Doug Marcello
Plaintiff attorneys have a seminar title for your safety data. They call it a treasure trove.
At their conferences and webinars, they teach each other exactly what data trucking companies generate, how to obtain it through discovery, and how to make it admissible at trial. They study your telematics systems, your electronic control modules, your collision avoidance alerts, your driver performance platforms. They know what you have, often better than you do.
The goal of all of this education is straightforward: leverage your own data against you. Take the information you collected to operate more safely and use it to construct the narrative that your company represents a systemic threat to community safety — the Reptile Theory strategy we covered in Part 5 of this series.
The trucking industry’s most common response to this reality has been what I call the Discovery Fallacy.
The Discovery Fallacy
The Discovery Fallacy is the belief that if you don’t look at your data, you won’t have to turn it over. That avoiding analysis is the same as avoiding exposure. That ignorance of your own safety record is a litigation strategy.
It is not. It is the opposite.
The data exists whether you look at it or not. Your telematics system is recording. Your ECM is logging. Your collision avoidance system is generating alerts. Your communication platform is archiving. None of that stops because your safety department decided not to build a formal analysis program.
What the Discovery Fallacy actually produces is the worst possible outcome: plaintiff attorneys discover data you never reviewed, surface patterns you never identified, and present to a jury evidence that your company had warning signals it never acted on. The narrative that creates — the picture of an organization that generates safety data it deliberately ignores — is precisely the systemic indifference argument that Reptile Theory is designed to exploit.
You do not choose whether your data exists. You choose whether you get there first.
The Alternative: The Identify-Analyze-Manage-Enforce Framework
The carriers that have transformed their data from a liability into a defense asset did not do it by generating less data or avoiding analysis. They did it by implementing a systematic approach to their own safety information — one that creates a documented record of organizational competence that defeats the systemic failure narrative before it can be constructed.
The framework has four steps. They are sequential and interdependent. Skipping any one of them produces a partial record that is worse than no record at all.
Step 1: Identify — Know What You Have
The starting point sounds obvious: know what data your operation generates. In practice, many carriers do not have a clear answer to this question until after an accident, when they are working with counsel and accident reconstructionists to determine what records exist and what they contain.
Your data landscape likely includes: telematics systems capturing location, speed, and route data; electronic control module records including hard brakes, rapid deceleration, and engine performance; collision avoidance and lane departure system alerts; dashcam footage, both forward and driver-facing; communication and dispatch records; driver performance and safety scoring data from any platform you use; hours of service and ELD records; drug and alcohol testing records; and training documentation.
Each system generates a different type of record. Each type of record has different preservation implications, different discovery exposure, and different evidentiary potential — for both sides. You cannot manage what you have not identified. The first step is a complete data inventory: what systems are running, what they capture, how long records are retained, and who has access to them.
Conduct this inventory before the accident. After the accident, everything you learn about your data landscape is potentially discoverable and potentially harmful.
Step 2: Analyze — Which Data Relates to Maximum Risks
Once you know what data you have, the second step is understanding what it tells you about your specific operation’s risk profile. This is where many carriers stop — they have the data but they have not translated it into operational intelligence.
Different operations generate different primary risk signals. A carrier running long-haul routes on I-80 through Nebraska is going to see a different leading indicator of crash potential than a carrier making urban deliveries on the George Washington Bridge corridor into New York. Speeding on open highway is a different risk profile than hard braking in dense urban traffic. Know which indicators are most predictive of accident potential for your specific routes, loads, and driver population.
This analysis serves two purposes simultaneously. Operationally, it tells you where to focus your safety management attention. For litigation defense, it establishes that your company conducted a genuine, data-driven assessment of its safety risk — not a generic compliance exercise, but a specific analysis of the conditions most likely to produce harm in your operation. That documented analytical process is evidence of organizational competence that directly defeats the Reptile Theory systemic failure argument.
