For years, the trucking industry’s fraud problem grew faster than anyone in Washington seemed willing to act on it. That has changed. Over the past several months, a wave of legislation, regulatory overhaul, and public-private coordination has turned freight fraud from an industry complaint into a federal enforcement priority — and the early results are already reshaping who can get into this business at all. The American Trucking Associations puts the stakes plainly: cargo theft is draining more than $18 million from the industry every day, and strategic theft incidents have exploded roughly 1,500 percent since 2021. In one case cited by ATA, a six-figure load of energy drinks was rerouted more than 1,000 miles from its intended destination before anyone caught the scheme. Now the response is arriving on three fronts at once: the SAFER Transport Act in the Senate, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act moving through Congress, and an FMCSA registration overhaul that has already cut newly published carrier authorities roughly in half. Here is what is happening, and what every legitimate small carrier needs to do about it.

The SAFER Transport Act: The End of the MC Number As You Know It

The most sweeping proposal on the table is the Securing American Freight, Enforcement, and Reliability in Transport Act — the SAFER Transport Act — introduced by Senator Todd Young of Indiana and backed by the ATA. The bill goes after the structural weaknesses that fraud rings have been exploiting for years. It would modernize and secure FMCSA’s registration system, phase out the legacy MC number in favor of consolidated USDOT number identification, strengthen the agency’s fraud detection and enforcement capabilities, tighten oversight of CDL issuance and training providers, and close regulatory gaps involving foreign dispatch services operating outside U.S. jurisdiction. On the enforcement side, it would increase criminal penalties for fraudulent certifications and improve interagency coordination on freight theft and cabotage enforcement. The MC number phase-out matters more than it might sound: dormant and resold MC numbers are the raw material of carrier impersonation and chameleon operations, a dynamic we broke down in our fraud defense playbook. ATA President Chris Spear framed the bill around exactly the businesses that read this blog: small carriers are not equipped to fight large-scale, organized fraud on their own, and the federal registration infrastructure has to stop making it easy.

CORCA and the Cargo Theft Task Force

The second front is the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which has already passed the House with overwhelming support and is gaining momentum in the Senate under Judiciary Committee leadership from Senator Chuck Grassley. As Overdrive reported, portions of the bill were authored by Scott Cornell, chair of the Transported Asset Protection Association and one of the industry’s longest-standing cargo crime experts. CORCA would establish coordinated federal enforcement against organized cargo theft — addressing the jurisdictional gap where a load stolen in one state, re-tagged in a second, and sold in a third falls between local police departments with no mandate to chase it. Alongside CORCA, the BUILD America 250 highway bill includes provisions creating an advisory task force specifically focused on cargo theft. For carriers, the significance is simple: theft rings have been operating with near-impunity because no single agency owned the problem. That structural gap is finally being closed.

FMCSA’s Identity Checks Cut New Authorities in Half

While Congress legislates, FMCSA has already acted — and the data shows how much fraud was hiding in the registration pipeline. The agency’s enhanced identity verification for new carrier applications, run through third-party vendor Idemia with facial recognition and government ID upload, went fully live for all new applicants in April 2025. The result, reported by FreightWaves, was dramatic: the conversion rate from filed applications to published authorities dropped from the historical 60 to 65 percent range to roughly 30 percent — a 50 percent decline in newly published authorities. Read that carefully. Half of the would-be new carriers entering the pipeline could not or would not pass an identity check. Applicants who fail verification cannot obtain operating authority at all, and FMCSA receives only confirmation of completed verification rather than the underlying biometric data. The overhaul is not stopping at new entrants either: roughly 800,000 existing carriers will eventually need to verify their identities when they update registration information, and the agency’s new Motus registration system — launched May 14, 2026 — is the platform that vetting will run through. This is the same enforcement trajectory we have been tracking since USDOT’s year-one cleanup numbers — 20,000-plus carriers removed — and it is accelerating, not slowing down.

The Vetting Industry Comes to the Table

The same day Motus launched — and the same day the Supreme Court decided the Montgomery v. Caribe broker liability case we covered in our analysis of the 9-0 ruling — a coalition of carrier vetting platforms including Highway, Verified Carrier, GenLogs, Descartes, FreightValidate, and Truckstop.com met with FMCSA and congressional staff in Washington. The message from the vetting industry was blunt: siloed fraud databases don’t work, and real progress requires intelligence sharing across platforms and with the government. FMCSA is now exploring public-private partnerships to tighten controls around MC number sales and new applications. For small carriers, the practical consequence is that the vetting layer between you and the freight is getting thicker and more interconnected. The same systems being built to catch fraudsters will be scoring you — your data consistency, your registration history, your digital footprint — every time you book a load with a new broker.

What Legitimate Small Carriers Should Do Now

First, get ahead of identity verification instead of waiting for it to find you. If you have a registration update coming — address change, insurance change, biennial update — expect an identity verification step and have a current government ID ready. Treat any unexpected outreach claiming to be FMCSA with suspicion, because fraudsters are already impersonating the agency’s new processes; the agency’s own fraud guidance page is the authoritative reference. Second, audit your public-facing data for consistency. When vetting platforms cross-reference your FMCSA record, insurance filings, and contact information, discrepancies read as risk signals — a mismatched phone number can cost you a load even when everything about your operation is legitimate. Third, if the SAFER Transport Act’s MC number phase-out becomes law, transition friction is coming: update your contracts, your invoices, your carrier packets, and your broker profiles methodically so your identity stays continuous through the change. And fourth, understand the upside. Every fraudulent carrier forced out of the market is capacity removed from the load boards you compete on, and every strengthened vetting layer raises the value of a clean, verifiable operating history. In a market this tight, being provably legitimate is a competitive position — one that took you years to build and that this enforcement wave finally starts rewarding.

Bottom Line

Washington’s freight fraud response is no longer theoretical. A registration overhaul is live and has already halved the flow of new authorities. Legislation with real enforcement teeth is moving in both chambers with rare bipartisan and industry alignment. And the private vetting ecosystem is being wired directly into the federal effort. For the fraud rings that have treated trucking as a low-risk, high-reward target, the operating environment is about to get materially worse. For legitimate small carriers, the transition will bring some friction — identity checks, thicker vetting, an eventual MC number migration — but the direction is favorable: fewer phantom competitors, cleaner load boards, and a market that finally puts a premium on being exactly who you say you are. Stay verified, keep your data consistent, and watch this space — we will track the SAFER Transport Act and CORCA as they move.

Innovative Logistics Group