Authority revocation and reinstatement
Operating authority is not permanent. FMCSA can revoke a carrier's or broker's authority, and a common trigger is a lapse in the required insurance on file. A revocation typically begins as a pending action with an effective date in the future, then becomes final if the underlying problem is not fixed. If the carrier cures the issue, the authority can be reinstated.
The record keeps the history
Every grant, revocation, and reinstatement is an event in the authority-history file. A carrier that looks active today may have been revoked and reinstated more than once. FMCSA's public snapshot shows the current status; the fuller history shows the pattern. fleetfax reconstructs that timeline, including the gaps between a revocation and a reinstatement, and shows a caution when the company's carrier authority was revoked in the last five years, unless it was reinstated within about 60 days. A revoked broker authority does not raise it. See daily grant and revocation counts nationwide →
Reading a dismissed revocation
Not every revocation entry means the authority actually went down. FMCSA sometimes files an involuntary revocation and then discontinues it days later when the carrier files proof of insurance in time. On the raw record this appears as two opposing events. Read literally it looks alarming; read correctly it is a revocation attempt that was dismissed. A currently active authority with a revocation gap in its past is a fact worth knowing, not a conclusion on its own.
A concrete case
A carrier lets its insurance filing lapse for a week. FMCSA files a pending revocation with an effective date ahead; the carrier's insurer files proof before that date, and FMCSA discontinues the action. On the raw record this is two events, a revocation and a discontinuance, days apart, and the carrier's authority never actually went inactive. A different carrier that missed the window would show the revocation going final, then a reinstatement weeks later once it refiled, leaving a real gap in between. Reading which of the two happened is the difference between a paperwork blip and a genuine lapse in coverage, and it is why the full authority history is more informative than the current-status line alone.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.
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