A haulier in Rotterdam, a transportista in Monterrey, a trucking company in Alberta. All three are proper carriers with proper paperwork, and none of them holds a US DOT number. Adding one to your carrier list used to mean leaving the identification blank and dealing with it later.
What changed
The carrier form asks for the number that country issues. Set Country at the top of Basic Information and the identifier field changes with it: USDOT for the United States, business number for Canada, RFC for Mexico, VAT number for the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and the rest of the EU. The label, the example and the expected format all come from the country you picked, so a number in the wrong shape is caught while the carrier is being added.
The field beside it changes too. MC Number sits next to USDOT for a US carrier, Community Licence next to the Dutch VAT number, Federal Cargo Autotransport Permit next to the Mexican RFC. Each country gets the operating authority it actually issues, under the name it is actually called.
The rest of the form follows the same country. The phone field takes that country's dialling code, and the address fields are the ones that country uses, so nobody is fitting a Dutch address into boxes built for US states and ZIP codes.
Mexico selected: RFC with the expected format in the field, the Federal Cargo Autotransport Permit beside it, and a +52 dialling code on the phone.
The number is checked against official records. Enter it and the dashboard looks the company up: VIES for the EU, FMCSA for the United States. When details come back, the legal name and address are filled in for you, so the record starts from the register instead of from whatever was pasted out of an email.
Signing up works the same way. A company joining as a Carrier, Broker or Hybrid picks its country and is asked for that country's registration number, in that country's format, and it is required. A new company arrives identified rather than half identified.
Why it matters
Company sign-up, Kazakhstan on the left and the Netherlands on the right: Business Identification Number on one, VAT Number on the other, each shown in its own format and each required.
- A carrier outside the US goes in through the same flow. No blank identification field, no number parked in the company name, no separate workaround because the company is not American.
- Mistakes are caught at entry. The field knows what the document is called and what it should look like, which is cheaper than finding a transposed digit during an audit.
- Less retyping. When the register answers, the legal name and address come with it.
- Your existing list is untouched. Carriers already in it keep working exactly as before, and searching, filtering and sorting by DOT or MC are unchanged.
How to use it
Open Carriers, start a new carrier and set Country first, before the name. The form rebuilds around it: the registration number, the operating authority beside it, the dialling code and the address. Type the number and give the lookup a moment; if the register knows the company, the legal name and address fill themselves in and you confirm them.
Brokers and customers still use DOT and MC. This change is about carriers and about company sign-up.
