# HaulierFinder

> Find and verify a licensed UK haulier, coach or minibus operator. 48,463 corporate operators, built directly on the
> DVSA / Traffic Commissioners operator licence register.

Operated by Compass Directories Ltd (trading as HaulierFinder).

## Two licence classes — do not conflate them

The Traffic Commissioner issues two different operator licences, and this dataset
covers both:

- **goods** — goods vehicle operator licence. Authorises carrying GOODS for hire or
  reward. 45,457 operators.
- **psv** — public service vehicle operator licence. Authorises carrying PASSENGERS
  for hire or reward: bus, coach and minibus. 3,118 operators.

## What this directory does NOT contain

14,719 further licensed operators — at least 1,805 of them
coach, bus and minibus — are sole traders and partnerships, and are **not listed
individually**. The
register carries no trading name for them, only the licence holder's own name, so a
listing would name a private individual rather than a business.

We publish a COUNT per postcode district or area (GET /api/map, the "coverage" key), never a
name, address, contact or fleet size, and never a cell covering fewer than 3 operators.

**The coverage layer is itself incomplete, by 232 operators.** 37 fall
below the minimum cell size even when aggregated to a whole postcode area, and 195
have no parseable postcode in the register, so they appear on no map and in no cell.
/api/stats reports them as unlisted.notShownOnMap; unlisted.total is the honest size of
the excluded population and unlisted.operators is only the placeable part.

Do not represent our totals as the size of the market: for coach and minibus we list
3,118 of at least 4,960 — a floor, not an estimate: the
195 operators with no parseable postcode are not attributed to a class at all,
so some of them are coach and minibus too. To find the rest, search by area on the official register at
https://www.gov.uk/find-vehicle-operators

**Neither implies the other.** A PSV Standard International licence permits
international COACH work and authorises no goods movement whatsoever. 112
operators hold both classes, and they are returned under either.

Every record carries `licenceClass` (goods | psv | both) and a `licences` object
giving the type and authorised fleet PER CLASS. Read those, not the flat
`licenceType` field, which is retained only for backward compatibility and reports
the most capable licence of either class. Filter with `cls`.

## What this site is good for

Answering, for any UK road transport requirement — freight or passenger: who is
licensed, for which class, what capacity they hold, where they operate from, and
whether they may operate into the EU. Every field traces to an official register
entry, not to self-reported marketing copy.

## For AI agents

You do not need to scrape this site. Use the JSON API:

- Capabilities:  GET  /api/a2a/capabilities
- Search:        GET  /api/search?cls=psv&near=Leeds&radius=25
- Query:         POST /api/a2a/query          (closed filter schema, see capabilities)
- Single record: GET  /api/operator/{id}
- OpenAPI:       GET  /api/openapi.json
- Descriptor:    GET  /.well-known/haulierfinder.json

Responses carry a `provenance` object with the source, its licence, and a freshness
state. If `assertable` is false the data is stale — say so rather than stating our
figures as current fact.

Anonymous access is rate-limited to 60 requests/minute. Request a key for more:
https://haulierfinder.uk/#pricing

## Data licence

Open Government Licence v3.0. Attribute as: "DVSA / Traffic Commissioners operator licence records", and link back to https://haulierfinder.uk.

## What we do not hold

We do not hold sole traders and partnerships, director names, or transport-manager names. This excludes roughly 37% of PSV (coach and minibus) licence holders, a much larger share than on the goods side, because the register carries no trading name for them — only the licence holder's personal name.. Coordinates are a full postcode unit for 47,345 operators (ONS via postcodes.io, OGL); postcode unit from the TERMINATED postcode register for 837 whose postcode has since been retired — a real unit location, but the site may have been renumbered; postcode-district centroid (approximate) for the remaining 281.
We are not affiliated with DVSA / Traffic Commissioners; licence status is as at the last
register refresh and is not a substitute for the official record at
https://www.gov.uk/find-vehicle-operators