How to use MC Look Up
A task-based manual: run your first lookup, decode every panel on a carrier page, work the pre-booking checklist, and manage your plan. Built for people who clear carriers for a living.
Your first search in 60 seconds
One search box, three input types. Here’s the fastest path from “who is this carrier?” to a scored record.
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1
Grab the strongest identifier you have
Best is the USDOT number — digits only, like
2211456. It maps to exactly one record and is never reissued. Second best is the MC number, also digits only, like771203. Save the legal name for when you have neither. -
2
Drop it in the search box and submit
Pick the matching field type before submitting. Picked the wrong one? No harm — when a DOT query comes back empty we quietly rerun it as an MC query, and the reverse, before reporting a miss.
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3
Name searches: strip the decoration
Federal registration stores the bare legal entity, so
ROADRUNNER FREIGHTwill hit whereRoadrunner Freight, Inc.misses. Leave out commas, periods, and suffixes, and use the registered name rather than the DBA painted on the truck. -
4
Land on the carrier page
The result is a full dossier: verdict and score up top, then risk flags, the score-breakdown table, the FMCSA record timeline, insurance filing history, shared-contact connections, and an analyst summary. The next section decodes each panel.
Shortcut: tap / from any dashboard screen and the cursor lands in the search field — no mouse required.
Reading a carrier page
Every record opens with a verdict. The panels underneath show the evidence that produced it — read them top to bottom and you’ve done a structured review.
The record supports booking: authority intact, coverage on file, no disqualifying safety pattern. Keep your normal contract terms — a green verdict is evidence, not a guarantee.
Something in the file needs a human eye. Open the risk flags and breakdown table, find the category that lost points, and decide whether it matters for this particular load.
Either the weighted deductions piled up or a hard gate tripped. Either way, the public record argues against putting freight on this authority today.
The panels, in order
Scoring runs in five layers: classification, reject gates, weighted deductions, pattern modifiers, and decision floors. Each panel on the page exposes one slice of that pipeline.
Plain-language list of every issue the engine found, worst first
Deductions by category: Safety to −35, Crashes to −30, Insurance −25, Authority −25
G1–G5 auto-reject conditions plus the chameleon pattern adjustment
Registration, MCS-150 updates, authority grants and revocations, dated
Every BMC filing: insurer, coverage class, amount, effective and cancel dates
Other registrations reusing this phone, address, or officer — with their status
A short narrative read of the whole file, generated from the evidence above
Caps that hold the verdict down when specific hazards exist, whatever the math says
Deductions are scaled by evidence volume: a two-truck outfit with a handful of inspections is penalized more gently than a large fleet showing the same percentages.
The pre-booking checklist
Six checks, two minutes, run on every carrier before the rate confirmation goes out. Each one maps to a panel on the carrier page.
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Authority live-check. Confirm status at booking time, not from last week’s notes — authority can be revoked between quote and pickup. The timeline also tells you whether this authority has been yanked and reinstated before; repeat lapses are their own warning.
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Insurance against the cargo, not the minimum. Federal floors run $750K BIPD for general freight, $5M for most hazmat, $300K for lighter non-hazmat units — but your load may be worth more than the floor. Match the filed coverage amount and class to what’s actually on the trailer, and treat a cancellation effective in the next few weeks as unresolved.
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MCS-150 freshness. The biennial update is mandatory; a filing past 24 months old means the fleet size, mileage, and contacts on record are stale, and chronic non-filing signals a back office that ignores federal paperwork. The last update date sits in the record timeline.
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Shared-identity screen. Open the connections panel. Links to active sister companies are usually benign; a phone, address, or officer shared with a revoked registration is the signature of a reincarnated operation and deserves a phone call before any tender.
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Crash trend, not crash count. Direction beats totals: two crashes in the last six months on a small fleet is a deteriorating operation, while an old cluster followed by two clean years suggests a problem that got fixed. Read events against fleet size and recency.
