Trucking Industry News
FMCSA Clearinghouse Registration for Owner-Operators, Step by Step
If you run your own truck under your own USDOT number, FMCSA treats you as two people in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse: the employer and the driver. Both have to be registered, and a consortium or third-party administrator (C/TPA) has to be designated in your account before you can run a single query. Here […]
FMCSA Clearinghouse Registration for Owner-Operators, Step by Step
If you run your own truck under your own USDOT number, FMCSA treats you as two people in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse: the employer and the driver. Both have to be registered, and a consortium or third-party administrator (C/TPA) has to be designated in your account before you can run a single query. Here […]
NY HUT, KYU, New Mexico and Oregon Weight-Distance Taxes: Who Owes What
New York, Kentucky, New Mexico and Oregon charge heavy trucks a tax based on the miles they drive inside the state. Each one runs its own registration, its own returns and its own credential, separate from your plates and your fuel tax license. Here is who owes each one, how it is calculated, how often […]
UCR 2027 Fees Are Final: The Full Table and the Deadlines
The 2027 Unified Carrier Registration fees are final. They were published on 1 September 2026, they take effect on 1 October 2026, and they are up by an average of about 20 percent. Registration for the 2027 year opens on 1 October 2026 and closes on 31 December 2026. Here are the actual numbers, what […]
IRP Apportioned Plates: How the Cost Is Calculated
Apportioned plates confuse people because the bill does not look like a registration bill. You are not paying one state for one plate. You are paying your base state a single amount that it then divides among every jurisdiction you told it you would drive in, in proportion to the miles you said you would […]
What Is Trucking Authority? A Plain Definition
“Trucking authority” is one of those phrases the industry uses constantly and defines rarely. It gets used to mean a number, a document, a permission and a business model, sometimes in the same conversation. If you are deciding whether to get your own, the first thing worth having is a clear definition, because most of […]
Getting Your Own Authority as an Owner-Operator: The Real Numbers
The pitch for running under your own authority is always the same: keep the percentage the carrier was taking. The pitch is true and it is also not the whole calculation. Here is what actually changes, with the recurring numbers where we can state them, so you can decide on arithmetic rather than on somebody’s […]
Requirements for New Trucking Authority: The 2026 Checklist
Most guides to getting trucking authority are written as a list of forms. That is not where new carriers actually get stuck. They get stuck because a requirement they had never heard of turns out to gate everything downstream, or because they satisfied a requirement in the wrong order and paid for the same thing […]
USDOT Number vs MC Number: Which One You Need in 2026
Two numbers, one company, and a lot of confusion about which one is the real one. In 2026 the answer got simpler than it has been in thirty years, and it is not the answer most people expect. This is what each number is, which one you need for what you are actually doing, and […]
MC Authority Certificate: What It Is and How to Get a Copy
People ask for an “MC authority certificate” for three different reasons: a broker asked for proof of authority before releasing a load, a factoring company or insurer wants the document on file, or the carrier lost the original and needs another copy. The document you are looking for exists, but where it lives and what […]