For freight brokers & 3PL carrier-sales reps4 vetting tools

Verify any MC, DOT, or VIN — stop double-brokers before they cost you a load.

Paste a carrier name, MC, DOT, or VIN. Get verified operating authority, current insurance, fraud flags, and observed lane footprint — refreshed daily. Free, no signup.

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Vetting a whole list?Vet 50 at once with bulk lookup
670k+ carriersRefreshed daily$0 · no signup

What a free public lookup doesn't show you

Same MC, two views. A free public lookup gives you raw registration fields. KnowHaul joins authority, current insurance, observed equipment, and fraud rules so the three questions a broker actually needs answered — is the authority real, is the insurance live, are they who they say they are — surface in one card.

Free public lookup
Public record
Legal name
Example Trucking LLC
MC 0000000 · DOT 0000001
Authority status
Active
Authority date
2017-08-14
Entity type
Carrier
Operation
Interstate
Power units
120 (self-reported)
Drivers
118 (self-reported)
Insurance on file
Liability form$1M filed
Cargo form$100K filed
That's what a free public lookup shows. No insurance currency, no fraud signals, no inspection history, no observed fleet, no lane data.
KnowHaul
AVOID · score 24
Refreshed 06:00 UTC
Example Trucking LLC
Active authority
Insurance lapsed 14d ago
MC 0000000 · DOT 0000001 · Reactivated 38d ago
Fleet
7 observed
vs 120 claimed
Lane footprint
GA → FL
11 stops · 12mo
OOS rate
38.4%
2.1× national
3 active fraud flags
  • Dormant MC reactivated
    No inspections 2022-04 → 2025-09. Authority reactivated 38 days ago.
  • VIN reuse across MCs
    3 VINs observed under 2 other active MCs in the last 12 months.
  • Fleet size mismatch
    Claimed 120 power units. Observed 7 distinct VINs on inspections.
All of the above. One card. 20 seconds.Do not tender

What the free lookup can't show

  • Active authority status
  • Insurance status
  • Active fraud flags
  • Operating states & lane footprint
What we verify
  • Authority
  • Insurance
  • Inspections
  • VIN-level
Refreshed daily · 06:00 UTC

Illustrative only. “Example Trucking LLC” is fictional and the DOT/MC numbers (0000001 / 0000000) are synthetic placeholders — not any real FMCSA carrier. Live carrier records use the same layout.

Everything in KnowHaul

The hero above is the fastest path — paste an identifier and see a card. Below is every tool the site exposes; nothing's hidden behind a sign-up wall.

Verify a carrier

Paste an MC or DOT number. Get a verification card with authority, insurance, and fraud signals — built for the broker's twenty-minute vetting window.

Find carriers on a lane

Drop origin and destination states. Get a ranked phone book of carriers actually running that lane, sorted by recent trucks in your pickup state.

Read the guides

How to verify a carrier, what double-brokering looks like, what a free public lookup leaves out — broker-facing playbooks for the situations the tool can't fully automate.

Explore industry trends

Free interactive charts on the US trucking industry — inspection volume, out-of-service rates, fleet-size mix, busiest lanes, and more, refreshed daily from FMCSA data.

Search history

Recent searches and carriers you've viewed. Available when you sign in — anonymous searches aren't logged to your account.

Free for everyone
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  • Verification card
    Full fraud-flag detail with evidence
  • Lane footprint
    Insurance form-level filings
  • Composite carrier score
    Saved searches + history

Found a carrier? Now act on it.

The search above tells you who a carrier is. These tools are what you do next — screen a tender for re-brokering, confirm the insurance is still good, pull the full verification card. Each one runs against the live FMCSA record.

See all tools

Carrier check

Paste a DOT or MC number. Authority, current insurance, observed equipment, fraud signals, and inspection footprint — joined into one card, refreshed daily from FMCSA.

Double-broker check

Run a tender against the patterns we see when a load gets re-brokered without the shipper's knowledge — MC reuse, authority age, identity flips, inspection-state mismatches.

Contact-match check

Paste the phone and email a 'carrier' is contacting you from and compare them against the contacts that carrier actually filed with FMCSA. Catches stolen-identity impersonation when the presented contact diverges from the filed record.

Truck check

Paste the cab-card VIN, the MC number on the truck, and the COI insurer. KnowHaul tells you in one card whether the physical truck, the authority, and the insurance certificate connect to the same coherent operator — the freshly-painted-MC fraud check.

