Freight broker statistics

A loss is the first time FMCSA records show the authority ended after the grant: almost always an involuntary or voluntary revocation, plus a handful of out-of-service orders and administrative inactivations. Transfers and renumberings don't count. Rates use only brokers whose 6-, 12- or 24-month window closed by 15 May 2026, when FMCSA moved to a new records system that has recorded far fewer revocations since. *2024: 24-month rate covers brokers granted 2 January 2024 – 15 May 2024 (1,665). *2025: 6-month rate covers brokers granted 2 January 2025 – 13 November 2025 (3,341); 12-month rate covers brokers granted 2 January 2025 – 15 May 2025 (1,355).

For the 705 property brokers FMCSA authorized in Q3 2026 with a recorded application date, the median time from application to active authority was 21 calendar days. Half took between 13 and 36 days. FMCSA's own guidance is that first-time applications may take 20 to 25 business days.

Application date is the first "Initial Status" entry in FMCSA's Authority History; the end date is the grant. The span includes the broker's own bond or trust and BOC-3 filings and the protest period, not only FMCSA's review. 48 of 753 dockets have no application date in the new records and are left out: 31 were applications pending when FMCSA switched systems in May 2026 and 17 were older authorities being reinstated. Each took at least 27 days, so counting them would put the median at 22 days. Application dates in the new system start on 19 May 2026, so the July figure leans toward faster approvals.

• Who is counted. Every property-broker authority FMCSA granted in the year, one count per docket at its earliest grant. Household-goods brokers and freight forwarders are excluded.
• What a loss is. The first time the authority ended after the grant, almost always by revocation (involuntary or voluntary). A lost authority is not always a closed business, and about 10% of brokers that lost authority later regained it.
• Which windows count. FMCSA moved to a new records system in 2026, and it has recorded far fewer revocations since. Loss rates use only brokers whose 6-, 12- or 24-month window closed by 15 May 2026; anything later would undercount.
• Reasons. FMCSA's older records don't state why an authority was revoked. We match each involuntary revocation to a BMC-84 bond or BMC-85 trust cancellation that took effect in the 45 days before it.
• Email. The address on the broker's FMCSA registration, sorted into free providers and the broker's own domain. It is the address on file in October 2026, not necessarily the one used at approval. The gap is a correlation, not proof of cause.
• Checked before publishing. We drew 120 brokers at random (20 from each year, 2021–2026), re-queried FMCSA's records live and re-derived each result with a second implementation. Grant dates matched for 120 of 120 and first-loss dates for 120 of 120. A separate analysis, written independently from the same raw records, reproduced the headline rates.

Sources: FMCSA Authority History (legacy 9mw4-x3tu and Motus yu5v-wbh6), Revocation and Insurance History, Company Census, via data.transportation.gov. Data as of 7 October 2026. Every figure on this page is in the CSV download.