How to Get a List of New Trucking Companies From FMCSA Data

Pull new trucking companies from the free FMCSA Company Census File: the query, the real field names, monthly and state counts, and the cleanup pitfalls.

Published Oct 29, 2026 · 29 min read · by Lead Mining Company

The free way to get a list of new trucking companies is the FMCSA Company Census File, a public dataset on the U.S. DOT open data portal at data.transportation.gov (dataset ID az4n-8mr2). Filter it on two columns, ADD_DATE (when the record was added) and STATUS_CODE = A (active), and you have every motor carrier record created in the window you chose, with a phone number and an email address on almost every row. As of October 28, 2026, 178,190 active carriers had an add date between October 1, 2025 and October 28, 2026. That is about 14,000 a month.

The download is the easy part. The raw file holds more than 4.5 million records and 147 columns, mixes carriers with brokers and freight forwarders, treats reactivated records as new, and puts one shared phone number on more than a thousand rows. This guide shows the exact query, the field names, the numbers by month and state, and the cleanup that turns the census file into a list a salesperson can work. It is written for anyone who sells to new carriers: insurance agents, factoring companies, dispatchers, ELD and fleet software, truck and trailer dealers, lenders and compliance services.

What the FMCSA Company Census File is

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration keeps a record for every entity it registers. Its data dictionary describes the census file as records for active, inactive and pending entities registered with FMCSA, each identified by a USDOT number. Each record carries identifying data, business operations data, equipment and driver data, and carrier review data. The agency publishes the file on the DOT data portal as Company Census File, dataset az4n-8mr2. The portal lists FMCSA as publisher, marks the rights as public, and needs no login to download.

When we checked the portal on October 29, 2026, the dataset had been updated that morning, the newest add date in it was October 28, 2026, and a count query returned these totals:

FMCSA Company Census File by record status, October 29, 2026
STATUS_CODE	Meaning (data dictionary)	Records
A	Active: in business and subject to the FMCSR or HMR, or an intrastate non-hazmat carrier issued a USDOT number by certain states	2,243,366
I	Inactive: no longer in business or no longer subject to the rules	2,278,823
P	Pending: a Mexico-domiciled company applying for operating authority, still under review	1,359
All		4,523,548

So about half the file (50.4%) is inactive or pending. A list built from the whole file without a status filter is mostly companies you cannot sell to.

The official field definitions are in the MCMIS Company Census File Data Dictionary, Revision 8, dated January 23, 2026, attached to the dataset page. It runs 89 pages, mostly code tables. Keep it open while you work. Several of the pitfalls below come from guessing what a code means.

What "new trucking company" means in this guide

In this guide a new trucking company is an active record (STATUS_CODE = A) whose ADD_DATE falls inside your window. That is a registration date, nothing more. It is not the date the carrier got operating authority, bought insurance or hauled its first load. The census file does not show insurance status, the date operating authority was granted, inspections or crash history. If you need those, you need other FMCSA data, covered in the authority section below.

The columns that matter for a lead list

The dataset has 147 columns. Fewer than 30 matter for prospecting. These are the real API field names, with what the data dictionary says they hold and how a seller uses them.

Census fields for a new-carrier lead list (field names as published on data.transportation.gov)
Field	What it holds	How sellers use it
dot_number	The USDOT number, the census record number	Unique key; quote it in your first message so the owner knows you looked them up
add_date	Date the record was created, reactivated or systematically updated (text, YYYYMMDD)	The registration date filter
status_code	A active, I inactive, P pending	Keep A
mcs150_date	Date written on the MCS-150 form used to update the record	Shows recent updates; not a "new company" signal
legal_name, dba_name	Legal name and trade name	Addressing mail and email
company_officer_1, company_officer_2	Name and title of company representatives	Who to ask for
phone, cell_phone, fax	Office phone at the principal place of business, cell phone, fax	Calls, after a Do Not Call scrub
email_address	The carrier's email address	Email outreach
phy_street, phy_city, phy_state, phy_zip	Physical location of the principal office	Territory, state licensing, distance to your lot
carrier_mailing_street, _city, _state, _zip	Mailing address, used when mail goes somewhere else	Direct mail
carrier_operation	A interstate, B intrastate hazmat, C intrastate non-hazmat	Interstate versus in-state carriers
carship	Entity type: C carrier, S shipper, B broker, R registrant, F freight forwarder, I intermodal equipment provider, T cargo tank	Drop brokers and forwarders if you sell to carriers
classdef	Classification, for example AUTHORIZED FOR HIRE, PRIVATE PROPERTY, EXEMPT FOR HIRE	For-hire versus private fleets
power_units, truck_units, fleetsize	Power units reported, trucks, and a letter code for fleet size	Sizing the account
total_drivers, total_cdl	Drivers and CDL drivers reported	Per-driver pricing
hm_ind	Hazardous materials indicator	Hazmat carriers
docket1prefix, docket1, docket1_status_code	Operating authority docket (MC, MX or FF), its number, and A or I status	Who filed for authority (see the caveats below)
crgo_genfreight through crgo_cargoothr_desc	One column per cargo type, marked X when checked	Equipment and lane fit
prior_revoke_flag	Whether a USDOT registration was revoked before	Spotting returning operators

