New trucking companies in North Carolina, April 2026
North Carolina is adding about 254 new for-hire carriers a month (average of the three complete months to April 2026), +19% versus the prior three months and +10% versus a year earlier. The provisional count for August 2026 is 127, 83 of them single-truck operations. Over the last 12 months North Carolina added 2,577 new carriers against 24,885 currently active, a 10.4% annual entry rate.
The two most recent months are provisional (census lag and MC-docket assignment delay); read trends on the three-month averages.
| Month | New carriers | With ≥1 power unit | Single-truck | Share of US |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 (provisional) | 127 | 122 | 83 | 3.4% |
| July 2026 (provisional) | 273 | 253 | 153 | 3.6% |
| June 2026 (undercounted) | 127 | 119 | 67 | 4.1% |
| May 2026 (undercounted) | 130 | 112 | 83 | 3.3% |
| April 2026 | 261 | 220 | 183 | 3.4% |
| March 2026 | 251 | 207 | 175 | 3.2% |
| February 2026 | 250 | 212 | 167 | 3.7% |
| January 2026 | 223 | 194 | 163 | 3.3% |
| December 2025 | 197 | 169 | 131 | 3.8% |
| November 2025 | 222 | 199 | 165 | 4.4% |
| October 2025 | 251 | 215 | 172 | 4.0% |
| September 2025 | 265 | 234 | 188 | 4.4% |
| August 2025 | 250 | 222 | 183 | 4.0% |
| July 2025 | 271 | 225 | 182 | 4.3% |
| June 2025 | 235 | 206 | 158 | 4.0% |
| May 2025 | 238 | 210 | 165 | 4.0% |
| April 2025 | 235 | 208 | 164 | 3.8% |
| March 2025 | 239 | 202 | 156 | 3.5% |
| February 2025 | 218 | 196 | 147 | 3.7% |
| January 2025 | 210 | 184 | 144 | 3.6% |
| December 2024 | 158 | 137 | 99 | 3.6% |
| November 2024 | 171 | 153 | 110 | 3.9% |
| October 2024 | 203 | 184 | 142 | 4.1% |
| September 2024 | 176 | 156 | 119 | 3.7% |
Browse the carriers themselves, with authority and insurance status, on USDOT Index: North Carolina carriers.
May 2026 and June 2026 are undercounted. FMCSA moved carrier registration to a new system on 2026-05-14 and stopped writing the MC docket into the census for several weeks. This series counts carriers that carry a docket, so those months show roughly half their true entries; the underlying registration rate did not change. The headline averages on this page skip them, and the monthly table marks them. Treat any average spanning the cutover as a floor rather than a measurement.
Method
Active carriers in the FMCSA Company Census with a physical address in North Carolina, an MC docket, and a USDOT number issued in the month shown. Older months understate entries slightly because carriers that have since gone inactive are excluded. Source: FMCSA via data.transportation.gov (public domain), reloaded monthly.
Last updated 2026-09-08 · first published 2026-09-07. Data sources are listed on each page; see About for methodology.