How to avoid car shipping scams: check any company in five minutes

Before you pay a car shipping company, check five things. Its USDOT or MC number is active in FMCSA’s records. It is registered as what it says it is — broker or carrier. A broker has its $75,000 bond on file. The carrier’s insurance is confirmed with the insurance agent, not just shown to you. And no large payment leaves your account before a carrier is assigned.

Each check takes a minute or two and uses FMCSA’s public lookups. Below is how to do them, what the results mean, and the warning signs that should stop a booking.

Step 1: Look up the USDOT or MC number with FMCSA

Every broker and carrier that arranges or hauls cars across state lines must be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). FMCSA’s own advice is blunt: avoid any auto transporter or broker that doesn’t prominently display its MC number on its website. If you can’t find a USDOT or MC number on the site or in the quote, ask for it. A company that won’t give it to you has answered your question.

Then look it up yourself:

• SAFER Company Snapshot — safer.fmcsa.dot.gov. Search by USDOT number, MC number or company name.
• Motus — motus.dot.gov, FMCSA’s newer registration system. Under Search → Search Companies, look the company up by USDOT number or name, then open its operating authority to see the status, the date it was granted and the insurance or bond on file.

Go to these sites by typing the address. FMCSA warns that the top results in a search engine can be fake profiles set up by scammers.

Step 2: Read the status — and the type of authority

On the Company Snapshot, two lines matter most.

USDOT Status. Active means the number is active. Inactive means the company didn’t complete its required registration update. Out-of-service means FMCSA has ordered it off the road.

Operating Authority Status. This line lists exactly what the company may do — for example “Broker of Property” or “Motor Carrier of Property”. If it says Not Authorized, the company has no authority to work as an interstate for-hire carrier. In Motus, each authority shows a current status (active, or not) and a status history with dates, including when it was granted.

Then compare the record with what you were told:

• Broker or carrier? The “Entity Type” and the authority show which one the company is. A company that calls itself a carrier but holds only broker authority — or the other way round — is misrepresenting itself. FMCSA says to be suspicious of any website where it isn’t clear which one you’re dealing with.
• Name and address. The legal name or “doing business as” name should match the company you’re talking to.
• Phone number. This is the check that catches identity theft. Scammers borrow the USDOT number of a real, clean company and put their own phone number on the paperwork. FMCSA’s advice: if the number you were given doesn’t match the one in SAFER, call the number in SAFER and ask about your shipment there.

A recently granted authority isn’t a red flag on its own — every company starts somewhere. It matters when it comes together with other warning signs below.

Step 3: If it’s a broker, check the $75,000 bond

A broker must keep $75,000 of financial security on file with FMCSA: a surety bond (form BMC-84) or a trust fund (form BMC-85). In Motus you can see the filing, its amount and whether it’s active. Since January 2026, if a broker’s security drops below $75,000 and isn’t restored within 7 calendar days, FMCSA suspends its authority.

Know what the bond is for. FMCSA describes it as money to cover unpaid freight charges — for example, a carrier the broker didn’t pay. It is not insurance for your car. An active bond tells you the broker is properly registered; damage to the car is a matter for the carrier’s insurance.

Step 4: Confirm the carrier’s insurance with the agent

Here is something many people don’t expect. FMCSA’s insurance chart sets a liability minimum for trucks — $750,000 for vehicles of 10,001 lbs or more, $300,000 below that — but the federal cargo insurance requirement for a carrier hauling cars is $0. Cargo coverage for your car depends on what the carrier actually carries and what the broker or contract requires. So it’s worth checking.

A certificate of insurance is easy to fake. FMCSA says so directly: even insurance certificates can be fraudulent. To check one:

1. Read the certificate: the insurer, the policy number, the dates and the cargo limit.
2. Find the insurance agency’s phone number yourself — not the number printed on the certificate, which may lead back to the person who made it.
3. Call the agent and ask whether the policy is active today and whether it covers cargo, at what limit.

If your car is worth more than the cargo limit, say so before you book and ask whether a carrier with higher limits is available.

Step 5: Find out who will actually carry your car

Ask the company you book with how the carrier is chosen and how that carrier is checked. If you book with a broker, the truck that comes will belong to someone else — the question is whether anyone checked that carrier before your car is loaded.

At pickup you can check the truck yourself. Federal rules require a commercial truck to show the operating carrier’s name and “USDOT” number on both sides. Look the number up on SAFER while the driver is there: the carrier should be active and authorized. A truck with no markings, or with a name you can’t find anywhere, is a reason to stop and call the company you booked with.

This step is what protects you against double brokering. FMCSA has no single legal definition, but the term usually means a load handed on by someone without the authority to broker it — a carrier that takes your car and quietly passes it to another carrier. Your car ends up with a company nobody checked, and the carrier that hauls it may not get paid.

Step 6: Get the contract and the Bill of Lading in writing

Before you pay anything, get in writing:

• the total price, and whether it can change before pickup;
• what the deposit is, when it’s charged and when it’s refunded;
• the cancellation terms;
• the pickup window.

