Carrier check: MC and USDOT lookup with insurance and authority.

What the check shows

One card, six sections, and every value with a source line under it. The sources are FMCSA's own: the live registration record, the motor carrier census, the Licensing & Insurance datasets for insurance and authority, and the SAFER snapshot as a fallback.

• Official record. The legal name, DBA, USDOT, every docket, the physical address, the phone and the entity type as FMCSA has them, each with the source it came from and the date that source is current to.
• Can they operate. Operating status, whether FMCSA lists the carrier as allowed to operate, any out-of-service date, the common, contract and broker authorities separately, and the last three authority actions (granted, revoked, reinstated).
• Insurance on file. One row per filing: BIPD, cargo or bond, the insurer, the coverage, the effective date and the cancellation date, with a cancellation inside thirty days called out, then the amount on file against the amount FMCSA requires.
• Size and safety. Power units, drivers, the MCS-150 date and mileage, the safety rating and its date, the carrier operation, the cargo carried, when the USDOT was registered, and the inspection, crash and out-of-service numbers.
• What changed. The differences between the last snapshot Cover took of this carrier and this one, newest first; the first time Cover sees a carrier, it says so and starts recording from that day.
• What we cannot tell you. A fixed list that is always on the card, with how to check each item yourself, because a database that hides its own limits is worse than no database.

What it cannot tell you

The sixth section is on every card because the questions that lose brokers money are mostly ones no public record answers. Here is the list and what to do about each.

• Whether the email that contacted you is the carrier's. Many FMCSA records list one email, and the compare step sets yours against it. A match is still not a person: a taken-over mailbox writes from the real address. The answer is a call to the phone on the record.
• Whether the person you are talking to is authorized to book for this MC. No public record lists officers or dispatchers. Ask the official number who the dispatcher is.
• Which driver and truck will show up. Get the driver's name, phone and unit number from the dispatcher before the rate confirmation goes out, and confirm with the driver by text.
• Whether the load will be re-brokered. A clean record does not rule it out. Watch for a different MC on the truck at pickup.
• Whether the carrier is "safe". Nobody can tell you that from a database. The card shows the facts on file as of the dates on it; the decision stays with you.

Got the carrier's email instead?

Forward it as an attachment to [email protected] and Cover answers by email: whether the domain in From really sent it, where replies go, and this same check on the carrier the email names, with its email, phone and MC set against the record. How to forward as an attachment from Gmail, Outlook or Apple Mail.

MC number or USDOT?

The USDOT number is the company's identity: one per registered carrier, issued when the company registers with FMCSA. The MC number is a docket, the record of an operating authority FMCSA granted that company: common carrier, contract carrier or broker, and a company can hold more than one docket. A rate confirmation usually names the MC because that is what load boards show, but the identity behind it is the USDOT, and FMCSA has long planned to retire MC numbers in favor of the USDOT number alone. This check accepts either, resolves it to the USDOT, and lists every docket that belongs to it. If the MC on the rate confirmation is not one of them, the compare step says so.

Watch the carriers you will use again

A watch is for your bench, not your history: the twenty or thirty carriers you call first. Checking one before every load means checking the same companies over and over, usually at four in the afternoon with a truck to cover. A watch turns that around. Cover re-reads the record every day, and the next time you are about to tender to one of them, you already know.

Three things change after the rate confirmation goes out, and all three are yours to carry:

• The load is still moving. Days pass between the rate confirmation and delivery. An authority revoked or a policy cancelled while your freight is on that truck is a problem happening now, not a matter of record.
• Claims arrive late. Damage and shortage surface days or weeks after delivery. If you have to claim against a cargo policy that lapsed the morning after pickup, the time to have learned that was the morning after pickup.
• Your shipper's agreement. Broker contracts commonly require carrier qualification to be kept current. A dated record that you were monitoring is the evidence that you did.

Sign in and switch on a watch. Cover sends one email when any of these change, with the old value, the new value, the source and the date:

• Legal name and DBA
• Phone, email and physical address
• Operating status and out-of-service date
• Common, contract and broker authority
• Insurance filings, the insurer and any cancellation date
• MCS-150 date
• Safety rating
• Power units

No change, no email. A carrier that changes twice in a day gets one message, not two. Nothing else on the record is worth waking you for, so nothing else does.

How current is the data

The registration record is read from FMCSA's live service at the moment you check, when that service answers. The insurance filings and authority history come from datasets FMCSA publishes in batches, sometimes daily, sometimes less often, and the card shows the date each one is current to rather than pretending it is live. When a source does not answer, the card says which one and falls back to the last date it did. Nothing on the card is guessed, and a field FMCSA does not have is shown as not on file rather than filled in.