Carrier safety ratings explained

The four statuses

Everything below was checked against the official sources at the bottom of this page on November 4, 2026. From 49 CFR 385.3:

• Satisfactory: you have adequate safety management controls in place and working.
• Conditional: your controls aren't adequate to ensure compliance, but it hasn't led to the serious results listed in 385.5.
• Unsatisfactory: your controls aren't adequate and that has led to those results, such as violations, crashes or unqualified drivers.
• Unrated: FMCSA hasn't assigned you a rating. It is not a bad mark.

Unrated is common. FMCSA's own safety fitness page says the current process reaches only a small percentage of carriers: in fiscal 2019 it did 11,671 compliance reviews against more than 567,000 active interstate carriers. Passing the new entrant safety audit does not give you a rating.

How a rating is scored

After a compliance review, FMCSA rates six factors: general (insurance and Part 390), driver (Parts 382, 383, 391), operational (Parts 392, 395), vehicle (Parts 393, 396), hazmat, and your accident rate. Each acute violation, and each pattern of a critical violation, is 1 point (hours of service patterns are 2). A factor with 0 points is Satisfactory, 1 point is Conditional, 2 or more is Unsatisfactory. Then the factors combine:

Accident factor: it only counts if you had 2 or more recordable accidents in the past 12 months. A recordable preventable accident rate over 1.5 per million miles is Unsatisfactory, or over 1.7 for carriers that stay within 100 air-miles (urban carriers). Keep your accident register accurate.

Deadlines after a bad rating

• FMCSA sends written notice within 30 days of the review. A Satisfactory rating is final on the notice date.
• A proposed rating becomes final 45 days after the notice for placarded hazmat and passenger carriers and 60 days after for everyone else (385.11).
• A final Unsatisfactory generally means you can't operate a commercial motor vehicle from day 46 or day 61, and FMCSA issues an out-of-service order. Property carriers that are making a good-faith effort to improve can get up to 60 more days (385.13).
• Federal agencies must not use carriers rated Unsatisfactory.
• A Conditional rating doesn't stop you from operating under the regulation.

How to change a rating

• Upgrade after corrective action (385.17): ask in writing at any time, with a description of what you fixed and the evidence. FMCSA decides within 30 days for hazmat and passenger carriers and 45 days for others. Asking doesn't pause the 45-day clock for hazmat and passenger carriers. A denial can be appealed within 90 days. FMCSA's pages show no fee.
• Administrative review (385.15): if you think the rating itself is wrong, ask for a review; with a proposed Unsatisfactory you should ask within 15 days, and you must ask within 90 days. The decision is final agency action.

Move fast on a proposed Unsatisfactory: fix the files, document it, and file before the 45 or 60 days run out. Our compliance setup service can help rebuild DQ files and maintenance records.

Where to see a carrier's rating

FMCSA's SAFER Company Snapshot has a Carrier Safety Rating section with the rating, its type and the rating and review dates; SMS shows ratings too. Use our FMCSA carrier lookup to pull a USDOT record. SAFER notes that the federal rating doesn't necessarily reflect a carrier's intrastate operation.

Changes ahead? FMCSA has been studying a new safety fitness method since an advance notice in August 2023 (no specific proposal) and a data notice in January 2024. As of its March 2026 report to Congress, no new rule had been proposed, so the three ratings above still apply.

Brokers check these records when they set up carriers, so a clean file helps you book. Dispatch is a simple percentage of each load, quoted for your truck. Call (747) 210-0227.

Questions carriers ask