Two federal registers, read together
DOT Number Lookup
A carrier can be registered and still not be allowed to haul your freight. Those are two separate records in two separate federal registers, and 17 of the 400 carriers on this site are in exactly that state today: registration active, operating authority gone.
Three registers, one answer
Census
4,494,460
Licensing
1,860,604
Revocations
1,529,083
Provenance
What a DOT number lookup returns
| Field | Source file | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| Registration status | Motor Carrier Census | Whether the USDOT number is live at all. |
| Common, contract, broker authority | Carrier licensing register | Which kinds of freight the carrier may legally move. |
| BIPD, cargo, bond filings | Carrier licensing register | What coverage FMCSA requires and whether it is filed. |
| Insurance policies | Insurance filings register | Who actually underwrites the cover, and from what date. |
| Safety alerts | Safety measurement file | Where FMCSA flagged the carrier above its own threshold. |
| Power units, drivers, mileage | Motor Carrier Census | Scale of the operation, as the carrier last declared it. |
Two real records
An active registration is not active authority
USDOT 241829 · docket MC165372
XPO Logistics Freight
Registered as Active with 10,260 power units on file. Its common, contract and broker authority all read Not held, and one revocation order sits on the docket. A dispatcher reading only the top line books that truck.
USDOT 268015 · docket MC143308
Penske Logistics
The mirror image: all three authorities active today, four revocation orders in its history. Neither picture is visible from a status badge alone, and neither stays true for long.
Source
Where the numbers come from
FMCSA publishes these files openly on data.transportation.gov, with no key and no licence to accept. DotNumberWatch reads them directly, which is why there is no account wall in front of the lookup above and no charge for it.
One quirk is worth naming because it silently breaks anyone joining the files by hand: the census writes USDOT 80806 as 80806, the licensing file writes the same carrier as 00080806. Match on the wrong one and every carrier looks unlicensed.
Why watching beats re-checking
Watching a DOT number instead of re-checking it
Authority moves between the day a carrier is approved and the day it hauls. The revocation file alone holds 1,529,083 orders, every one of which was, at some point, news to somebody who had already booked a load. Run a lookup above, then leave an address on the record and the change comes to you.
Before booking
Questions brokers ask before booking a load
How do I look up a company's DOT number?
Type the number into the field above. A DOT number lookup here reads five FMCSA registers at once and returns the licensing record alongside the census entry, which is where the two usually disagree.
How can I check the status of my USDOT number?
The left half of the extract answers that: Active or Inactive, straight from the census file. It is a separate question from the right half, which is whether you may haul.
Can a carrier be inactive and still hold authority?
The reverse is the common case. Registration stays Active while common, contract and broker authority all read Not held, as with USDOT 241829. 17 of the 400 carriers in the directory are in that state.
How often do these records change?
FMCSA republishes the files on data.transportation.gov daily. The figures on this page were checked against the source on 2026-08-31.
Is this the same data SAFER shows?
It is the same origin, read through the open datasets rather than the SAFER web form. The difference is that licensing, revocations, insurance filings and safety scores are pulled in beside the snapshot instead of living on four separate screens.
What else does carrier vetting need beyond this record?
A certificate of insurance from the underwriter, and whoever the shipper contract names as an approved carrier. The register settles who is permitted to haul, and it stops there.
Roadmap
What we plan to add
Four of the five things that stood here yesterday now work: the daily re-check with the change named in the email, the dated history of every watched record, the safety alerts and the insurance filings with the underwriter named. What is left is described so you know where this is going, and it does not work today.
- planned
Roadside inspection history line by line, not only the five category totals.
- planned
Uploading a whole approved-carrier roster at once instead of adding numbers one at a time.
- planned
A signed PDF of the record as it stood on a given date, for the file that goes to the insurer after a claim.