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Free public tool · Federal data · Updated 2026-09-21

Check Your Mover: is it a licensed carrier, or a broker?

Type a moving company’s name, USDOT number or MC number. We read the answer straight out of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s public record and tell you, in plain English, whether that company is registered to move your things itself or to sell your job to somebody else — plus what insurance it has on file.

Check a company ↓ How this works

Enter a company name, USDOT number or MC number. USDOT and MC numbers give an exact match — names do not, because unrelated companies share them.

Queries the federal FMCSA record live. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored, no cookies.

Why this matters. A large share of the companies that advertise long-distance moves online are brokers. A broker takes your deposit and then sells the job to whichever carrier will take it. You often do not learn who is actually driving the truck until it arrives. That is legal — brokers are federally registered too — but it is not what most people think they are buying, and it is the single biggest source of moving complaints. Ninety seconds here tells you which one you are dealing with.
The difference

Carrier, broker, or both

What the record saysWhat it means for your move
Motor carrierThe company moves your things itself — its trucks, its crew, its insurance on the job. You deal with one company from quote to delivery.
BrokerUnder 49 CFR Part 371 a broker arranges transportation but does not perform it. A different company’s truck and crew will arrive. Ask, in writing, which carrier has been assigned before you pay a deposit.
Carrier and brokerRegistered to do either. Perfectly normal for larger operators. Ask which applies to your job and get the answer on the estimate.
No active federal authorityNot automatically a red flag. Federal authority is only needed for interstate for-hire moves. A mover working only inside Texas is licensed by TxDMV, not FMCSA, and will correctly show nothing here. Check the state regulator too.
Method

Where these answers come from

Every word this tool says about a company comes from one federal file: the FMCSA Licensing & Insurance record, published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on the U.S. DOT open data portal. We do not rate, score, grade or rank anybody. We show you the federal fields and what they mean.

  • Authority type and status — the COMMON_STAT, CONTRACT_STAT and BROKER_STAT fields. A means active, I inactive, N no such authority on the record. Every result shows you these raw codes so you can check our reading.
  • Insurance — FMCSA’s own “required” versus “on file” fields for liability (BI&PD), cargo, and broker surety bond.
  • Household goods — the HHG_CHK flag, which is how FMCSA marks a registration as covering household moves rather than freight.
  • Two federal files, newest first. FMCSA is midway through replacing its registration system. Every search asks the current file first — that one is refreshed daily and spells each authority out in words ("Motor Carrier of Household Goods", "Broker of Household Goods"). Only if a company is not in it do we fall back to the older Licensing & Insurance file, which FMCSA stopped updating on 2026-05-14. Every result tells you which file answered, and a result from the older file is labelled as possibly out of date.
  • We show you our working. Each result links straight to that company’s live record on FMCSA’s own SAFER system so you can check us in one click.
What this tool does not have: complaints. We looked. FMCSA’s National Consumer Complaint Database is published with the access level non-public and the note “Consumer and carrier details are private information”. There is no bulk complaint file to republish, so we do not show complaint counts — rather than estimate them. FMCSA’s own mover lookup at protect-your-move does display complaints per company, one at a time. Use it alongside this page.
The honest limitation. FMCSA froze its historical operating-authority file on 2026-05-14 and its replacement does not yet cover every company. For a company only in the older file, an authority revoked or lapsed since that date will still read as active here. We cannot fix that — nobody publishes the missing data — so instead we label those results plainly and put a one-click link to the live federal record on every one. Treat this page as a fast first filter, and SAFER as the final word.
The data

The Texas household-goods snapshot

Alongside the live lookup we publish the filtered extract the tool falls back on: every Texas household-goods operating-authority record in the federal file — 5,599 in all. Of those, 573 show an active motor carrier authority, 59 an active broker authority and no carrier authority, 19 both, and 4,948 no active federal authority (mostly long-dormant dockets, and intrastate-only movers whose licence is held at state level).

Download the JSON 745 KB · free to use and cite

Company officer names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers that appear in the federal source files are deliberately stripped out: for the many one-person carriers those are somebody’s home details.

Our own record

Check us, too — that is the point

A tool like this is worthless if the company publishing it exempts itself. Moving Company Guys is USDOT 3918729, docket MC-1645220. Put either number in the box above and you will get exactly the same reading, generated by exactly the same code, as any other company on this page — including where our own federal record is not flattering. FMCSA’s entity type for us is carrier, not broker: we have never sold a customer’s job to another company. But the federal authority fields say what they say, and we would rather you read them here than be surprised by them somewhere else. Our live federal record ↗

Before you book

Four questions worth asking

  1. “What is your USDOT number?” A company that will not give you one, or gives one whose name does not match, has told you something important.
  2. “Will your own employees and your own truck do this move?” Get the answer in writing on the estimate.
  3. “If you are brokering it, which carrier is assigned?” Then check that carrier here too.
  4. For a move inside Texas: “What is your TxDMV motor carrier certificate number?” Verify it at TxDMV Truck Stop, which is the state register federal data does not cover.
Small print

About this data

Source. FMCSA Licensing & Insurance, “Carrier — All With History” (dataset 6eyk-hxee), and the FMCSA Motor Carrier Census (kjg3-diqy), both published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Data retrieved from the U.S. DOT open data portal. FMCSA states that the authority file was last refreshed on 2026-05-14 and will not be updated further; our snapshot was taken on 2026-09-21.

Not an endorsement or a certification. This tool is published by Moving Company Guys, a private moving company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, TxDMV, or any government agency. Appearing here is not a certification, rating, endorsement or recommendation of any company, ours included.

Accuracy. These records reflect the contents of FMCSA management information systems as at the dates above and may be out of date or wrong. Once data leaves the agency’s site the government cannot vouch for its quality or timeliness. Always confirm a company’s current status at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov before you hire.

Reading a result. “No active federal authority” does not apply to private or intrastate-only operations, and is not evidence of wrongdoing. Unrelated companies share names, so match on USDOT or MC number rather than on a name. We publish no safety ratings, crash figures or complaint counts.

Corrections. A company that believes its federal record is wrong can challenge it through FMCSA’s DataQs system. If you think this page displays your company’s record incorrectly, call us on (972) 528-0385 and we will fix it.

Legal basis for republication: works of the U.S. Government are not subject to domestic copyright (17 U.S.C. § 105), and Data.gov’s data policy states that federal data is “offered free and without restriction”. FMCSA applies no licence of its own to these datasets; this page relies on that default rule rather than on any grant.

Questions

Frequently asked

No — brokers are federally registered and many are reputable. The problem is not knowing. If you think you have hired the company that will show up, and a different company shows up, you have no relationship with the people holding your possessions and no clear route for a claim. Knowing which you have hired is the whole point of this page.

Not necessarily. Federal operating authority is only required for interstate for-hire moves. A company that only moves people within Texas is licensed by TxDMV instead, and will legitimately show nothing in the federal authority file. Check TxDMV Truck Stop for the state licence. It is only a concern if a company is selling you a move across state lines.

Because moving company names repeat constantly across unrelated businesses, and some large brands have separate registrations in many states. That is exactly why we show the city, the USDOT number and the docket number on every result, and never merge two records into one verdict. Ask the company for its USDOT number and search on that instead.

Because FMCSA does not publish it in bulk. Its National Consumer Complaint Database is marked non-public on the grounds that consumer and carrier details are private. We would rather show you nothing than make a number up. FMCSA’s own mover lookup shows complaints one company at a time.

Yes. The underlying records are U.S. federal public data and our filtered extract is free to download and cite. If you are a journalist or researcher and want a cut we have not published — another state, or the national file — call (972) 528-0385.