that produces a safety rating; no amount of roadside data alone rates a carrier.
Who gets reviewed
Far fewer carriers than people assume. The agency's investigative capacity covers a small fraction of the registered population, so reviews are prioritized: crash involvement, complaints, scores crossing intervention thresholds, and new-entrant audits drive most of them. This is exactly why roughly 94% of interstate freight carriers carry no rating; they have simply never been reviewed.
What it means for vetting
The compliance review explains both the value and the limits of the rating field. A rating is a real regulatory finding, worth taking seriously, but its absence is uninformative, and even a good rating describes the carrier as of the review date (fleetfax notes when a Satisfactory rating is older than the nominal audit cycle). The continuously updated evidence is the roadside record, which exists for rated and unrated carriers alike.
Related terms
Safety rating
FMCSA's official Satisfactory / Conditional / Unsatisfactory grade from a compliance review. Roughly 94% of carriers have never received one.
Conditional & Unsatisfactory ratings
The two adverse FMCSA safety ratings. Conditional means a compliance review found inadequate safety controls but the carrier may keep operating; Unsatisfactory leads to a federal prohibition on operating.
CSA & the BASICs
FMCSA's safety scoring system: seven behavior categories. Official percentiles are hidden from the public for all seven; the raw data behind five of them is public.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.