{"slug":"us-motor-carriers","domain":"travel","title":"US motor carriers: who is hauling, and whose fleet grew","summary":"The federal motor carrier census, mirrored weekly: look a carrier up, list new fleets, or find the ones that added trucks.","help":"us-motor-carriers: the federal motor carrier census, as JSON.\n\nRETURNS\n  One JSON object on stdout. `us-motor-carriers` with no arguments prints all\n  three studies.\n\nTHREE QUESTIONS\n  `search` looks one carrier up by name — fleet size, drivers, address, and\n  when it registered.\n\n  `list` is every fleet that entered the register since a date. New trucking\n  businesses.\n\n  `changed` is carriers whose fleet changed size. A fleet adding trucks is a\n  fleet with work it cannot cover.\n\n`changed` ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE WE KEEP THE HISTORY\n  The census publishes its fleet counts as TEXT and keeps no history of its\n  own, so nothing upstream can answer \"who added trucks\". This reads a local\n  mirror, refreshed weekly, and the comparison exists only because the previous\n  week was written down.\n\nSELF-REPORTED COUNTS ARE NOT ALL TRUE\n  Nothing validates a carrier's own filing. One claims 1,299,987 trucks against\n  two drivers, and 1,208 of them report more than fifty trucks per driver.\n  Those come back with `counts_implausible: true` and sort LAST — marked, never\n  dropped, because the carrier is real and only the number is wrong. Do not\n  rank on `power_units` without reading that field.\n\nTHE ANSWERS ARE INSTANT, AND THEY ARE ABOUT THE LAST REFRESH\n  Every one carries `mirrored_at` and `carriers_held`. \"No new carriers\" read\n  out of a stale mirror is a different claim, and a wrong one.\n\nStudies:\n  search  \u003ccompany\u003e\n      look a carrier up by name — fleet size, drivers, address and when it registered\n  list    \u003cregistered_since\u003e\n      every fleet that entered the federal register since a date — new trucking businesses\n  changed \u003csince\u003e\n      carriers whose fleet changed size since a date — growth the source cannot report itself\n\nJSON to stdout, so it composes: pipe to `jq` to pick a field, or `\u003e /tmp/…` to keep it.\nRun a study with no arguments — `us-motor-carriers search` — to see what it takes.\n","example_command":"us-motor-carriers search swift","example_output":"","cost_class":"upstream-fetch","tier":"metered","billing_items":["signals_carriers","signals_fleet_changes"],"price_per_1k_calls":1.5,"price_is_from":true,"status":"available","commands":["us-motor-carriers"],"studies":[{"call":"search","about":"look a carrier up by name — fleet size, drivers, address and when it registered","args":[{"name":"company","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"legal or trading name, partial"},{"name":"dot_number","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"exact USDOT number, if you have it"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters, the carrier's physical address"},{"name":"min_power_units","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks — the usual way to skip owner-operators"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many carriers"}]},{"call":"list","about":"every fleet that entered the federal register since a date — new trucking businesses","args":[{"name":"registered_since","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"YYYY-MM-DD — every fleet that entered the register since then"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters"},{"name":"min_power_units","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks — 5 or more is a fleet rather than one driver"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many carriers"}]},{"call":"changed","about":"carriers whose fleet changed size since a date — growth the source cannot report itself","args":[{"name":"since","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"min_delta","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks gained, default 1; a negative number finds fleets that SHRANK"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many changes"}]}],"default_enabled":false,"first_seen":"2026-09-28T05:09:33.097255Z","enabled":false}