One storage detail trips up almost everyone who queries the API. Every column except dot_number is published as text, including add_date, power_units and total_drivers. Dates sort correctly as text because they are written YYYYMMDD. Numbers do not: as text, "10" sorts before "2". Cast them in a query (power_units::number) or convert the column in your spreadsheet before you filter by fleet size.

How many new trucking companies register each month

These are active carriers by the month of their census add date, as of October 28, 2026. October 2026 runs through the 28th. The last column comes from our own count query on October 29, 2026 and shows how many of each month's carriers had an MC, MX or FF docket on their census record that day.

Active carriers by census add month, October 2025 to October 2026
Month	Active carriers added	With a docket on Oct. 29, 2026	Docket share
October 2025	12,521	6,143	49.1%
November 2025	10,257	5,053	49.3%
December 2025	10,669	5,144	48.2%
January 2026	13,594	6,709	49.4%
February 2026	13,561	6,663	49.1%
March 2026	16,414	7,871	48.0%
April 2026	15,993	7,629	47.7%
May 2026	15,065	4,884	32.4%
June 2026	15,536	4,799	30.9%
July 2026	15,243	7,576	49.7%
August 2026	14,701	5,414	36.8%
September 2026	14,444	2,814	19.5%
October 2026 (1st to 28th)	10,192	608	6.0%
Total	178,190	71,307	40.0%

What the table says, in numbers:

The 12 full months from October 2025 to September 2026 add up to 167,998 active carriers. That averages 14,000 a month (167,998 / 12) or about 3,230 a week (167,998 / 52).
March 2026 was the busiest month at 16,414. November 2025 was the slowest at 10,257.
October 2026 is on pace for about 11,280 by month end if the daily rate holds (10,192 / 28 days x 31 days). That is an estimate, and the last few days of any month are thin when you pull them, for a reason explained in the pitfalls below.
Registrations cluster on weekdays. In the week of October 19, 2026, weekdays ran 352 to 491 a day, while Saturday October 24 had 117 and Sunday October 25 had 76.
From October 2025 to April 2026 the docket share sits between 47.7% and 49.4%. May, June and August 2026 are lower, and September and October 2026 far lower. Read the section on operating authority before you treat a missing docket on a recent record as final.

Out of the 178,190, 177,751 have a phone number (99.8%), 177,954 have an email address (99.9%) and 29,448 have a separate cell phone (16.5%). 130,839 are classified as authorized for hire (73.4%), 102,308 run interstate (57.4%) and 12,225 marked hazardous materials (6.9%). By fleet size, 122,643 reported one power unit or none (68.8%), 46,926 reported two to five (26.3%), 7,079 reported six to 20 (4.0%) and 1,542 reported 21 or more (0.9%). This is a market of owner-operators and very small fleets.

New trucking companies by state

The census records the state of the carrier's principal office in phy_state. Here are the 15 states with the most active carriers added since October 1, 2025, as of October 28, 2026. Each state name links to its page with the current counts.

