Public data policy
How the freight company directory works
Source hierarchy
The FMCSA Company Census controls legal identity, entity classification, USDOT status, business geography, reported operations, fleet and cargo fields. The FMCSA MOTUS registration file adds disclosed operating-authority and insurance observations. When the sources disagree, Company Census controls identity and MOTUS controls authority and insurance fields; the conflict is retained for review. First-party company websites may establish website destinations and marketed services. Reviewed company claims may add company-confirmed presentation fields.
Facts, normalization and derived signals
FreightTotals preserves official-source facts, labels normalized values, and separately labels derived specialization signals. Equipment quantities are sums of explicit FMCSA owned, term-leased and trip-leased fields. A specialization signal is normalized from an explicitly reported cargo category; it is not a claim that the company advertises that service.
Unknown information stays unknown
A freight broker or freight forwarder classification supports only the matching brokerage or forwarding category. It does not prove LTL, full truckload, reefer, flatbed, drayage or another marketed service. Missing facts remain absent. A mailing or FMCSA business address is not described as a service location or service area without separate evidence.
Authority status
“Authority status checked” means the displayed public FMCSA snapshot was checked on the stated date. It is not a safety rating, endorsement or guarantee. Check the current FMCSA Licensing & Insurance record before relying on authority status.
Organic ordering
Organic order uses exact name or authority match, confirmed service and location relevance, current public status, profile completeness, source confidence, freshness and stable name/ID tie-breaking. Related-company links use overlapping confirmed services, entity types, reported cargo and equipment, fleet band and geography. Premium status, sponsorship, campaign spend, Stripe state, claims and Quote Funnel plans are excluded.
Indexability
A record may be searchable while its profile remains noindex,follow. Indexable profiles require stable identity, useful public geography, active disclosed authority, direct public contact, provenance and no unresolved conflict. Service-state pages require at least 12 records across at least three cities. Service-city pages require at least eight records. Pages below those thresholds remain browseable but noindex and are omitted from sitemaps.
History and exports
Each successful refresh compares a normalized observation with the prior one and records only actual changes. Monthly company and market snapshots are retained separately from current publication rows. Internal proof exports include eligible public, normalized, derived and verified facts; raw first-party content and visitor data are excluded.
Claims, corrections and paid placement
Claims and corrections enter a private review queue and never directly overwrite the live record. Claiming and correcting are free. Premium profiles enhance approved company presentation; sponsored placements appear in a separate labeled region. Neither changes official facts or organic order.
Updates
The pipeline reads a bounded, nationally balanced subset of the current FMCSA sources and carries previously tracked USDOT entities forward so deactivations are not erased. Publication is staged and guarded against empty or dramatic drops. A failed run retains the previous valid snapshot.