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Keep the receipt. Export or file the vetting result with the load record. If selection is ever challenged, a dated report showing what the public record said when you booked is the difference between documented diligence and an empty folder.
Walk-away conditions
- Authority currently revoked or under an active out-of-service order — no exceptions, no “reinstatement is processing”
- No liability filing in effect, or the certificate the carrier emailed doesn’t match what FMCSA has on file
- A connections panel showing this phone or address attached to a revoked registration
- An Unsatisfactory federal safety rating anywhere in the record
- An authority only weeks old paired with a fleet too large to have been built from scratch
- Insurers repeatedly refusing this carrier’s filings — underwriters see risk data you don’t
Accounts, limits & billing
Sign-in is passwordless — a one-time code to your email, no password to remember or leak. Pick the tier that matches your search volume.
15 lookups a day, capped at 200 a month, with 25 watchlist slots. Enough to spot-check carriers on an occasional basis, forever, with no card on file.
300 lookups a day and 3,000 a month, a 50-slot watchlist, and PDF exports for your load files. Built for a working dispatcher or single broker desk.
No search caps, 250 watchlist slots, and three seats under one bill. Sized for a brokerage vetting carriers all day across multiple desks.
Billing basics: upgrades take effect immediately, plans are month-to-month with no contract, and you can cancel from Settings without emailing anyone. Watchlisted carriers are rechecked automatically — score movement shows up as a delta the next time you open your watchlist. Need volume beyond Team, CSV batches, or API keys? Write to hello@mclookup.com.
Common questions
The answers our support inbox sends most often.
Which identifier should I search with?
Reach for the DOT number first: assigned once, never recycled, one carrier per number. The MC number resolves to the same record but only exists for carriers holding for-hire interstate authority. Use the legal name only when you have neither — and strip suffixes and punctuation when you do.
What exactly are the G1–G5 reject gates?
Five pass/fail conditions evaluated before any arithmetic: things like a revoked authority, no liability coverage on file, an active out-of-service order, or an Unsatisfactory safety rating. Trip one and the verdict is REJECT outright — strong inspection numbers can’t offset a gate. This is deliberate: some risks aren’t gradations, they’re disqualifiers.
Why did the same carrier score differently today?
Because its federal record moved. Inspections post, insurance filings take effect or cancel, and authority actions land continuously; we recompute against refreshed bulk data on roughly a 48-hour cycle. Add the carrier to your watchlist and the change arrives as a delta instead of a surprise.
Should I treat REVIEW as a soft no?
Treat it as an assignment. The engine found signals pointing both ways and is handing the call to you. Check which category took the deduction in the breakdown table — an aging crash on a solid record is a different conversation than a three-month-old authority with thin coverage. Plenty of REVIEW carriers are perfectly bookable once a human confirms the context.
My search came back empty. Now what?
Work through the likely causes: a mistyped digit, a number that was never registered, or a name that doesn’t match the registered legal entity. Retry with the DOT number if you have it, and for name searches drop everything after the core words — no “LLC”, no “Inc”, no punctuation. Carriers that registered but never activated can also return sparse records.
How does the watchlist actually work?
Hit Watch on any carrier page and that record joins your monitored set. We recheck watchlisted carriers on the regular refresh cycle; when a score moves, the watchlist shows the direction and size of the change so you can rescreen carriers you use repeatedly without re-searching them one by one.
What are the plan limits again?
Free: 15 lookups daily and 200 monthly with 25 watchlist slots. Pro ($19/month): 300 daily, 3,000 monthly, 50 slots, PDF exports. Team ($79/month): uncapped searching, 250 slots, three seats. Full comparison lives on the pricing page.
Is this an official FMCSA site?
It is not. MC Look Up is an independent, privately operated research tool with no affiliation to, endorsement from, or operation by FMCSA, the US DOT, or any government body. Everything shown traces back to public federal datasets; the scoring and verdicts layered on top are our own analysis, not an official safety determination.
Still stuck on something?
Write to us — a human reads every message and answers within a business day.
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