What changed on May 14, 2026
FMCSA retired its legacy registration stack — the Unified Registration System (URS), the public Licensing & Insurance (L&I) site, and the registration functions inside the old FMCSA Portal — and replaced all of it with one system: Motus, at motus.dot.gov. The agency announced the system and the cutover in an April 29, 2026 Federal Register notice, and the legacy systems went dark on May 14, 2026.
If you filed for authority before mid-May 2026, almost every guide you read is now describing a system that no longer exists. The bookmarked L&I links are dead, the Portal registration menus are gone, and the filing flow starts somewhere new. Here is how it actually works now, deadline by deadline, with the federal rules cited so you can check them yourself.
This is an operating walk-through, not legal advice. For legal questions about your specific application, talk to a transportation attorney.
The new front door: Login.gov plus identity proofing
Motus sits behind Login.gov, the government-wide sign-in service, and adds a step the old systems never had: identity verification for new applicants. Per FMCSA’s registration modernization FAQs, all new applicants must pass identity proofing — verifying a government-issued photo ID — before they can file. This is FMCSA’s response to years of fraudulent registrations filed under other people’s names.
Two practical consequences:
- The company official has to do it personally. A compliance service or process agent can help you prepare the application, but they cannot pass identity verification for you. Have your driver’s license or passport ready, and expect the verification flow to take real time on your first session.
- Your Login.gov email matters. Existing companies claiming their records in Motus need the company official to sign in with credentials that match what FMCSA has on file (see FMCSA’s Move into Motus page). New applicants are starting fresh, so set up Login.gov with an email you control long-term — not a dispatcher’s, not a filing service’s.
What you need before you touch the application
Nothing here is new with Motus, but it is the stuff that stalls applications when it is missing:
| Item | Where it comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Business entity | Your state’s Secretary of State | LLC or corporation registered before you file |
| EIN | IRS (free) | Match the legal name exactly — mismatches cause problems downstream |
| Login.gov account + verified identity | login.gov / Motus | Company official, personally |
| $300 per authority type | Paid inside the filing flow via Pay.gov | Non-refundable, per FMCSA’s fee FAQ |
| Insurance quotes in hand | Your agent | You have only 20 days after publication to get filings on record — shop before you file |
| A process agent lined up | Any BOC-3 blanket agent service | Same 20-day clock |
The $300 is per authority type. Motor carrier of property, broker of property, and freight forwarder are separate authorities; applying for two means $600.
You file, then FMCSA publishes — and publication is not a grant
After you submit and pay, FMCSA publishes a summary of your application in its daily Register, posted at motus.dot.gov around 7:00 AM ET each business day. The same day your notice publishes, FMCSA sends you a letter with your docket number, the publication date, and your filing deadlines — that’s stated in the Register’s own General Information section. (So no, docket numbers did not disappear with the old systems.)
Here is the part most people get wrong, in FMCSA’s own words from the June 10, 2026 Register preamble: the Register “publishes a summary of an operating authority application as a preliminary grant of authority to provide public notice and allow any interested party the opportunity to oppose the application.” The disclaimer on the same page is blunt: the Register “is not approval, endorsement, or a grant of operating authority and may not be used as proof that any person or entity is authorized to operate.”
Publication starts clocks. It does not make you a carrier.
For scale: across the three Register days June 8–10, 2026, our pipeline parsed 827 operating-authority applications — 320, 238, and 269 per day — the large majority of them motor carriers of property. Your application publishes alongside hundreds of others, sectioned by authority type, with your USDOT number, legal name, filing date, mailing address, and company officer listed in public. (Browse the current window on our feed, or look up your state on the state pages.)
The clocks that start at publication
All of this is in 49 CFR Part 365, and the Register preamble restates it daily. The three deadlines that matter:
| Clock | Length | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Protest window | 10 days from the Register notice date | Part 365 Subpart B / § 365.107T; receipt-based |
| Insurance + BOC-3 evidence | 20 days from publication | § 365.109T |
| Appeal if rejected | 10 days from the rejection letter | § 365.111T |
Details worth knowing on each:
The protest window is receipt-based. Anyone opposing your application must have the protest received — not postmarked — by FMCSA’s Office of Registration (MC-RS), 1200 New Jersey Ave SE, Washington, DC 20590, within 10 days of the notice date, with a copy sent concurrently to you. A protest has to state a factual basis: that the applicant isn’t fit, willing, and able; won’t comply with safety and financial-responsibility rules; or that the grant isn’t in the public interest. Late or unsupported protests waive further participation. For ordinary trucking applications, protests are not something to lose sleep over — the window exists mostly for contested passenger and household-goods cases — but it is why nothing can go final for at least 10 days.
