What The MTN Ratio DOESN"T Tell You

Unregistered Carriers on 03/08/2009 - 783
Unregistered Carriers on 03/09/2010 - 746

Illinois - 96.56%
Maine - 95.88%
Indiana - 91.96%
Alabama - 91.35%
Kentucky - 89.76%

Actually, there are LOTS of things the MTN Ratio doesn't tell you. The "thing" I was thinking about was that the MTN Ratio does not reflect when a state like New York or Texas registers lots of non-participating state carriers. The MTN ratio only applies to carriers domiciled in the states under discussion at the time.

Take New York, for example. Please! Take New York! (Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here through Saturday night.)

New Jersey - a neighboring non-participating state - has 13,000 carriers. A great many of them are registered by our good friend in New York, Bill Leonard. So ... if you add NJ's MTN ratio of 130 to New York's 170, you could argue that Bill has an MTN Ratio of close to 300. And that's just one extra jurisdiction that Bill deals with - there are also carriers from another 8 to 10 jurisdictions who could choose NY if they so desired.

So, we could surmise that if you were going to seek out exclusive registration of carriers from a non-participating state, you might get a rough idea of how much work you were in for by using the MTN Ratio. That's the theory, at least.