Original data
How long a new trucking company takes to get insured
A US motor carrier cannot legally run a load until an insurer files proof of coverage with FMCSA. Both halves of that — the authority application and the insurance filing — are public. The gap between them is not published by anyone, so we measure it: of carriers that applied for operating authority, what share is actually covered after one day, one week, three weeks, six weeks.
By the XDate Alert team — built on public FMCSA / MOTUS records and federal regulations, reviewed against primary sources.
Last updated .
Measured 2026-09-11 · 10,861 live applications
Scroll across to see every column.
| Days since applying | Applications | Insured | Share insured |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–1 days | 46 | 0 | 0% |
| 2–3 days | 760 | 38 | 5% |
| 4–7 days | 617 | 60 | 9.7% |
| 8–14 days | 2,195 | 335 | 15.3% |
| 15–21 days | 1,783 | 453 | 25.4% |
| 22–30 days | 2,288 | 829 | 36.2% |
| 31–45 days | 3,172 | 1,403 | 44.2% |
Bars are scaled to 40% for readability, not 100%. Counts exclude California, Oregon, Vermont and Connecticut, which this service does not cover, and carriers without a strong corporate entity name. They also exclude 1,237 brokers and freight forwarders: those file a surety bond rather than liability insurance, so they can never appear as “insured” in this measurement and would drag the curve down permanently.
What it says
Almost nobody buys in the first week. Of applications filed in the last four to seven days, 9.7% have an insurance filing on file. The share climbs steadily afterwards and still reaches only 44.2% by 31–45 days.
Right now 6,418 applications are more than a week old and still have nothing on file. The obvious objection is that those are abandoned filings. They are not: when we checked the current FMCSA status of that cohort, 89% were still marked Pending — live applications working through the process — and only 5% had been withdrawn.
The other half: carriers that already had insurance
Run the same measurement on carriers whose authority was suspended becausetheir insurance was cancelled, and the curve is almost unrecognisable.
Scroll across to see every column.
| Days since suspension | Carriers | Re-insured | Share re-insured |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–1 days | 86 | 78 | 90.7% |
| 2–3 days | 105 | 93 | 88.6% |
| 4–7 days | 128 | 99 | 77.3% |
| 8–14 days | 410 | 243 | 59.3% |
| 15–21 days | 326 | 193 | 59.2% |
| 22–30 days | 442 | 184 | 41.6% |
| 31–45 days | 952 | 682 | 71.6% |
These bars are scaled to 100%, unlike the ones above.
A carrier that has been through the process once and is now parked behaves nothing like a first-timer. It re-insures roughly eight times faster in the same time window — and the reason is not mysterious: the truck is off the road, every day costs money, and it already knows what a policy costs.
For anyone working this data the practical consequence is that the two groups reward opposite habits. Suspended carriers reward speed, because half of them are gone within a fortnight. New applicants reward patience, because almost none of them are ready in the first week and most are still there in the sixth.
Why it matters to anyone selling insurance
The trucking-insurance lead market competes almost entirely on speed. Vendors advertise new-venture contacts within 48 hours, and every list is sorted newest-first. This curve says that effort is aimed at the wrong moment: the carrier is not ready on day one, and by the time it is, the lists have moved on to fresher rows. It is the reason our own feed is ordered longest-waiting first rather than newest first.
Method, and what it does not show
The measurement is cross-sectional. Each day we take every live operating-authority application in our coverage area, group it by how many days have passed since it was filed, and count how many of those carriers currently have a BMC-91 amount on file. Age buckets are fixed; the counts move daily.
It therefore assumes the last six weeks of applicants behave alike. If FMCSA processing time changed sharply, that would appear here as a shift in the curve rather than as a measurement error — which is a limitation and also part of why it is worth watching. It also cannot tell you why the gap exists; the answers offered above are readings, not findings. And it measures insurance filings, which is when an insurer tells FMCSA about a policy — a carrier that bound coverage yesterday may not appear as insured until the filing lands.
The series behind it starts in May 2026, when FMCSA moved insurance and authority data to the MOTUS datasets. Earlier records exist but are too sparse to bucket, so no pre-migration comparison is offered here.
Reuse
The whole series is a CSV file — both curves, with the exclusions and caveats in the header comments. These figures are published under CC BY 4.0. Cite XDate Alert and link to this page. If you want the underlying daily series or a breakdown we have not published, ask — we would rather it were used than sat on.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take a new trucking company to get insurance?
Longer than the industry assumes. Measured on 2026-09-11 across 10,861 live operating-authority applications, only 9.7% had an insurance filing on file within the first week. By 31–45 days it reaches 44.2%, meaning roughly 56% are still uninsured six weeks after applying.
Why do so few new carriers have insurance in the first week?
This page measures the gap, not its cause, so what follows is reading rather than evidence. Plausible explanations: the FMCSA authority process itself takes weeks, so there is no deadline pressure on day one; a new venture is shopping a price it has never paid before; and some applications are speculative and never proceed. What the data does rule out is that the aged applications are simply dead — 89% of applicants still uninsured after the first week remain in 'Pending' status at FMCSA rather than withdrawn.
Do carriers that already had insurance behave the same way?
No, and the contrast is the sharpest thing on this page. Run the same measurement on carriers whose authority was suspended because their insurance was cancelled and roughly 45% are re-insured within a fortnight — about eight times the rate of a first-time applicant at the same age. A carrier that has been through the process once and is now parked knows what a policy costs and is losing money every day it sits. The two groups reward opposite habits: suspended carriers reward speed, new applicants reward patience.
Can I reuse this data?
Yes. The figures on this page are published under CC BY 4.0 — cite XDate Alert and link to this page. The underlying records are public FMCSA data; the measurement, the buckets and the daily re-check are ours.