Your carrier passed every check you run — and its logging device may be off the federal registry, FMCSA has stopped enforcing the update that keeps its record current, and its fuel bill just set a record three weeks running

Week of September 28, 2026 · 3 items · 8-minute read

1. The federal registry pulled a logging device your carrier may be running — and for five of them, the out-of-service date is October 6

FMCSA publishes two lists of electronic logging devices: registered ones, and revoked ones. The revoked list describes its entries as devices “found by FMCSA to not meet the Electronic Logging Device technical specifications.” Carrier qualification checks authority, insurance and safety scores. It rarely asks which box is bolted to the dash.

What the list holds. Pulled from FMCSA’s revoked-device list on September 28: 387 device registrations — 132 revoked by FMCSA and 255 withdrawn by the provider itself. 102 of those rows are dated 2026 (56 FMCSA revocations, 46 self-revocations), across 55 provider names, and the most recent entry is dated September 28.
Read the rows carefully. They are registrations, not companies: one provider can hold several rows. And a provider withdrawing its own registration is not an FMCSA finding against it. The 132/255 split is the honest way to state the number, and it is why totals quoted in trade coverage vary so much.
It does not arrive evenly. By month, 2026 runs: May 37, July 16, March 15, August 12, February 10, January 5, June 3, April 2, September 2 (to date). A carrier that was fine in April could be running a revoked device in May.
The clock on the latest FMCSA batch is running now. On August 6, FMCSA removed five devices from the registered list. Its bulletin says carriers “have up to 60 days to replace the revoked ELDs,” must “discontinue using the revoked ELDs and revert to paper logs or logging software” in the meantime, and that “beginning October 6, 2026, motor carriers who continue to use the revoked devices listed above will be considered as operating without an ELD.” From that date, FMCSA tells roadside officials to cite the driver and “place the driver out-of-service.”

So what: two additions to how you qualify a carrier, and neither costs anything. (1) Ask each core carrier which ELD provider and model its fleet runs, and check the names against FMCSA’s revoked list before you award lane volume. For any carrier on the August 6 devices, confirm the replacement before October 6. (2) Put a notice duty in the transportation agreement: if a device in the carrier’s fleet is removed from the federal registry, the carrier tells you inside a fixed window — the same clause shape as the credential-compromise notice from Issue 11. A revocation is one of the few compliance events that can idle a truck you have already tendered, and it is published, free, and searchable by name.

2. “Active USDOT” means less than it did in June: FMCSA stopped inactivating carriers that skip their biennial update

The MCS-150 biennial update is what keeps a carrier’s federal record — address, fleet size, contacts, operation type — from going stale. Historically, a carrier that missed it risked having its USDOT number inactivated. During the move to Motus, its new registration system, FMCSA suspended that.

FMCSA’s notice, last updated September 10, says Motus “launched on May 19” and that:

FMCSA “has temporarily suspended enforcement of biennial updates and the inactivation of USDOT Numbers for entities that have not completed the required biennial update.”
“Registrants whose biennial update was due on or after June 1, 2026 will receive additional time to complete any required biennial updates and will not have their USDOT Number inactivated for failing to submit a biennial update.”
“We will share additional guidance as Motus recovery and stabilization efforts continue.” No end date is posted.

What that does to a qualification file. Two things, pointing in opposite directions:

A current-looking FMCSA record is weaker evidence than it was. Since June, nothing forces a carrier whose update came due to refresh its address, fleet count or contacts, and nothing happens if it doesn’t. If your process treats “USDOT active” as evidence the record is maintained, that inference no longer holds.
A stale MCS-150 is weaker evidence too. It used to be a reasonable dormancy or shell-company signal. With enforcement suspended and Motus still being stabilized, a lapsed update on a post-June due date says little on its own. Don’t let it carry a finding by itself.

And there is a deferred event built in. When FMCSA resumes enforcement, carriers that never filed are back in scope for inactivation, potentially many at once.

So what: (1) For your core carriers, get the record directly rather than inferring it: ask them to confirm their current MCS-150 filing status and operating address, and date-stamp the answer in the file. (2) Stop scoring a stale MCS-150 as a standalone red flag for now, and write that into your procedure so the change is deliberate rather than silent. (3) Watch for FMCSA’s guidance on resuming enforcement. When it lands, carriers in your pool that never filed will have a deadline, and you want to know before a roadside inspection does.

3. Diesel set a record three weeks running, and many fuel-surcharge tables were written for a different price

The weekly DOE/EIA U.S. on-highway diesel average is a common index for fuel surcharges. From the St. Louis Fed’s copy of that series, pulled September 28:

Week of September 21: $6.529 a gallon — the highest in the series.
The previous record was $5.810 on June 20, 2022. The current print is 71.9 cents above it.
It is the third straight record week: $5.967 (September 7, the first week ever above the 2022 peak), then $6.285 (September 14), then $6.529.
Five weeks earlier (August 17) it was $5.454 — up $1.075 in five weeks.
A year earlier (September 22, 2025) it was $3.749 — up $2.78 year over year.

Why a record matters more than the level. Surcharge schedules are step tables: a base price where the surcharge starts, a cents-per-mile increment per step, an index, and a lag. A table drafted when diesel ran $3–4 may top out below where the index now sits, and what happens past the last row is not standard. It gets negotiated in the middle of a cost spike, from whatever your contract failed to say.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quote: at 6 miles per gallon, $1.00 a gallon is about 16.7 cents a mile. Against the year-ago print, that is roughly 46 cents a mile of fuel-cost change to be split between you and the carrier by whatever your table says.

So what — four questions, answerable this week from documents you already have: (1) Which index does each transportation agreement name: the DOE weekly national average, a regional average, or a carrier-published table? (2) What is the base price the surcharge starts from, and how long is the lag between the index print and the week it bills? (3) Does the table have a top row, and what governs above it? (4) Do surcharges apply to accessorials and LTL the same way they apply to linehaul? Then rebase the freight line of the budget against the current print, not last year’s.