Monthly Report · FMCSA Census Data
Construction Fleet Registration Report
Which construction and trade businesses are putting trucks on the road, what they do, and where they are. Compiled monthly from the FMCSA Motor Carrier Census. Current edition: September 2026 (through Sep 18).
4,712
New USDOT registrations, all types (Sep 1-18)
240
Identifiably construction or trade businesses
5.1%
Share of all new registrations
82
With "Construction" in the legal name
Why this report exists. Everyone tracks new trucking authorities. Almost nobody tracks the construction firms quietly registering trucks alongside them, because they do not look like carriers: most register as private property carriers hauling their own machines, not for hire. They are invisible in the usual freight numbers, and they are buying equipment.
New registrations by trade - September 2026 (through Sep 18)
Classified by trade keyword in the registered legal name. This undercounts: a firm called "Smith & Sons LLC" that does excavation will not appear here. Treat these as a floor, not a total.
All new registrations by state - top 12
Navy bars are the tri-state market NTIB works in most closely. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania together accounted for 574 new registrations in the first eighteen days of September.
What the numbers mean
A USDOT registration is an equipment signal, not a freight signal. A grading contractor does not register with USDOT because it wants to haul freight. It registers because it now owns a truck and trailer big enough to need a number, which usually means it has just bought, or is about to buy, a machine to put on that trailer.
Most of them are buying against their line of credit, and should not be. A contractor's operating line is what makes payroll and buys materials between draws. Spending $150,000 of it on a machine leaves the business cash-poor in exactly the month a new job lands. Equipment finances against itself: the machine carries a serial number and secures its own paper, so the credit line stays intact. Our
equipment cost comparison shows a loan, a dollar-buyout lease and an FMV lease side by side, with the end buyout added back in.
Time in business matters less here than people expect. A general business loan at under two years is difficult. Equipment is different, because the lender can resell the collateral, and funding at six months in business is routine. A larger deposit, a co-signer or a titled vehicle as additional security usually reopens a file that a bank has already declined.
The trades on this list are equipment-intensive by definition. Excavation, concrete, paving, tree work and landscaping cannot scale on labour alone. Every additional crew needs iron, and the machine is almost always the constraint on taking the next job.
Buying a machine, or about to?
NTIB Finance & Consulting is a commercial finance brokerage working across a network of more than fifty lenders, including equipment lenders that fund at six months in business, and that take used, private-party and auction purchases. The conversation and the quote review are free; if we place your financing, we charge a small fee at closing.
Compare the real cost
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Call / text 914.419.3059
Methodology
Source: FMCSA Motor Carrier Census (data.transportation.gov, dataset az4n-8mr2). Counts cover census records added between September 1 and September 18, 2026. State is the registrant's physical address state. Trade classification is by keyword match on the registered legal name, which systematically undercounts firms whose names do not describe what they do; the trade figures should be read as a floor. "Tree service" is matched on the full phrase rather than on "tree" alone, because the shorter string also matches "street" and inflated the count by roughly a third. A small number of businesses carry two trade words in one name and appear in two rows. September is a partial month and totals will rise. Updated monthly. Reuse permitted with attribution and a link to this page.
