VerifyCarrier

For freight brokers

Carrier vetting questions, answered

What to check before a load, what an FMCSA filing does and does not prove, how monitoring alerts work, where the data comes from, what VerifyCarrier costs and how to use it from code or an AI assistant. Data is from FMCSA as published; it is not a guarantee of carrier fitness.

Carrier vetting

What should a broker check before working with a carrier?

At minimum: the carrier's identity (legal name, USDOT number, MC number and address match the company you are dealing with), operating authority is active, the carrier is not out of service, the safety rating is not Unsatisfactory, and insurance is on file. Record what you checked and what remains unresolved. VerifyCarrier shows the records; the approval decision is yours.

What is the difference between a USDOT number and an MC number?

A USDOT number identifies a company for safety monitoring; nearly every commercial interstate operator needs one. An MC (docket) number carries for-hire operating authority to haul regulated freight across state lines. Many carriers have both. An active USDOT registration is not for-hire authority: read the two records separately.

Why can a carrier show active authority but an inactive registration?

They are separate FMCSA records. Operating authority is tied to the MC docket, while registration status reflects the USDOT record itself, which goes inactive when a carrier stops filing its biennial update. Treat an inactive registration as a reason to confirm with FMCSA before booking.

How do I check for double brokering?

Double brokering has no regulatory definition. Check who arranged the load and which authority that role needs: a company that negotiates with shippers, takes broker pay or picks among carriers needs broker authority, while a dispatch service working for one carrier can be its agent. Compare the entity on the rate confirmation with the USDOT number marked on the truck at pickup, and ask about any recent name, address or contact change on the record.

How do I review a new carrier with a short public history?

Use the current records: registration and authority status, insurance on file, the MCS-150 date and any New Entrant context. FMCSA does not publish BASIC percentiles for most property carriers, and a missing percentile or rating does not establish that a carrier is safe or unsafe. Decide with an explicit approval or exception process and note which checks stayed open.

What if someone is using a carrier's identity?

Match the carrier's identity before anything else: legal name, USDOT and MC numbers and the address on the FMCSA record against the person contacting you. A matching number identifies a record; it does not establish who is on the phone. Shared phone numbers and addresses across carriers, and a recent change to payment instructions, are prompts for an independent callback to the number on the public record.

What the evidence shows

Does an insurance cancellation filing mean the carrier is uninsured?

No. A filing can take effect on a future date, a replacement policy may already be on file, and public records may be delayed or incomplete. Review the filing, its effective date and any replacement, then confirm the relevant coverage independently with the insurer or agent. VerifyCarrier does not guarantee carrier fitness.

How are the risk tiers on a carrier lookup decided?

Tiers are anchored to FMCSA's own facts. Extreme: an active out-of-service order or an Unsatisfactory rating. High: a BASIC at or above its FMCSA intervention threshold, a pending suspension of operating authority, or a pending insurance cancellation with no replacement on file. Moderate: a BASIC within 10 points of its threshold, a Conditional rating, an acute or critical SMS flag, or an out-of-service rate above the national average on 10 or more inspections. Low: none of these. Without a percentile, enough inspections or another deciding fact, the tier is Insufficient data and the score is null. It is not a prediction of fraud or an approval.

What does an unavailable source mean on a report?

That the source could not be read at the time of the request: an outage, a timeout or a record FMCSA has not published. It is never a clean result. Each section of a report carries its own status and dates, so a partial response can hold useful filings while another field is unavailable. Missing crash history is marked unavailable, never zero.

What does a UCC filing on a carrier mean?

A UCC financing statement is evidence that a record was published; it is not proof of unpaid debt, financial distress, a current loan balance, fraud or carrier suitability. Read the identity match, the filing chain and the source dates before drawing conclusions, and follow the state source link to the original record.

Monitoring alerts

What will carrier monitoring alert me about?

