A Rob Carpenter/Tea Technologies production

Carrier Rescue

We've spent 25 years inside the best fleets in America, and cleaning up the worst.

Now we're taking it on the road. Carrier Rescue finds carriers and brokers taking on water: bad audits, conditional ratings, CSA scores lighting up, insurance walking. We come in, tear the operation down to the frame, and rebuild it legal, safe, profitable, and defensible. On camera. The way it should've been built the first time. Compliant is the floor. Defensible is a file that holds up when a plaintiff's lawyer pulls it.

We've held a CDL-A, run fleets, directed compliance, testified as an expert witness, and covered this industry as an investigative journalist. Property, passenger, brokers, every mode.

The teardown

What we put under the lights

Every rescue runs the same assessment a federal investigator would, the one that decides your rating, your insurance, and whether a plaintiff's lawyer owns your company after a crash. Nothing cosmetic. We go where the violations actually live.

01

Operating authority & registration

Who's really the carrier of record, authority status, and whether the operation matches what's filed.

MCS-150 · Part 365
02

Driver qualification files

Every DQ file built to the rule, by driver class. It's the first thing a reviewer pulls.

49 CFR 391
03

Hours of service & ELD

Logs, edits, unassigned miles, and whether the ELD is a control or a liability.

49 CFR 395
04

Drug & alcohol program

Clearinghouse queries, SAP process, random pool, and the fake-SAP traps that sink carriers.

49 CFR 382
05

Maintenance & inspections

Annual inspections, PM intervals, and the out-of-service rate that follows you into court.

49 CFR 396
06

CSA/SMS BASICs

Where your percentiles sit, what's driving them, and the fastest legitimate way down.

SMS · DataQs
07

Insurance & financial responsibility

Coverage adequacy, filings, and why the renewal letter said what it said.

Form MCS-90
08

Crash register & preventability

Accident register built right, and crashes challenged where the record supports it.

49 CFR 390.15
Why it matters

What it costs to stay broken

The paperwork you can't find reads the same to a jury as paperwork you never kept. The gap between "running" and "compliant" is where carriers lose the company.

OOS
An out-of-service order can park your whole fleet overnight.
Cond.
A conditional rating can trigger non-renewal and lost freight.
Nuclear
A single preventable crash with a thin safety file becomes a nuclear verdict.
Revoked
Authority revocation ends the operation, and the restart gets flagged as a chameleon.
Every mode. Every mess.

The door is open

Property or passenger, over-the-road or never leaves the yard, ten thousand trucks or one. We've run it, audited it, or testified about it. If it needs a USDOT number, we've worked it.

Dry van & OTRRegional & LTLFinal mile ReeferFlatbed & step deckHeavy haul & oversize Tanker & bulkHazmatPort & drayage Yard & dock bumpingAuto haulersHotshot Oil & gas/oilfieldVocational: dump, construction, waste, utility Towing & recoveryLivestock & agHousehold goods Passenger: motorcoach, bus, vanBrokers & 3PLs
The process

How a rescue runs

Bar Rescue for the compliance side of the house. You bring the problem; we bring the fix and the follow-through.

1

Apply

Punch in your USDOT or MC number and we pull your public record on the spot. Tell us what's going wrong.

2

Assessment

A full mock DOT audit and risk assessment, the same teardown above, on site.

3

The fix

We rebuild the program with you, on camera, and put the systems in place to keep it fixed.

4

Follow-up

We come back. The episode isn't a before-and-after photo. It's a carrier still standing a year later.

Casting

Who we're looking for

Worst of the worst? Good. The worse the record, the better the rescue. We're not scared of an Unsatisfactory rating, a revoked authority, or a file that won't survive a deposition. All we need is an owner who wants to turn it around. Carriers and brokers, every mode.

Step one

Apply to be rescued

Fill this out and it comes straight to us. Everything you share stays between us until you decide otherwise, and being filmed is always your call.

Start here

Carriers and brokers both. We'll fill in what FMCSA has on file. You can fix anything that's wrong. Don't have one, or it's a new authority? Skip this and fill it in by hand.

The company
What's going wrong

Check every one that fits. If you pulled your record above, we've pre-checked what it shows. Uncheck anything that's wrong. The honest ones make the best rescues.

Your story
You
Vendors, partners & sponsors

Outfit the fleets we rescue

We rebuild the compliance and safety operation. The right technology is what keeps it fixed after we drive off. We're building a vetted bench of vendors whose products and services complement the guidance, and the carriers we rescue are exactly the buyers who need them. If your tech makes a fleet safer, cleaner, and more compliant, pitch us. Want to back the series itself? Sponsorships are open too: presenting, product, and service.

  • ELD & telematics that hold up in an audit and a courtroom
  • Dash and road-facing cameras, event recorders, and video review
  • Maintenance networks, PM programs, and inspection tools
  • Drug & alcohol consortiums, DQ-file and background-check systems
  • Fuel cards, factoring, and cash-flow tools built for small fleets
  • Safety training, driver coaching, and onboarding platforms
  • Insurance, risk-control, and claims partners
  • Anything else that demonstrably moves the needle on safety and compliance
Your company
What you'd bring to a rescue
Contact