FMCSA Halts USDOT Deactivations for Missed Biennial Updates as Motus Rollout Stumbles

FMCSA has temporarily suspended USDOT number deactivations for motor carriers, brokers and freight forwarders who missed a biennial update because of access or system problems in Motus, the agency's replacement registration platform, according to a notice posted to FMCSA's registration site. The relief applies to any biennial update due on or after June 1, 2026, and will stay in place "until further notice" — FMCSA says it will give advance warning before resuming enforcement, but has not set a date.

The agency's own language is direct: "Registrants will receive additional time to complete any required biennial updates and should not worry about inactivation resulting from Motus-related access or system issues." That is a notably informal reassurance for a compliance notice, and it signals the scope of the access problems FMCSA is trying to paper over without saying so directly.

What Motus changed, and where it broke

Motus launched May 19, replacing the fragmented set of legacy FMCSA registration tools with a single platform covering biennial updates, new applications, address changes and document uploads for a wide registrant base: not just motor carriers but brokers, freight forwarders, intermodal equipment providers, cargo tank facilities and financial-responsibility filers. A biennial update is not optional paperwork — a lapsed one is what triggers USDOT number deactivation, which in turn can knock a carrier or broker out of SAFER lookups and off a shipper's or forwarder's approved-vendor list.

FMCSA has not published a count of affected registrants or a root-cause explanation of what in Motus is failing, and neither the agency's newsroom nor its main registration pages carry a fuller notice than the one paragraph now published. The suspension notice itself is undated in its visible metadata beyond a "last updated June 22" stamp, even though the cutoff it describes (June 1) and its public surfacing this week suggest the problem has been live, and growing, for most of the summer.

What forwarders and brokers do differently

This is a registration story with a counterparty-risk angle for anyone who checks a partner's USDOT status before tendering freight:

• A lapsed-looking USDOT number may not mean a lapsed carrier. A forwarder running routine SAFER checks on a drayage or linehaul provider should not treat an inactive status alone as disqualifying through this period — it may reflect a Motus filing failure rather than an actual compliance gap. Confirm directly with the carrier before dropping them from an approved list.
• Brokers and forwarders are registrants too. Motus covers freight forwarder and broker registrations directly, not just carriers. Any brokerage with a biennial update due since June 1 that hit an access problem should not assume it is protected by this notice without checking — the relief is described as automatic, but there is no confirmation email or status flag mentioned in FMCSA's own guidance, only the phone line and support ticket system.
• There's no fixed end date to plan around. Because FMCSA has committed only to "advance warning" before enforcement resumes, not a calendar date, registrants should treat any Motus access problem as still live rather than assuming it will be resolved by a specific point in Q3 or Q4.