Top 15 states by new active carriers, October 1, 2025 to October 28, 2026
State	Added since Oct. 1, 2025	Last 30 days	Last 90 days	For hire	With a docket	City with the most
Texas	20,972	1,305	4,860	87%	40%	Houston (620)
California	19,061	1,151	4,282	74%	36%	Fresno (215)
Florida	14,906	961	3,385	84%	38%	Miami (317)
Georgia	8,791	526	1,870	73%	38%	Atlanta (159)
New York	8,122	524	1,732	45%	20%	Brooklyn (142)
Pennsylvania	7,865	523	1,793	69%	45%	Philadelphia (313)
New Jersey	6,159	458	1,445	70%	45%	Newark (80)
Illinois	6,144	466	1,501	83%	61%	Chicago (243)
Ohio	6,020	393	1,392	84%	53%	Columbus (211)
North Carolina	5,738	366	1,276	77%	44%	Charlotte (172)
Minnesota	4,262	292	994	62%	29%	Minneapolis (111)
Michigan	3,957	236	850	69%	38%	Detroit (67)
Indiana	3,682	241	794	77%	50%	Indianapolis (244)
Maryland	3,521	215	755	66%	41%	Baltimore (90)
Colorado	3,264	188	686	71%	30%	Denver (124)

Three things stand out for anyone planning territory.

Concentration. Texas, California and Florida hold 54,939 of the 178,190 (30.8%). Add Georgia and New York and the top five hold 71,852 (40.3%).
For-hire share varies a lot. In Texas 18,142 of 20,972 new carriers (87%) are authorized for hire. In New York it is 3,639 of 8,122 (45%), so more than half of New York's new registrations are private fleets that haul their own goods. An insurance agent or factoring company working New York should expect fewer usable rows per thousand than in Texas.
Docket share varies too. Illinois has a docket on 61% of new records, New York on 20%, and Hawaii on 10 of 536. Private fleets and carriers that stay inside one state do not need interstate operating authority, so states with more of them show lower docket shares. New York fits that pattern, at 45% for hire and 20% with a docket.

City counts help regional sellers. Indiana's new carriers cluster in Indianapolis (244 of 3,682) and Nevada's in Las Vegas (170 of 1,281). Every state with at least 100 new carriers in the last 90 days has its own page under new trucking companies by state.

How to pull the list yourself for free

There are two free routes. The portal route needs only a browser. The API route needs a browser too, but gives you exact control and repeats in seconds. Both use the same data.

Route 1, the portal filter and export

Open the Company Census File page on data.transportation.gov.
Open the data view, add a filter on STATUS_CODE equal to A, and a filter on ADD_DATE.
Because ADD_DATE is stored as text, a date-range filter does not behave like a calendar. Use a "starts with" or "contains" condition on the year and month you want, for example 202610 for October 2026. For several months, add one condition per month.
Check the row count the portal shows. For October 2026 through the 28th it should be close to 10,192.
Export the filtered view as CSV. The export keeps your filter, so you download thousands of rows, not 4.5 million.

The export brings all 147 columns. Delete the ones you do not need before you share the file.

Route 2, a SODA API query in the address bar

The portal runs on Socrata, which answers queries written in SoQL, a SQL-like language, at a URL ending in /resource/az4n-8mr2. You can paste these into a browser address bar. The browser encodes the spaces and quotes for you.

First, count before you download. This query returns the number of active records added since October 1, 2026:

https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.json?$select=count(*)&$where=add_date >= '20261001' AND status_code = 'A'

On October 29, 2026 it returned 10,192. The same count written with starts_with(add_date, '202610') gives the same answer.

Then download the rows as CSV, with only the columns you need, newest first:

https://data.transportation.gov/resource/az4n-8mr2.csv?$select=dot_number,legal_name,dba_name,company_officer_1,phone,cell_phone,email_address,phy_street,phy_city,phy_state,phy_zip,carrier_mailing_street,carrier_mailing_city,carrier_mailing_state,carrier_mailing_zip,add_date,mcs150_date,carrier_operation,carship,classdef,power_units,total_drivers,hm_ind,docket1prefix,docket1,docket1_status_code&$where=add_date >= '20260730' AND status_code = 'A'&$order=add_date DESC&$limit=50000

Three parts of that query matter:

$where holds the filter. The dates are quoted because the column is text.
$order sorts newest first, so a cut-off list still has the freshest carriers.
$limit overrides the default. Socrata's documentation says a query returns 1,000 records unless you set $limit, that version 2.0 endpoints allow at most 50,000 per request, and that versions 2.1 and 3.0 have no maximum. Leave out $limit and you get 1,000 rows and no warning. For a bigger pull, page through it with $offset.

We ran this query on October 29, 2026 for July 30 to October 28. It returned 40,490 rows. With all 147 columns the CSV was 18.4 MB and took 27 seconds to download. With the 26 columns above it is a fraction of that.