The analysis should be documented. The methodology should be defensible. The conclusions should be specific to your operation and updated as your routes, fleet, and driver population change.
Step 3: Manage — Monitor and Respond
Identifying and analyzing your data creates knowledge. Managing it creates defense.
Management means establishing ongoing monitoring of the key indicators you have identified as most predictive of accident potential in your operation — and taking documented action when those indicators exceed the thresholds you have set. This is the step that transforms your data from a static record into an active safety management system.
The critical word is documented. Monitoring that does not generate records of what was observed and what action was taken is monitoring is difficult to defend. When plaintiff counsel asks — and they will ask — whether your company reviewed its safety data and responded to warning signs, the answer needs to be supported by a paper trail that shows exactly what was reviewed, when, by whom, and what happened as a result.
This is also where the DataQs reform we covered in the series becomes relevant internally. Just as you need to manage and challenge your external FMCSA safety record, you need to manage and respond to the internal signals your own systems generate. The carrier whose records show a pattern of identifying risk indicators and addressing them before accidents occur is the carrier with a fundamentally different litigation posture than one whose records show warning signs that were never acted on.
The documented management record is the most powerful single defense asset you can build. It answers the Reptile Theory’s central argument — that your company ignored warning signs — with objective evidence that you did not.
Step 4: Enforce — The Hardest Step
The fourth step is where safety data management becomes genuine organizational accountability — and where many carriers struggle.
Enforcement means acting on what your data tells you about individual drivers. It means coaching, retraining, and when necessary, disciplinary action or termination based on documented performance data. In a tight driver market, these are difficult decisions. The temptation to look past warning signs from a driver you need on the road is understandable.
But consider the calculus. Your best drivers — the ones with clean records, who follow your safety protocols, who drive defensively and professionally — are generating revenue and building your reputation. How many safe miles do they have to run to pay for one bad actor’s nuclear verdict? And the more serious question: will that one bad actor, left unchecked because the driver market is tight, be an existential threat to your business?
Documented enforcement is not just a safety practice. It is the final piece of the litigation defense. It shows that when your data identified a problem, your organization acted. That documented accountability — the coaching sessions, the performance improvement plans, the terminations when warranted — is the evidentiary record that defeats the argument that your company knew about dangerous driver behavior and did nothing.
The absence of documented enforcement, by contrast, is one of the most damaging things plaintiff counsel can surface. A driver with a history of speeding alerts, hard brake events, and collision avoidance triggers who is still on the road at the time of an accident — without any documented response to those indicators — is a Reptile Theory case waiting to happen.
The Choice
The Data Dilemma comes down to a single decision that every trucking company makes, either explicitly or by default.
You can get ahead of your data — identify what you have, analyze what it means, manage the key indicators, and enforce accountability when the data demands it. You create the narrative: a safety-focused organization that uses data proactively, responds to warning signs systematically, and holds itself accountable to the standards it sets.
Or you can abdicate the narrative to plaintiff attorneys. They will find your data. They will analyze it. They will identify your warning signs. And they will present it to a jury in the worst possible light — as evidence that your company had every opportunity to prevent what happened and chose not to.
The data is there. The question is who tells the story.
The DENUCLEARIZATION Connection
The Data Dilemma is Part 6 of the DENUCLEARIZATION series because it sits at the center of everything we have covered. The Reptile Theory (Part 5) requires a systemic failure narrative — your unmanaged safety data is the raw material. The DataQs reform (news reactive, two weeks ago) addressed your external FMCSA safety record. This week addresses your internal safety data. The Motus piece addressed your regulatory compliance record. All three records — external safety data, internal operational data, and regulatory profile — contribute to the organizational narrative that plaintiff attorneys construct and that a proactive carrier can defeat.
The defense that wins is built before the accident. The data management framework is how you build it.
Alex Lockie
Roughly two months since the new breed of electronic-logging-device cheating with entirely hacked and fabricated logs got its own distinct out-of-service violation code, the state of Arizona said it’s already found 281 such violations.
