A huge number of people in the United States every day need to move, transport things or goods. Each of them thinks, first of all, about security. There are other reasons to hire reliable transport:
- speed of delivery of goods or passengers;
- safety of cargo and passengers;
- fewer problems along the way.
To ensure all this, the shipper should carefully choose a carrier. It must have the legal right to transport cargo or passengers between states or to other countries. This opportunity is available to the owners of a special number.
What does the USDOT number mean
In the United States there is an organization called the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration). It is part of the country’s Ministry of Transport. The name of the organization suggests that it is concerned about the safety of freight transport. It issues a unique identification number for each company so that the government can track the movement of freight transport around the country. This makes it possible, if necessary, to quickly calculate the truck with which something can happen.
Without a USDOT number, no one truck is allowed to drive between states. If you hire an unregistered car, you risk to run into scammers. The identification number protects customers from unscrupulous carriers.
USDOT is also needed for those companies that carry out transportation in the Intrastat system in the following cases:
- Transport dangerous goods on a scale at which a security permit is required.
- The total weight of the trucks exceeds 10,000 pounds.
- The means of transport takes 8 people for a fee or 15 people free of charge.
The innovation was so liked by Americans that most states decided to require such registration for all modes of transport.
The number must be fixed on the car.
What does the identification number give the employer of the transport
Checking the USDOT number is easy on the official FMCSA website. There you will find all the information about the companies:
- what types of cargo is engaged;
- the number is active or not;
- identification and contact details of the company;
- number of registered cars;
- number of drivers of the company.
After this information, a table is shown in which the results of inspections in the company over the past two years are recorded. In each consecutive line you will find:
- Number of inspections of cars, drivers.
- The number of inspections, after which the company received the status of «Not in operation». If there are a lot of violations, refrain from choosing.
- The percentage of checks that caused the status «Not working».
- In the fourth line, you will find the average percentage of inspections of companies in the country that led to the status «Not working».
And one more piece of information that may be more important than all the others. It’s a safety rating. It has three stages:
- Satisfactory, when there are no significant violations.
- Conditional, indicating one or more violations.
- Unsatisfactory, when there are a lot of violations.
Which one to choose, you probably guessed.