Public safety data is one of the most useful tools a freight buyer has, and one of the easiest to misuse. A percentile on a dashboard can look like a grade. It can also change when new inspections arrive, when a peer group shifts, or when FMCSA updates how it organizes the information. Treating a single number as an automatic award or rejection over-reads the system.

Shippers who build Western approved-carrier files need a working method: what the Safety Measurement System is for, what a safety rating is under federal safety-fitness rules, and how to combine those public records with a callback and a lane file. The goal is better questions, not a homemade formula that pretends to be FMCSA’s own rating.

SMS is a monitoring system, not a safety rating

The FMCSA Safety Measurement System organizes inspection, crash, and related safety data so enforcement agencies can prioritize interventions. Shippers can review the same public history if they keep that purpose in view. SMS is not a safety rating, and it is not a private ranking of every carrier from best to worst for your commodity or lane.

Safety ratings are a different product. They are assigned under 49 CFR Part 385 after a compliance review, using FMCSA’s safety-fitness procedures. Part 385 describes ratings of satisfactory, conditional, and unsatisfactory, and it also recognizes that a carrier may be unrated because FMCSA has not assigned a rating. An unsatisfactory rating has operating consequences under that part. A percentile in SMS does not, by itself, equal that determination.

That distinction matters in a procurement file. “Reviewed SMS on this date and asked about two recent vehicle-maintenance inspections” is a defensible note. “Failed because the percentile looked high” is harder to explain later, especially if the carrier had insufficient data in some categories or if the public methodology later changed.

Read the categories, not only the biggest number on the page

SMS publicly groups data into Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories that shippers typically see around unsafe driving, crash indicator, hours-of-service compliance, vehicle maintenance, controlled substances and alcohol, hazardous materials compliance, and driver fitness. Labels, peer grouping, and calculation details can change; read what the live portal shows on the day you review a carrier rather than relying on a screenshot from last year.

Look at the categories that match the work you are buying. A carrier hauling your general freight across the West should prompt questions about vehicle maintenance, hours-of-service compliance, and crash involvement if the public record shows a pattern you do not understand. Hazardous materials compliance matters more if you actually tender placarded freight. A category with little or no recent inspection data is not automatically a passing grade. It may simply mean the public file does not yet have enough information for a percentile.

Absolute counts and peer percentiles answer different questions. A larger carrier can accumulate more inspections simply because it runs more miles. A percentile compares a carrier with a peer or safety-event group, not with every company in the country and not with your private scorecard. Do not treat a better percentile as proof that a carrier is safer on your next load, or a worse percentile as proof of the opposite, without reading the inspections or crashes underneath it.

Two roadside inspectors reviewing a clipboard beside a dark red TEOCAL cab on a sunny rural highway shoulder under a blue sky
AI-generated illustration of roadside review beside a TEOCAL tractor. This image was created for the article and is not a photograph of Teocal Transport staff, customers, or facilities.

Pair SMS with the Company Snapshot and a human callback

Start identity with FMCSA’s SAFER Company Snapshot. Confirm that the legal name, USDOT number, and operating status match the quote. Look for an assigned safety rating if one appears; many carriers will not have one, and the absence of a rating is not by itself a pass or a fail. Record the date of the review so a later colleague knows what you saw.

Then open SMS for the same identity. Ask whether the inspections and crashes you see belong to the company you are hiring, not to a similarly named entity. If the snapshot and the SMS record do not tell one story, stop and ask why before you add the carrier to a standing list or tender another load.

Use the public file to prepare a conversation, not to replace one. If vehicle-maintenance findings repeat, ask how defects are corrected and how often equipment is inspected. If hours-of-service data stands out, ask how dispatch plans appointments so a legal day is still possible. If crash information appears, ask what the carrier can share about dates and corrective steps without demanding private records it cannot release. Write the question and the answer into the file.

A first-load illustration helps keep the method practical: a shipper comparing two carriers for a Hayward-to-Boise truckload — not a claim about particular companies — should keep both public records, callbacks, and equipment answers side by side. The cheaper rate is not the file; the dated review is.