If you script repeat pulls, register an app token. Socrata's documentation says requests without a token come from a shared pool and are throttled by IP address, while requests with a token are not throttled unless they look abusive. Pass it in the X-App-Token header.

Narrowing by state, for-hire status and operation

Add conditions to $where with AND. This version keeps Georgia carriers that are authorized for hire:

$where=add_date >= '20260730' AND status_code = 'A' AND phy_state = 'GA' AND contains(classdef, 'AUTHORIZED FOR HIRE')

Our count on October 29, 2026: 1,896 Georgia records in the window, 1,397 of them authorized for hire. Add AND carrier_operation = 'A' AND contains(carship, 'C') to keep interstate carriers only, and the count falls to 859. Other useful conditions:

hm_ind = 'Y' for hazmat carriers (2,979 nationally in the July 30 to October 28 window).
power_units::number BETWEEN 2 AND 5 for small fleets (14,209 in the same window).
crgo_coldfood = 'X' for refrigerated food, crgo_bldgmat = 'X' for building materials, and so on for each cargo column.
phy_country = 'US' to drop Canadian and Mexican carriers.

Turning the CSV into a working list

Lower-case every email and trim spaces, then remove exact duplicates.
Strip phone numbers to ten digits and count how many rows share each number. Set aside any number that appears on more than a handful of rows (see the duplicates pitfall below).
Convert power_units and total_drivers to numbers.
Turn the cargo X columns into one readable column, for example "general freight; building materials".
Decide which address you mail to and keep it in its own column.
Scrub the phone column against the National Do Not Call Registry and your own do-not-call list before anyone dials.
Save the file with the pull date in its name, so next week's pull can start where this one ended.

Pitfalls in the raw census file

Every pitfall below showed up in our own pulls. The counts come from queries we ran on October 29, 2026, either across the year of active records added since October 1, 2025, or across the 40,490-row pull for July 30 to October 28, 2026.

Millions of rows and a silent 1,000-row default

The file holds 4,523,548 records. Nobody needs them all for prospecting. Filter on add_date and status_code at the source, and always set $limit, because a query without it stops at 1,000 rows. Run a count first so you know what the full answer should be.

Status codes

Records added in October 2026 through the 28th included 10,192 active, 212 inactive and 64 pending. Inactive means no longer in business or no longer subject to the rules, and pending means a Mexico-domiciled applicant under review. Filter on status_code = 'A' every time.

The add date is not only for new companies

The data dictionary defines ADD_DATE as the date the record was "created, reactivated, or systematically updated" in the registration system. A carrier that went inactive years ago and came back gets a fresh add date. In the year of active records added since October 1, 2025, 119 carry USDOT numbers below 4,000,000. New numbers at the start of that period were above 4,475,000, so those 119 are older registrations with a new add date. In May 2026 one record with a five-digit USDOT number showed up as added that month. The share is small, but a "brand new company" pitch to a carrier that has held its USDOT number for years does not go well. Check prior_revoke_flag and the USDOT number before you write copy that assumes the company is new.

Add date versus MCS-150 date

mcs150_date is the date written on the MCS-150 form used to update a record. Under 49 CFR 390.19T, carriers file the MCS-150 before they begin operations and update it every 24 months on a schedule set by the last digits of the USDOT number. So established carriers keep producing fresh mcs150_date values year after year. Filtering on mcs150_date to find new companies returns old companies doing paperwork. In the other direction, 9,005 of the 10,192 records added in October 2026 (88%) had no mcs150_date at all, and across the year 108,875 of 178,190 had one. Use add_date to find registrations and treat mcs150_date as a sign of recent activity.

Carriers, brokers and freight forwarders in one file

The carship column says what kind of entity the record is. In the year since October 1, 2025, 166,842 of the 178,190 active records (93.6%) are coded C (carrier) alone, 4,608 (2.6%) are B (broker) alone, 845 are F (freight forwarder) alone and the rest carry combinations such as C;B or F;C. A dispatcher or truck dealer does not want brokers. If you also sell to brokers, keep them in a separate list. Filter with contains(carship, 'C') to keep anyone that operates as a carrier.

Private versus for-hire

classdef holds one or more classifications separated by semicolons. The data dictionary defines authorized for hire as a business whose primary activity is transporting property or passengers for compensation, and private property as a business whose trucking is incidental to its main business. A landscaper with two dump trucks is private property. In October 2026 through the 28th, 5,640 records were AUTHORIZED FOR HIRE alone, 2,266 were PRIVATE PROPERTY alone, 1,382 were both, and 475 had no classification. Use contains(classdef, 'AUTHORIZED FOR HIRE') rather than an exact match, or you lose the 1,382 that checked both.

