Not Rated Isn't a Safety Rating. It's the Absence of One.

The majority of active motor carriers registered with FMCSA are "Not Rated" — no Satisfactory, no Conditional, nothing. Most brokers I've talked to think that means those carriers haven't done anything wrong yet. It doesn't mean that. It means FMCSA hasn't gotten to them. Not Rated isn't the middle of the safety spectrum. It's the absence of a formal evaluation entirely.

I've watched this misread play out enough times to stop being surprised by it. The SAFER snapshot loads, the Safety Rating field reads "Not Rated," someone on the team checks the box, and the load gets booked. What they didn't check: Unsafe Driving BASIC at the 84th percentile. Two OOS orders in the last fourteen months. Authority issued eleven months ago. The carrier had never been through a compliance review. "Not Rated" meant FMCSA hadn't looked — not that they'd looked and found nothing.

What a safety rating actually requires

FMCSA rates carriers through the compliance review process, governed by 49 CFR Part 385, Subpart A. A compliance review is a formal investigation — a federal safety investigator or state safety official examines the carrier's driver qualification files, hours of service records, vehicle maintenance logs, drug and alcohol testing program, and operational records. At the end of the review, the carrier receives one of three ratings: Satisfactory (substantial compliance), Conditional (some deficiencies that don't yet rise to revocation), or Unsatisfactory (serious deficiencies; the carrier has 45 days to fix them or lose operating authority under § 385.13).

The critical part that most people miss: FMCSA doesn't do compliance reviews on every carrier. They target carriers based on elevated BASIC scores, crash involvement, complaints, or referrals from law enforcement. They also do new entrant safety audits (Part 385, Subpart D) on carriers in their first 12–18 months of operation. But here's what that new entrant audit produces: a pass or a fail, not a safety rating. A carrier that passed their new entrant audit and has been operating for two and a half years is still "Not Rated." The audit is a threshold check — does this company have the basic administrative systems in place? Not an endorsement.

The result is that the vast majority of carriers you'll run — including many you've used for years without incident — are "Not Rated" because FMCSA has never had reason or resources to formally review them. Not Rated is the default state. Satisfactory and Conditional are the exceptions.

The scenario

MC-1247893 / DOT-3567102. Dry van operation, runs the I-85 corridor, authorized 22 months ago. Passed their new entrant audit at month 15 — authority stayed active, they cleared the threshold. SAFER shows Safety Rating: Not Rated.

Also in SAFER: Unsafe Driving BASIC at 82nd percentile. Vehicle Maintenance BASIC at 74th. One OOS order at month 10 — brakes found defective during a Level I inspection in Georgia. Crash Indicator at 64th percentile. Authority 22 months old, so they're past the new entrant window but well short of any statistical baseline on long-haul safety.

A broker sees "Not Rated" and moves on. A different broker sees those BASIC numbers and thinks: this carrier has never been through a compliance review, their Unsafe Driving score ranks them in the top fifth of problematic carriers nationally on speeding and following-distance violations, and they had a brake failure OOS order less than a year ago. That's not a carrier I'm putting on a $340,000 flatbed load of precision equipment without at least documenting why I'm making that decision.

Both brokers used the same carrier. One has a file. One has a note that says "Safety Rating: Not Rated — OK."

What Montgomery changed about this

Before Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, decided unanimously by the Supreme Court in May 2026, brokers in many circuits could point to FAAAA preemption and avoid state-court negligent-selection claims entirely. Justice Barrett's opinion closed that. FAAAA doesn't preempt those claims. Every state with a negligent-selection theory in its tort law is now a live venue for a broker who chose the wrong carrier.

The standard isn't "was the carrier rated Conditional." The standard is reasonable care — what a reasonably diligent broker would have done given what the data showed. A plaintiff's attorney will put your carrier's SAFER snapshot in front of the jury. They'll walk through every section. When they get to the Safety Rating field and it says "Not Rated," they won't stop there. They'll ask what else the snapshot showed. If the answer is elevated BASICs, a prior OOS order, and eleven months of authority — and your file says nothing about any of that — the gap between what you saw and what you documented is where the verdict lives.

