What the federal register says this month
Anyone who arranges to move your car has to be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and that register is public. In October 2026 it lists 25,081 brokers with active authority and 328,575 common carriers.
This is the first month I have taken this reading, so there is no change to report yet. From next month I will say what moved.
| What | How many |
|---|---|
| Brokers with active authority | 25,081 |
| Broker applications pending | 8,053 |
| Brokers facing revocation | 617 |
| Active brokers with the required bond on file | 24,970 |
| Active brokers required to hold a bond with none on file | 92 |
| Common carriers with active authority | 328,575 |
| Contract carriers with active authority | 68,919 |
The bond is the part that protects you
A broker has to carry a surety bond before it can legally arrange your shipment. If the broker takes your money and the car never moves, that bond is what a claim goes against. In October 2026, 24,970 of the 25,081 active brokers have one on file, about 100 percent, and 92 are required to hold one and have not filed it.
Before you pay anyone a deposit, look them up. The register is free and public, and it takes a minute.
Where the brokers are
Brokerage is concentrated. TX has 3,057, CA has 2,688, FL has 2,069, IL has 1,597, OH has 949.
How these numbers were produced
- Read from FMCSA's licensing and insurance file on the federal open data portal, dataset 6eyk-hxee, on 2026-10-04.
- FMCSA registers brokers and carriers to move property and does not record what they haul, so these are property brokers and carriers, the pool car shipping companies are drawn from, not a count of car shipping companies.
- The file carries no history, so the month-to-month movement is measured between snapshots taken by Car Shipping Hawaii, one a month.
- Counts are taken with the same queries every month. Any figure that moves more than a quarter in one month holds for review instead of publishing.
Sources
Using this study
This study and its images are licensed CC BY 4.0: use any figure, chart or image with credit to Car Shipping Hawaii and a link to this page. Underlying counts, the exclusion list and lane-level tables are available to reporters on request.
Camilo Jaime, Founder, Car Shipping Hawaii · info@carshippinghawaii.com · (808) 378-7540