Interstate versus intrastate

carrier_operation is A for interstate, B for intrastate hazmat and C for intrastate non-hazmat. In our 90-day pull, 23,681 rows (58.5%) were interstate, 16,798 (41.5%) intrastate non-hazmat and 11 intrastate hazmat. The data dictionary notes that selected states have their intrastate carriers issued USDOT numbers, which is why so many intrastate carriers are in a federal file. The split matters for federal operating authority and for the federal hours-of-service record rules that ELD sellers care about.

Physical versus mailing address

The physical address is where the principal office is located. The mailing address is where mail goes when that is somewhere else. In our 90-day pull, 4,907 rows (12.1%) had a different mailing street or ZIP code from the physical one, 586 had a mailing address in a different state, and 1,556 had a P.O. box as the mailing street. Use the physical state for territory and licensing, and the mailing address for letters and postcards.

Duplicates and shared contacts

Some phone numbers and emails on new records do not belong to the carrier. The pattern points to registration and compliance services that file on a carrier's behalf and put their own contact details on the form. In the year of active records added since October 1, 2025, one phone number appears on 1,393 records. The most-shared email address appears on 44 records, and several of the other most-shared addresses sit on domains whose names describe trucking compliance, consulting or process agent services. In our 90-day pull, 549 rows shared a phone number with at least one other record and 201 rows carried a number used on ten or more records. The same email also turns up in capital and lower-case letters on different rows, so lower-case every address before you dedupe.

The fix is simple. Count each phone and email across the file, flag any value used on more than two or three records, and remove those values from the contact columns before outreach. A salesperson who calls a filing service 40 times in a week wastes the week and annoys the service.

USDOT numbers are no longer in order

The data dictionary says census numbers were issued in sequence. Through April 2026 that held: records added in October 2025 ran from 4,475,434 to 4,489,414 and records added in April 2026 from 4,559,158 to 4,576,001. From May 2026, records added each month carry numbers scattered as high as 9,999,980. FMCSA's page on registration changes says its new system assigns random numbers to new USDOT and docket registrations, while existing numbers stay the same. If your old method was "sort by USDOT number and take the highest", it no longer finds the newest carriers. Sort by add_date.

The newest day is partial

On October 29, 2026, the file held 8 records dated October 28, against 445 dated October 27 and 504 dated October 26. The last day in any pull is incomplete. Set the end of your window one or two days back, or pull the same window again the next week.

Foreign carriers

Of the 178,190 active records added in the year, 1,855 have a physical address in Canada and 263 in Mexico. Keep them if you sell cross-border; filter phy_country = 'US' if you do not.

Codes that need decoding

fleetsize is a letter, not a number: A means 1 power unit, B means 2 to 3, C means 4 to 6, and so on up to Z for more than 5,000. Cargo is spread across about 30 columns marked X. Among carriers registered in the last 90 days, building materials and construction carry identical counts (6,615 each), and the two match within every state we checked, so do not add them together as if they were separate carriers. Use power_units for size and build one cargo column for readability.

Free email addresses

In our 90-day pull, 30,668 of 40,490 rows (75.7%) used a Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, iCloud or AOL address. That fits a market of owner-operators. It also means many of these inboxes are personal, which matters for tone and for compliance.

USDOT number versus operating authority

A USDOT number and operating authority are two different registrations, and the census file mostly tells you about the first.

USDOT number. The census record number. Under 49 CFR 390.19T, motor carriers file Form MCS-150 before they begin operations. The data dictionary says each entity should have only one active census number.
Operating authority. The registration a company needs to haul other people's freight for pay in interstate commerce, or to work as a broker or freight forwarder. 49 U.S.C. 13901 says a person may provide transportation as a motor carrier, or service as a broker or freight forwarder, under that chapter only if registered to do so. Authority is identified by a docket number with an MC, MX or FF prefix. FMCSA's Licensing and Insurance system describes its carrier search as information about interstate for-hire carriers that have been granted authority or have applications pending.

Private carriers that haul their own goods, and carriers that stay inside one state, generally have a USDOT number and no docket. That is why only 40% of the year's new records have one.