An urgent email when FMCSA posts an insurance cancellation, an involuntary suspension or a revocation on a carrier you watch, with the date that filing takes effect. The daily FMCSA census file also triggers an urgent email when a watched carrier's registration or safety status changes or its insurance record is removed. Other census changes, such as safety rating, name, address, phone, fleet size and new insurance filings, arrive in a digest email. A posted filing does not by itself mean the carrier is uninsured or out of authority.

How fresh are the alerts?

We check published FMCSA records daily. Alerts depend on source availability and publication timing; they are not real-time notifications of every carrier event. Distinct changes can generate multiple emails in a day. UCC change emails are not included yet.

How many carriers can I watch?

Carrier watch covers up to 50 carriers for $49/month. Add carriers one at a time by DOT, MC or company name, or upload a CSV or paste a list of up to 1,000 rows. At the limit, remove a carrier before adding another; removal does not cancel your subscription.

Data sources and freshness

Where does the data come from?

Registration, authority, safety rating and BASIC percentiles come from FMCSA's public web services at the time you search. Insurance comes from FMCSA's licensing and insurance (L&I) filing records. Change history comes from a daily archive of the FMCSA Company Census File and the MOTUS daily insurance-history and revocation files. UCC history comes from state records (Florida, Colorado, Connecticut and Oregon today). VerifyCarrier is an independent tool and is not affiliated with FMCSA; the official source is safer.fmcsa.dot.gov.

How often is the data refreshed?

Live lookups query FMCSA in real time. The census and insurance files are archived and diffed once a day after FMCSA posts them; FMCSA does not republish the census file every day, so one skipped upstream day is normal. UCC records are imported snapshots with visible source dates, not a scheduled feed. Every record keeps its own source date, and the status page shows the last successful import for each source.

Why does a lookup say no carrier data?

It can mean six different things: an invalid search, a source failure, unsupported coverage, an ambiguous match, a withheld field or a genuine empty result. A source outage is never reported as a missing carrier: the evidence API returns 200 with the carrier section marked unavailable, and only a confirmed FMCSA answer returns 404.

Pricing and trial

Can I check a carrier for free?

Yes. Web lookups by USDOT number, MC number or company name are free and need no account or card. Anonymous API calls are limited to 10 per network address per day; a free API key includes 100 calls a month.

What does VerifyCarrier cost?

One paid plan: Carrier watch, $49/month, for up to 50 watched carriers. The JSON API is included, 1,000 calls a month. There is no cheaper paid plan.

How does the free trial work?

Monitoring is included in the free trial, which starts when you verify your email. The trial lasts seven days after email verification. No card is required and there is no automatic charge; after the trial you choose whether to continue. During the trial you can watch up to 50 carriers and use up to 1,000 API calls.

Do you offer refunds?

Yes, we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans. If you're not satisfied, contact us for a full refund.

API and AI connector access

Is there an API?

Yes. Create a key under API Keys in your dashboard and send it as Authorization: Bearer. GET /api/carrier/{dot}/evidence returns carrier, insurance, UCC, contact and reviewed company-profile sections, each with its own status and dates. Basic lookups and name search allow anonymous calls. A used-up allowance returns 402 quota_exhausted with the reset date. The OpenAPI 3.1 description is at /openapi.json; no SDK packages are published.

Can I use VerifyCarrier from Claude or ChatGPT?

Yes. The Carrier Research MCP connector offers three read-only tools: search_carriers, get_carrier_snapshot and get_carrier_evidence. Search needs no sign-in; snapshot and evidence sign you in to your VerifyCarrier account with OAuth and share one successful single-carrier lookup every rolling seven days. Setup steps and the server URL are on the connector page; the server manifest is at /.well-known/mcp.json.

How should I store my API key?

As a server-side secret. Never put it in a URL, a public repository or a browser bundle. The full key is shown once when created; VerifyCarrier stores only a bcrypt hash and a short prefix. To rotate, create a new key, update your application, then delete the old one. Deleting a key revokes it.

Go deeper

Still have a question? Email support@verifycarrier.com.