Who Is Actually There
What FMCSA's own public records say about the carriers and brokers in the federal registry
A small carrier that accepts a load has a few minutes to decide whether the company on the other side is real and whether it will pay. The facts that help with that decision sit in federal registration records. They are public and free, but they are published as raw files with millions of rows, and nobody turns them into numbers a carrier can read.
This page counts a few of those numbers. It uses only public FMCSA files. Each figure has a stated population, a date, and a query that anyone can run to get the same result.
1Why count this
In July 2024 FMCSA reported to Congress on unlawful brokerage. On double brokering the agency wrote that it had received many expressions of concern from the industry, but that
“it lacks data to quantify or confirm a safety impact.”
FMCSA, Unlawful Brokerage Activities Report to Congress, July 2024
That sentence is narrow: it is about the safety impact of one practice. This page does not fill that gap and does not measure fraud. It measures something more basic that the registry can answer today: who is registered, in what roles, how often authority is taken away, and what stands behind a broker's promise to pay.
2Data and method
| File | Dataset ID | State of the file |
|---|---|---|
| Company Census File | az4n-8mr2 | Live. Read on 2 October 2026 |
| Carrier - All With History | 6eyk-hxee | Frozen. FMCSA: last refreshed 14 May 2026, no longer updated |
| Revocation - All With History | sa6p-acbp | Frozen, same note |
| Insur - All With History | ypjt-5ydn | Frozen, same note |
Three of the four files stopped updating in May 2026, when FMCSA moved registration to a new system. So the figures on carriers are current, and the figures on brokers, revocations and bonds describe the registry as it stood in May 2026. The replacement files cover only records created or changed after the move, and they are not used here.
Rules followed for every figure: the population is named before the count; the count is made on the full file; each result is checked against a known total.
3Most interstate carriers are very small
The census file lists 708,858 active interstate carriers. This is the population FMCSA regulates for interstate freight, and the only one used below.
| Trucks reported | Carriers | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 330,761 | 46.7% | |
| 2 to 5 | 217,746 | 30.7% | |
| 6 to 20 | 79,085 | 11.2% | |
| 1 to 20, total | 627,592 | 88.5% | |
| More than 20 | 33,420 | 4.7% | |
| 0 reported | 47,846 | 6.7% |
Almost half of all active interstate carriers report a single truck. A company of this size has no compliance department. The person who checks the broker is the person who drives or dispatches.
4One active broker in nine is also a carrier
The authority file lists 25,081 active broker authorities. Of these, 2,757 also hold active motor carrier authority.
| Active brokers | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| All active broker authorities | 25,081 | 100% |
| Also hold active carrier authority | 2,757 | 11.0% |
| common and contract | 1,044 | 4.2% |
| common only | 1,195 | 4.8% |
| contract only | 518 | 2.1% |
This is a structural condition, not a finding of wrongdoing. Many of these companies run trucks and broker freight lawfully. For a carrier the practical meaning is that the name on a rate confirmation does not say which role the company is playing in that load. It has to be checked each time.
5More than four revoked broker authorities for every active one
| Authority type | Involuntary | Voluntary | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broker | 98,369 | 11,760 | 110,130 |
| Common carrier | 852,951 | 146,842 | 999,794 |
| Contract carrier | 377,045 | 41,415 | 418,461 |
Against 25,081 active broker authorities the revocation file holds 110,130 revoked ones, and 89.3% of those were involuntary. Totals include one administrative revocation per type.
| Year | Broker authorities revoked | |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 4,064 | |
| 2021 | 4,214 | |
| 2022 | 6,323 | |
| 2023 | 8,694 | |
| 2024 | 7,572 | |
| 2025 | 4,823 |
Revocations more than doubled between 2020 and 2023 and then fell. The 8,694 revocations of 2023 alone equal 35% of today's active broker count.
The file does not give a reason for a revocation. An involuntary revocation most often follows a lapse in a bond or insurance filing. It is not evidence of fraud. Records without a usable effective date are not in the yearly table.