What the census docket columns tell you

The census has room for three dockets per record: docket1prefix and docket1, docket2prefix and docket2, docket3prefix and docket3, each with a status code the data dictionary defines as A for active or I for inactive. Of the 71,307 new active records with an MC, MX or FF docket, the docket status reads A on 70,605, I on 694 and P on 8.

A docket on a census record is not proof that the authority is active. It tells you the company has a docket number. Authority goes through its own steps: an application, publication, a waiting period, insurance and process-agent filings, and a grant. It can also be suspended for lapsed insurance after it is granted. None of that is in the census file.

Where authority status lives

FMCSA Licensing and Insurance (L&I). The L&I home page still offers a carrier search for interstate for-hire carriers with granted or pending authority. Its banner says the registration functions it used to handle were retired on May 14 at 8:00 PM ET, with Motus launching the following week.
The FMCSA Register. The Register is published daily. It lists requests for authority as preliminary grants, and states that those notices "do not represent authority to operate". Opposition is due within 10 days of publication, the applicant must file compliance evidence within 20 days or the application is dismissed, and dismissal notices issue on the 30th day.
Motus authority data. The open dataset Motus AuthHist, All With History (yu5v-wbh6) records the history of each authority with its USDOT number, docket number, type, status and the reason for each change. When we checked, it had 239,528 rows and status values of Active, Pending, Inactive and Withdrawn.

How this guide defines new authority

When a vendor says "new authority leads", ask which date they mean. In this guide, new authority means an operating authority whose status changed to Active with the reason Granted inside your window. That is a different event from a census add date, and usually a later one.

The Motus authority history shows the scale. Between October 1 and October 29, 2026, 5,886 rows record a property-carrier authority (motor carrier of property, except household goods) moving to Active with the reason Granted, against 4,602 in September 2026. In the same October window 6,716 rows moved to Pending with the reason Published to FMCSA Register, and 2,816 moved to Inactive with the reason that insurance cancellation had taken effect and no active insurance meeting minimum coverage was on file. A suspension reason like that one is a lead for an insurance agent, but a very different conversation from a first policy.

To join the two sources, match on usdot_number. Pull new census registrations by add_date, then look up each USDOT number in the authority history to see whether it has a docket, and what that docket's latest status and reason are.

The Motus registration transition

FMCSA is moving registration into a new system called Motus. What the official record says:

A Federal Register notice published April 29, 2026 (91 FR 23144) announced Motus and said it would come in phases. Phase I, released December 8, 2025, let supporting companies create accounts: BOC-3 filers, insurance and surety filers, and transportation service providers. In Phase II, planned for the second quarter of 2026, Motus would open to all regulated entities.
The same notice says FMCSA will sunset the Unified Registration System used for new USDOT and operating authority applications, the registration components of MCMIS, and the former ICC Licensing and Insurance system established in 1994.
The L&I home page says those registration functions were retired on May 14 at 8:00 PM ET, with Motus launching the following week.
FMCSA's registration changes page says new USDOT and docket numbers are assigned at random, existing numbers do not change, and each newly granted authority gets its own docket number.

What it changes in the data, from what we can see:

The census file keeps publishing. Records added after the switch are still there, with phone and email filled on almost every row.
USDOT numbers stopped running in sequence from May 2026, as shown in the pitfalls above.
New authority datasets appeared on the portal. Motus Carrier (nakq-58th) is a daily difference file of carriers, brokers and freight forwarders with active, inactive or pending authority, including insurance on file and a business phone. It has no email column. Its description notes that one USDOT number can hold several dockets, because Motus gives each authority its own docket.
The legacy insurance datasets stopped. ActPendInsur (qh9u-swkp) and InsHist (6sqe-dvqs) both say they were last refreshed on May 14, 2026 and will no longer be updated. Any insurance-renewal list built on them is frozen at that date.

One risk to watch: the email column. The census file still carries email on 99.9% of new records, but the Motus Carrier table does not publish email at all. If a future census release dropped it, a list built on the free file would lose its cheapest outreach channel. Nothing we found says that is planned. Check the column fill on every pull.

How to segment the list for each type of buyer

The same 178,190 rows are a different list for each kind of seller. These are the filters that do the most work for each, with the numbers they produce.

Commercial truck insurance agents

Keep for-hire carriers (130,839, 73.4% of the year), split interstate from intrastate since only interstate for-hire carriers need federal operating authority, and pull hazmat carriers (12,225) as a separate list. Then cut by the states your agency is licensed in.

