Carfax hits a vehicle history-record milestone

Centreville, Virginia-based Carfax, the largest provider of vehicle history reports, recently reached 30 billion records in its database.

Carfax was founded in 1984 to combat odometer fraud. Today, it is used by millions of used vehicle buyers to check histories for accidents and repairs, recalls, vehicle registrations, and other information about the vehicle’s past.



It receives data from more than 131,000 sources.

Carfax said it took more than 15 years for the company to reach 1 billion records. It now loads about one billion records every five months.

“The amount of information we’re loading daily is staggering,” said Faisal Hasan, Carfax’s general manager of data. “On average, we load more than 6.6 million records every single day. The largest data we’re loading today is service and maintenance records.”

Carfax knows exactly what the 30 billionth record loaded into its database was. It was an “offered for sale” record on a 2020 Kia Telluride. It is a one-owner, well-maintained, certified pre-owned SUV that has had no accidents or damage reported to Carfax.

The 30 billionth report loaded to the Carfax database was a 2020 Kia Telluride. (Courtesy Carfax)

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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