Unlike contractors, trucking has one national registry: every for-hire or interstate motor carrier registers with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and receives a USDOT number. The FMCSA Company Census we ingest currently holds 2,206,122 registered carriers — the closest thing any industry we cover has to a complete national roster.
The state distribution is lopsided in instructive ways.
The state ranking
California — 328,091 registered carriers. Texas — 193,024. Florida — 156,263. New York — 129,219. Georgia — 107,662. Pennsylvania — 81,994. Michigan — 77,914. Minnesota — 75,882. Wisconsin — 65,454. Illinois — 55,759.
The top five states hold roughly 41% of all registered carriers. Minnesota and Wisconsin punch far above their population — upper-midwest freight corridors and agricultural hauling put more registered carriers in Minnesota than in Illinois.
What the registry does and doesn't tell you
Census entries are self-reported on the carrier's MCS-150 filing and include everything from national fleets to a farmer with one grain truck, active and inactive alike. Registration is not a safety endorsement, and a USDOT number is not an operating authority — those are separate FMCSA grants.
What it does give you: legal name, DBA, physical address, fleet size, and the carrier's self-described operation — federally filed, publicly checkable, and updated as carriers refile. Our carrier records, including the towing and household-goods moving segments we break out, come from this census and are checked against it. If you sell to fleets — insurance, factoring, parts, compliance software — the census is the honest denominator of your market, state by state.