Worked example for an agency licensed in Georgia: our July 30 to October 28 pull had 1,896 Georgia records, 1,397 of them authorized for hire and 859 that are also interstate carriers. Spread over 13 weeks that is about 66 interstate for-hire Georgia carriers a week (859 / 13), a workable number for one producer. The census does not tell you whether the carrier already bought a policy. A carrier whose authority shows Pending with the reason Published to FMCSA Register in the Motus authority history is still inside the window the Register sets for filing compliance evidence, so it is not yet authorized to operate. More on the sales side in how to sell commercial truck insurance to new trucking companies and on the insurance agents page.

Freight factoring companies

Factoring fits for-hire carriers that haul for brokers and shippers and invoice for each load. Keep for-hire, keep carship C, and use the docket. Nationally 40.0% of the year's new records have one.

Be careful applying that share to recent registrations. Applied to Texas's 1,305 carriers from the last 30 days, the full-year Texas docket share (8,460 of 20,972, 40.3%) suggests about 526 with a docket. Our count shows only 19.5% of September's carriers and 6.0% of October's had a docket on October 29, so the real number on the day you pull is lower. Both figures are estimates. A better trigger is the authority grant: pull the Motus authority history weekly for property-carrier authorities that moved to Active with reason Granted, then join to the census for contact details. See how to get freight factoring clients from new carriers and the factoring companies page.

Truck dispatch services

Dispatchers want owner-operators who haul for others. Filter for-hire, carship C and one power unit. In our 90-day pull 22,249 of 40,490 rows (55%) reported exactly one power unit. Add a cargo column that matches the loads you book, for example crgo_coldfood = 'X' if you book reefer freight. The guide for truck dispatchers covers the pitch, and the dispatch services page has current counts.

ELD and fleet software

Software sellers get the most from interstate carriers with more than one truck. 102,308 of the year's new records (57.4%) are interstate, and 55,547 (31.2%) reported two or more power units (46,926 with two to five, 7,079 with six to 20 and 1,542 with 21 or more). Use total_drivers to size seats. Email is the natural first touch for software, and the email column is full on 99.9% of rows. Current counts are on the ELD and fleet software page.

Truck and trailer dealers

Dealers sort by cargo and distance. Among carriers registered in the last 90 days as of October 28, 2026, general freight was checked by 22,005, building materials and construction by 6,615 each (the same carriers, as noted above), machinery and large objects by 2,045, grain, feed and hay by 1,614 and motor vehicles by 1,503. Use the physical ZIP code to draw a radius around your lot, and use the mailing address for postcards. The truck and trailer dealers page lists the cargo counts.

Equipment lenders

Lenders care about fleet size and growth. Carriers that reported one power unit or none (122,643) are the natural audience for first- and second-truck financing. Carriers with two to five units (46,926) may be adding equipment. Pair the census with the authority history so you are not lending to a carrier whose authority was suspended for lapsed insurance. See commercial truck financing leads from new carrier registrations.

DOT compliance services

Compliance services sell to the whole list, interstate carriers first. Be careful how you describe the offer. FMCSA's page on fraudulent and misleading marketing to new applicants says the use of a service provider is not required by FMCSA. Any message that implies your service is mandatory is the kind of marketing that page warns about. More in how DOT compliance services find new carrier clients.

Contact rules and the FMCSA impersonation problem

New carriers are targeted by scams that pretend to be FMCSA. The agency's page on fraudulent and misleading marketing to new FMCSA applicants says FMCSA does not make robocall solicitations, does not ask for credit card numbers by phone, and that misleading telemarketers posing as FMCSA or USDOT can be reported to the FTC. A new owner-operator who has just been through that will be suspicious of your first message. Make it easy to see who you are.

Put your company name in the first line of every email, letter and call.
Never use eagle seals, federal-looking letterheads, "compliance notice" headings, case numbers or "action required" deadlines.
Never send from an address or domain that looks like a government one, and never say you are calling "about your DOT registration" as if you were the agency.
Quote the USDOT number to show you looked the carrier up, and say plainly that you found it in public FMCSA registration data.

The phone and email rules apply too. Owner-operators and small carriers are often individuals on personal cell phones. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the National Do Not Call Registry apply: scrub against the registry, do not use autodialers, prerecorded or AI voices, and do not send texts without consent. Cold email must follow CAN-SPAM, with accurate headers, a physical postal address and a working opt-out. Direct mail to the mailing address is the lowest-risk channel. This is not legal advice. The details, including state laws that add their own limits, are in rules for calling, texting and emailing new trucking companies.

