The unrated majority
97.6% of active US motor carriers have no FMCSA safety rating at all. Not a poor one — none. We analysed all 2,237,147 active carriers to see who has a rating, who does not, and what predicts the difference.
By the Fleetive Compliance Team · Published 2026-09-11 · Source: FMCSA Motor Carrier Census (public)
have no rating on record
2,183,901 of 2,237,147 active carriers have never been assigned one.
carriers are rated
Just 2.38% of the active population.
gap by fleet size
1% of 1–2 truck carriers are rated, against 34.3% of 100+ fleets.
Unrated does not mean unsafe
A safety rating is the output of a compliance review. Most carriers have never had one, so they have no rating. That is a fact about how many reviews FMCSA conducts — not a judgement about the carrier. Any reading of this study that treats the 97.6% as a safety problem has misread it.
Of the few that are rated
Among the 53,246 carriers carrying a rating, Conditional is far more common than most carriers expect — roughly one in five — while Unsatisfactory is vanishingly rare, because an Unsatisfactory rating generally ends the ability to operate.
| Rating | Carriers | Of rated |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfactory | 41,230 | 77.4% |
| Conditional | 11,247 | 21.1% |
| Unsatisfactory | 769 | 1.4% |
Rating likelihood tracks fleet size almost perfectly
This is the finding that explains the headline. The chance a carrier has been rated rises at every step up in fleet size — from 1% at one and two trucks to 34.3% above a hundred. FMCSA prioritises reviews by risk and exposure, and a bigger fleet presents more of both. We measure the pattern here; we do not claim to describe the selection process behind it.
| Fleet size | Rated | Active carriers | % rated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 trucks | 15,815 | 1,516,075 | 1% |
| 3–7 trucks | 14,282 | 339,200 | 4.2% |
| 8–20 trucks | 11,222 | 96,279 | 11.7% |
| 21–100 trucks | 8,843 | 39,807 | 22.2% |
| 101+ trucks | 2,935 | 8,569 | 34.3% |
American trucking is smaller than people think
The reason the unrated share is so large is that the carrier population itself is overwhelmingly tiny. 1,182,881 active carriers — 52.9% of the entire country — run exactly one truck. 67.8% run two or fewer. Fleets above fifty trucks are 0.8% of carriers.
| Power units | Carriers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 truck | 1,182,881 | 52.9% |
| 2 trucks | 333,194 | 14.9% |
| 3–5 | 281,901 | 12.6% |
| 6–10 | 102,809 | 4.6% |
| 11–50 | 80,467 | 3.6% |
| 51–500 | 16,247 | 0.7% |
| 501+ | 2,431 | 0.1% |
Method
- Source.
- FMCSA Motor Carrier Census (data.transportation.gov, dataset az4n-8mr2). Public, no authentication.
- Population.
- All records with
status_code = 'A'— 2,237,147 active carriers. - Rated test.
safety_rating IS NOT NULL. A carrier is 'rated' if the FMCSA census carries any safety_rating value (Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory). A null rating means FMCSA has never assigned one — most commonly because the carrier has never had a compliance review.- Fleet size.
- From
power_units. Carriers reporting zero power units are excluded from the size tables, so those rows sum to less than the total. - Query date.
- 2026-09-11. The census updates continuously; re-running later will not reproduce these counts exactly.
Free to cite with attribution to Fleetive. Found a flaw in the method? Tell us and we will correct the page.
Related: our MCS-150 Compliance Index 2026, which found 44.9% of the same population overdue on their biennial update.
Questions about this study
- Does "no safety rating" mean a carrier is unsafe?
- No, and this is the most important thing to understand about the number. A safety rating is the output of an FMCSA compliance review. Most carriers have never had one, so they have no rating — that is a fact about how many reviews FMCSA conducts, not a judgement about the carrier. An unrated carrier may be excellent or poor; the record simply does not say.
- Then why does it matter?
- Because brokers, shippers and insurers routinely ask for a safety rating, and many carriers do not realise that not having one is the normal case rather than a red flag. It also means CSA BASIC scores and inspection history — which nearly every carrier does have — carry the weight that a rating does not.
- Why are small carriers so much less likely to be rated?
- Rating likelihood tracks fleet size almost perfectly: 1% of one- and two-truck carriers are rated against 34.3% of fleets over 100 trucks. FMCSA prioritises reviews by risk and exposure, and a larger fleet presents more of both. This study measures the pattern; it does not establish the selection process behind it.
- What does "Conditional" mean, and is it common?
- Conditional means a compliance review found deficiencies that had not yet caused, but could cause, inadequate safety management controls. Among carriers that have a rating at all, it is more common than most expect: 21.1% — roughly one in five.
- Can I reproduce these numbers?
- Yes. The method section names the dataset, the exact filter and the query date, and the underlying snapshot is committed with the page. Anyone can run the same query against the public FMCSA census.