Five red flags in a moving company's federal record

Every interstate mover leaves a paper trail with FMCSA. These are the five patterns in that data worth treating as warnings, with the numbers showing how common each one actually is.

1. FMCSA says the company is not authorized

This is the loudest flag in the record and the easiest to miss, because the company is still registered, still has a USDOT number, and still comes up in a search. 3,251 of the 9,110 companies in the household-goods registry, about 36%, are ones FMCSA's own mover search says are NOT authorized to transport or arrange household goods. People hire them anyway: 71 of those companies have household-goods complaints on file, 342 complaints in the published window, every one of them from a customer who did not check first.

2. Hostage-load complaints

Most complaint categories describe a move that went badly. Hostage Goods describes a business model: the truck is loaded, the price goes up, and your belongings are not coming off until you pay it. 529 companies in the data have at least one complaint in that category, and there are 2,589 such complaints in the published window. Loss and damage happens to good movers. A hostage-load complaint is a different kind of company, and even one on a record is worth taking seriously.

3. A price that grows after pickup

The single largest complaint category in the entire dataset is Estimates/Final Charges, with 6,760 complaints: the classic bait of a low quote that becomes a higher bill once the truck is loaded. The defense is boring and effective: a written estimate, signed before pickup, that says on its face whether it is binding. A company that will not put the word binding in writing has told you what the final bill will do.

4. The quote comes from a broker, but reads like a mover

624 companies in the registry hold broker-only authority: they sell moves and hand the work to carriers you have not met, and 565 of them report no trucks at all. That is legal, but broker-only companies average 7.1 complaints each in the published window against 0.9 for companies that run their own trucks. If the website shows trucks and crews but the docket shows broker authority and no fleet, you are not talking to the company that will hold your belongings. The distinction has its own page: moving broker vs. carrier.

5. A fresh name over an old record

2,982 of the 9,110 companies in the registry operate under a trade name different from their legal name. Usually that is ordinary branding. The pattern to watch is a company whose name is younger than its complaints: renaming does not reset a federal record, because the USDOT number and the legal name carry it forward. Every company page here shows both names and is addressed by the legal name, so a mover that rebranded away from its history is still standing next to it.

Check any company against all five in about a minute: search it by name or USDOT number, or start with how to check a mover before you pay a deposit.

Counts are FMCSA's own filings as we last read them, and cover the rolling four-year window FMCSA publishes. A complaint is an allegation filed by a member of the public, not a finding of wrongdoing.