Here’s the odd part: those 281 violations came from just 115 Driver Vehicle Examination Reports, the formal phrase for a driver inspection report.
Inspectors around the nation on April 1 began to use the new OOS violation code to differentiate between old-school false logs (incorrect PC use, for instance) and the new brand of backend ELD manipulation. The regulatory code is 49 CFR 395.8(e)(2), for “False Record of Duty Status: ELD Tampering.”
The 281 OOS violations recorded by Arizona inspectors are among the most documented by any state in the nation.
“In Arizona, where long, monotonous stretches of I-10, I-40, and I-17 serve as primary CMV corridors, a fatigued driver operating an 80,000-pound vehicle at highway speeds represents a catastrophic risk to every other motorist on the road,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Public Safety told Overdrive.
AZ DPS’ Commercial Motor Vehicle Enforcement Program, in coordination with the state DOT and other state and federal partners, has led targeted enforcement operations “along high-volume freight corridors, including roadside ELD compliance inspections, HOS audits, and Level I through Level III vehicle and driver inspections,” the spokesperson said.
As in Oregon, another state experiencing some success spotting the new breed of ELD manipulation, training plays a key role for Arizona inspectors.
“Troopers are trained to identify indicators of both ELD tampering and driver fatigue/impairment, including bloodshot eyes, erratic lane behavior, and slurred speech,” said the AZ DPS spokesperson.
Common sense goes a long way. If someone shows spotless logs but they’re tired and on their third can of Monster, inspectors take a closer look.
Some states around the nation, at once, have been frank in self-assessment, noting they truly don’t know how to prove such sophisticated manipulation if the ELD looks clean upon initial inspection.
Since the April 1 introduction of new OOS standards “AZ DPS has seen a notable increase in out-of-service drivers and related violations identified during commercial vehicle inspections,” the spokesperson noted. Through May 19 inspectors “documented approximately 115 Driver Vehicle Examination Reports (DVERs) associated with these cases, resulting in roughly 281 violations of False Record of Duty Status — ELD Tampering.”
How is it possible to have 115 inspections result in 281 OOS violations for the same thing? According to AZ DPS, each day with an observed ELD falsification results in a distinct OOS violation.
From AZ DPS:
“When documenting these violations, certified commercial vehicle inspectors in Arizona adhere to CVSA Operational Policy 14 regarding Hours-of-Service enforcement and violation documentation. In accordance with Operational Policy 14, inspectors document hours-of-service limitations and falsification violations separately for each 24-hour period during which a violation occurred. Each affected 24-hour period must be clearly identified and supported by the corresponding evidence discovered during the inspection or investigation.”
Getting specific on just how they look at ELDs, AZ DPS added that “ELD analysis during a roadside inspection involves a thorough comparison of ALL supporting documents and driver statements with the ELD record.”
Fuel receipts likely play a big role. And FMCSA does have a central portal inspectors use to help analyze hours data, and AZ DPS takes a hard look at that, too.
AZ DPS’ success catching ELD tampering relative to other states comes back, ultimately, to a big emphasis on training.
“This improvement is largely the result of enhanced training and frequent continuing education for our commercial vehicle enforcement personnel, combined with more effective analysis of ELD and paper logs when encountered during inspections,” the spokesperson said.
AZ DPS places “primary emphasis,” the spokesperson added, on “officer training, experience, and thorough inspection practices.
“Our officers continue to focus on identifying inconsistencies and ensuring compliance with federal safety regulations.”
Overdrive first reported on the trend of certified ELD vendors cold calling owner-operators and offering “ELD editing” services in 2025. More recently, accusations emerged of widespread ELD cheating at two fleets: Extra Mile International and Prime Route Transportation. More reports of ELD cheating and driver coercion continue to filter in from readers.
