Editor's note: Friday morning, Sept. 11, 2026, FMCSA reactivated River Oaks Couriers within Motus, less than 24 hours after this story was published on Sept. 10. FMCSA noted to CCJ that the agency forwarded our inquiry to the to the appropriate team for review.
A routine trip through an Oklahoma weigh station late last month came to an abrupt halt for River Oaks Couriers when state inspectors declared the truck’s federal operating authority inactive.
The driver wasn't cited for an equipment failure or hours-of-service violations. Rather, the shutdown was triggered by a phantom administrative glitch inside Motus, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) newly launched digital registration system.
River Oaks Couriers President Kevin Clark told CCJ that the agency’s system purged the carrier’s process agent designation (Form BOC-3) without warning or notice Aug. 20, wiping out a compliance record that had been untouched since at least 2008.
"Oklahoma completely understands what's happening based on what the driver said," Clark said, "but they're not willing to go ahead and let us roll, knowing that we're marked inactive because we don't have a BOC-3 agent, even though there's a BOC-3 agent listed in the box."
Despite what Motus showed, Clark said River Oaks Couriers clearly had a Form BOC-3 on file. The process agent "has been out there for 20 years listed. I almost forgot who they were," he said with a laugh. "All of a sudden, that field is blank."
The administrative deletion automatically deactivated the company’s U.S. Department of Transportation number and its motor carrier dockets, leaving loaded freight stranded mid-transit.
"This can put us out of business. Period. End of story," Clark said.
Clark brokered the load just to keep it moving, but the surprise roadside shutdown—one of the more common issues cited in Motus' clunky launch—is among a growing number of errors reported by fleets and intermediaries navigating the agency’s clumsy rollout of Motus, a unified platform designed to replace legacy databases like the Unified Registration System and modernize motor carrier compliance.
First sign of trouble
Sugar Land, Texas-based River Oaks's administrative headaches began even before its Oklahoma shutdown. On July 7, in the middle of an insurance renewal for his carrier operation, Clark discovered that Motus had overwritten the business’s legal name on its DOT account with Preferred Logistics, the name of his company's separately registered brokerage.
"This almost cost us our insurance renewal," Clark recalled, adding that after standard customer service channels failed, he sought intervention from congressional representatives to prod a return call from a DOT representative.
DOT’s attempt to resolve the issue only made it worse. The agent mistakenly changed the name of the company’s brokerage arm, Clark said, leaving both accounts entangled. "We still have not been able to fix that one," he said.
Despite having the process agent resubmit the BOC-3 paperwork the same day the roadside shutdown occurred, River Oaks Couriers’ authority remains inactive, and more than two months after his odyssey began, Clark is still locked out of claiming his USDOT number in the Motus dashboard.
"We have filed many trouble tickets, spent hours upon hours on hold for calls that are abruptly disconnected before answering," Clark said. "We have filed OIG complaints and left voicemails on main DOT numbers about these potentially company-ending problems."
FMCSA did not respond to CCJ's request for comment on this story.
Where is the BOC-3?
FMCSA launched Motus in May to curb fraud, improve data accuracy, and thwart identity theft and double-brokering schemes through centralized oversight. Yet thousands of companies like Clark's are caught in its technical crossfire, and more than 100 appear to be caught in the same snare as River Oaks.
Nearly 150 authority records in the Motus dataset—143 in total as of Thursday afternoon—are currently listed as inactive despite having a Form BOC-3 process agent filing on record, according to Central Analysis Bureau (CAB) analysis, having been canceled for a missing BOC-3. Twenty-three records appear to have had a BOC-3 in place when they were canceled, while another 120 are listed as inactive due to a missing BOC-3 despite currently having one on file.
"Motus shows that their BOC-3 was filed after the cancellation occurred," said CAB Senior Product Manager Jay Weinberg, "however, looking back at the old L&I system, which shows what they had when Motus went live, they have a BOC-3 already in place."
Life goes on
In the interim, River Oaks Couriers is keeping itself afloat by hauling intrastate loads under 26,000 pounds, and Clark is brokering the heavier and interstate freight that he previously hauled himself.
"I'm wincing a little bit," he said, "when I'm on the phone with customers and they say, 'Hey, can you do ... ,' and I'm thinking, 'Please don't ask me to go out of state right now.'"
There's been an added benefit, too, of working from a state that covers 268,580 square miles.
"Texas is the same size as five or six other states put together," Clark said, "so we can still do some long runs, because that's how our drivers make money."
Clark heaved another Hail Mary for help Wednesday night: a personal note through a backdoor channel that he hopes will find its way to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, detailing his plight and the frustration of being locked out of his nearly three-decade-old business.
"I have lost several customers and many loads. We lost our DAT posting account due to the DOT personnel malpractice/malfeasance, severely hindering our ability to post loads for truckers," Clark wrote in his email to Secretary Duffy, noting his company renewed its MC in July. "We are a good and safe trucking company... The DOT has broken the covenant by not holding up their end of the bargain. They are no longer a legitimate overseer, as they are causing more damage than they prevent. No one is made safer on the road as a result of this disastrous rollout."
Even with much of his business on ice for now, Clark said a lot of his frustration lies in the sheer lack of communication from DOT and motor carriers' inability to speak to an actual person.
"We feel like everything we're dealing with here was an error, was a glitch, call it what you want, but it's fixable and it's provable," said River Oaks Couriers Safety Manager Brad Richard. "But we hit so many dead ends down every avenue, whether it's email—you get a generic response that's not appropriate—or you drop a phone call. This is no exaggeration: I'm 275th in line. I wait, more than once. I get down to about No. 10, and I get disconnected. If we even had an option of walking into a brick-and-mortar office. Anything."
