Free lookup · FMCSA public records
USDOT lookup, and what the record means
The same federal record whether you are checking a company you are about to book or the one you run yourself. Authority, insurance, fleet, filing date — read straight from FMCSA and dated.
The four fields that decide most questions
A federal carrier record has dozens of fields. In practice four of them answer nearly everything anyone asks of a lookup, and they are the four this card leads with.
- Authority status. Active means the permission to operate is in force today. Inactive means it once existed and does not now. "None" means this type of authority was never held — a carrier with no broker authority is not suspicious, it simply never applied for it.
- Revocation pending. The one field that shows a live process: authority still reads active while FMCSA has begun pulling it. Usually the last visible signal before a lapse.
- BIPD on file against required. Coverage filed with FMCSA versus the minimum for what the company hauls. On file below required, or zero on file, means the filing is not currently satisfying the requirement.
- MCS-150 date. Companies must refile every two years. A date several years back tells you the fleet numbers next to it describe a company that may no longer exist in that shape.
Where the numbers come from
FMCSA publishes its carrier files as open data, refreshed daily. This site reads the census file, the authority file with history and the insurance file with history, joins them on the USDOT number, and shows the company-level fields — nothing about individuals is read, stored or served.
Dollar amounts in the source files are recorded in thousands, and the same company can appear several times with superseded rows. Both are handled before you see the card, which is the whole reason to use a lookup instead of the raw dataset.
Questions
Is a USDOT number the same as a DOT number? +
Yes. "DOT number" is the everyday shorthand; USDOT is what FMCSA calls it on the forms. One number, one record.
How do I look up my own USDOT number? +
Enter it above. You will see exactly what a broker sees when they check you: authority status, the insurance filed on your behalf, and the date of your last MCS-150 update.
My record shows the wrong information — can you fix it? +
No, and neither can any other republisher. The record shown here is FMCSA’s. Corrections go through FMCSA — updating your MCS-150, or having your insurer refile — and appear here after the federal file refreshes, usually the next day.
Why does my USDOT number show inactive? +
The most common cause is a missed biennial MCS-150 update; FMCSA deactivates the record until it is filed. Whatever the cause, the federal file records the status but not the reason, so that is all any lookup can honestly tell you.