Don’t let outdated data ruin your reputation — or your insurance rates. A few minutes updating your MCS-150 could save you thousands.
When fleet owners think about reducing insurance premiums, they typically focus on crash prevention, claims history, or driver behavior. But one commonly overlooked factor can quietly sabotage your efforts — outdated or inaccurate information on your MCS-150 form.
That’s right — the data you submit to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in your Motor Carrier Identification Report could be working against you, inflating your CSA scores and pushing up your commercial insurance rates.
Why Insurance Underwriters Look at Your CSA Scores
Insurance companies use FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scores as a critical risk indicator. High CSA scores can suggest a lack of safety culture, insufficient maintenance practices, or careless driver behavior — even if that’s not truly the case.
But what if your scores are misleading? That’s where the MCS-150 form comes in.
According to a former FMCSA investigator and current safety consultant and insurance expert, “Many carriers unintentionally hurt their scores and premiums by not keeping their MCS-150 up to date. And they don’t even know it.”
How MCS-150 Data Affects Your CSA — and Your Premiums
Your CSA Crash Indicator and Unsafe Driving scores are calculated using two key components:
- Average Power Units – the number of trucks reported to FMCSA over time
- Utilization Factor – miles driven per truck, based on annual Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT)
Here’s the catch: the FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS) averages your power units using a rolling 18-month window (now, 6 months ago, and 18 months ago). If your fleet is growing and you haven’t updated your MCS-150, the system could undercount your trucks — making each violation or crash appear twice as severe.
Example:
Say you grew from 20 to 40 trucks recently. If your MCS-150 still reports 20 trucks and mileage for 20 trucks, FMCSA sees a low average fleet size. But all violations or crashes that occurred with your full 40-truck fleet get applied to that smaller denominator.
This inflates your crash rate per vehicle, hurting your CSA score and causing your insurance premiums to spike.
The Utilization Factor Trap
It’s not just your power unit count that matters — it’s how much each truck appears to be driving.
If the FMCSA thinks your trucks are averaging 200,000 miles or more per unit, that increases your utilization factor and can worsen your CSA scores significantly.
Here’s how that happens:
- If your fleet actually runs 6 million miles across 60 trucks, you’re averaging 100,000 miles per truck — a healthy number.
- But if the FMCSA thinks you only have 30 trucks (based on outdated data), they calculate 6 million ÷ 30 = 200,000 miles per unit — enough to trigger a higher severity weight in CSA scoring.
That small reporting error could be costing you thousands in unnecessary insurance premiums.
CSA Peer Groups and Insurance Risk Ratings
CSA doesn’t just look at violations — it also compares you to your peer group, based on fleet size and inspection count. That means even clean inspections can have unexpected effects.
Imagine moving up to a more competitive peer group — similar to moving from high school basketball to the NBA — where your performance is judged more harshly. This can happen if you get enough inspections (even without violations) to bump into the next group.
For example, we have had clients go from no alerts to alert status overnight — just because a clean inspection pushed them into a tougher peer group.
And when insurance underwriters or shippers see those alerts? They may assume your risk has increased, even if your actual safety record hasn’t changed.
Why Insurance Providers Care
Underwriters look for consistency and accuracy in your DOT data. If they see:
- Mismatched truck counts
- Low mileage compared to reported crashes
- Alerts in CSA scores due to poor math, not performance
…then your fleet is labeled high-risk, and you’ll pay for it.
Worse yet, you may miss out on contracts with shippers and brokers who monitor your CSA data before awarding loads.
Update Your MCS-150 Regularly
Federal law only requires an MCS-150 update every 24 months, but in practice, that’s not enough. A motor carrier should update every time their fleet size or mileage changes significantly.
If you’re unsure how to review or update your registration properly, our sister company Compliance Navigation Specialists (CNS) can help.
Our experts walk carriers through:
- MCS-150 updates
- CSA score monitoring
- Insurance impact assessments
- Safety audits and corrective action plans
Call us at 888.260.9448 or email: info@cnsprotects.com.
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If you have any questions or concerns, please call us at 800.724.5523 or email info@cnsinsures.com.
