01
Enter the USDOT
Paste any active USDOT number (e.g. 264184, Schneider National).
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DOT safety score and safety rating,
by USDOT number.
Safety rating, BASIC scores, and crash history, in one card. Paste a USDOT and get the federal safety rating, all five public BASIC measures with any acute or critical violation flagged, inspection and out-of-service totals, and crash counts (last 24 months and lifetime) with the 10 most recent crashes, pulled live from FMCSA.
Three things people mean
What is a DOT safety score?
There is no single number called the DOT safety score. When people search for one they usually mean one of three things FMCSA keeps on a carrier, and this card shows the first two.
- The safety rating. Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory, assigned only after an FMCSA compliance review. Most carriers are Not Rated because they have never been reviewed, so the absence of a rating says nothing on its own.
- The BASIC scores. Seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories under the Safety Measurement System, built from roadside inspections, violations and crashes. Five are public for property carriers. FMCSA stopped publishing the percentiles and alert thresholds under the FAST Act, so what is public is the measure itself, any acute or critical violation found in an investigation, and the inspection counts behind each category.
- The ISS score. The 1 to 100 Inspection Selection System number roadside enforcement uses to decide who gets pulled in for inspection. FMCSA does not publish it. The ISS score checker estimates it from the same public SMS data.
Step by step
How to check a DOT safety rating
Paste the USDOT number into the box at the top of this page. If you only have the company name, find the number first with the DOT number lookup. The card shows the rating, the date it was assigned, and the type and date of the last compliance review on file.
Read it alongside the BASICs, the out-of-service rates and the crash record. Not Rated is the normal state, because only a small fraction of registered carriers has ever had a compliance review. A Not Rated carrier with a high vehicle out-of-service rate is a different risk from a Not Rated carrier with clean inspections, and the rating alone will not tell them apart.
Four federal files, one card, about five seconds02
We pull the safety file
We hit the FMCSA datasets in parallel (Census for safety rating and last review, SMS BASIC scores from both the interstate and intrastate files, and the Crash File) and reconcile them on the DOT.
03
See the safety story
Federal safety rating, all 5 public BASIC measures with any acute or critical violation flagged, inspection + OOS totals, and crash counts (last 24 months + lifetime) plus the 10 most recent crashes.
The categories
What the five BASIC scores mean
- Unsafe Driving. Moving violations found at roadside: speeding, reckless driving, improper lane changes, following too closely, and handheld phone use.
- Hours of Service Compliance. Driving past the hours limits, missing or falsified records of duty status, and operating while fatigued or ill.
- Driver Fitness. Drivers without a valid CDL, a current medical certificate, or the endorsements and training the vehicle requires.
- Controlled Substances and Alcohol. Use or possession of alcohol or controlled substances by drivers, and violations of the drug and alcohol testing program.
- Vehicle Maintenance. Brakes, lights, tires and other defects found at roadside inspection, plus improper load securement.
Two more categories exist, Hazardous Materials Compliance and Crash Indicator, and neither is public. For each public category the card shows the raw measure, whether an acute or critical violation was recorded for it in an FMCSA investigation, and how many inspections carried a violation in that category. It does not show a percentile, because FMCSA no longer publishes one for property carriers.
FMCSA scores intrastate non-hazmat carriers in a separate file from interstate carriers, and most lookup tools read only the interstate file and show nothing for the rest. This card checks both and labels which population the carrier was scored in, because an intrastate carrier is measured against state-regulated, typically local operations and should not be read as an interstate fleet.
FAQ
The honest answers.
Where does the FMCSA DOT safety profile data come from?
The Native Base free DOT safety profile tool pulls live from four FMCSA datasets on data.transportation.gov: the carrier Census (Socrata az4n-8mr2) for safety rating and last compliance review, both SMS Property results files (the interstate + intrastate-hazmat file 4y6x-dmck and the intrastate non-hazmat file h9zy-gjn8, whichever one scores the carrier) for BASIC scores and inspection / out-of-service totals, and the Crash File (aayw-vxb3) for crash history with fatalities, injuries, tow-away, and federal-reportable flags. The data is never stored or modified; every lookup returns the current federal record for that USDOT number.
Why does the safety profile label some carriers “intrastate non-hazmat”?
FMCSA publishes SMS results as two separate, non-overlapping files: one covering interstate carriers plus intrastate hazmat carriers (4y6x-dmck), and a second, larger file covering intrastate non-hazmat carriers (h9zy-gjn8), roughly two-thirds of all SMS-scored carriers. Most lookup tools read only the first file and silently show nothing for intrastate carriers. The Native Base tool checks the interstate file first, falls back to the intrastate file, and labels which population the carrier belongs to, because an intrastate non-hazmat carrier is scored against a state-regulated, typically local operation and should not be read as an interstate fleet.
What are FMCSA BASIC scores and which ones does the safety profile tool show?
BASIC stands for Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, FMCSA's 7-category framework for measuring carrier safety performance under the Safety Measurement System (SMS). Five categories are publicly available and surfaced by the Native Base DOT safety profile tool: Unsafe Driving, Hours of Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances / Alcohol, and Vehicle Maintenance. Two additional categories (Hazardous Materials Compliance and Crash Indicator) are not published publicly under current FAST Act rules and therefore are not included. Each category shows the raw measure value, whether an acute or critical violation was recorded for it in an FMCSA compliance investigation, and the count of inspections with at least one violation in that category. FMCSA has not published BASIC percentiles since the FAST Act, so no public tool can show whether a category sits above the intervention threshold.
What does a “Conditional” or “Unsatisfactory” FMCSA safety rating mean?
FMCSA assigns three safety rating levels following a compliance review: Satisfactory (carrier meets safety fitness standards), Conditional (carrier did not meet one or more safety fitness standards but is still allowed to operate), and Unsatisfactory (carrier is prohibited from operating in interstate commerce, which typically results in revoked operating authority). Many carriers are listed as “Not Rated” because FMCSA has not yet conducted a compliance review on them. The Native Base DOT safety profile tool surfaces the rating, the rating date, and the type and date of the last compliance review on file.
How many DOT safety profile lookups does the Native Base free tool allow?
Without an email you get 3 full lookups a day on this tool (8 a day across all the free tools). A work email lifts that to 25 a day, with no account to create or password to set. There is also a limit of 5 per IP address per minute. Insurance agencies and brokers that need higher-volume programmatic access can request the same federal safety data via API by contacting Native Base.
Related free tools
Keep going from the same DOT number.
Check a carrier’s estimated ISS scoreISS score checker →Look up an employer’s OSHA inspection historyOSHA inspection lookup →Pull a carrier’s FMCSA census snapshot from a USDOT numberCompany census (DOT) →Pull a carrier’s insurance inspection history from a DOT numberInspection history (DOT) →
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Underwriting a trucking risk?
One safety glance is informational.
A pre-filled ACORD 163 is a workflow.
FMCSA Safety + SMS + Crash data feeds the entire Safety section of ACORD 163 plus the DOT-recordable-accidents fields on ACORD 137 and 125. If your team is keying this in by hand, we can wire it into your AMS and pre-fill the packet before the producer opens it.
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