Understanding Motor Coach Safety Records

When we reference the FMCSA, we’re not mixing up the letters to the 1978 disco classic Village People’s single, but rather we’re talking about the government organization that monitors and enforces motor carrier safety. The full acronym is Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They process registrations and perform inspections to ensure all commercial vehicles on roadways are driven responsibly and are mechanically-sound.

Check Into Charter Bus Safety

When it comes to motorcoach rentals, know that BusRates.com first searches the FMCSA for an operator’s USDOT (that’s United States Department of Transportation, for the curious) registration, licensing and insurance before adding a bus operator to its database.

If you’ve performed a search within our bus operator database, you’ll have seen this USDOT link under the address of each bus company. Feel free to click this, which will pop open a new window on the FMCSA’s SAFER Company Snapshot (SAFER stands for Safety and Fitness Electronic Records).

The SAFER system offers company safety data and related services to the public. The Company Safety Profile contains safety-related information on an individual company’s operation, including selected items from inspection reports, crash reports and the results of any reviews or enforcement actions involving the requested company. It’ll give you a brief overview of the company in question. To find the specifics of each entry, please reference our guide to Understanding Operating Authority to get all the details you need.

We are glad to link to the licensing and insurance information for operators across the United States and Canada. For companies in USA, the licensing and insurance links will direct to the appropriate operator’s documentation as is on file with the FMCSA. For operators in Canada, this link will provide you with the appropriate provincial authorities to contact should you have extraneous questions regarding the specific operator.

Planning with Verified Operators

Why does BusRates.com go through all of these records and details? For starters, it’s a  sign that the operator owns and operators his own fleet (brokers file differently than operators). That means when you contact them, you’ll be getting all of your information straight from the source. You can save money and skip the middleman—bypassing commissions that national brokers or resellers impose. Of course, we also check this to make sure that the drivers are safe and that the companies are running equipment that is safe before we add them to the directory.

We encourage you to take a look at each operator’s information on file with the FMCSA and feel free to be curious and ask questions. And thank you for using BusRates.com to plan your group travel.