The federal record on a motor carrier is scattered across separate systems: registration, operating authority, insurance filings, roadside inspections, crashes, safety measurement, equipment. The SAFER snapshot most brokers check summarizes a few of them. fleetfax puts the whole public record in one report and leads with what matters.
fleetfax cross-references the sources: the trucks a carrier runs against the trucks it reports, its identity against carriers whose authority was already pulled, its safety against peer carriers. You see how the pieces line up, or don't, instead of one slice at a time.
fleetfax reads 40+ million federal records: 2.1M+ active carriers, 9.5M inspections, 5.0M crashes, 7.5M insurance records, plus authority changes, out-of-service orders, and safety-measurement records. Sizes as of Oct 30, 2026.
How to vet a carrier in three steps
- Step 1Search the carrier
Enter a USDOT or MC number, company name, phone, or email. fleetfax pulls the matching federal record.
- Step 2Read the report
Risk flags up top, then authority, insurance, safety vs peers, inspections, crashes, fleet detail, and an operating map.
- Step 3Come back to it
Each carrier has a permanent link. It always opens today's report, not a copy of what you saw before.
What the report looks like
What one report pulls together from the federal record.
The read
Findings first, each one you can open
fleetfax reads the public federal record for a carrier, reconciles it, and leads with blocking issues, serious issues and cautions. Blocking issues are facts like an inactive authority or no insurance on file. Serious issues are critical findings on a carrier that is still allowed to operate. Cautions sit beneath both. Some findings come from cross-referenced records, like an officer who also appears on a carrier whose authority was pulled.
Reading it. Blocking, serious and caution describe the record, not a decision. Every finding opens to the data behind it, so you can judge it yourself.
Where they operate
A map built from inspections, not an address
Every roadside inspection carries a location and a date. Bigger dots mean more inspections in a place. Shading shows where the carrier operates over the window you choose. The interstates the activity lines up along are drawn in, and recorded crashes sit on their own layer.
Reading it. This is where the trucks were actually pulled in, which is hard to fake. Compare it to the address and lanes the carrier claims. One domiciled in a state but only ever seen far from it is worth a question.
Safety vs peers
Measured against the carriers it compares to
fleetfax groups a carrier with others that have a similar amount of inspection activity. It weighs each violation by severity and age, per relevant inspection, following FMCSA's Safety Measurement System method. The result is shown as a percentile. These are fleetfax estimates, not official FMCSA scores.
Reading it. A high percentile means more violations than most similar carriers, not a pass or fail. The alert zone marks roughly where FMCSA steps in. The counts and the inspections behind each bar are all there.
The fleet
The trucks observed on the road, decoded
fleetfax decodes the VIN of every truck and trailer seen in a carrier's inspections, then dates and classifies the equipment and compares its age to other carriers of the same size. It also lines the observed fleet up against what the carrier reports on its MCS-150.
Reading it. This is the fleet on the road, not a number on a filing. A mismatch, like equipment plated far from the carrier's base, is the kind of thing worth asking about.
Product views. Carrier names, numbers, dates and amounts are fictional.
What's in every report
Free, for any carrier, with the records behind each line.
Whether it's active and which authority types it holds. Pro adds the full history of grants, revocations and reinstatements.
The filings on record, with a routine renewal told apart from a cancellation the federal filing ledger confirms. No active insurance on file surfaces as a blocking issue.
Safety percentiles against peer carriers and crash rate per million miles, with the inspections and crashes behind every number.
A map drawn from where the carrier's trucks were actually inspected, so you can see where it really runs. A lot harder to fake than the address on a filing.
The trucks reported on the MCS-150 against the trucks actually seen in inspections, plus equipment age vs peers. When the reported fleet and the observed fleet don't line up, that surfaces as a flag.
The identity-overlap patterns behind double-brokering and reincarnated carriers, surfaced by reconciling a carrier's record against the rest of the federal data. Each one is a named flag with the records behind it; the names of the connected carriers are on Pro.
The facts behind every flag. You make the call.
Fraud and double-brokering are the industry's biggest worry right now, and a carrier built to scam is built to pass a quick glance. Reports to the Transportation Intermediaries Association rose 65% in the six months ending February 2025, and 22% of respondents reported more than $200,000 in losses in a single six-month period. Reading deeper is the whole point: authority granted last week with no inspection history, an open out-of-service order, no insurance on file, or an address shared with a carrier whose authority was revoked. fleetfax surfaces each of those as a named flag with the record attached.
Source: TIA, “State of Fraud in the Industry,” April 2025 (survey of the six months ending February 2025). news.tianet.org
The exposure isn't only financial. In May 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that brokers can face state negligence claims over the carriers they select. That makes a carrier's federal record matter more than it used to.
Source: Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, No. 24-1238, decided May 14, 2026.
fleetfax describes the record. It tells you what the record shows (blocking issues found, a count of cautions, or nothing flagged as of the day you check) and links each claim to the records behind it (the names of connected carriers are on Pro). It makes no call on any carrier. A clean report is one input to your decision, not a replacement for your process.
Free carrier vetting FAQ
Is carrier vetting on fleetfax really free?
Yes. Carrier reports are free at full depth, with a daily limit. No credit card required. Read 3 a day without an account, 10 with a free one. Past the limit you still see FMCSA's record and insurance filings for the carrier, without contact details. A carrier's phone and email need a free account. A carrier's federal record is always free.
What does fleetfax check when vetting a carrier?
Operating authority and status, insurance filings on file, roadside inspections and out-of-service rates, crashes, fleet and equipment detail, a map of where they are observed to operate, and named risk flags including the identity-overlap patterns behind double-brokering, all read from the public FMCSA datasets.
Does fleetfax decide whether to book the carrier?
No. fleetfax gives you the facts and the patterns: the public record, the cross-referenced signals, and the records behind each one (the names of connected carriers are on Pro), with no single score. The decision is always yours.
Do I need an account or a credit card?
Not for your first 3 reports a day. A free account gives you 10 a day, the carrier's phone and email, and monitoring for 5 carriers in your book.
How is free fleetfax different from other vetting tools?
fleetfax goes deeper on the single-carrier read. It reads the whole federal record and reconciles it: safety against peer carriers, a map of where the carrier is observed to operate, the fleet checked against what it reports, and the identity-overlap signals behind double-brokering. Carrier reports are free, with a daily limit, and the first 3 a day need no account.
Start from a number with the free MC number lookup or free DOT number lookup, run a free FMCSA safety check, check is this carrier legit, or browse the carrier directory.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. A clean report is not legal cover or a substitute for your own process or policy.
