Glossary

Operating authority

Operating authority is the federal permission to transport regulated freight for hire (or to broker it). It comes in flavors: common and contract authority for carriers (the historical distinction matters less than whether either is active), and broker authority for arranging freight. An entity can hold more than one.

Status: the first thing to check

• Active: the carrier may legally operate for hire.
• Pending: an application is on file but not yet granted. Not a revocation, but not permission either.
• Inactive / revoked: authority was held and lost, commonly for lapsed insurance. A carrier hauling for hire without active authority is operating illegally.

fleetfax treats missing active authority as a blocking issue and surfaces pending status distinctly so it doesn't read as a revocation.

Authority history and gaps

The current status is a snapshot; the history is the story. A carrier that lost authority and won it back has an authority gap, and the most common cause is an insurance lapse. Repeated revoke-and-reinstate cycles tell you something about how the business runs that today's green "Active" cannot. fleetfax reads the full authority history and flags prior revocations alongside the current status.

Carrier, broker, or both

An entity holding both carrier and broker authority is legal and common, but it changes the questions you ask: when a dual-authority entity gives you a truck, you want to know whether it's hauling on its own authority or re-brokering your load. fleetfax notes dual authority on every report, and flags broker-only entities that cannot legally haul at all.

Related terms