Glossary · FMCSA & freight
SAFER
Also called: SAFER Company Snapshot, Safety and Fitness Electronic Records
Definition
SAFER is FMCSA's public Safety and Fitness Electronic Records website, whose Company Snapshot shows a carrier's identification, size, safety rating, inspections and crashes.
The Company Snapshot is a free, one-at-a-time record of a company's identification, size, commodities and safety record, including any safety rating, a roadside out-of-service inspection summary and crash information. You can search it by USDOT number, MC or MX number, or company name.
For a factor, SAFER is the starting point, not the verification. It shows what a carrier's record says today. It does not show when the phone, email, address or officers changed, who is applying in the carrier's name, who owns the bank account, or which other carriers share its contacts, and those are the gaps fraud uses.
Pull the record yourself, add change history and related-entity checks with the carrier check, then work through is this carrier legit.