The 19 Risk Factors We Use to Score Every Carrier (And Why)

Every carrier in the FMCSA database has a story told through data — authority records, insurance filings, safety inspections, crash reports, and enforcement actions. The challenge is reading that story accurately. A single data point rarely tells you much. A carrier with a new authority might be a legitimate startup or a reincarnated chameleon carrier dodging enforcement history. A carrier with one insurance cancellation might have switched providers or might be struggling to maintain coverage.

That's why CarrierBook's risk score doesn't rely on any single factor. It evaluates 19 distinct signals across four categories, weights them based on how predictive they are of future risk, and combines them into a single score. Here's what those factors are and why each one matters.

Authority & Operations

A carrier's authority status and operational profile form the baseline. These factors answer the most fundamental questions: is this carrier legally allowed to operate, and how established are they?

1. Operating Authority

The starting point. A carrier must hold active operating authority from FMCSA to legally transport freight. If authority is revoked, suspended, or inactive, everything else is moot. This is a binary check — either the carrier is authorized or they're not.

2. Authority Age

How long a carrier has held continuous operating authority is one of the stronger predictors of reliability. FMCSA data consistently shows that carriers in their first 18 months of operation have significantly higher crash rates and out-of-service rates than established carriers. This doesn't mean new carriers are bad — it means they carry more uncertainty. A carrier with eight years of continuous authority has a track record you can evaluate. A carrier with eight months doesn't.

3. Fleet Size

FMCSA requires carriers to self-report their number of power units and drivers on the MCS-150 form. Very small fleets (one to three trucks) aren't inherently risky, but they have less inspection history, fewer data points for safety evaluation, and less operational redundancy. Fleet size provides context for interpreting other factors — a single crash means something different for a 200-truck fleet than for a 2-truck operation.

Insurance

Insurance data is often more revealing than safety data, because it updates more frequently and reflects how the insurance market — which has its own financial incentives to assess risk accurately — views a carrier.

4. Insurance Adequacy

Does the carrier maintain at least the minimum required insurance for their operating authority type? For general freight carriers, that's $750,000 in liability coverage (or $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 for hazmat, depending on the specific materials transported). This is another baseline check, but one that a surprising number of carriers fail at any given time.

5. Cancellation Pattern

Insurance cancellations happen for many reasons — a carrier switches providers, an insurer exits a market, or a policy isn't renewed. The distinction that matters is whether cancellations are paired with replacement filings. A carrier that shows a cancellation immediately followed by a new policy filing is behaving normally. A carrier with repeated cancellations and no timely replacements is showing a pattern of instability.

6. Coverage Gaps

Related to cancellation patterns, but measured differently. Coverage gaps track the actual calendar days a carrier went without active insurance on file. Even short gaps are meaningful — they indicate periods where the carrier was either operating without proper coverage or wasn't operating at all. Repeated gaps are a stronger signal than a single instance.

7. Insurer Stability

How frequently a carrier changes insurance providers. Some churn is normal, especially in the current hard insurance market. But a carrier that has cycled through four or five insurers in two years may be getting non-renewed for cause — meaning their own insurer decided they were too risky to keep on the books.

8. Bond Stability

FMCSA requires brokers and certain carriers to maintain a surety bond or trust fund. Bond cancellations and replacements follow similar patterns to insurance — stability indicates reliability, while frequent changes or lapses suggest financial or compliance issues.

9. Renewal Continuity

This factor looks at the smoothness of insurance transitions. A carrier that maintains continuous coverage with clean handoffs between policy periods is demonstrating operational discipline. Carriers that let policies lapse and scramble for replacements — even if they ultimately maintain coverage — are showing a pattern that correlates with broader operational problems.

Safety

Safety data comes primarily from FMCSA's inspection and crash databases. These are the factors most people think of when they hear "carrier risk," and they matter — but they need context. A carrier with zero inspections isn't necessarily safe; they may just be new or operating in areas with less enforcement presence.

10. Safety Rating

FMCSA assigns safety ratings of Satisfactory, Conditional, or Unsatisfactory based on compliance reviews (on-site audits). The catch is that most carriers have never been audited — roughly 92% of active carriers have no safety rating on file. When a rating exists, it carries significant weight. An Unsatisfactory rating is a serious finding. But the absence of a rating doesn't mean a carrier is safe; it means they haven't been evaluated through this particular lens.

11. Driver Out-of-Service Rate

When an FMCSA inspector pulls a truck over for a roadside inspection and finds driver-related violations serious enough to remove the driver from service (expired medical certificate, hours-of-service falsification, no valid CDL), that's an out-of-service event. The national average driver OOS rate is approximately 5.5%. A carrier whose drivers are placed out of service at double or triple the national average has a systemic driver compliance problem.

12. Vehicle Out-of-Service Rate

The same concept applied to vehicle conditions — brakes, tires, lights, load securement. The national average vehicle OOS rate is roughly 20%. Carriers with elevated vehicle OOS rates are deferring maintenance, which directly correlates with crash risk. This is one of the more predictive individual factors because it reflects ongoing operational decisions, not one-time events.