Alex Lockie
With Roadcheck under way and spot rates hitting unheard-of new highs, and cut-rate carriers either chased out of the industry or simply shy around inspectors, Overdrive asked New Hampshire State Police the question likely on lots of truckers’ minds: Why not do Roadcheck every week?
That got a chuckle, at least.
NHSP’s Lieutenant Thomas Conlon, leader of Troop G of the truck enforcement branch, said “we’re out here every day, every week” but that Roadcheck “is when we try to really clear the schedules to make sure we have an increased presence.”
This year, Roadcheck’s focused on two things: Load securement and hours of service violations. The latter of which comes against a backdrop of widespread, turbocharged ELD cheating.
On April 1, a new out-of-service code took effect that differentiated between old-school false logs (like using personal conveyance to advance a load) to new-school entire fabrications, like calling an overseas office to hack the backend and produce spotless logs.
While Overdrive Chief Editor Todd Dills found inspectors in Tennessee and Wisconsin sharing a veritable how-to on ways to spot this new generation of cheats, inspectors in New England were a little less in-the-know, or maybe just a little more humble.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Derek Barrs “did a fantastic job” addressing ELD cheating on CBS News’ viral 60 Minutes story, said NHSP Sergeant Anthony Cattabriga. “But enforcement folks, we’re behind the curve on this.”
“Just like everything else with tech,” he added, industry gets it first, then enforcement figures it out later.
Basically, Cattabriga admitted that hacked logs aren’t easy to spot roadside.
“It takes detective work for us to follow through and figure out is this an actual factual or some sort of chameleon log,” he said, referring to the revolving door self-certified ELDs, which might simply rebrand after getting shut out of FMCSA’s registry.
FMCSA said it’s solved the problem of self-certified ELDs for now, and has been well on the way toward an ELD-registry clean-up. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance also has new in-depth guidance on how to catch the new generation of ELD cheats, but many rank-and-file troopers for now are still learning.
At a weigh station in Vermont, inspectors mostly agreed, saying it’s difficult, if not impossible, for inspectors to catch false logs like that.
Cattabriga said he’d seen hotshots running two ELD apps and caught them before, but he didn’t have an answer for how exactly to catch full-on ELD fabricators.
One inspector outside of New Hampshire explained that the one edge officers have roadside is that since ELD cheating with fabricated logs isn’t a criminal offense, just a ticket, the burden of proof is somewhat lower.
Rather than “probable cause,” an inspector writing a violation for HOS fabrication only needs “reasonable suspicion.”
Imagine a driver showing up to the scales with bloodshot eyes and a still-cold half-empty energy drink in the cupholder. This driver’s logs show he’s got nearly a full set of hours and just emerged from the sleeper berth.
Officers would know to double check. If digging through the cab, officers found a fuel receipt showing that driver had been in New Haven, Connecticut, four hours prior, and they were now in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a violation under 395.8 e(2) could be in order. That’s reasonable suspicion.
This kind of ELD manipulation had resulted in hundreds of violations with just a couple weeks’ worth of data in Overdrive‘s sister company RigDig‘s internal accounting, current as of roughly mid-April.
Over the first weeks of last month, the following states were making the biggest dent, with California, Washington, Ohio and South Dakota just behind them recording violation numbers in the double digits.
Those aren’t big numbers by any means. With just more than six weeks in the book as an OOS condition, enforcement will likely only get tougher from here.
What’s new at Roadcheck?
This also represented the first Roadcheck in a decade with English Language Proficiency violations generating a mandatory OOS order, and the first under FMCSA’s “aggressive” new administrator.
Conlon said ELP violations in New Hampshire were “not an everyday occurrence,” but certainly something that happened. Overdrive‘s RigDig analysis shows New Hampshire recorded just 14 ELP OOS violations in 2026 through mid-April.
As for those OOS orders resulting in drivers actually taken off the road, Conlon said New Hampshire simply documents the order, and doesn’t babysit the driver, as is often the case.
