The federal carrier lookups, such as FMCSA’s SAFER Company Snapshot and the Licensing and Insurance public system, answer one question: what does the record say now? They show the carrier’s current operating status, its current authority, and the insurance filings on record today, made under 49 CFR Part 387. They do not keep a copy of what they showed on an earlier day.
When an action is entered, the lookup shows the new state. A suspension, a revocation, a reinstatement, an insurance cancellation or a new filing replaces what the lookup displayed before. Some actions are entered days after the date they take effect, and some are dated back to an earlier day.
The federal files that list past events have the same limit. The authority and insurance history tables FMCSA publishes on the Department of Transportation’s open-data portal are reloaded whole, as the record stands today: they report what is on file now about an earlier date, not what anyone could see on that date.
The carrier and docket here are fictional and the dates are chosen for illustration; the pattern is not. Suppose a lookup of docket MC-000001 on October 6, 2025 showed the carrier’s operating authority as active. FMCSA later revoked that authority effective October 10, 2025, but the revocation was entered into the public record on October 21, eleven days after its effective date. The authority was reinstated on November 20, 2025.
Four dates, and what a printout of the lookup would have said on each of three days:
| Printed on | What the lookup said |
|---|---|
| October 14, 2025 | Authority active. Nothing on the page said a revocation effective four days earlier was coming. |
| October 28, 2025 | Not authorized; revocation effective October 10. The page read as if that had been visible since October 10. It had not. |
| December 1, 2025 | Authority active; the history listed a revocation effective October 10 and a reinstatement on November 20. Nothing showed the eleven days when the lookup still said active. |
A load tendered on October 14 went to a carrier the public record then called active. Only a copy made that day shows it.
A motor-carrier case can require proof of what the public record showed on a particular day: the day a carrier was hired, the day a load was tendered, or the date of a crash. A printout of today’s lookup answers a different question. It shows the record on the day it was printed, not on the day that matters.
A copy of the public record made on or before the date, and kept unchanged since, shows what the record said then. To be useful as evidence, each fact in it needs its source and the time it was captured, and the copy needs a way to show it has not changed, such as a cryptographic fingerprint that anyone can check. The Federal Rules of Evidence describe certification for records of this kind: Rule 902(11) for certified records of a regularly conducted activity, Rule 902(13) for certified records generated by an electronic process or system, and Rule 902(14) for certified data copied from an electronic file and authenticated by a process of digital identification, such as a hash value. Whether a given copy qualifies is for counsel and the court.
Where no copy was made at the time, a later copy can only show what the record says now about that date. That difference should be stated, not hidden. A copy that was not made at the time cannot be made later.
Substradium keeps its own dated copies of public federal and state carrier records. Coverage differs by carrier and by date, so it is answered per request: for the carrier and date you name, we say whether this archive can answer. A date the archive did not capture is answered as “not captured”, never as clean.
A Substradium report states, for one carrier and one date, what those copies show, labels each finding Captured, Reconstructed or Not captured, and gives the source and capture time of every row it relies on.
No. The SAFER company snapshot and the other public carrier lookups show the record as it stands now. A later action replaces what they showed before.
Only in part. The history files list past events with their dates, but they are the record as it stands today, including actions entered or dated back after your date. They show what is on file now about that date, not what the record showed on it.
It shows what the record said on or before the date, with the source and capture time of each fact, and a fingerprint that shows the copy has not changed since. A copy that was not made at the time cannot be made later.
Tell us the carrier and the date. We reply by email within one business day with what this archive holds for that date. Nothing is charged for a request.
Or check a carrier and a date yourself, free, no account: the page that opens shows which records this archive was capturing on your date and how many archived rows it holds since.
Or write to hello@substradium.com.