Worker in a dark red polo kneeling to inspect the front wheel of a dark red TEOCAL cab in a sunny industrial yard
AI-generated illustration of pre-trip wheel inspection on a TEOCAL cab. This image was created for the article and is not a photograph of Teocal Transport staff, customers, or facilities.

Put the review on a calendar, and do not invent a private FMCSA grade

A useful shipper process has three parts: a dated public-record review, a conversation about anything that needs explaining, and a decision that names the lanes or services the carrier is approved to handle. Refresh the public review on a cadence you can keep — quarterly for carriers you use often, and before reuse for a name that has been idle. New inspections can change what you see. So can a change in ownership or billing name.

Do not build a homemade pass/fail line that treats one percentile as if it were a hidden FMCSA rule. The agency uses SMS to prioritize its own work. Your company may still decide that certain patterns are unacceptable for high-value, high-risk, or customer-sensitive freight. If you make that decision, write it as your policy, dated and specific, rather than as a sentence that claims FMCSA already banned the carrier.

Part 385 remains the place to look if you need to understand what an assigned safety rating means, including the consequences described there for an unsatisfactory rating. SMS remains the place to look for inspection and crash history that may never have produced a rating at all. Use both, and keep your notes in ordinary language.

Use service pages as context, then run the same checks on everyone

Teocal’s page on why shippers choose Teocal publishes a five-point service pledge about standing behind the work, treating a shipment as if it were the company’s own, aiming for competitive pricing, asking to be told if something does not seem right, and communicating about delays or problems. Those are published service commitments, not an SMS score, a safety rating, or a substitute for the public checks you should run on any carrier, including us.

The same is true of a full truckload shipping page or any other service summary. Use it to understand the work being offered, then put the USDOT number, the snapshot, the SMS review, and the callback notes in one file.

Watch for a few common reading errors

The first error is treating no data as good data. A carrier with few recent inspections may simply not have been inspected often enough for a public percentile to appear. That can happen with a smaller operation, a newer identity, or a company inspected less often than a larger peer. You may still hire that carrier after a snapshot check and a conversation. You should not write “clean SMS” when the more accurate note is “insufficient public data on this date.”

The second error is mixing the crash indicator with a courtroom conclusion. Public crash information can be a reason to ask a question. It is not, standing alone, a finding that the carrier was at fault, and it is not a reason to invent details the portal does not show. Ask what the carrier can share, record the answer, and decide whether the freight you are tendering can tolerate the remaining uncertainty.

The third error is copying another shipper’s threshold without knowing what it measures. Some routing guides reject any carrier above a stated percentile in any category. That rule is simple, and it can exclude carriers whose public record would look different after a conversation, a peer-group change, or a closer read of one inspection type. If your company wants a numerical screen, write what it is screening for and how an exception is approved. Otherwise you will create an unofficial second list of people used anyway.

The fourth error is forgetting that SMS and a safety rating can diverge. A carrier can have inspection history in SMS and still be unrated under Part 385 because no compliance review has produced a rating. A carrier can also have an assigned rating older than the newest roadside data. Read both records on the same day and date the note. Do not assume the more dramatic number is the official fitness determination.

What belongs in the note, and what does not

A good file note is short. It should capture the USDOT number, the date of the SAFER and SMS reviews, any assigned rating or the fact that none appeared, the categories you looked at, and any question you asked. It should not include a homemade composite score that no one else can rebuild, or language that claims any carrier has a particular unpublished ranking.

Share the method with operations and payables so the people who tender freight and the people who pay invoices look at the same identity. If a billing name changes, run the snapshot again before the next load. If an overflow carrier is needed during a peak week, apply the same minimum review rather than treating urgency as a waiver.

Revisit the file after a serious incident, an equipment complaint, or new inspections that change the public record. You do not need to rebuild the method each time, but you do need to date the new look.

A short method you can repeat

Before you award or renew a Western carrier:

If you are refreshing an approved list or sending a first tender, include those review steps in the package you send with a freight quote request. Ask us to walk through how we would appear in that file the same way you would ask another carrier. A careful SMS reading will not make a highway safer by itself, but it will keep a public dashboard from being treated as a final verdict when it was built to help people ask better questions.

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