Short answer: Any company moving your household goods across a state line must have a USDOT number, and its complaint and safety history is searchable for free before you sign anything. The lookup takes about two minutes.

Most people research a mover the way they research a restaurant — a few star ratings, a scroll through recent comments. For interstate moves, there is a second layer of information that carries more weight and almost nobody opens it.

Federal or state — the line matters

A move from Santa Clarita to Valencia is an in-state move, regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. A move from Santa Clarita to Denver crosses a state line, which puts it under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and 49 CFR Part 375, the rules governing estimates and contracts on interstate household goods moves.

Ask which one applies to your move first. The answer determines which record you should be reading.

What FMCSA publishes

FMCSA’s Protect Your Move site includes a database of interstate moving companies searchable by state or name, showing both consumer complaint history and safety performance records.

Three things to look at:

That last distinction causes a large share of the confusion in moving disputes. A broker arranges your move but does not perform it, and the crew that shows up may be a company you never evaluated.

Complaints are rising, and the system just changed

Complaints to FMCSA’s National Consumer Complaint Database climbed from 4,340 in 2020 to 8,295 in 2021.

The database itself was modernized in a first phase announced on September 24, 2025. The change that matters for consumers: for the first time, complaints can be lodged against property brokers, not only against carriers.

If a broker arranged your move and the experience went badly, that complaint now has somewhere to go.

What happens when a mover holds your goods

FMCSA’s Operation Protect Your Move deploys investigators against complaints of movers holding possessions hostage to extract additional charges.

The enforcement consequences are specific. Where an authorized carrier is found to have held household goods hostage, FMCSA may suspend the carrier’s operating authority for 12 to 36 months, can order the goods returned, and can award affected consumers all or a portion of the civil penalties collected.

Complaints go to nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov or 1-888-DOT-SAFT (1-888-368-7238), 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday.

Reading the record

A clean database entry is a floor, not a guarantee — a company can be properly authorized and still run a bad operation. What the record does reliably tell you is when to walk away: no operating authority, a complaint pattern in the same category, or a broker presenting itself as the carrier.

Those sit alongside the behavioral warning signs that show up before any paperwork does — a quote given without anyone seeing your belongings, a large deposit demanded up front, a company that answers the phone with a generic greeting rather than a business name. Consumer guides on the red flags of moving fraud catalogue the pattern in more detail, and it is worth reading before you start collecting quotes rather than after.

Two minutes, four checks

1. Confirm whether your move is interstate or in-state.
2. For interstate: get the USDOT number and look it up on the FMCSA database.
3. Confirm whether the company is the carrier or a broker, in writing.
4. Check the complaint history for repeat categories, not just volume.

Regulatory details reflect FMCSA publications current as of August 2026. Verify a carrier’s authority directly with FMCSA before signing.