How to Check a Moving Company
Every company that moves your belongings across a state line must be registered with the federal government, and most of what you need to know about them is on the public record. These are the six checks, in the order worth doing them.
1. USDOT and MC numbers
Interstate movers must be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and must display their USDOT number. A company that will not give you one, or gives one that does not match its name, has failed the first check. Ask for both the USDOT number and the legal company name, because brokers and carriers often trade under a different name from the one on the paperwork.
The register is public and free to search. Look it up yourself rather than trusting a badge on a website, which is an image anyone can copy.
2. Is the authority active today
Registration is not permanent. Operating authority can be revoked, suspended or allowed to lapse. What matters is the status right now, not that a number exists. Check the status field, not just the presence of a record.
3. Insurance on file
Carriers are required to keep current insurance filings. A lapsed filing tells you something about how the business is run, and it is the difference between a claim being paid and a claim being your problem.
4. Broker or carrier
This distinction catches people out constantly. A carrier owns trucks and moves your goods. A broker sells your job to whichever carrier takes it, and you may not know who is loading your things until the truck arrives.
Brokering is legal and brokers must be registered too. But if you booked with a broker believing it was a carrier, the crew, the equipment and the standard of care are not what you evaluated. Ask directly: are you the carrier performing this move, or are you brokering it?
5. Complaint history
Complaints against interstate movers are recorded publicly. Volume alone means little for a large company. What matters is the pattern: repeated complaints about loss, damage, or bills rising on delivery day are a different signal from an isolated scheduling dispute.
6. How they behave before you sign
The public record will not catch everything. These behaviours are warnings in their own right:
- A large cash deposit up front. Not standard practice, and the most common opening move of a rogue operator.
- No written estimate. Federal rules require one. A verbal number is not an estimate.
- No survey. A price given over the phone without seeing your inventory will be revised.
- Generic branding. Unmarked trucks, a business name that changes, no physical address you can verify.
- Pressure to book today. Real seasonal pricing does not expire in an afternoon.
- Refusal to give the USDOT number. This one alone ends the conversation.
Your rights on delivery day
Two federal protections are worth knowing before anything goes wrong, because they are the ones people discover too late.
- The 110 percent rule. With a non-binding estimate, the mover cannot require more than 110 percent of the estimated charges at delivery in order to release your goods. The balance is billed afterwards.
- Holding goods hostage is not legal. A carrier demanding payment far above the estimate before unloading is not exercising a right, and there is a formal federal complaint route for it.
Knowing these two before delivery day is worth more than any negotiation afterwards.
What we do not do
We do not rate, rank or recommend individual moving companies, and we do not accept payment from carriers or brokers. This page explains how to read the public record yourself. The verdict on any particular company is yours to reach, from primary sources, not ours to sell.
General information about federal requirements, not legal advice about your situation. Requirements can change. Last reviewed August 2026.