"Not Rated doesn't mean anything bad" is not a defense. Not any longer.

What to actually look at when there's no rating

Not Rated is the starting point, not the destination. Here's what the real data is:

Unsafe Driving BASIC. This is the score that correlates most strongly with serious crash involvement. It reflects speeding violations, improper lane changes, reckless driving, and following-distance citations from roadside inspections. An 80th-percentile score means 80% of comparable carriers have a cleaner inspection record on those behaviors. Anything above the 65th-percentile intervention threshold means FMCSA has flagged this carrier for potential action.

Vehicle Maintenance BASIC. Brake violations, tire violations, lighting and load securement defects. What matters most here is what kind of violations make up the score. Repeated brake failures are a different risk than repeated running-light citations. The inspection-level detail is in the FMCSA Portal if you need to dig.

Crash Indicator. Understated by design — 49 CFR § 390.5 limits what counts as a "DOT-reportable crash" to incidents involving injury, fatality, disablement of a vehicle requiring a tow, or hazmat release. Minor collisions without injury don't make this record. A fender-bender on a city street isn't there. What is there is the reportable-crash-per-mile comparison against peer carriers. An elevated Crash Indicator tells you this carrier has had more reportable incidents than expected for their operating profile.

Active OOS orders. This is different from OOS rate. An active out-of-service order means federal or state enforcement directed the carrier to cease operations until specific deficiencies were corrected. That's an enforcement action, not a violation count. An active OOS order with authority still showing as active deserves a direct question to the carrier about current status. A prior OOS order in the last 12 months, without a follow-up review on record, tells you something about how they responded.

Authority age. Not Rated looks different at 6 months than it does at 6 years. A carrier with two years of authority, a clean BASIC profile, and no OOS history that's Never been reviewed is a normal, bookable carrier. A carrier with eight months of authority and elevated scores is a different conversation.

The broker's responsibility when the rating is absent

Post-Montgomery, the question at deposition isn't "did the carrier have a bad rating?" The question is "what did you check, what did it show, and why did you select them anyway?" Not Rated doesn't exempt you from answering that.

If a carrier is Not Rated and has clean BASICs, low OOS rate, and authority over 18 months, your file can reasonably reflect that. "No formal compliance review; BASIC percentiles all below intervention threshold; no OOS orders; authority 31 months; selected within policy" is a defensible record.

If a carrier is Not Rated with elevated BASICs, a recent OOS order, or authority under 18 months, you need either compensating controls or a documented decision. What did you do because the data showed a flag? Did you call the dispatcher and verify the inspection outcome? Did you put them on a monitoring list for more frequent re-screens? Did you limit the load types or lanes? "Not Rated — approved" is not a decision record when the SAFER snapshot showed a problem.

How I document this

For any carrier flagged Not Rated:

• Capture the full SAFER snapshot at the time of selection — not just the Safety Rating field, but the BASIC percentiles, OOS rate, authority issue date, and operating status. A screenshot timestamped to the load date is the baseline.
• Note explicitly that the carrier is Not Rated and confirm they are past the new entrant window (authority > 18 months) or that you're applying new-authority compensating controls if under 18 months.
• If any BASIC is above the 65th-percentile intervention threshold, document the specific percentile and the reason for the selection decision — or document the step you took before clearing them (call to dispatcher, Verifi pre-tender, COI refresh, whatever it was).
• If you're setting a carrier up in continuous monitoring, note the triggers you've configured: compliance review producing a Conditional or Unsatisfactory, OOS order, insurance lapse, authority revocation. The Carrier Selection Record in DOTScreener captures this snapshot automatically at screening time, so even if the carrier's status changes next month, your file shows what the data showed when you booked the load.
• Don't store this only in the carrier master file. The carrier file is about the company over time. The load-level record is about what you checked on the specific date you made the specific selection decision.

Most of your carriers are Not Rated. That's normal. What isn't normal — and what a jury won't accept — is treating "Not Rated" as a substitute for reading the rest of what SAFER actually tells you.

The rating field is one line in a snapshot that has a lot more lines. After Montgomery, you need to have read all of them.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com