A clean lookup isn’t a clean carrier.
fleetfax reads the whole record.

Half of freight theft happens behind spotless records. fleetfax checks the federal record for what a lookup misses: fraud patterns, reincarnated authorities, peer-benchmarked safety scores. All of it, free.

  • DOT
  • MC
  • Name
  • Phone
  • Email
Trusted by 7,000+ brokers and dispatchers every month Featured in Denim by Truckstop 40,000,000+ federal records unified

Why lookups fail

Fraud learned to pass the lookup.

In Q1 2026, roughly half of all freight-theft incidents involved carriers with clean records: hijacked identities, purchased MC numbers, reincarnated authorities, and the average loss runs $402,344 per company. In a single year, carrier identity theft rose 89.6% and ownership-change fraud 169.6%. A SAFER snapshot that says “Active, insured, not rated” is not a vetting decision. It is a coin flip.

What the lookup showed
  • Authority: ACTIVE
  • Insurance: on file, $1M liability
  • Safety rating: None (like 94% of carriers)
  • No alerts
What the full record held

Identity

Insurance

Operations

An illustrative composite. Every line above is a signal fleetfax computes on every carrier. None of them appear on the lookup.

Pull a carrier’s full record

The unrated 94%

“Not Rated” is not an answer.

FMCSA has the audit capacity to rate about 6% of the industry. For everyone else the rating field is blank, and a vetting process that leans on it is blind for most of the market.

Unrated doesn’t mean unsafe. It means unchecked. The underlying data exists for every carrier, rated or not, and fleetfax reads all of it: every BASIC measured against peer carriers of similar size, crash history against real exposure, the operating footprint drawn from actual inspections.

What the data shows for unrated carriers →

fleetfax safety panel: FMCSA BASIC categories scored as percentiles against similar-size carriers, with violation counts

Carrier intelligence, not carrier lookup.

Unify

The whole federal record, one page

Ten federal datasets that normally live in separate systems, read together. One search, one report, everything official on one page, with the filing dates on all of it.

Every report leads with what matters: the blocking issues and cautions worth knowing before you book, each backed by the data behind it.

And when a public insurance record looks wrong, fleetfax checks it against the federal system of record and corrects it. Read the research.

Derive

Signals that exist in no single source

Public records in, carrier intelligence out.

  • Fleet composition, VIN-decoded from federal inspection records: the year, make, model, and class of every truck actually observed, next to what the carrier reports
  • Peer percentiles for every BASIC, against peer carriers of similar size (the numbers FMCSA stopped publishing in 2015)
  • Reincarnated-authority matching across shared officers, addresses, and phones
  • Observed geography, drawn from federal inspection and crash records
  • Insurance-churn timeline across every filing and cancellation: the liability and cargo coverage behind an active authority, and who underwrites it
  • Observed activity, measured nightly from roadside events, filings, and record changes. A measure of activity, not a safety rating.
Unsafe driving 82nd percentile vs size peers

A fleetfax estimate, when the data allows.

Connections Other carriers tied to this one by shared trucks, officers, or addresses.
Ridgeline Transport LLC DOT 8840127 14 shared trucks
Authority revoked
Oakfield Logistics Inc DOT 8815593 Shared officerSame phone
Active
Beacon Freight Co DOT 8863742 Same address
Active

Illustrative composite. Carrier names are fictional and the DOT numbers are unissued. Drawn from the FMCSA registration and inspection records fleetfax reads on every carrier.

Monitor & source

Watch your book. Build your book.

The record you vetted in March is not the record hauling your load in July. Authority gets revoked, insurance is replaced mid-quarter, enforcement cases land, and none of it announces itself. A carrier is usually re-checked once, the day it is onboarded, and never again.

Monitoring turns that one-time check into a standing one: your whole book, re-read against the federal record every night, with material changes surfaced as soon as the record moves.

Sourcing answers the other question, who else can cover this lane, from the same evidence: carriers ranked by what the federal record shows they actually run, never by who paid to appear.

Monitor Your watched book
Cedar Line FreightNo change
Harbor Point Carriers2 changes
Granite Haul CoNo change
Jul 2Operating status: Active → Inactive
Jun 28BIPD liability coverage replaced
Jun 21New enforcement case recorded

Every carrier in your book, checked against the federal record daily. An insurance filing drops or an authority gets revoked, you hear it first, in plain English.

