For brokers, factors and underwriters
Paste the carrier list you work from.
See which ones are running on a stale federal record.
SAFER takes one USDOT number at a time. Your working list is 200 carriers, or 2,000. About 1 in 16 of the interstate carriers in the current public dataset has either passed its assigned MCS‑150 date or has no filing date on the federal record. On a 200‑name list that is about 13 records to check. This is a record screen, not a decision about who you can use.
Check a carrier list → 10 numbers free, no account
4 have missed their assigned deadline
3 more have no filing date at all
93 are current Of the 667,258 active interstate carriers subject to 49 CFR 390.19T, swept 30 July 2026. Counted against each number's own assigned filing month, not a flat two-year rule.
Who this is for
Somebody hands you a USDOT number and you've got about a minute to decide whether the company behind it is real and current. What is riding on that minute depends on your job.
Freight brokers & 3PLs
You're on the hook for the load and, increasingly, for having vetted the carrier. A record untouched since 2014 is a company that might not be the company on the paperwork any more.
Factors
You advance cash against invoices from a business you know by its federal record. If the address, the officers and the fleet size on that record are a decade old, so's your underwriting.
Insurance agents & underwriters
Power units and mileage come off the MCS‑150. Rating a fleet from a form filed ten years ago is rating a fleet that no longer exists.
SAFER, free from FMCSA
- Shows the carrier, the status, and the MCS‑150 form date
- The authoritative source, and where a dispute gets settled
- Prints the date and leaves the arithmetic to you. 07/07/2025 is either fine or two years late depending on a rule you have to know
- Never tells you which month and year that number is assigned to file under
- One carrier per search. An approved list runs to hundreds
This page
- Does the subtraction. How stale, in days, against the schedule that number is actually assigned to
- Works out the filing month and year from the digits, before anyone logs in
- Takes the whole list at once and hands back only the ones worth reading
- Reads the same federal census file, live, free, with no account
- Not the authority. For a dispute, SAFER and FMCSA are
FMCSA's own status text says it plainly: INACTIVE means “biennial update of MCS‑150 data not completed”. The date is the thing the status is made of, and across the interstate carriers you can actually book, about 1 in 16 is carrying an old one or none at all.
What "active" is actually worth
A carrier's status says ACTIVE and most people stop reading there. Active means the registration has not been revoked. It says nothing about when the record behind it was last touched, so the address, the fleet size and the insurance contact can be years out of date on a carrier whose status looks perfect.
49 CFR 390.19T reaches carriers and intermodal equipment providers. Brokers, freight forwarders and shippers are outside it, so they are not counted here
6.37%. 23,797 past due against their own assigned filing month, 18,676 with nothing on the record
at the register-wide rate you would expect 88, which is why the population matters
Swept from the FMCSA Company Census File on 30 July 2026 by the same rule engine
that answers every lookup on this site. Re-run it yourself on az4n-8mr2 at
data.transportation.gov: the filter is status_code='A' AND carrier_operation='A' AND (carship
LIKE '%C%' OR carship LIKE '%I%'), and past due is measured against each number's own assigned
filing month rather than a flat two years. Drop those filters and the past-due share rises to 40.5%
of 2,114,314, because intrastate registrations dominate the register and rarely file. That larger
number is real, it is on our method page, and it is not your list.
Why the usual carrier checks miss this
The monitoring services brokers already pay for watch insurance, operating authority, safety ratings and BASIC scores. Those are the right things to watch and they're all downstream: they tell you a carrier has already lost something. None of them reads the MCS-150 date, so a carrier whose federal record has sat untouched since 2014 looks identical to one that filed last month.
That's the whole of what this page adds. It does the subtraction nobody else does, on data that was free the entire time.
Your whole list, and a copy for the file
The free check takes 10 numbers, three times a day. That is enough to test it on carriers you know. The Book check handles up to 2,500 and gives you files you can keep.
- Up to 2,500 USDOT numbers. Paste a column or upload a CSV
- Both spreadsheets. Every result, and a second file of only the ones that came back flagged, so the follow-up list is already made
- Dated and timestamped, printable, with the census file and the exact query it came from printed on it. Looking it up tells you. This is what proves you looked, six months later, when a load has gone wrong
$19
one list, up to 2,500 numbers
Check my whole book, $19Pay once. Upload the list after checkout. Get every result, the review list, and a dated printable at once. The links are also sent to your receipt email.
What this doesn't tell you
This page shows you a copy of a government census record and the filing date arithmetic that goes with the number. It's not a compliance determination. FMCSA makes those. A carrier can be current on the record and still have things going on that never appear in the census, and a stale date can turn out to be a data gap, not a missed filing.
Authority to haul is a separate question, and FMCSA's SAFER lookup is where that one gets answered. It will show you a status. It won't tell you how old the record behind that status is, and that's the part which catches people out.
One number, or all of them
One carrier
The box at the top of this page
Paste a USDOT number, get the record and the arithmetic. Free, no account, and it stays that way.
Your whole approved list
10 free a go. Up to 2,500 for $19.
SAFER takes one number per search. The list check hands back only the records with a stale or missing date and stays quiet about the rest. Paste 10 to see it work on carriers you know. The Book check takes the full list and gives you two CSVs and a dated copy for the file.
Read every result on this site with this in mind
FMCSA moved carrier registration to Motus in May 2026. It has temporarily suspended USDOT inactivation for missed biennial updates since June 1 while the new system stabilizes.
Two things follow. A record that looks past due may belong to a carrier who tried to file and could not. And the deactivation the regulation describes isn't currently being applied. Treat a stale date as a reason to ask the carrier, not as a conclusion about them.
Questions we get
What happens if I miss the MCS‑150 biennial update?
The rule describes deactivation for a missed update, but FMCSA has temporarily suspended that step while Motus problems continue. A stale census date is a reason to ask the carrier and check FMCSA directly, not a current finding that the carrier may not operate.
How often does an MCS‑150 have to be filed?
Every two years, even when nothing about the business has changed and even if the carrier is not currently operating. That last part catches people out. The obligation is on the number, not on whether trucks moved.
When is my MCS‑150 due?
The schedule comes from the USDOT number itself. The last digit sets the month: 1 is January, through to 0 for October. The next-to-last digit sets the year: odd means odd-numbered years, even means even-numbered years. That is 49 CFR 390.19T(b). Put the number into the box above and this page does that arithmetic for you.
Does this tell me whether a carrier is authorised to haul right now?
No, and be careful with anything that says it does. This shows the FMCSA census record and the filing arithmetic that goes with the number. Operating authority is a different question and FMCSA's own SAFER lookup answers it free.
Can I check a whole list of carriers at once?
Yes. The list check takes the carrier list you use and hands back only records with a stale or missing date. That is a review queue, not an approval or compliance decision. One number at a time is what SAFER does and this page does it too, but a list is usually the real job.
Where does this data come from?
The FMCSA census file, which is public federal data. It's read live when you press the button. Nothing is stored here and nothing is sent anywhere else.