Data Sources & Methodology

CarrierScore reorganizes public records published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The March 2026 snapshot combines carrier census records with available inspection, crash, insurance filing, out-of-service order, and Safety Measurement System data.

The official current sources are FMCSA SAFER, FMCSA SMS downloads, and USDOT open data.

State wage and employment context comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; freight context comes from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Those contextual figures are displayed separately from carrier records.

Records can change after March 2026. CarrierScore is useful for discovery and comparison, but FMCSA is authoritative. Every carrier page links to its SAFER lookup so operating status and material safety information can be checked at the source.

Values shown under FMCSA SMS Safety Measures come from measure fields in the source snapshot. They are not presented as percentiles, are not directly comparable across BASIC categories, and are not converted into a proprietary safety verdict. Formal FMCSA ratings are displayed separately when available.

Insurance values describe filings found in the snapshot. A missing value does not prove that a carrier is uninsured, and a listed amount does not prove current or adequate coverage. Confirm current authority and filings with FMCSA before a consequential decision.

Power-unit and driver counts can be carrier-reported and occasionally implausible. Rankings are limited to records marked active with an MCS-150 report from 2022 or later. Records with 1,000 or more power units must also contain inspection, crash, safety-rating, or insurer data in the snapshot; extreme fleet/driver relationships are excluded. These checks reduce obvious anomalies but do not independently verify fleet size. Ranking exclusion is not an accusation and does not itself delete an underlying lookup record.

An order is treated as active only when the source marks it active and no rescind date is present. Rescinded or historical orders remain visible as history but do not trigger a current out-of-service warning.

CarrierScore cannot change an official carrier record. Submit source-data corrections through FMCSA DataQs and verify the current result in SAFER. CarrierScore is independent and is not affiliated with FMCSA or USDOT.