Overview
- The Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rolled out Motus Tuesday, moving carrier registration into a single online dashboard that replaces multiple legacy apps.
- Motus requires registrants to sign in with Login.gov, verify identities with government IDs and digital facial scans through Idemia, and use Thomson Reuters CLEAR for business validation.
- Agency officials say the system is meant to stop 'chameleon' carriers that close and reopen under new identities to evade penalties and oversight and to improve data quality for enforcement.
- More than 50,000 motor carriers had registered on the platform by midweek with over 1,000 sign-ups in the first hour, showing strong early industry uptake as the rollout proceeds.
- DOT estimates there are several thousand suspicious registration numbers tied to fraud, a problem Motus targets by collapsing five to seven fragmented systems into one and by adding stronger identity checks.