How to verify a carrier's insurance from the federal record

What FMCSA actually has

• BI&PD on file. Bodily-injury and property-damage liability, filed by the insurer on an FMCSA BMC-91 series form. FMCSA shows the amount on file beside the minimum the carrier's authority requires — $750,000 for most general freight, $1,000,000 for some operations, more for hazardous materials.
• The filing history. Every policy filed on the docket with its insurer, effective date, and any cancellation with the date and the method FMCSA recorded (cancelled, replaced, name change, transferred). A "cancellation" row next to a newer policy's filing usually means the policy was replaced, not that coverage ended.
• Cargo, bond and trust filings where the authority requires them.

The 2026 switch, and the gap it left

In May 2026 FMCSA moved licensing and insurance to a new registration system. The old Licensing & Insurance files were frozen — FMCSA's own description says they were last refreshed 2026-05-14 and will not be updated — and current filings appear only in the new system's files. A lookup that reads only the old file shows the policy as it stood in May. Carrier Archive reads both and labels each fact with the file and date it came from, so a figure from the frozen file says so beside it.

How to read a carrier's insurance in order

1. Start with what is on file today and compare it with the required minimum. No policy on file against a $1,000,000 requirement is the fact that matters most.
2. Then read the history by date. A cancellation followed by a new filing is a replacement. A cancellation with nothing after it is a lapse. Two or more lapses in two years is one of the patterns we measured.
3. Check the authority beside it. FMCSA suspends authority when liability coverage on file falls below the minimum; the suspension notice carries the date it was served and the date it takes effect.
4. Ask the carrier for the certificate of insurance anyway. A federal filing is not a certificate and not proof that a policy is in force for a particular load; the certificate names the insured, the limits and the dates, and you can call the insurer on it.

Why the record can be behind reality

Insurers file on their own schedule, FMCSA publishes on its own, and a policy can be cancelled days before the filing appears. Our pages state the date each federal file was read, and tracking a carrier re-reads it daily and emails you when a filing changes — after the change appears in the federal file, which is as early as the public record allows.