FMCSA is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates commercial trucking. It issues operating authority, sets safety and insurance requirements, monitors crash and inspection records, and publishes all of it in free public databases. Every legitimate auto transport company in America is registered with FMCSA, and that public database is one of the most underused consumer protection tools in car shipping.
FMCSA does four things that affect your shipment. It licenses the company — nobody may haul or broker vehicles for hire across state lines without active FMCSA authority, an MC number for carriers and brokers and a USDOT number for anyone operating commercial vehicles, with authority conditional on filings staying current. It sets insurance minimums: property carriers must keep at least $750,000 in public liability coverage on file, and brokers must maintain a $75,000 surety bond or trust (BMC-84/BMC-85). FMCSA does not mandate a specific cargo insurance limit for auto transport, which is why you should always request the certificate of insurance and read the cargo line yourself.
FMCSA also regulates safety — driver qualification, commercial licensing, hours-of-service limits, drug and alcohol testing, and vehicle inspection standards all come from FMCSA, and roadside inspections that put a truck out of service are recorded against the carrier's USDOT number. And it publishes the record: the SAFER system at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov gives you a Company Snapshot showing operating status, entity type, power units, drivers, annual mileage, and 24 months of inspection and crash data, while the companion Licensing and Insurance database shows current insurance filings and authority history.
FMCSA also runs the National Consumer Complaint Database at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov, where you can file a complaint against a mover or auto transport company and search complaint history. Everything a car shipping company claims about itself is either confirmed or contradicted by its FMCSA record, for free, in about two minutes — whether they own trucks, whether their authority is active, whether their insurance filing is current, whether their equipment gets pulled out of service, and whether other customers have filed complaints. Marketing pages cannot be audited; federal records can.
The mistake is assuming FMCSA registration equals quality. It does not — registration is a floor, proof of licensing and minimum insurance filings, nothing more, and plenty of registered companies deliver bad service. A second mistake is assuming FMCSA-mandated insurance covers your car: the $750,000 liability minimum is public liability, not cargo coverage on the vehicle riding the trailer, so always ask for the certificate of insurance. A third mistake is skipping the complaint database, which takes 30 seconds and frequently surfaces exactly the pattern to watch for. Baier Transport LLC operates under USDOT 3306263 and MC-1049429 as a motor carrier — our own trucks, our own drivers, out of Seabrook, New Hampshire, with 250,000+ vehicles transported and a BBB A+ rating. Pull the snapshot before you call us, then get a quote for the season.