We analysed every one of the 19,524 interstate household goods carriers licensed to move Americans' belongings across state lines. 90.5% hold no federal safety rating. 48.0% have never been stopped for a roadside inspection.
Every moving company in America advertises that it is licensed and insured. The phrase is accurate and nearly meaningless. It means the company filed for federal operating authority and carries the minimum required insurance. It says nothing about whether anyone has ever checked how the company operates.
There are two federal mechanisms that would tell you something, and both are rarer than the industry's marketing implies.
The first is a safety rating, issued only after a full compliance review of a carrier's records. Reviews are resource-intensive and triggered by complaints, crashes or poor roadside data — so most carriers never receive one. In our data, 90.5% of licensed household goods movers have no rating at all.
The second is the roadside inspection: a truck is stopped and checked, and if a defect is serious enough the vehicle is placed out of service until it is repaired. Inspections are far more common than compliance reviews. They still miss nearly half the industry.
The pattern in the data is consistent and it explains the headline. Small carriers are dramatically less likely to have been inspected — not because they are safer, but because fewer trucks on the road means fewer chances to be stopped.
| Fleet size | Carriers | Never inspected | Share | With a crash | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 trucks | 12,534 | 7,712 | 61.5% | 506 | 4.0% |
| 3–5 | 3,161 | 1,052 | 33.3% | 379 | 12.0% |
| 6–10 | 1,614 | 320 | 19.8% | 349 | 21.6% |
| 11–50 | 1,727 | 222 | 12.9% | 768 | 44.5% |
| 51+ | 488 | 70 | 14.3% | 373 | 76.4% |
Power units as reported on each carrier's most recent MCS-150 filing. "Never inspected" = no roadside inspection recorded in the FMCSA Safety Measurement System file.
Because 89% of licensed long distance movers run ten trucks or fewer, the effect on the industry total is large: the federal government has essentially no operating history for the majority of the companies it licenses to move households across the country.
Inspection coverage varies by state, driven by state enforcement capacity and by where carriers are registered rather than where they operate.
| State | Licensed movers | Never inspected | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| LA | 121 | 79 | 65.3% |
| VA | 589 | 351 | 59.6% |
| OH | 660 | 381 | 57.7% |
| FL | 1,256 | 712 | 56.7% |
| TX | 1,476 | 821 | 55.6% |
| MS | 156 | 85 | 54.5% |
| OK | 172 | 93 | 54.1% |
| MO | 452 | 244 | 54.0% |
| NC | 829 | 445 | 53.7% |
| AZ | 330 | 177 | 53.6% |
| KY | 201 | 106 | 52.7% |
| NV | 189 | 99 | 52.4% |
States with at least 100 licensed household goods carriers, ranked by the share with no inspection on record. Based on the physical address on the federal filing, which is where the business is registered — not the limit of where it operates.
Two public federal datasets, joined on USDOT number.
Carrier universe. The FMCSA Company Census File, filtered to entities that are active, interstate, for-hire, authorised for household goods, and operating at least one power unit. That yields 19,524 companies. The filter excludes intrastate-only movers, brokers holding no carrier authority, and registrants with no trucks.
Safety history. The FMCSA Safety Measurement System inspection file (716,198 carrier records) and crash file (258,353 crash records). 98.8% of our carrier set matched the inspection file.
Out-of-service rate is vehicle inspections ending in an out-of-service order, divided by total vehicle inspections. We report it only for carriers with at least five vehicle inspections (2,910 companies), because below that the percentage is dominated by sample size rather than by fleet condition.
All figures retrieved 14 August 2026. The source files are public and published on data.transportation.gov. Our filtered and joined dataset is available on request.