A weekly routine for a fresh list

New carriers hear from many vendors in their first weeks, so freshness matters more than size. This routine keeps a list current with about one pull a week.

Every Monday, count active records with an add_date in the previous seven days. At recent rates expect a few thousand nationally (the year averaged about 3,230 a week).
Download the same window as CSV with the 26 columns above and $limit set above the count.
Drop brokers and freight forwarders if you do not sell to them. Apply your for-hire, operation, state and fleet filters.
Dedupe on dot_number, lower-case emails, and flag shared phones and emails.
Look up each USDOT number in the Motus authority history if authority status matters to your offer.
Scrub phones against the Do Not Call Registry and your internal list.
Re-pull the previous week's last two days, because the newest day is always partial.
Log the pull date and row count, so you can tell when a week looks wrong.

Run the counts first every time. If a weekly count drops to a few hundred without a holiday, check the portal's update date before you blame the market.

What a filtered, refreshed file saves

Everything above is free, and for one pull it works well. The cost is the repeat work: writing and checking the query, pulling the right columns, decoding classdef, carship, carrier_operation and 30 cargo columns, flagging shared filing-service contacts and catching the partial last day, every week, for as long as you sell.

Our new trucking companies file does most of that part. It holds active carriers from the FMCSA Company Census File by census add date, refreshed every six hours, with 17 fields (USDOT number, MC docket, legal and DBA name, company officer, phone, cell phone, email, physical and mailing address, registered date, operation, for hire, power units, drivers, hazmat and cargo), and filters for registration date, state, for hire, hazmat, fleet size and cargo. Operation, for hire, hazmat and cargo come decoded into plain words. Check shared phone numbers in any file before calling, ours included. Two prices:

$99 a month for new trucking companies in every state, up to 25,000 rows a month. The busiest month in the last year had 16,414 new active carriers, so the cap covers a full month nationally.
$149 once for carriers registered in the last 90 days (39,891 as of October 28, 2026), downloadable for 7 days after payment.

It is the same public data, with the same limits: no insurance status, no authority grant dates, no inspections or crash history. Details are on the pricing page. If you need a feed built around your own CRM or territory rules, see custom lead-generation software, and for other public-record sources, public records as B2B lead sources.

Questions and answers

Is the FMCSA Company Census File free to download?

Yes. The FMCSA publishes it on data.transportation.gov as dataset az4n-8mr2, with no login. You can filter it on the portal and export a CSV, or query it through the SODA API. Filter on add_date and status_code = 'A' so you download only recent active records instead of all 4.5 million.

How many new trucking companies register with the FMCSA each month?

From October 2025 to September 2026, an average of about 14,000 active carriers a month were added to the census file (167,998 over 12 months). March 2026 was the busiest month at 16,414 and November 2025 the slowest at 10,257. Counts are as of October 28, 2026.

What is the difference between a USDOT number and an MC number?

The USDOT number identifies the company's census record, and carriers file for it before they begin operations. An MC number is a docket for operating authority, which for-hire interstate carriers, brokers and freight forwarders need. Many private and intrastate carriers have a USDOT number and no MC number.

Does the census file show whether a new carrier has insurance or active authority?

No. It has no insurance status, no authority grant date, no inspections and no crash history. A docket on a census record means the company has a docket number, not that its authority is active. Authority status is in FMCSA's Motus authority data and the L&I carrier search.

Why do some new carriers share the same phone number or email?

Registration and compliance services often file for new carriers and put their own contact details on the form. In the year since October 1, 2025, one phone number appears on 1,393 active records. Count each phone and email across your file and remove values used on more than two or three records before outreach.

Can I call or text the phone numbers in the file?

Many are personal cell phones of owner-operators. The TCPA and the National Do Not Call Registry apply, so scrub before calling, dial by hand, use no prerecorded or AI voices, and send no texts without consent. Email must follow CAN-SPAM. Mail is the lowest-risk channel. This is not legal advice.

Why can I no longer find the newest carriers by sorting on USDOT number?

USDOT numbers ran in sequence through April 2026. From May 2026, under FMCSA's new Motus system, new numbers are assigned at random, so new numbers in the census are scattered as high as 9.99 million instead of rising in order. Sort and filter on add_date instead.