[Related: Why state police are letting drivers placed OOS for English violations go free]
Tucked away in a sparsely populated corner of the country, the state doesn’t really see a lot of non-domiciled CDLs or non-English speakers. New Hampshire is one of just seven states that never opted-in to issuing non-domiciled CDLs.
FMCSA has put a new emphasis on documentation. Inspectors now have been asked to document more and more about their interactions with carriers, in an effort to create the kind of paper trail the agency can use to shut down chameleon carriers and some of those “scofflaws” who might not even have rolled this week, according to another inspector.
Overall, inspectors in New England on this rainy day at Roadcheck had almost entirely positive things to say about local carriers, whom Conlon referred to as “partners.”
“I would say the vast majority of truckers and carriers we interact with are trying to do the right thing to keep the highway safe,” he said, “but there’s always certain elements that skip steps on purpose, or try to make as quick a buck as possible. But for the most part, this is a very safety-oriented industry.”
A Breaking Analysis of the May 14, 2026, Supreme Court Decision and Its Immediate Implications for the Transportation Industry
The preemption shield that freight brokers have relied on for years to defend against personal injury claims is gone. The United States Supreme Court said so unanimously on May 14, 2026.
In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), a nine-justice Court held that negligent hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. The decision, written by Justice Barrett, reverses the Seventh Circuit and abrogates two circuit precedents that had insulated brokers from state tort liability. It resolves a circuit split that had divided courts for years.
The implications reach every segment of the trucking industry. Brokers face new and immediate litigation exposure. Carriers find their FMCSA safety records newly elevated as commercial gatekeeping criteria. Insurers must reassess coverage structures built on preemption assumptions that no longer hold. And the broker-carrier contractual relationship — particularly indemnification provisions — is due for immediate scrutiny.
The Facts That Got to the Supreme Court
Shawn Montgomery was working as a truck driver on an Illinois highway when his tractor-trailer, stopped on the shoulder, was struck by a Mack Truck driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena. Montgomery’s leg was amputated. He sustained other severe and permanent injuries.
Varela-Mojena was driving for Caribe Transport II, LLC, hauling a load of plastic pots. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. — one of the largest freight brokers in the country, arranging transportation for enormous volumes of freight annually — had brokered the shipment.
Montgomery’s central claim against C.H. Robinson was straightforward: the broker negligently hired Caribe Transport, a carrier that had a conditional safety rating from FMCSA at the time of the hiring. That rating reflected documented deficiencies across multiple BASIC categories — driver qualification, hours of service compliance, inspection and maintenance records, and recordable crash rate. Montgomery argued that C.H. Robinson knew or should have known from that record that choosing Caribe Transport was reasonably likely to result in crashes injuring others.
The district court held the claim preempted. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the circuit split — and reversed, unanimously.
What the Court Held and Why
The legal analysis turned on a single statutory provision: the FAAAA’s safety exception, which provides that the preemption clause shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles. 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(2)(A).
The Court’s reasoning was direct. Negligent hiring claims impose a duty of reasonable care in selecting a contractor for work carrying a risk of physical harm. The preemption question was whether such claims are with respect to motor vehicles. The Court held they are — because requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier concerns the trucks that will transport the goods. That connection brings the claim within the safety exception and saves it from preemption.
Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence, joined by Justice Alito, acknowledged competing contextual arguments that cut in favor of the brokers: the FAAAA does not mandate insurance for brokers as it does for carriers, suggesting Congress did not anticipate routine broker liability; and the anomaly that state tort suits would be permitted against brokers for arranging interstate transportation but preempted for intrastate. He treated these as serious points — but concluded that Congress, in an economic-deregulation statute, did not intend to immunize brokers from safety-based tort liability while leaving trucking companies fully exposed to it. The bottom line: federal law does not preempt state tort liability against brokers for negligent selection of trucking companies.