More on monitoring →
Source Capacity on your lane
flatbed, Dallas to Atlanta, 20+ trucks
1
Redline Cartage Co
14 inspections on this lane flatbed confirmed 9 yrs authority
2
Bluestem Freight LLC
11 inspections on this lane flatbed confirmed
3
Harvest Peak Logistics
8 inspections on this lane authority 4 yrs

Ranked by observed lane history and safety against peers.

Ask for a lane the way you’d say it and get the carriers observed actually running it, ranked by evidence and safety. No sponsored spots, no way to buy one.

More on sourcing →

The federal record behind every report, dataset by dataset, refreshed daily

4.4Mcarriers on file
8.4Mroadside inspections
7.3Minsurance filings
6.7Minspection violations
4.9Mcrash records

No hearsay, no black box

Every signal traces back to a filing.

Nothing on fleetfax is a broker’s complaint, an anonymous review, or a score you take on faith. Every flag is computed from the federal record, states what the data shows, and links to the filings behind it, with their dates. If you ever need to show your work, the evidence is already attached. It’s the promise in the name: the fax is for facts.

14 of 22 observed power units were previously inspected under USDOT ******* (authority revoked). Matched by VIN across inspection records.

Source: FMCSA inspection & registration files · refreshed daily

Since May 14, 2026

Diligence is now the defense.

In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the Supreme Court held unanimously that brokers answer under state law for the carriers they select. The stakes were never abstract: NHTSA’s fatality census recorded 5,472 people killed in crashes involving large trucks in 2023, and GAO has found that reincarnated “chameleon” carriers are involved in severe crashes at about three times the rate of other new carriers. The defense the opinion points to is documented ordinary care: what you checked, and when. fleetfax puts the full record in front of you before you book, evidence attached, so care is easy to take and easy to show.

Sources: NHTSA FARS 2023 · GAO-12-364 · TIA State of Fraud 2025

The intelligence layer they charge for. Free.

Until now the choice was a free lookup that restates filings, or a paid platform at $99 to $149 per seat per month. fleetfax ends the tradeoff, so every load gets the full check, not just the ones that already smell wrong.

Capability The government lookup Paid vetting platforms fleetfax
Price Free $99–$149 / user / mo Free
The full federal record, unified Fragments, one system at a time Restated filings, plus alerts One report
Derived intelligence: reincarnation, connections, fraud patterns None Partial, at the top tiers On every carrier
Safety measured against peers Hidden since 2015 Rarely, and unlabeled A fleetfax estimate, on every carrier
Where the trucks actually run Self-reported only Self-reported only Drawn from real inspections
Signal provenance It is the filing Often broker-reported hearsay Every signal links to its filing
Proof of what you checked, and when Screenshot it yourself Paywalled Timestamped PDF
Signup required to look No Contract and onboarding No

In the browser

fleetfax Chrome extension

The same record, opened in a side panel on whatever page you’re already working.

  • Vet a carrier without leaving the load-board tab
  • Authority, insurance, and safety vs peers at a glance
  • The observed fleet and operating map, one click deeper
  • Free, no account needed

Get the Chrome extension

The fleetfax side panel on a carrier report: the carrier name, USDOT and MC, an active interstate authority, a verdict reading one blocking issue and two cautions with the flag list, and authority, insurance, safety, and crashes at a glance.
The side panel on a carrier report.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, and there is no asterisk. Every single-carrier report is free and complete: no lookup cap, no trial, no card, no signup required. A Pro tier is rolling out for working a whole book at scale (unlimited monitoring, alerts on every change, bulk vetting). The single-carrier report stays free for good.

The public federal record: FMCSA’s published datasets covering registration, operating authority, insurance filings, roadside inspections, crashes, and safety ratings. fleetfax ingests them into its own backend and refreshes daily.

No, deliberately. fleetfax is descriptive: it reports what the record shows and puts the evidence in front of you. No “safe to book,” no composite score. The booking call is yours.

It means the public federal record shows no blockers or cautions, which is meaningful but bounded. The record can’t see yesterday’s hiring decision or fraud that hasn’t surfaced yet. A clean report is a strong data point inside your process, not a substitute for it.

No. FMCSA stopped publishing the official percentiles in 2015. fleetfax ranks each carrier against others of similar size from the same public records, labeled as our estimate, never as an official score.

No. fleetfax requires no account, sells no data, and carriers are not notified of lookups.

All questions →

Pull the record before you book.

Takes ten seconds. Costs nothing.

Live on the load board all day? Get the Chrome extension and vet without leaving the tab.