Methodology

How fleetfax reads the federal safety record

Every fleetfax report is built from the public federal record. This page explains, in plain terms, where the numbers come from, what the safety percentiles mean, when we do not compute one, and how to correct a number you think is wrong.

The name says it: fax is facts. Every figure on a fleetfax report comes from the public federal record — FMCSA’s own data — and nothing else. fleetfax never tells you whether to book a carrier; it surfaces every fact and flag the record holds and leaves the judgment with you. There’s no single “safety score” here, and there won’t be — no honest number collapses insurance, safety, authority, and crash history into one verdict. Be wary of anyone who sells you one.

Where the data comes from

fleetfax reads the public federal record that FMCSA publishes about every registered carrier: registration and company details, operating authority, insurance filings, roadside inspections, crashes, and safety ratings. We pull those public datasets into our own backend and refresh them daily. fleetfax deliberately reloads the full federal dataset each cycle rather than applying FMCSA’s difference files, so a missed or malformed diff cannot silently corrupt the record.

Freshness is ultimately bounded by the source. FMCSA publishes different datasets on different cadences, and no tool built on the public record can be fresher than the record itself. Where a figure is tied to an older filing, the report says so.

The 24-month window

The safety signals in a report are computed over a rolling 24-month window, the most recent two years of the record. This is the same window FMCSA’s own Safety Measurement System (SMS) uses for its safety calculations, so a fleetfax number looks at the same recent slice of a carrier’s history that the federal system looks at.

Comparing carriers within peer groups

A raw count is hard to read: a large fleet racks up more inspections and more crashes simply by running more trucks. So the safety picture is expressed as a percentile, meaning where a carrier sits relative to other carriers rather than an absolute count.

FMCSA’s SMS sorts carriers into safety event groups so they are compared to peers with similar road activity, rather than the entire industry. fleetfax applies this same grouping to inspection BASICs and unsafe driving. Crash rate is the exception: it is measured per million miles. Because normalizing by mileage already removes the fleet-size bias, a carrier is ranked in one national pool rather than a size group — every carrier with at least two recordable crashes and recent, usable mileage.

What “fleetfax peer estimate” means

You will see fleetfax percentiles labeled as a fleetfax peer estimate. Under the FAST Act of 2015, FMCSA removed property carriers’ official BASIC percentiles from public view (though carriers can still see their own, and passenger-carrier percentiles remain public). fleetfax calculates its own peer estimate using the exact same public inspection and crash records FMCSA relies on. It is our best model of a number the agency keeps private — never an official CSA, SMS, or FMCSA score.

When we do not estimate a percentile

fleetfax only calculates a peer estimate when a carrier has sufficient underlying public records to make the comparison meaningful. This requires enough recent inspections or crashes alongside up-to-date filing data, mirroring FMCSA’s own policy of establishing minimum activity thresholds before scoring carriers against peers. When a carrier’s record is too thin or outdated to support a reliable estimate, fleetfax displays the raw counts and underlying facts with no percentile attached. We would rather present the record as-is and say “look closer” than publish a number the data cannot support.

The crash rate

fleetfax displays crashes as a rate per million miles rather than a raw count, allowing large and small fleets to be evaluated on the same scale. The rate divides federally recordable crashes in the 24-month window by two years of the carrier’s reported annual mileage. Under FMCSA rules, a crash is federally recordable only if it involves a fatality, an injury requiring off-scene medical attention, or a vehicle towed from the scene.

One caveat: because mileage is self-reported on the carrier’s MCS-150 filing, the rate relies entirely on the accuracy of that submission. fleetfax displays the filing period covered and tags the rate as historical so it is not confused with real-time operations. For baseline context, reports show the national average FMCSA published in its Safe Driver Apprenticeship Pilot eligibility criteria — roughly 0.96 crashes per million miles. That is the industry average, not a pass-fail line; the flag on the report fires at FMCSA’s 1.5 compliance-review threshold, or when a carrier’s rate stands well above its peers.

Fatal crashes are read the same way, by rate rather than by count. A fatal crash is on the record either way, and it carries its own flag, but a raw count says nothing about how much driving it came from — so fleetfax divides fatal crashes in the 24-month window by the same mileage the crash rate uses and compares the result to the national figure for large trucks: roughly 1.63 fatal-crash involvements per 100 million miles driven (NHTSA, Traffic Safety Facts 2023, Large Trucks; FMCSA’s Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts publishes the same measure off a slightly different mileage source). Two things worth knowing about that number: it counts trucks involved in a fatal crash rather than lives lost, and it covers every truck over 10,000 pounds, which is a wider group than the carriers we report on. It is context, not a peer rate. Below roughly 30 million miles over the window — the point at which the national rate would predict even half a fatal crash — fleetfax makes no comparison in either direction and says so, because at that mileage one crash is chance rather than a rate. What this changes on the report is tone, not flags: a carrier with a fatal crash on the record does not get a green crash tile unless its own fatal rate sits at or below the national figure on enough miles to say so.

A report is evidence, not a verdict

fleetfax surfaces facts and flags; it does not make the decision for you. The percentiles, the crash rate, and the risk flags are evidence you weigh. The judgment, and the responsibility for it, stays with you.

Report a data error

Because fleetfax mirrors the public federal record, you can always verify any figure against the source. If fleetfax differs from the live federal record, use the Report a data error link on the carrier report or email [email protected].

If the underlying federal record itself is wrong, submit a Request for Data Review through FMCSA’s DataQs portal — once FMCSA corrects the record at the source, the fix flows into our daily refresh automatically.