UPDATE: FMCSA data back online after outage

Department of Transportation says glitch caused temporary disruption

The data affected includes company census files, crash files, inspections per unit, citations and more. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Updated 11:23 am ET, Sept. 17

The FMCSA database is back up and running after several data sets were unavailable yesterday.

X user @garret_makes let FreightWaves know via DM this morning that the missing data, which was returning a standard “404 error” on attempted access, was accessible again.

This data has been the backbone of a grassroots effort to bring more scrutiny to safety in the trucking industry and users were questioning why it disappeared.

The FMCSA confirmed with FreightWaves that a technical error occurred during daily updates leading to the data being temporarily disabled. A fix has since been applied.

Swaths of public carrier data is no longer accessible on FMCSA website

Several types of publicly available data recorded by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) have seemingly vanished from the Department of Transportation’s website.

The data affected includes company census files, crash files, inspections per unit, citations and more. Most links to these records – updated daily on the FMCSA website – are no longer working.

Users took to social media on Tuesday drawing attention to the removal of these documents. Garrett Allen posted on X that while monthly snapshots for this data are still available, it’s not as helpful as the daily updated datasets.

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Caleb Revill

Caleb Revill is a journalist, writer and lifelong learner working as a Junior Writer for Firecrown. When he isn't tackling breaking news, Caleb is on the lookout for fascinating feature stories. Every person has a story to tell, and Caleb wants to help share them! He can be contacted by email anytime at Caleb.Revill@firecrown.com.