On May 14, 2026, FMCSA retired its legacy registration systems and moved to a new USDOT Registration System called MOTUS. The FMCSA Portal and the Unified Registration System were shut down permanently on that date, and MOTUS is intended over time to become the single hub through which federal, state, and industry users reach registration and safety data.
Since then, brokers have been running into a problem that looks like a data error and is actually a systems transition: the same carrier can show active authority in one place and a problem in another.
If you are a broker who has been told “that out-of-service flag is wrong, check MOTUS,” or a carrier whose loads have dried up because brokers are reading a stale record, this guide explains what is happening and what to do about it.
What actually changed
MOTUS replaced the registration systems, not every public-facing lookup. SAFER still exists and FMCSA still points users to it for checking a USDOT number and authority status. That is the source of the confusion: two surfaces, one of which is now downstream of a system that was rebuilt.
FMCSA also temporarily suspended enforcement of biennial update requirements and the inactivation of USDOT numbers for entities that had not completed migration, to limit disruption during the changeover. So some records that would normally have gone inactive have not, and some that changed in MOTUS may not be reflected everywhere a broker looks.
What carriers are reporting
The following comes from carriers describing their own experience on r/OwnerOperators, not from an FMCSA statement. Treat it as field reports rather than official guidance, and verify against the agency before acting on any individual case.
Status mismatches in both directions. One carrier: “My DOT number is showing active on Motus but Out of service on Safer. Brokers are saying you are out of service on safer and need to get that active but FMCSA is saying the brokers need to check on Motus.”
Asymmetric syncing. Several carriers report that negative changes propagate quickly while reinstatements do not: “The out of service does sync very fast, which is like laughing on your face. After they fix your motus issue, the safer will still show OOS and brokers will still refuse to book you.” Some describe waiting months for a manual correction.
An insurance-minimum misclassification. A widely reported bug has some standard freight carriers showing a $5,000,000 insurance requirement instead of the usual $750,000, apparently by being classified as hazmat or passenger carriers. Because the carrier’s filed policy then looks insufficient, authority can display as pending or inactive. One operator reported “15 trucks parked for nearly a week because of this.” Another running a cargo van, required to carry $300,000, found the same $5,000,000 figure against his record and his authority suspended.
Escalation through congressional offices. More than one carrier reported that contacting a congressional representative was what finally got a record manually corrected, after calls to the agency did not resolve it.
What this means for brokers
The instinct to treat any out-of-service flag as an absolute stop is correct and should not change. What changes is the follow-up.
A flag is now a question, not always a conclusion. If a carrier tells you the flag is a transition artifact, that is a claim worth ten minutes rather than dismissal, because it is sometimes true right now in a way it was not before May 2026.
Verify in the authoritative system, and record which one you used. If two systems disagree, your file should say which you relied on, what it showed, and when. “Authority active” with no source is a weak record in normal circumstances and a worthless one during a period when sources conflict.
Do not accept a screenshot from the carrier as resolution. A carrier showing you a MOTUS screen proving they are fine has an obvious interest, and screenshots are trivially edited. Check it yourself.
Be careful about the inverse error. The transition is also cover for fraud. “That out-of-service flag is just the MOTUS glitch” is now an available excuse for a carrier that is genuinely out of service. The existence of real data problems does not mean any particular flag is a data problem. If the carrier is out of service in the system you can verify, do not move the load.
What this means for carriers
If your authority is showing incorrectly:
- Check both systems and document what each shows, with dates and screenshots for your own records.
- Call the FMCSA contact center and, per multiple carrier reports, push back if you are told simply to file an MCS-150 update. Carriers report that this does not resolve the misclassification issue and that a ticket has to be raised.
- Escalate to your congressional representative if it persists. Several carriers credit this with resolving cases that calls did not.
- Tell your brokers proactively, with documentation, before they discover it on their own and quietly stop offering you freight.
Why this is worse than a normal outage
Two structural reasons this lingers.
Brokers have no incentive to move first. A broker who keeps checking the old surface and refuses a carrier that is actually fine loses nothing visible. A broker who trusts the new surface and books a carrier that is actually out of service owns a catastrophic problem. Faced with that asymmetry, the rational broker over-refuses, and the cost lands entirely on carriers.
Nobody in the middle is accountable for the discrepancy. The carrier cannot fix the record. The broker cannot verify which system is authoritative for a given field. The agency is managing a migration. That gap is where weeks of parked trucks come from.
The vetting principle underneath
This episode is a useful illustration of something that is true even when the systems are behaving: a status field is a claim made by a system at a point in time, not a fact about the world.
That is why a vetting record should capture the value, the source, and the timestamp rather than a conclusion. A file that says “authority active per MOTUS, checked 2026-09-12 14:10 UTC” survives a later dispute about which system was right. A file that says “carrier vetted, OK” does not.
See how to document carrier vetting for what that record should contain, and MC number vs DOT number for why registration status and authority status routinely disagree even without a migration in progress.
A note on this page
The transition dates and the retirement of the legacy systems are documented by FMCSA and by transportation counsel writing about the change. The specific failure modes described above are drawn from carriers reporting their own experiences publicly, and individual cases vary. If your authority status is disputed, verify with FMCSA directly rather than relying on this page or on any third-party lookup, including ours.