The Court was also careful to cabin the ruling. This is not strict liability. Brokers who exercise reasonable care in vetting carriers — who verify safety ratings, check BASIC scores, and ask the hard questions before tendering a load — should be able to defend successfully against negligent hiring claims. As plaintiff’s counsel acknowledged at oral argument, brokers who hire carriers with reasonable safety records and ask substantive questions about carrier safety practices will not have a problem. The exposure is for negligent vetting, not for every accident involving a brokered load.
Impact on Brokers: The Vetting Obligation Is Now a Legal Duty
The most immediate impact falls on freight brokers. The preemption defense that brokers have used to dismiss personal injury claims at the pleading stage is gone. Cases that were previously dismissed on preemption grounds will now proceed to discovery and potentially trial.
The standard that will govern broker liability in these cases is negligent hiring — whether the broker exercised reasonable care in selecting the carrier before the load moved. That standard has several practical components:
- CSA score and BASIC review. Caribe Transport’s conditional safety rating and BASIC alert status were the foundation of the negligent hiring claim in this case. Brokers must review carrier CSA scores and BASIC ratings as a standard part of the vetting process. A carrier with a conditional rating or alert status in safety-related BASICs presents heightened risk that a broker who proceeds without additional scrutiny may have difficulty defending.
- Safety rating verification. Brokers should verify a carrier’s current FMCSA safety rating — satisfactory, conditional, or unsatisfactory — before tendering freight. An unsatisfactory rating should, in most circumstances, preclude the hiring. A conditional rating at least warrants additional inquiry if not preclusion.
- Documentation. The vetting process that was previously a business practice is now a legal obligation. Every element of the review — what was checked, what was found, what decision was made and why — needs to be documented before the load moves. That documentation is the broker’s defense at trial.
- Carrier selection standards. Brokers should consider developing and following written carrier selection criteria. A documented internal standard, consistently applied, is significantly more defensible than ad hoc selection. The standard does not need to be perfect — it needs to be reasonable and followed.
Impact on Carriers: Your Safety Record Is Now a Commercial Gatekeeping Criterion
For motor carriers, the implications of this decision are less about direct liability and more about commercial consequences that flow from brokers’ new legal exposure.
Your CSA scores are now gatekeeping criteria. Brokers who face personal injury liability for negligently hiring unsafe carriers will scrutinize carrier safety records more carefully than ever before. A conditional safety rating, alert status in safety-related BASICs, or a pattern of unresolved violations is not just a regulatory compliance issue — it is a commercial liability that may result in brokers refusing to tender freight.
This makes the DataQs reform published April 16, 2026 — which we covered in this series two weeks ago — immediately more important. Every inaccurate inspection record, every incorrectly attributed crash, every data entry error that sits unchallenged in the FMCSA system now has direct commercial consequences in addition to its litigation implications. The three-stage appellate process established by the new DataQs requirements gives carriers a real mechanism to challenge inaccurate records. Use it aggressively.
Broker-carrier contract indemnification provisions. Brokers facing increased liability exposure will respond by strengthening indemnification clauses in their broker-carrier agreements. Carriers should expect to see contract language requiring them to indemnify and hold harmless brokers for claims arising from carrier negligence — including personal injury claims like the one in Montgomery. These provisions need to be reviewed by counsel before execution. The insurance implications need to be assessed against the carrier’s current coverage.
Carriers who also broker: Many motor carriers also broker freight as part of their operations. Those companies now carry broker liability exposure on top of their carrier exposure. If your company arranges transportation for others, the broker analysis applies fully to your brokering activities.
Impact on Insurers: The Coverage Landscape Has Changed
For insurers covering brokers for personal injury liability, the foundational assumption that preemption would defeat most claims before trial is no longer operative. Cases that would have been dismissed at the pleading stage will now reach discovery and potentially jury trial. The cost of defending those cases, and the risk of adverse verdicts, has increased materially.
