When a moving company says it's "federally rated Satisfactory," ask when. We checked the rating date for every rated interstate household goods mover in America — all 1,850 of them. The median rating is 18 years old. 78.3% are ten years old or more. Most of these companies were examined before the smartphone existed, and never again.
The federal safety rating is the closest thing this industry has to a seal of approval: FMCSA examines a carrier's records and operations and issues Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory. Only 9.5% of licensed household goods movers hold one at all — we've written about that. What nobody mentions is that the badge doesn't expire, and almost nobody gets re-examined.
Since then, that company may have changed owners, fleets, drivers, insurers and standards — the rating rides along untouched. There is no renewal cycle, no expiry date, and re-reviews are triggered mainly by trouble. So the paradox: the movers with the freshest federal examinations are often the ones that recently gave the government a reason to look.
What to do with this: treat a rating's date as part of the rating. Recent roadside inspection history — which we publish for every carrier — tells you far more about the truck showing up at your door than a rating older than your mortgage.
Method: SAFETY_RATING and SAFETY_RATING_DATE fields, FMCSA Company Census File, filtered to active interstate for-hire household goods carriers with 1+ power unit (n=19,524; rated subset n=1,850); dates parsed and aged against 2026. Retrieved 14 August 2026.