13. Crash History

Total reportable crashes, broken down by severity: fatal, injury, and tow-away. Raw crash counts need to be normalized against fleet size and miles traveled to be meaningful, but any fatal crash warrants attention regardless of fleet size. FMCSA's crash data covers the most recent 24 months and includes crashes reported by law enforcement, whether or not the carrier was at fault.

14. Safety Scores

FMCSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS) calculates scores across seven Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICS): Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Driver Fitness. These scores percentile-rank a carrier against peers with similar inspection volume. Elevated BASIC scores — particularly in Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator — are among the strongest predictors of future crash involvement.

Compliance & Enforcement

These factors capture a carrier's relationship with the regulatory system. They often reveal history that the carrier's current data might not show.

15. MCS-150 Compliance

Carriers are required to update their MCS-150 registration data every two years (biennially). Failure to do so is a simple compliance check, but it's telling. A carrier that can't be bothered to file a routine update is more likely to have other compliance issues. It also means their self-reported data (fleet size, mailing address, operation type) may be stale.

16. Revocation History

Has this carrier had authority revoked in the past? Voluntary revocations (carrier chose to shut down) are different from involuntary revocations (FMCSA forced a shutdown), but both are relevant. A carrier operating on a re-granted authority after a prior revocation carries more uncertainty than one with a clean history.

17. Insurance Rejections

When an insurer files proof of coverage with FMCSA, the filing can be rejected for various reasons — incorrect information, insufficient coverage, or filing errors. Occasional rejections happen and may reflect administrative mistakes. A pattern of rejections suggests either a carrier providing false information to insurers or insurers having difficulty underwriting the carrier.

18. Out-of-Service Orders

Federal out-of-service orders are the most serious enforcement action short of criminal prosecution. An OOS order means FMCSA has determined the carrier poses an imminent hazard to public safety and has ordered them to cease operations. Any history of OOS orders is a significant risk signal, even if the order has been lifted.

19. Authority Changes

Recent changes to a carrier's authority type, status, or scope can indicate instability. A carrier that recently downgraded their authority, had a change forced by FMCSA, or shows a flurry of recent modifications may be in a period of transition — and transition periods correlate with elevated risk.

How the Score Works

Each of the 19 factors is evaluated and contributes to an overall risk score on a 0-100 scale. The score maps to four tiers:

• Low Risk (0-30): The carrier shows strong performance across authority, insurance, safety, and compliance factors. No significant red flags in any category.
• Moderate Risk (31-50): The carrier is generally compliant but shows some areas of concern — perhaps a thin inspection history, a recent insurance change, or an elevated OOS rate in one category.
• Elevated Risk (51-70): Multiple risk signals are present. The carrier may have coverage gaps, above-average OOS rates, compliance deficiencies, or a combination of moderate concerns across categories.
• High Risk (71+): Serious risk indicators are present. This could mean significant safety performance problems, chronic insurance instability, enforcement history, or patterns consistent with carriers that have historically been involved in major incidents.

Hard-Fail Rules

Some conditions are serious enough to override the scoring formula entirely. Regardless of how a carrier performs on the other 18 factors, certain findings trigger an automatic high-risk classification:

• No active operating authority — the carrier isn't legally allowed to operate
• Underinsured — insurance on file is below FMCSA-required minimums for the carrier's operation type
• Zero power units — no fleet reported, potential shell company
• Active federal out-of-service order — FMCSA has ordered the carrier to cease operations
• Multiple involuntary revocations — repeated FMCSA-initiated authority revocations within a configurable time window

All hard-fail rules are configurable — you can enable or disable each one and adjust thresholds to match your risk appetite.

What We Don't Score

Transparency about methodology means being honest about limitations. The risk score is based on publicly available federal and state data. It does not account for:

• Shipper or broker relationships — we don't know who a carrier hauls for or their payment history
• Cargo claims history — cargo loss and damage data isn't in FMCSA records
• Driver turnover — no public data source tracks this reliably
• Financial health — revenue, profit margins, and debt loads aren't public for most carriers

The score tells you how a carrier looks through the lens of regulatory compliance, safety performance, and insurance stability. It's a critical piece of the diligence picture, but it's not the only piece.

Why Transparency Matters

Most carrier scoring systems are black boxes. You get a number or a letter grade with no explanation of what went into it. That makes it hard to know whether the score is actually measuring something relevant to your risk — or just recycling the same data you could have looked up yourself.

We publish our factor list because we think you should be able to evaluate the methodology, not just the output. If you disagree that insurer stability matters, or you think authority age is weighted too heavily for your use case, that's a legitimate perspective — and one you can only have if you know what's in the model.

The 19 factors aren't static, either. As FMCSA data quality improves (particularly with MOTUS modernizing the registration infrastructure) and as we incorporate additional data sources like Secretary of State business entity records, the model will evolve. The goal is always the same: surface the signals that actually predict which carriers are likely to cause problems, and make those signals accessible to the people making underwriting and vetting decisions.