Guide

Operating authority, explained

Last updated 2026-08-05

Operating authority is the federal government's answer to a narrow question: is this company permitted to be paid to transport regulated cargo across state lines? For a moving company, it is the difference between a business and an unlawful one. Everything else on a carrier's record — insurance filings, safety rating, complaint history — sits downstream of it.

It is granted per class of cargo. Authority to haul general freight is not authority to move households. A carrier can legitimately hold one and not the other, which is why this site checks specifically for household goods authority rather than for authority in general.

What a carrier has to do to hold it

Broadly, three things, and all three are continuing obligations rather than one-time steps:

• Apply and be granted the authority for the relevant cargo class, having registered and received a USDOT number.
• Keep the required insurance on file with FMCSA. Not merely hold a policy — the insurer has to file proof with FMCSA, and the filing has to stay current. More on the filings.
• Designate a process agent in every state it operates in (the BOC-3 filing), so it can be legally served.

Let any of these lapse and the authority does not survive it. That is the mechanism behind most inactive authority: not a dramatic enforcement action, but an insurance filing that expired and was never replaced.

The statuses you’ll see, and what each means

Active

Operating authority for household goods is active in FMCSA’s Licensing & Insurance system.

Revoked

FMCSA revoked this operating authority. The effective date is shown where the revocation record supplies one.

Not active

The operating authority is on file but is not active. This includes authority that was voluntarily surrendered or allowed to lapse.

Application pending

An application for operating authority is on file and has not yet been granted.

Revoked vs. voluntarily surrendered

Both end up as authority that is no longer active, and both mean the company cannot currently perform interstate household goods moves for hire. But they describe genuinely different events, and lumping them together would be unfair to a lot of ordinary businesses:

• Involuntary revocation is FMCSA withdrawing the authority — commonly for a lapsed insurance filing, sometimes following enforcement.
• Voluntary surrender is the carrier handing it back. Firms retire, get acquired, or move out of interstate work, and this is the orderly way to do it.

Where FMCSA's revocation record distinguishes the two, we show which one applies and its effective date, rather than flattening both into a single ominous label.

Why so many carriers show as not currently authorized

Of the 18,400 carriers in this registry, 10,049 do not currently hold active household goods authority. That proportion surprises people, and it isn't evidence of mass wrongdoing. The registry deliberately includes carriers that previously held authority, because the useful question is often "what happened to this company?" — and a page that simply didn't exist for a defunct carrier couldn't answer it.

Moving is a high-turnover industry. Small carriers register, operate for a few years and stop. Insurance lapses. Companies are bought. Most inactive authority reflects an ordinary business ending, not a scam.

It matters when a company with inactive authority is still selling moves. That is the case worth catching before you pay a deposit, and it is checkable in a minute.

How to check it yourself

1. Get the carrier's USDOT number.
2. Look it up in FMCSA's Licensing & Insurance system, which is the authoritative record for current authority status.
3. Confirm the authority is active and covers household goods.
4. Read the SAFER snapshot's "Operating Authority Status" line with care — it names the class of authority on record and is not a current-status field.