How to read a federal carrier record

Two different federal ideas get mixed together

A safety rating (Satisfactory, Conditional, Unsatisfactory, or none) is the result of a compliance review. Many carriers have never been rated. SMS, the Safety Measurement System, is a separate screening tool that ranks inspection and crash data in BASICs. FMCSA has said, repeatedly, that SMS is not a safety rating and should not be used to conclude that a carrier is safe or unsafe.

This site does not publish SMS percentiles as a score, and it does not rank carriers. The lookup shows inspection counts, out-of-service percentages next to the national average, and reported crash involvement for the last 24 months. Those are inputs that appear in the federal file. They are not a grade we assign.

What crash numbers do and do not mean

Crashes appear in a carrier's record regardless of who caused them. A tow-away in a parking lot and a multi-vehicle fatality both increment the file if they meet the reporting threshold. Carriers can request review through DataQs and, for some crashes, through FMCSA's preventability process. A high crash count is a reason to read the underlying reports, not a finding that the carrier caused those events.

Inspection out-of-service percentages are more tightly tied to what an inspector found on a specific day. A vehicle out-of-service order means the inspector found a violation serious enough that the truck could not continue until it was fixed. Compare the carrier's rate to the national average on the same row. Do not convert that comparison into a label about the company.

What to do with the snapshot

Use the record to identify the company, confirm authority, and see the federal insurance filing as of the date you pulled it. Use the evidence tool for the records that will actually decide a claim: logs, the driver qualification file, ECM data, and video. The census snapshot is the map. The trip file is the case.