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 authority that was held and lost as a blocking issue, and shows a pending application as not yet active so it doesn't read as a revocation. A carrier whose only authority is a pending application is still a blocking issue: FMCSA has not yet granted the authority it needs to haul for hire. A pure broker whose broker authority is a pending application, with nothing else on its authority record, is a caution: a broker's application says nothing about any truck. A for-hire interstate carrier with no operating authority on record is a caution. A carrier registered as exempt or private needs no operating authority, so fleetfax raises nothing for it.

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. See authorities granted and revoked nationwide, counted daily →

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 entities that hold broker authority with no carrier operating authority on file.

Related terms