These are not ghost registrations. Nearly the entire cohort held coverage that reached the federal record at some point, and most of it ended recently: this is churn at the small end of the market, not carriers that never engaged with the filing system.
| State | Active authority | No BI/PD filing | Share | Power units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 9,335 | 807 | 8.64% | 1,887 |
| Florida | 16,060 | 1,136 | 7.07% | 2,078 |
| California | 44,417 | 3,107 | 7% | 7,330 |
| Texas | 31,357 | 2,113 | 6.74% | 6,076 |
| Louisiana | 2,063 | 128 | 6.2% | 364 |
| North Carolina | 11,406 | 700 | 6.14% | 1,706 |
| Delaware | 1,102 | 67 | 6.08% | 111 |
| Rhode Island | 858 | 52 | 6.06% | 114 |
| Nevada | 2,702 | 155 | 5.74% | 412 |
| Georgia | 12,377 | 701 | 5.66% | 1,558 |
| Arizona | 5,672 | 315 | 5.55% | 823 |
| Mississippi | 3,026 | 162 | 5.35% | 353 |
| South Carolina | 5,240 | 270 | 5.15% | 515 |
| West Virginia | 1,188 | 61 | 5.13% | 158 |
| Indiana | 9,414 | 473 | 5.02% | 1,367 |
| Virginia | 6,673 | 335 | 5.02% | 542 |
| New York | 5,983 | 290 | 4.85% | 722 |
| Alabama | 4,033 | 194 | 4.81% | 470 |
| Ohio | 14,156 | 630 | 4.45% | 2,422 |
| Connecticut | 2,785 | 122 | 4.38% | 282 |
| Maryland | 6,285 | 274 | 4.36% | 668 |
| Pennsylvania | 15,192 | 650 | 4.28% | 1,865 |
| Utah | 3,151 | 135 | 4.28% | 430 |
| Tennessee | 6,316 | 269 | 4.26% | 761 |
| Kentucky | 3,897 | 164 | 4.21% | 565 |
| Massachusetts | 4,473 | 179 | 4% | 443 |
| Oklahoma | 3,681 | 146 | 3.97% | 505 |
| Colorado | 4,734 | 184 | 3.89% | 405 |
| Arkansas | 2,478 | 95 | 3.83% | 167 |
| Michigan | 6,367 | 241 | 3.79% | 511 |
| Oregon | 3,936 | 147 | 3.73% | 506 |
| Missouri | 6,360 | 233 | 3.66% | 636 |
| Illinois | 19,001 | 676 | 3.56% | 2,965 |
| New Hampshire | 1,013 | 35 | 3.46% | 116 |
| Washington | 7,976 | 270 | 3.39% | 771 |
| New Mexico | 2,311 | 78 | 3.38% | 192 |
| Minnesota | 7,210 | 232 | 3.22% | 547 |
| Wisconsin | 5,686 | 182 | 3.2% | 542 |
| Idaho | 2,723 | 84 | 3.08% | 220 |
| Vermont | 519 | 16 | 3.08% | 32 |
| Maine | 946 | 28 | 2.96% | 129 |
| Kansas | 3,757 | 104 | 2.77% | 344 |
| Wyoming | 1,343 | 36 | 2.68% | 106 |
| Nebraska | 3,699 | 94 | 2.54% | 247 |
| Montana | 1,362 | 33 | 2.42% | 59 |
| North Dakota | 1,808 | 37 | 2.05% | 120 |
| Iowa | 5,544 | 103 | 1.86% | 328 |
| South Dakota | 1,824 | 27 | 1.48% | 92 |
States with fewer than 500 carriers holding authority are included in the full CSV but omitted from the table, where small denominators make the percentages noisy.
A carrier is counted when all of the following hold in the public FMCSA record, which we mirror daily: an active USDOT registration; active motor carrier operating authority; domiciled in the 50 states or DC; fewer than 50 power units; and no BI/PD insurance filing currently in effect.
“No active filing on record” is not the same claim as “operating uninsured.” Filing data lags reality, and since May 2026 FMCSA’s transition to its MOTUS systems has left part of current filing flow unpublished, so some counted carriers hold coverage whose filing has not yet reached the public record. The number measures the state of the federal record, and it is the record that regulators, brokers and shippers rely on.
Carriers with 50 or more power units are excluded because FMCSA grants self-insurance authority to carriers with sufficient financial resources and publishes no self-insurance dataset, which makes self-insured large fleets indistinguishable from uninsured ones. Mexico- and Canada-domiciled carriers are excluded because cross-border filing works differently; including Mexico-domiciled carriers alone would inflate the count by roughly a third.
Source data: FMCSA census, licensing and insurance datasets, mirrored daily. Cite as “NativeBase analysis of FMCSA data” with a link to this page. The state-level CSV is free to reuse with attribution. For row-level data or methodology questions, get in touch. Track any carrier’s filings, renewal estimates and safety record in Market Tracker.