Insurance check

Pull the latest BMC-91 (liability) and BMC-34 (cargo) filings on file with FMCSA. Flags coverage that has lapsed, policies set to cancel inside 30 days, and limits that don't fit the load.

Got a list instead of a single carrier?

Daily driver

Bulk lookup

Paste up to 200 MC or DOT numbers and get a resolved carrier table back — legal name, authority state, dormancy, score band, last inspection — exportable to CSV. Signed-in brokers.

How to verify a carrier in three steps

The tool is the page. There's no form, no popup, no signup gating the basic verification flow.

  1. 1

    Paste an identifier

    Drop in any MC number, DOT number, or 17-character VIN. The search bar at the top accepts all three and figures out which is which.

  2. 2

    Land on the carrier page

    Hit Enter and you jump straight to that carrier's page — no intermediate screen. Authority, fleet size, dormancy state, fraud signal count, and the composite carrier score are all on the page when it loads.

  3. 3

    Check the MC, vet the carrier

    If the headline numbers look good, scroll the page for the deep view: lane footprint, inspection history, score breakdown, and the evidence behind every fraud flag.

Frequently asked questions

The questions brokers actually ask when they first land on the tool. The same answers are emitted as Schema.org FAQPage data so Google can surface them in rich results.

How do I verify a carrier?

Paste the carrier's MC number or DOT number into the search bar at the top of this page. KnowHaul resolves the identifier and renders a verification card with active authority, current insurance, fleet size, recent inspection history, and any active fraud signals. For the deep view — lane footprint, score breakdown, full inspection list — click 'View full profile' on the result card.

What is a double-broker check?

A double-broker check verifies that the carrier presenting itself for a load is the real entity behind the MC number, not a fraudster who has hijacked a dormant authority. KnowHaul flags the classic signals: dormant MCs that just reactivated, VINs registered under multiple unrelated authorities, fleet sizes that don't match observed VINs, and insurance limits that are implausible for the claimed fleet. The fraud flags list on every carrier profile surfaces these patterns automatically.

How is this different from a free public carrier lookup?

Free public lookups show you the raw registration fields — legal name, authority date, fleet count claimed, insurance form filings. KnowHaul joins that with two years of observed inspection history, an inferred lane footprint, a composite carrier score, and an algorithmic fraud-flag layer. The verification card is built for the twenty-minute window a broker has between tender and pickup, not for a compliance team's monthly review.

Is KnowHaul free?

Yes. The carrier verification card, the lane lookup, the directory, and the guides are all free to use with no signup. Signing in unlocks search history and insurance-detail / fraud-flag-detail views, but the headline verification flow works for anonymous visitors.

How do I look up a DOT number?

Type or paste any 1–8 digit DOT number into the search bar. The result card renders inline; you don't have to click into a separate page. You can also link directly to /c/<DOT> for a permanent URL — these are the canonical pages we submit to the sitemap and that appear in Google search results.

How do you compute the carrier score?

The composite carrier score is a weighted 0–100 across six components: authority status, insurance status, dormancy state, out-of-service rate vs national, active fraud flags, and inspection recency. Each component is scored 0–100 independently and combined with fixed weights documented on every score card. Bands are offer (≥80), consider (50–79), and avoid (<50). The full breakdown is on the carrier profile page.

What does the dormancy state mean?

Dormancy is a bucket derived from recent inspection history: active (inspected within the last 90 days), stale (90–180 days), warning (180–365 days), or dormant (365+ days). Reactivated dormant MCs are the textbook double-broker setup — a fraudster buys a dormant authority, slaps a fresh name on it, and starts booking loads. The dormancy badge on the verification card surfaces this in one glance.

Do you sell my searches?

No. Anonymous searches are not logged to any account. Signed-in searches are kept in your own user_search_history so you can revisit recent lookups; that history is private to you and never sold or shared. The aggregate query stream feeds product analytics (popular DOTs, common queries) but not individual targeting.

Where does the data come from?

Public-domain carrier filings — operating authority, insurance, roadside inspections, and registry data — refreshed daily. We're happy to walk through specific provenance with customers and regulators on request. The value we add is in the joins (lane footprint from inspection activity, fraud rules across VIN and MC tables, identity-graph reconciliation) and in surfacing the result fast enough to use during a live tender.

Verify your next carrier before you respond to the load.

Free. No signup. No per-search fee.

Verify a carrier