Where the data lives
FMCSA publishes its carrier data free on the Department of Transportation’s open-data portal, data.transportation.gov. Three datasets matter for a carrier list:
| Dataset | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Company Census File | Active, inactive and pending entities registered with FMCSA, one record per USDOT number: names, addresses, contacts, operation, cargo, fleet and filing dates |
| Motus Carrier | Carriers, brokers and freight forwarders with active, inactive or pending operating authority, with docket numbers and insurance on file |
| Motus AuthHist | The history of each authority: when it was granted and when it ended |
The older “Carrier - All With History” and “AuthHist” datasets were last refreshed on May 14, 2026 and are no longer updated; use the Motus versions. Each dataset page has a CSV export and an API.
Downloading
The census file is large: it holds active, inactive and pending registrations, and in October 2026 that was more than 4.5 million records. A single CSV export can take a long time and fail partway. The portal’s API returns pages of rows, so a script can download in chunks and resume after an interruption, which is how our pipeline does it.
What you still have to build
- Select active registrations and the states you need; the file also contains Canadian, Mexican and territory records.
- Normalise phone numbers and emails, and flag addresses shared by many carriers.
- Join the operating-authority records by USDOT number to tell authorized for-hire carriers from the rest.
- Store daily snapshots and compare them, because new carriers can be posted days after their registration date.
- Keep the last good version when a refresh fails, and schedule and monitor it all.
If your team can run that, the raw data is free and entirely yours to shape; the data sources page explains how we handle each step. If you would rather start from clean files, our state packs and fresh leads deliver the same records ready to import.
Sources
Figures marked as current come from the FMCSA Company Census snapshot of November 7, 2026, as published on this site. How the data is built