The 20-day filing deadline is the one that actually bites. Under § 365.109T you must have evidence of financial responsibility (your insurer’s federal filing) and a process-agent designation (BOC-3, under 49 CFR Part 366) on record within 20 days of publication. Your insurance agent makes the federal filing electronically; a blanket process-agent company files the BOC-3, usually same-day. If you wait until after publication to start shopping insurance, you are racing this clock.
Then issuance. Under § 365.115(b): “If no one opposes the application, the grant published in the FMCSA Register will become effective by issuance of a certificate, permit, or license.” Unopposed application + insurance and BOC-3 on file → authority is granted after the window closes and becomes active upon issuance of the document — not on the publication date, and not automatically on day 11. And per the Register preamble, that authority “will remain valid only as long as the applicant continues to maintain that compliance.” Let your insurance lapse and the authority goes with it.
End to end, plan on roughly 4–6 weeks from submission to active authority, and your authority cannot go active until both the insurance filing and the BOC-3 are on record — that’s the consistent post-Motus experience reported in practitioner guides like Small Fleet HQ’s MOTUS walk-through (secondary source, updated May 2026). The regulatory minimum is faster on paper; the practical timeline includes insurance underwriting for a brand-new authority, which is the slow part.
Insurance: know the floors before you quote
The federal minimums for the common cases, from 49 CFR 387.9 and 387.307:
| Operation | Federal minimum |
|---|---|
| For-hire property, vehicles 10,001 lbs+ , non-hazardous | $750,000 liability |
| For-hire property, vehicles under 10,001 lbs, non-hazardous | $300,000 liability |
| Certain hazardous materials | $1,000,000–$5,000,000 |
| Broker or freight forwarder of property | $75,000 surety bond or trust (BMC-84/85) |
Note that the $750,000 floor is a floor — most brokers and shippers you’ll want to work with require a $1,000,000 certificate, so quote at that level from the start.
Pre-Motus folklore to unlearn
Things that were true once, or never, and still circulate in forums and old YouTube walkthroughs:
- “Mail in your OP-1 form.” Paper OP-series forms have been gone for new applicants since URS, and now URS itself is gone. Motus is the only door.
- “Check your status on the L&I site.” That URL died May 14, 2026. Confirm actual authority status at frs.fmcsa.dot.gov — the system the Register’s own disclaimer points to — or in your Motus dashboard.
- “You’re in the Register, you’re good to book loads.” Publication is a preliminary grant. Operating before issuance is operating without authority.
- “Your filing service handles everything.” Not anymore. Identity proofing is personal to the company official. Any service promising to file “entirely on your behalf” is describing the old world — or planning to impersonate you.
- “It’s active on day 11.” The 10-day protest window closing is necessary, not sufficient. Issuance happens after FMCSA confirms insurance and BOC-3 are on file.
After issuance, the calls start — because you’re public
Everything in your Register entry — name, address, phone, company officer — is public from day one. Expect “FMCSA compliance” robocalls, document-fee scams, and factoring pitches within days of publication; the legitimate-looking ones are the dangerous ones. Anyone claiming to be a broker or carrier can be checked against the actual application record: our verify tool looks up a USDOT number against the register data directly.
Still on your federal plate after the certificate arrives: UCR registration at ucr.gov, the MCS-150 biennial update, and the new-entrant safety audit within your first months of operation under 49 CFR Part 385, Subpart D. On the revenue side, most new authorities start on load boards — DAT is the standard one brokers will assume you have — but board access does you no good until the authority is actually issued.
The cutover changed the plumbing, not the rules: Part 365 timing survived Motus intact. File with your insurance already quoted, your process agent picked, and your identity documents in hand, and the system is genuinely faster than the one it replaced. File unprepared and the 20-day clock will teach you the rules the expensive way.