6The broker bond: almost always filed, written by a few companies
A broker must keep a $75,000 surety bond (form BMC-84) or trust fund (form BMC-85). For an unpaid carrier this is the only financial guarantee on file.
| Active brokers | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bond required and on file | 24,968 | 99.55% |
| Bond required, not on file | 92 | 0.37% |
| Bond not required | 21 | 0.08% |
A negative result is still a result: among active brokers a missing bond is rare. The weak point is somewhere else.
| Surety (BMC-84 filings, all history) | Filings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Jet Insurance Company | 4,519 | 14.8% |
| Merchants National Bonding, Inc. | 3,812 | 12.5% |
| Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company | 2,898 | 9.5% |
| Allegheny Casualty Company | 2,202 | 7.2% |
| American Alternative Insurance Corporation | 1,608 | 5.3% |
| Merchants Bonding Company (Mutual) | 1,392 | 4.6% |
| United States Fire Insurance Co. | 1,379 | 4.5% |
| SureTec Insurance Company | 1,258 | 4.1% |
| Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. of America | 1,029 | 3.4% |
| Southwest Marine and General Insurance Company | 981 | 3.2% |
| Top 5 | 15,039 | 49.3% |
| Top 10 | 21,078 | 69.1% |
The file holds 30,482 BMC-84 bond filings and 3,072 BMC-85 trust fund filings. Five sureties account for about half of the bond filings and ten for about 69%.
These are filings over the whole history of the file, including bonds that were later replaced or cancelled. They are not a count of bonds in force today. Company names are shown in standard capitalisation, with names that the file cuts short written out in full. The CSV keeps them exactly as FMCSA records them. Related companies are not merged.
7How current the carrier records are
| Active interstate carriers | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| MCS-150 date older than 24 months | 100,124 | 14.1% |
| MCS-150 date missing | 35,942 | 5.1% |
| Out of date or missing, total | 136,066 | 19.2% |
| Added to the registry in the last 12 months | 98,094 | 13.8% |
Carriers are expected to update the MCS-150 form at least every two years. About one in five active interstate records is past that date or has none. At the same time about one in seven was added within the last year. A recently registered counterparty is therefore normal, and the age of a registration says little by itself.
8What these numbers do not say
- They do not say how many companies commit double brokering. The registry shows which authorities a company holds, not what it does with them.
- They do not say that carriers with an old MCS-150 break the law. Some have stopped operating and never left the registry.
- They do not measure how often fraud or non-payment happens.
- They are not forecasts. Each figure describes the registry on a stated date.
- The broker, revocation and bond figures stop in May 2026, when the source files were frozen.
- Fleet size is what the carrier itself reported.
9How to check every figure
Each query below returns the numbers used on this page. Paste it into a browser. The census file changes daily, so its counts will move; the three frozen files should return the same values.
- Active entities by type of operation
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=carrier_operation,count(*) as n&$where=status_code='A'&$group=carrier_operation - Fleet size, active interstate carriers
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=power_units,count(*) as n&$where=status_code='A' AND carrier_operation='A'&$group=power_units&$order=n DESC&$limit=45 - MCS-150 older than 24 months
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=carrier_operation,count(*) as n&$where=status_code='A' AND mcs150_date < '2024-10-02T00:00:00.000'&$group=carrier_operation - MCS-150 date missing
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=carrier_operation,count(*) as n&$where=status_code='A' AND mcs150_date IS NULL&$group=carrier_operation - Added in the last 12 months
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=carrier_operation,count(*) as n&$where=status_code='A' AND add_date > '2025-10-02T00:00:00.000'&$group=carrier_operation - Active brokers by carrier authority
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/6eyk-hxee.json?$select=common_stat,contract_stat,count(*) as n&$where=broker_stat='A'&$group=common_stat,contract_stat - Active brokers by bond status
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/6eyk-hxee.json?$select=bond_req,bond_file,count(*) as n&$where=broker_stat='A'&$group=bond_req,bond_file - Revocations by authority type
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/sa6p-acbp.json?$select=type_license,order2_type_desc,count(*) as n&$group=type_license,order2_type_desc - Broker revocations in one year (change the year)
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/sa6p-acbp.json?$select=count(*) as n&$where=type_license='BROKER' AND order2_effective_date like '%/2023' - Filings by form
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/ypjt-5ydn.json?$select=ins_form_code,count(*) as n&$group=ins_form_code&$order=n DESC - BMC-84 filings by surety
https://data.transportation.gov/resource/ypjt-5ydn.json?$select=name_company,count(*) as n&$where=ins_form_code='84'&$group=name_company&$order=n DESC&$limit=15
For anyone who repeats this work: check every filtered count against a known total. A count larger than is logically possible means the filter was not applied.
NextWhat comes in later editions
- Addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses shared by several registered companies.
- Companies that return under a new registration after a revocation.
- The period between the cancellation of a broker's bond and the loss of its authority.
- Dual authority by state, and bond concentration counted on bonds in force.