Where Are America’s Freight Brokers? A State-by-State Count of 25,081 Broker Authorities

The short answer

Counted by business address, the ten states with the most brokers hold 59.7% of U.S.-based broker authorities and the top five hold 43.5%. Measured per resident, the Midwest leads with 9.1 brokers per 100,000 residents and the Northeast trails with 4.8. Newer authorities cluster in the Sun Belt and Mid-Atlantic, while the oldest are mostly in the Upper Midwest. The share of brokers with a recent revocation notice is similar across most states: 36.3% nationally, with only California and Illinois clearly above and six states clearly below.

We name no companies in this report. It counts authorities by where they are registered. For one company, our free broker checker reads the same FMCSA records.

How we counted

FMCSA publishes every broker authority it lists as active. We took the 25,081 active authorities in our November 4, 2026 snapshot, the same set used in our freight broker authority study, and read the business state, city and ZIP code on each record. 23,798 list a U.S. state or the District of Columbia, 1,273 list a Canadian address, and 10 list Puerto Rico, Mexico or France. The state figures below cover the 23,798 U.S.-based authorities.

One authority is one MC number, not one company, so a company with several MC numbers appears several times. Per-resident figures divide by each state’s 2020 Census resident population (331,449,281 people across the 50 states and DC).

The big states: one in three brokers

Texas leads with 3,057 authorities, 12.8% of the U.S.-based total, although it has 8.8% of U.S. residents. California is second with 2,688 and Florida third with 2,069. Together the top three hold 32.8%. California has the most residents, so its share of brokers (11.3%) is close to its share of people (11.9%). Texas, Florida and Illinois have clearly more brokers than their population alone would predict, and New York has fewer (3.9 per 100,000).

Per resident: the Midwest and the Plains lead

Per resident, Wyoming (15.4 per 100,000), North Dakota (14.6), Nebraska and Illinois (12.5 each) lead. Small states swing widely on a few dozen authorities: Wyoming’s rate comes from only 89 authorities, so we treat the large-state comparison as the steadier one. Among the ten states with the most brokers, Illinois has the highest rate at 12.5, ahead of Texas (10.5) and Florida (9.6). Hawaii (0.5) and DC (1.3) have the fewest per resident.

The Midwest has 26.3% of brokers with 20.8% of residents. The Northeast has 11.6% of brokers and 17.4% of residents. We cannot say why from this data. Registration is cheap to start and brokers can work from anywhere, so a broker’s address says little about the freight it moves.

City by city: Laredo has more registered brokers than Houston

Counted by the city on each record, Laredo, Texas lists 421 broker authorities, more than Houston (402), in a city of about 255,000 people, or roughly 165 per 100,000 residents against 7.2 across the whole country. Laredo is a major truck crossing on the Mexican border, and El Paso adds 118 more. Together they hold 539 authorities, 18% of all Texas brokers. We do not know why brokers register there, only that they do.

Las Vegas holds 141 of Nevada’s 253 authorities (56%). Miami has 237 (53.6 per 100,000 residents). New York City, with its five boroughs combined by ZIP code, has 239, a low 2.7 per 100,000. City figures use city limits, so suburbs count separately: Elk Grove Village and Schaumburg near Chicago each list 45 more.

New and old: where the youngest authorities are

The median U.S.-based authority is 7.0 years old. Delaware (3.9), Nevada (4.7), Maryland, South Carolina and Texas (5.2) have the youngest, and 38% of Delaware’s authorities are under three years old. Minnesota (15.3), South Dakota (14.3) and Wisconsin (13.9) have the oldest. Age is measured from the earliest grant date in FMCSA’s history, so it shows when an authority was first granted, not how long a firm has been in business. Only the 41 states with at least 100 broker authorities are ranked.

Revocation notices: most states look alike

In our revocation study, an involuntary revocation notice is FMCSA’s warning that an authority will be revoked unless something is fixed, usually a lapsed bond or insurance filing, and nearly all notices are cured within weeks. Across U.S.-based brokers, 36.3% of active authorities had at least one revocation notice or final revocation in the five years to October 2025 (35% across all 25,081, including Canada).

Only California and Illinois sit clearly above the U.S. rate, and Alabama, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia clearly below it. The other states are within chance of the national figure. With 51 comparisons, one or two states would fall outside the range by luck alone, so read this as a pointer, not a verdict on any state. These shares describe authorities that are still active; brokers that lost their authority and never returned are not in them.

What it means for shippers and for local officials

• A broker’s state is not a quality signal. The share with a recent revocation notice is similar across most states, so a broker in a big state is not better or worse for it.
• Check the authority and its date. Look up the USDOT or MC number on FMCSA, or use our checker, and look at the history as well as the current status.
• One notice is not a red flag by itself. About a third of active brokers had one in five years. Repeated notices, or a final revocation followed by reinstatement, deserve questions.
• Reporters and local officials: every state and city figure here is free to use with a link back. The state table is on slide 3 and downloads as a CSV, and each state card has a copy-ready sentence and a share image. For a county, metro area or ZIP code cut, email support@transportli.com.

Check a broker yourself

Type a USDOT number, an MC number or a company name into the checker in our freight broker authority study. It reads the live FMCSA record and shows the authority type, the bond on file, when the authority was granted and any revocation notices. It does not rate or recommend any company.

Methodology and limits

• Source. FMCSA open data on data.transportation.gov: the Carrier file (active broker authorities, broker_stat = A) and the Authority History file. We downloaded both on November 4, 2026, and the active list matched a second pull on November 14, 2026 exactly (same 25,081 authorities).
• What we counted. One broker authority is one MC number. The 23,798 U.S.-address authorities are counted by the state on the business address; 1,273 Canadian, 7 Mexican, 2 Puerto Rican and 1 French authorities are not in the state figures.
• Address is not operations. State and city are where an authority is registered. Many brokers work remotely. Fewer than 1% of authorities (188 of 25,081) share a business address with four or more others, so shared offices do not drive the totals.
• Per resident. 2020 Census resident populations (331,449,281 in total). City populations are 2020 Census figures for the city limits; cities without a matching Census place are shown by count only.
• Cities. City is the name on the record, normalised for spelling. New York City combines the five boroughs by ZIP code. Suburbs are separate cities.
• Revocation events. Same definition as our revocation study: an involuntary revocation notice or final revocation served between November 1, 2020 and October 31, 2025, counted once per authority and only for authorities that are still active. Ranges are 95% Wilson intervals; “clearly above” or “below” means the interval excludes the U.S. rate of 36.3%.
• Small states. States with fewer than 30 authorities show no age or revocation figures; the age ranking uses states with at least 100.
• Causes unknown. FMCSA records show that a notice happened, not why. We make no claim about any company and name none.

Frequently asked questions

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