Broker liability policies need to be examined in light of the decision. Policy language addressing negligent hiring claims, coverage limits, and premium structures may all require reassessment. The underwriting models built on the preemption defense need to account for a post-Montgomery environment where that defense is unavailable.
For insurers covering motor carriers, the indemnification dynamic matters. Brokers whose contracts include carrier indemnification provisions will make indemnification claims against carriers following accidents. Those claims will implicate carrier liability policies. The scope of coverage for indemnification obligations, the adequacy of coverage limits, and the interaction between carrier and broker policies all deserve review.
The DENUCLEARIZATION Connection
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport is a direct illustration of why the DENUCLEARIZATION series exists. The decision does not create new litigation risks out of thin air. It validates and expands the framework that plaintiff attorneys have been building for years — the use of FMCSA safety data to establish that a commercial entity knew or should have known it was engaging with an unsafe operator.
The CSA data that plaintiff attorneys have long used to establish systemic failure narratives against carriers is now the same data that establishes broker negligent hiring claims. The carrier whose FMCSA record shows conditional ratings and BASIC alert status is not just a litigation defendant — it is now a commercial pariah that brokers cannot afford to hire.
The DataQs reform, the data management framework, the Motus transition, the Reptile Theory defense — all of it now applies with equal force to broker vetting decisions and the carrier records that drive them. A clean, accurately documented FMCSA safety record is not just a defense asset in the courtroom. It is a commercial prerequisite for participation in the brokered freight market.
The industry that moves to the front of this decision — that builds the vetting processes, cleans the safety records, reviews the contracts, and reassesses the coverage — will be in a fundamentally different position than the industry that waits to respond case by case.
Tyson Fisher
When it comes to expanding truck parking, states have been telling the federal government, “Show me the money!” How does more than $1 billion sound?
Although that amount has not yet been allocated, nearly $1.2 billion is on the table. That money comes from three different bills, all of which use language similar to that of the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, including prohibitions on paid-parking projects.
One of those bills, a $1.2 trillion spending package, is a done deal. Signed into law in February, that bill set aside $200 million for truck parking expansion. Just a few months later, the Department of Transportation is already getting the ball rolling to dole out that money.
On Tuesday, June 9, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced more than $600 million in infrastructure funding. That includes the $200 million for truck parking from the spending package. The remaining dollars come from previous bills, including the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Now, the federal government is accepting applications due July 15 so it can disburse those funds. The relatively quick turnaround will get truck parking projects moving forward sooner rather than later.
“From our thriving commercial space industry to our hardworking truck drivers, the Trump Administration is delivering for the American people,” Duffy said in a statement. “We are moving at the Speed of Trump to prioritize critical infrastructure needs in grants, move federal dollars out the door, and start turning dirt.”
While states and other public entities try to get a piece of that pie, there may be a much bigger pie ahead.
Currently, a new highway bill awaits a full House vote. In that bill is a near carbon copy of the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, which would allocate $750 million to parking expansion projects over five years.
“If the next surface transportation reauthorization fails to provide dedicated funding for truck parking, but authorizes even a single penny of funding for new initiatives, OOIDA will use every tool it has to ensure the legislation is defeated,” the Association wrote in 2025. “Based on a history of strong bipartisan support for the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, we are confident the House will again agree this crisis requires federal leadership to solve. Together, we can deliver a key victory for hundreds of thousands of truckers across the country.”
The highway bill still needs to clear both the House and the Senate. During that process, the truck parking provision could be modified or eliminated.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a funding bill for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD). That bill also includes $200 million for truck parking expansion projects.
If the highway and THUD bills both make it to the finish line as is, that would mean an additional $950 million in funding for truck parking. That’s on top of the $200 million already underway from the spending package in February.
Anything can happen between now and when those bills are signed into law, but 2026 could be a milestone year for publicly available truck parking.
