Half of America’s trucking companies are one truck

The distribution

Active interstate carriers by reported power units, August 30, 2026. Percentages are of all 701,859 active interstate carriers.

The number that should change how the industry is served

48,314 active carriers report zero power units: records that are dormant, mid-update, or registered without equipment on file. Set those aside and look only at carriers reporting at least one truck, and the picture sharpens: 50.3% of them are a single truck, and 85.4% run six or fewer.

The regulatory obligations do not scale down to match. A one-truck carrier keeps driver qualification files, runs a drug and alcohol testing program, files quarterly fuel tax returns, updates its registration on a two-year cycle, and passes a safety audit in its first year, substantially the same list a three-hundred-truck carrier works through, minus the safety department. That asymmetry is the single most important fact about this industry’s compliance burden, and it is invisible if you assume the average carrier is a fleet.

New entrants, and the audit waiting for them

43,565 single-truck interstate carriers registered during 2026 and were still active on August 30. Every new entrant faces an FMCSA safety audit during an 18-month monitoring period (49 CFR 385.307), and FMCSA’s guidance is to expect it within the first 12 months, so that number is a reasonable floor on how many one-truck operations are inside the audit window right now, and most of them, by definition, are doing this for the first time.

For comparison, 54,042 single-truck carriers that registered during 2025 were still active on the same date. We would caution against reading a trend into those two figures: a carrier that registered in 2025 has had a year to fail, quit, or be deactivated, while one that registered in June 2026 has had weeks. The 2025 number is survivors of a full year; the 2026 number is survivors of eight months. They are not comparable, and we would rather say so than publish a growth rate we cannot defend.

Free audit readiness check: 13 questions scored against the automatic failures in 49 CFR 385.321(b).

Where the one-truck carriers are

Active interstate carriers reporting exactly one power unit, by state of physical address. Top ten.

Method

Source: FMCSA Company Census File, published on the U.S. DOT open data portal as resource az4n-8mr2 and refreshed daily from a 24-hour-old database. Queried August 30, 2026.

Population: records with status_code = ‘A’ (active) and carrier_operation = ‘A’ (interstate), giving 701,859 carriers. Fleet size is the self-reported power_units field. Counts by size are simple groupings of that field; state counts use phy_state; registration-year counts use add_date.

Limitations

• Power units are self-reported by the carrier on its MCS-150 and are only as current as that filing. A carrier that has grown or shrunk since its last update is counted at the old number.
• 48,314 active records report zero power units. We report them separately rather than dropping them silently, because how they are treated moves the headline percentages by several points.
• Registration-year figures count only carriers still active today, so earlier years are depressed by attrition. They are a snapshot of survivors, not a record of how many registered.
• Interstate only. Intrastate-only carriers are excluded, so state totals understate the number of trucking companies operating in each state.
• One USDOT number is one carrier here. Common ownership across multiple numbers is not detectable in this file.

Common questions

Sources

• FMCSA Company Census File (U.S. DOT open data portal)
• FMCSA Open Data Program
• 49 CFR 385.321: New entrant safety audit failure criteria

Data pulled August 30, 2026. TenFour Compliance is a compliance service, not a law firm, and is not affiliated with FMCSA or any government agency. We serve carriers in the segment this report describes, which is a reason to check our arithmetic rather than take it on trust, and the method above exists so you can.