Data · FMCSA safety ratings · 6 minute read · October 21, 2026
1 in 5 rated dump truck haulers is Conditional or worse
97%
And 97% have no FMCSA safety rating.
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After Montgomery v. Caribe Transport, a Conditional rating is close to a deal breaker. The Transportation Intermediaries Association's white paper puts a number on it: "A recent survey of TIA members found that, post-Montgomery, 91.6% would not use a conditionally rated carrier." An Unsatisfactory rating is worse. That carrier can't operate.
So how many dump truck haulers carry one? How would you know? And could it change tomorrow?
2.9%
of dump truck haulers have an FMCSA safety rating
22.3%
of those are Conditional or Unsatisfactory
97.1%
have no FMCSA rating on record
Rated haulers
FMCSA rates a carrier Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory after a compliance review. Of 86,082 active dump truck haulers, 2,484 have one. 555 of them, 22.3%, are Conditional or Unsatisfactory.
Rated dump truck haulers by rating
Active for-hire dump truck haulers with an FMCSA rating on record.
FMCSA Company Census (az4n-8mr2), safety_rating and safety_rating_date, updated 10/19/2026
FMCSA began aiming its reviews at carriers with warning signs in 2011. Since then, 31.2% of dump truck haulers' ratings have been Conditional or worse, against 28.3% for all carriers.
The other 97%
83,598 haulers have no FMCSA rating on record. No rating means no review, not a clean one. The same TIA paper notes unrated carriers can be shut out too.
How many would rate Conditional or worse? Reviews go mostly to carriers with warning signs, so the rated group's rate is a ceiling, not an estimate. Probably thousands. Even at a tenth of the rated rate, about 1,900 haulers that most TIA members say they wouldn't use.
The unrated haulers, at a range of rates
83,598 active dump truck haulers with no FMCSA rating on record.
| If unrated haulers rated Conditional or worse at | Haulers |
|---|---|
| 22.3%, the rate among rated haulers (a ceiling) | 18,678 |
| 10% | 8,360 |
| 5% | 4,180 |
| 2.2%, a tenth of the rated rate | 1,868 |
By fleet size
Bigger fleets are rated more often. Among rated haulers, the smallest are Conditional or worse most often.
| Trucks reported | Haulers | Rated | Conditional or worse, of rated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | 77,710 | 1,141 · 1.5% | 298 · 26.1% |
| 6 to 19 | 6,287 | 784 · 12.5% | 169 · 21.6% |
| 20 or more | 1,806 | 552 · 30.6% | 87 · 15.8% |
FMCSA Company Census (az4n-8mr2), safety_rating and safety_rating_date, updated 10/19/2026; trucks are power units on the MCS-150
By state
Texas has the most haulers and rates fewer than 1 in 100. Ohio and North Carolina have the most Conditional or worse ratings per hauler, about 1 in 85.
| Office state | Haulers | Rated | Conditional or worse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | 19,842 | 169 · 0.9% | 34 |
| Florida | 10,109 | 26 · 0.3% | 10 |
| California | 4,614 | 40 · 0.9% | 9 |
| Oklahoma | 2,993 | 63 · 2.1% | 14 |
| Minnesota | 2,807 | 100 · 3.6% | 13 |
| Colorado | 2,733 | 91 · 3.3% | 19 |
| Georgia | 2,645 | 44 · 1.7% | 13 |
| North Carolina | 2,292 | 55 · 2.4% | 27 |
| Wisconsin | 1,876 | 64 · 3.4% | 13 |
| Ohio | 1,826 | 101 · 5.5% | 22 |
FMCSA Company Census (az4n-8mr2), safety_rating and safety_rating_date, updated 10/19/2026; office address on the registration
Ratings are old
The median rating is 16.6 years old, and 70% are 10 years old or more. A rating stands until FMCSA reviews the carrier again. A Conditional from 2012 still reads Conditional, and a Satisfactory from 1995 still reads Satisfactory.
How old the ratings are
Rated dump truck haulers, by the date of the rating.
FMCSA Company Census (az4n-8mr2), safety_rating and safety_rating_date, updated 10/19/2026
A rating can change any day
63 dump truck haulers got a new rating in the last 12 months, about one a week. 20 of them were Conditional. FMCSA's records show a rating from the day it's issued. A check at onboarding shows the rating that day.
Creating new haulers after a bad rating
62 of the 555 Conditional or Unsatisfactory haulers have a related company that got a USDOT number after the rating. The two share at least two of an officer, phone number, address or company email domain. 19 of those numbers came within two years of the rating. A related company isn't wrongdoing, and many are sister companies formed years later. A rating stays with its USDOT number. It doesn't follow trucks to a new one.
How HaulStanding handles it
HaulStanding reads each watched hauler's safety rating every day from FMCSA's carrier snapshot. A new Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating comes as an Action needed alert the day it appears, and any other change is logged. Each day's check is kept with its date: what was checked and what it showed. The family view finds earlier USDOT numbers whose trucks moved to a hauler and shows each one's rating.
Montgomery lets negligent selection claims against brokers go forward in state court, and what counts as reasonable care is for a jury. Not legal advice.
How we counted. Dump truck haulers are active for-hire carriers whose own cargo words name dirt, gravel, aggregate, rock and similar work, plus a few named for it; the rule is in Who counts as a dump truck hauler. Ratings and rating dates are FMCSA safety ratings from the FMCSA Company Census, updated October 19, 2026. Some states rate carriers under their own programs; those aren't counted here. The census keeps only each carrier's current rating, so a re-rating replaces the old one and "new in the last 12 months" counts ratings issued, not changes. Before 2011 the share looks lower partly because older Conditional ratings have since been re-rated or their carriers closed.
We checked samples against FMCSA's live carrier snapshot: 57 of 60 Conditional ratings matched. 13 of 22 Unsatisfactory ratings matched; the rest were from 1990 to 2004 and no longer show there. Related companies come from the census on October 15, 2026: two shared signals of different kinds, ignoring any value shared by more than 25 carriers.
Sources: FMCSA Company Census (az4n-8mr2); FMCSA QCMobile carrier snapshot; Transportation Intermediaries Association, After Montgomery: Defining Reasonable Care in Freight Transportation, July 2026, page 3.
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