Motor Carrier Authority: 41% of New Small Carriers Lose It in a Year

Of the 45,849 carriers with 10 or fewer trucks that received new motor carrier authority from FMCSA in 2024, 18,922 lost it within 12 months. That is 41.3%. Of those losses, 875 were carriers asking FMCSA to cancel their own authority, which leaves 39.4% of the cohort that lost authority without asking to.

For carriers with 11 or more trucks, the loss rate was 11.1%. We pulled four years of public records to measure this, and every figure below comes from data.transportation.gov. No Hemut customer data was used.

About this data

• Sources: the company census, the licensing file, the authority history file and the revocation file, all pulled October 21, 2026 and re-pulled October 24, 2026.
• Coverage: the authority history and licensing files record no grants or revocations after mid-May 2026, when FMCSA moved registration to its new Motus system. Every figure reflects records through that date.
• Cohorts: grants from January 2022 through December 2024, so each had a full 12 months before the revocation file ended on December 31, 2025.
• Data: the cohort table is available as a CSV download, and the method is at the end of this article.

How many new carriers lose motor carrier authority in a year?

The rate was steady for small fleets across 2022 and 2023, then eased. The table splits grants into half-years, and each row had the same 12 months of exposure, per the authority history file.

Small carriers lost authority at 1.5 to 4.2 times the rate of 11-plus-unit carriers, depending on the period. The small-fleet rate fell from 47.4% for late 2022 grants to 41.2% for late 2024 grants. Larger-fleet cohorts are small, from 528 to 992 authorities per half-year, so their rates move around more.

Grants from 2025 are left out. A 2025 grant's 12-month window runs past the mid-May 2026 end of the public records, so its loss rate would be understated. We do not claim any trend for 2025.

Does the loss rate change with fleet size?

Yes, steeply. Among 2024 grants, a one-truck carrier lost authority within a year 47.3% of the time, against 11.1% for 11 or more trucks.

Treat that gradient with care. Fleet size here is the carrier's current self-reported count on the census record, not its size at the grant date. Carriers that survive tend to update the record and grow, which moves them into larger groups and widens the gap. The 11-plus group is also a small, unusual set of new companies that reported 11 or more trucks. About 80% of new authorities matched a census size, and only those appear in size tables.

What counts as lost authority in this study?

We counted an authority as lost when the authority history file recorded a revocation, safety revocation, safety suspension, out-of-service order or administrative inactivation within 365 days of the grant. We then used the revocation file to separate voluntary revocations, where the carrier asked to give up its authority, from everything else.

A new authority is a docket's first common-carrier grant dated 2022 or later, on a docket numbered MC1200000 or higher that had no earlier grant. Contract-only and broker authorities are excluded. Lost does not mean the business closed: authority can be reinstated, and a carrier can file again under a new docket.

OOIDA's Land Line magazine has put it at about 25% of new carriers failing in their first year. Our figure is higher because it counts authority actions, not business closures. A carrier revoked for a lapsed insurance filing and reinstated weeks later counts as a loss here. Insurance must be on file under 49 CFR part 387, but this study did not test insurance data and says nothing about why any carrier lost authority.

How many of the new authorities are still active?

A second view asks how many authorities from each year show as active in the licensing file as of the mid-May 2026 cutoff. Older cohorts have had longer to lapse, so this view favors newer grants, and 2025 and 2026 grants are left out for the same reason as above.

Of the 91,388 authorities granted in 2022, 28.8% were active in mid-May 2026. Some of that gap is businesses that closed on purpose or merged. Some is carriers that lost authority and filed again, so they appear in a later cohort. This data cannot separate those cases.

Where is new motor carrier authority least likely to last?

We grouped small carriers granted authority in 2024 by the state on their census record, using states with at least 1,000 grants. The share inactive in mid-May 2026 runs from 66.1% in Georgia to 38.7% in California, per the licensing file.

The Southeast runs highest, and California and Illinois run lowest. State means the carrier's registered physical address, not where its trucks run, and we did not test why states differ.

Two data quality problems we found along the way

First, the census status field overstates the active population. Of 130,899 MC dockets the census lists as active that were added in 2022, only 25,120 (19.2%) were active in the licensing file. Another 55,966 were inactive and 49,401 had no authority record. Counts of active carriers built on the census status field alone run far too high.

Second, many active authorities carry a pending revocation. Among dockets numbered MC1400000 and up, which were first issued in April 2022, 6,946 of 126,585 active authorities (5.5%), or about 1 in 18, show a pending revocation today. A pending flag is usually the notice period after a filing is cancelled, and many get cured, so it is a warning sign and not a loss.

What should a new carrier take from this?

In the 2024 cohort, a new carrier with 10 or fewer trucks had roughly a 6 in 10 chance of still holding its authority a year later, according to the authority history file. For one-truck carriers it was closer to 5 in 10.

Keeping authority means keeping filings current, including insurance, process agent and periodic updates. See our BOC-3 filing page, check any carrier with the carrier lookup tool, and read how the FMCSA registration system handles filings. Name one owner for each due date.

How we measured it

Method in short: take every docket whose first common-carrier grant fell between January 2022 and December 2024, drop dockets numbered below MC1200000 or with an earlier grant, join each to its current fleet size on the company census, and check whether the authority history file shows a loss disposition within 365 days. A revocation counts as voluntary when the nearest record in the revocation file is typed voluntary.

Of the cohort, 165,011 of 206,583 dockets (about 80%) matched a census size. Limits: fleet size is current, not at grant; reinstated authorities still count as lost; larger-fleet cohorts are small; and we did not examine insurance filings, inspections or out-of-service rates. Authority history ended mid-May 2026. The scripts and every query are available on request, and the cohort table is a CSV download.

About the author

Hemut builds dispatch and accounting software for small trucking fleets. Hemut Command is a transportation management system for carriers that run their own trucks. This study did not use any Hemut product data.

A checklist for keeping authority this week

1. Look up your own docket and write down its status and any pending flags.
2. List every filing tied to your authority and the date each one comes due.
3. Name one person who owns each filing date.
4. Confirm your insurer knows who to notify, and where the notice goes.
5. Put a reminder on the calendar well before each due date.