Indus Carrier Directory: Looking Up Freight Carriers with FMCSA Data

#python #logistics #api #webdev

Indus Carrier Directory is a freight carrier lookup tool built on public FMCSA data. It lets brokers, shippers and dispatchers find a carrier and check its registration details in one place before they book a load. I'm Muhammad Afzal Kalwar, founder of INDUS Web Agency, and I built it after years on the sales and dispatch side of US trucking.

Why a carrier directory?

In US trucking, every interstate carrier is registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and has a USDOT number. Before a broker books a truck, someone usually checks that number: is the carrier registered, is its authority active, does the name match? Doing that one carrier at a time on government pages is slow when you're vetting many carriers a day.

Where the data comes from

FMCSA publishes carrier information publicly, including through its QCMobile API (free, with a web key) and downloadable census data. Indus Carrier Directory reads that public data and presents it as a searchable directory.

import os, requests

WEBKEY = os.environ["FMCSA_WEBKEY"]   # never hard-code keys

def carrier_by_dot(dot: str) -> dict:
    url = f"https://mobile.fmcsa.dot.gov/qc/services/carriers/{dot}"
    r = requests.get(url, params={"webKey": WEBKEY}, timeout=15)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json().get("content", {})

Check FMCSA's QCMobile documentation for current endpoints and field names before you rely on them.

Lessons from building it

Cache, don't hammer. Public APIs have limits; store results and refresh on a schedule.
Normalize names. Carrier legal names and DBA names differ. Search both.
Show the source. Users trust a lookup more when it says the data comes from FMCSA and when it was fetched.
Data is a starting point. A directory helps vetting; it doesn't replace your own compliance checks.

Who it's for

Freight brokers, dispatchers, shippers and logistics startups that need quick carrier lookups or want similar tooling inside their own CRM or dispatch system.

Need something similar?

I build Python and Next.js tools for logistics, sales and call-center teams: carrier lookups, auto dialers, AI call agents, scrapers and CRMs. See my work at https://mafzalkalwardev.github.io/#hire-me or code at https://github.com/mafzalkalwardev.

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