The short version
Look up the carrier by USDOT number in the federal public records, confirm the authority is active and the legal name matches your paperwork, then ask for a certificate of insurance and read the cargo line specifically. The federally required insurance is liability cover for the public, not cargo cover for your goods, and cargo insurance is not required at all from most general-freight carriers.
A truck is coming for your freight tomorrow. Somebody sent you a packet, the paperwork looks professional, and there is a number on it that you could look up if you knew what you were looking at.
Most shipper advice stops at "check they are insured and authorised". That advice is not wrong, it is just thinner than it sounds, because the two things people usually check are not the two things that protect the freight on the trailer.
How do you look up a trucking company?
Four things, in this order: that the company exists as a licensed carrier, that its authority is active right now, that the legal name matches the paperwork in front of you, and that it carries cargo insurance that would actually replace your freight. The first three are free to look up and take about five minutes. The fourth is the one that catches people out.
| What you check | Where | What it proves | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrier exists and is licensed | Federal public records, by USDOT number | The company is registered to haul for hire | That it is the company contacting you |
| Operating authority is active | Same record | It is allowed to operate today | That its insurance is current today |
| Legal name matches your paperwork | Same record, against the rate confirmation | You are dealing with the licensed entity | That the person emailing works there |
| Cargo insurance and its limit | Certificate of insurance, confirmed with the insurer | Your freight has cover, up to the limit | That the cover was still in force this morning |
Is the MC number still the one to look up?
No. MC, MX and FF docket numbers stopped being issued on 1 October 2025 and the USDOT number is now the federal identifier. Carriers registered before that date still have an MC number in legacy records, so seeing one is normal and not a warning sign on its own.
What is worth a second question is being given only an MC number, with no USDOT number to look up. Most guides still tell shippers to check the MC number, which tells you how recently the guide was written rather than anything about the carrier.
Does the carrier's federal insurance cover your freight?
Almost certainly not, and this is the single most useful thing on this page. The required filing is public liability cover, generally $750,000 for non-hazardous general freight, and it exists to compensate other people for injury and property damage in a crash. Your pallets are not other people.
Cargo insurance is a separate product, and it is not federally required from most general-freight carriers. A carrier can be entirely legitimate, fully authorised, correctly filed and carrying nothing whatsoever that pays you if your load burns.
The exception is household goods carriers, which do have to file cargo coverage, and at minimums low enough to be worth knowing: published figures put it at $5,000 per vehicle or $10,000 per occurrence. If you are moving anything worth more than that, the federal minimum is not a safety net, it is a rounding error.
In practice, cargo insurance on general freight is something shippers and brokers require by contract, not something the government requires. Which means it only protects you if you ask for it, read the limit, and the limit is big enough.
Why can a carrier show as authorised and still be uninsured?
Because the public record and the insurance position are updated by different parties at different speeds. Insurers file coverage and cancellations with the regulator, and there is a gap between a policy ending and the record catching up. During that gap a carrier can appear active and authorised while its coverage has already lapsed.
How long that gap runs is where published guidance stops agreeing. The sources describing it are mostly commercial operators rather than the regulator, and the specific timelines they quote come from older decisions or individual cases. We are not going to put a confident number on it, because we could not verify one.
What survives the disagreement is the practical answer, and it is simple enough.
- Treat an active authority flag as necessary but not sufficient.
- For anything valuable, confirm coverage with the insurer named on the certificate, not only with the carrier.
- Check the certificate's own dates. It describes the day it was issued.
What does the five-minute check look like?
- Get the USDOT number in writing before you agree to anything, along with the legal company name.
- Look it up in the federal public records. Confirm the entity exists, the authority is active, and the legal name matches your rate confirmation exactly. The same record carries the safety rating and inspection history, worth a look on anything valuable. A trading name that appears nowhere in the record is worth a question.
- Call the carrier back on the number in the public record, not the number in the email. This single step defeats most identity-based freight fraud, because the fraudster controls their own phone number and not the one on file.
- Ask for a certificate of insurance naming the cargo limit and deductible, and read the cargo line rather than the liability line.
- For high-value freight, call the insurer on the certificate and confirm the policy is live today.
- Save what you looked at, dated. If a claim follows, your own diligence record matters.
None of that requires a subscription or a service. It requires knowing that steps four and five exist.
What are the warning signs worth stopping for?
A name that does not match the licensed entity, only an MC number with no USDOT number, contact through a personal cell and a free email address, pressure to load immediately, a rate well above the market, or a last-minute change to payment details. Any one of them is worth a pause rather than a cancellation.
- Only an MC number, no USDOT number. Since October 2025 every registered carrier has one.
- The name on the paperwork does not match the licensed entity. The most common tell of all.
- Contact only through a personal cell and a free email address. A licensed business usually has a domain.
- Pressure to load immediately, with no room to verify. Urgency is a technique, not a coincidence.
- A rate that is well above the market for the lane. The bait, usually.
- The carrier wants payment details changed at the last minute. A classic takeover pattern.
If your freight has already moved and something has gone wrong, how to spot a double-brokered load covers the version of this where a second carrier appears that you never hired.
What does a board change about this check?
This is our own board, so read this section with that in mind.
It removes the cold start, not the diligence. A bid here arrives from an account with a history rather than as an email from a stranger, and where we have checked a carrier against the federal register their name carries a verified mark. The insurance question is still yours, and so is the final call.
What a board cannot do is ring the insurer for you. For high-value freight that call is still worth making, because it is a conversation about your goods and nobody else can have it on your behalf. What it does remove is the part this whole page is about: being handed a phone number by a stranger and having to work out who they are.
Shippers post free, there is no commission on the load, and you do not need operating authority of your own. If you are weighing up handling freight directly, what you take on and what you save lays out the whole trade.
For the documents worth collecting once you have chosen a carrier, the carrier packet checklist covers what to ask for and why each piece matters.
The bottom line"Authorised and insured" is two filings, and neither of them is a promise about your cargo. Look up the USDOT number, match the legal name, call the number on file rather than the one you were given, and read the cargo limit before the truck arrives rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check if a trucking company is legitimate?
Look up the carrier by USDOT number in the federal public records and confirm three things: the entity exists, its operating authority is active, and the legal name matches your rate confirmation exactly. Then call the carrier back on the phone number in that record rather than the one in the email, which defeats most identity-based freight fraud on its own.
Does a carrier need cargo insurance?
Not federally, for most general freight. The required filing is public liability cover, generally $750,000 for non-hazardous freight, and it pays other people for injury and property damage in a crash rather than paying you for your goods. Household goods carriers are the exception. On general freight, cargo cover is something shippers and brokers require by contract, so ask for the certificate and read the cargo limit and the deductible.
Is the MC number still used to look up a carrier?
MC, MX and FF docket numbers stopped being issued on 1 October 2025, and the USDOT number is the federal identifier now. Carriers registered before that date still have an MC number in legacy records, so seeing one is normal. Being given only an MC number, with no USDOT number to look up, is worth a question.
Sources
Every figure in this article is linked in place. The full list, for anyone who wants to check the working.
- eCFR, 49 CFR 387.9. Minimum public liability limits for for-hire motor carriers of property, including $750,000 for non-hazardous freight.
- eCFR, 49 CFR 387.303. Cargo insurance minimums, which apply to household goods carriers rather than to general freight.
- FreightWaves, on the end of MC numbers. MC, MX and FF docket numbers ceased to be issued on 1 October 2025.
- FreightWaves, commercial truck insurance requirements. Summary of the distinction between required public liability cover and optional cargo cover.