Never sign a blank or half-filled document — FMCSA lists that as a red flag.

The Bill of Lading is the inspection record. At pickup, walk around the car with the driver and note every scratch and dent; at delivery, inspect before you sign, and write any new damage on it. Our insurance and claims page explains how that record is used if there’s a claim.

Step 7: Pay in a way you can get back

The Federal Trade Commission lists the payment methods scammers push: wire transfers through companies like Western Union or MoneyGram, gift cards, cryptocurrency and payment apps. They’re popular with scammers because the money is hard to recover.

A credit card is the opposite. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act you can dispute a charge for a service that wasn’t delivered as agreed; the FTC says your letter should reach the card issuer within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent to you.

A reasonable setup looks like this: a small deposit on a card, charged only after a carrier is assigned, with the refund terms in your contract — and the balance at pickup or at delivery. Paying the driver at delivery is a different situation from paying a stranger upfront: by then the car is in front of you and you’ve inspected it.

Red flags

Stop and check again if you see any of these:

• No USDOT or MC number on the website, or the company won’t give one.
• The number is inactive, out of service or “Not Authorized” — or it belongs to a different company name.
• The phone number in FMCSA’s records doesn’t match the one you were given.
• The company calls itself a carrier but has only broker authority.
• A demand for a large payment before any carrier is named — especially by wire, gift card, crypto or payment app.
• Pressure to decide right now. The FTC puts it simply: honest businesses give you time to decide.
• A quote far below every other quote. See the next section.
• A request to sign blank documents.
• A website with no physical address and nothing about registration or insurance.
• A truck at pickup with no USDOT number, or a different name from the one you were given.

Why the lowest quote often never shows up

Carriers choose which cars to haul based on what each load pays. A quote well below what carriers accept on that route can sit with no carrier willing to take it. The customer waits — and then hears the price has to go up, often after a deposit is paid and close to the date they needed.

A low quote isn’t a scam by itself. The question to ask is: if no carrier takes the car at this price, what happens — can the price go up, and do I get my deposit back if I say no? The answer should be in the contract.

Broker or carrier — and why it matters less than you think

Many searches ask for “car shipping companies that aren’t brokers”. The reasoning is understandable: cut out the middleman, deal with the people who own the trucks.

The difference is real. A carrier owns trucks and hauls cars. A broker arranges the shipment and assigns a carrier — it never hauls the car itself. Both must be registered with FMCSA, and both hold authority you can look up in the same place.

What decides how safe your car is isn’t the label — it’s whether the company that actually loads your car has been checked. A carrier with its own trucks can still be full on your dates. A broker can still hand your car to a carrier nobody checked. Either way, run the same checks: authority, insurance from the agent, and the USDOT number on the truck that shows up.

Reviews and the BBB

Reviews help, if you read them carefully. The FTC’s advice: look at several sources, not one star rating; check whether a reviewer has written other reviews; be wary of a burst of reviews in a short time; and search the company’s name with words like “complaint” or “scam”. Fake reviews can be positive or negative.

A Better Business Bureau rating is the BBB’s opinion of how a business is likely to treat its customers. It weighs things like complaint history, how complaints were answered and time in business, and customer reviews aren’t part of the calculation. BBB accreditation is separate from the rating, and businesses pay a fee for it. Read the complaints themselves — what went wrong, and whether the company answered.

FMCSA also lets you search the complaints filed with it, on the same site where you file one.

If you’ve already been scammed

Act quickly — some deadlines are short.

1. Call your card issuer or bank. Ask to dispute the charge or stop the payment. For a card, the 60-day window above applies.
2. File a complaint with FMCSA at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov or call 1-888-DOT-SAFT (1-888-368-7238), 8 a.m.–8 p.m. Eastern, Monday to Friday. A complaint doesn’t recover money by itself — FMCSA uses complaints to decide which companies to investigate — but it puts the company on record.
3. Report the scam to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. FMCSA also points to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, your local police and your state attorney general.
4. If a company used someone else’s USDOT number, tell the real company at the phone number in SAFER — it’s a victim too.
5. If your car was damaged in transit, the claim goes to the carrier and its cargo insurance. Note the damage on the Bill of Lading, take photos and follow the claim steps here.

How ShiftHaul checks the carrier

ShiftHaul is a licensed broker: MC 1786043, USDOT 4511175.

On every load we verify the carrier: an SMS to their FMCSA phone, insurance from the agent, the driver’s location at pickup, and a VIN-plate check against the carrier’s insured vehicles. The steps are shown in how our verification works. The car is covered by the assigned carrier’s cargo insurance — at least $100,000, confirmed with the agent; ShiftHaul itself doesn’t insure vehicles (insurance and claims).

You don’t pay to get a quote or to book. After a carrier is assigned, a $150 deposit goes on your card — it’s part of your total. Get your price.