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ELD Fraud

Arnold & Itkin Research Team – Reviewed by Adam Lewis

The goal of the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate was simple: by connecting the logging system to the truck’s engine, driving time would become nearly impossible to hide. The final rule published December 16, 2015, and effective December 18, 2017, requires ELDs to synchronize with the vehicle engine and automatically record driving time. The mandate was intended to address the long history of paper log manipulation that plagued the trucking industry.

The mandate worked, in part. Hours-of-service violations fell sharply after the ELD rollout, a trend the FMCSA attributes to improved compliance. But the reduction in recorded violations does not reflect the complete picture. The commercial pressure to keep trucks moving beyond legal driving limits did not disappear when paper logs did. Carriers and drivers adapted, exploiting gaps in the ELD system and in the regulatory framework’s enforcement capacity.

Federal Prohibitions on Falsification and Tampering

The federal prohibition is unambiguous. Under 49 C.F.R. Part 386, a person who knowingly falsifies, destroys, mutilates, or changes a report or record required under Parts 390 through 399 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations is subject to a maximum civil penalty of $15,846 if the falsification misrepresents a fact that constitutes a safety violation. Carriers that require or permit egregious violations of driving-time limits face additional exposure.

The regulatory framework makes clear that liability for log falsification applies to the carrier, not just the driver. Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.8, no driver or motor carrier may disable, deactivate, disengage, jam, or otherwise block or degrade a signal transmission or reception, or reengineer, reprogram, or otherwise tamper with an ELD so that the device does not accurately record and retain data. The FMCSA’s own regulatory guidance is equally direct: “a carrier is liable both for the actions of its drivers in submitting false documents and for its own actions in accepting false documents.”

Falsification Penalty

$15,846

Maximum civil penalty if the falsification misrepresents a fact that constitutes a safety violation, under 49 C.F.R. Part 386

Liability for log falsification applies to the carrier, not just the driver.

The Methods of ELD Fraud

ELD fraud takes several forms, ranging from opportunistic misuse of legitimate features to deliberate, carrier-directed criminal schemes. The most common methods include fictitious co-driver accounts, device disconnection, personal conveyance abuse, and back-end record alteration.

Common Methods

  • Fictitious co-driver accounts
  • Creating a second driver account that serves as a reset mechanism.
  • Device disconnection
  • Physically disconnecting the ELD or disconnecting the smartphone from the hardware transmitter during driving periods the carrier wants to conceal.
  • Personal conveyance abuse
  • Switching from on-duty driving to personal conveyance status once available hours are exhausted.
  • Back-end record alteration
  • A third-party service or carrier back-office staff member altering ELD records after the fact.

Fictitious Co-Driver Accounts, Known as “Ghost Drivers”

The most consequential form of ELD fraud involves creating a second driver account that serves as a reset mechanism. The structure of the ELD system requires each driver to log in under their own credentials. Driving time accumulates against that account. When the driver approaches the 11-hour limit, the carrier adds a fictitious or inactive co-driver account to the ELD profile. The primary driver logs out and the fictitious account logs in, opening a fresh 11-hour driving window. The real driver never stops. The federal regulations are explicit: no driver or motor carrier may reengineer, reprogram, or otherwise tamper with an ELD so that the device does not accurately record and retain data. Adding a fictitious account to circumvent driving limits is a direct violation of this prohibition.4 These multi-driver login schemes are the most deliberate forms of manipulation and the one most directly tied to documented fatal crashes.

The Ghost-Driver Reset

  • 1 – Each driver logs in under their own credentials, and driving time accumulates against that account.
  • 2 – When the driver approaches the 11-hour limit, the carrier adds a fictitious or inactive co-driver account to the ELD profile.
  • 3 – The primary driver logs out and the fictitious account logs in, opening a fresh 11-hour driving window.
  • 4 – The real driver never stops.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) has documented similar schemes in its inspection bulletins. In one example, a motor carrier created a fictitious ELD account using the same driver’s name but slightly altered credentials by changing a letter from uppercase to lowercase and modifying one digit in the CDL number. The driver alternated between the two accounts to continue driving after exceeding hours-of-service limits.

Disconnecting the Device

A simpler but well-documented method involves physically disconnecting the ELD, or in app-based systems, disconnecting the smartphone from the hardware transmitter during driving periods the carrier wants to conceal.

Personal Conveyance Abuse

Personal conveyance status allows a driver to use the truck for personal, off-duty purposes without the time counting against available driving hours, such as traveling from a truck stop to a nearby restaurant.

Drivers can falsify logs by misusing personal conveyance, such as by switching from on-duty driving to personal conveyance status once their available hours are exhausted in order to:

  • Finish delivering current loads,
  • Advance their position for the next pickup, or
  • Perform other work-related moves, such as driving to a repair shop.

Because personal conveyance is recorded with lower location precision than on-duty driving, it can partially obscure where the truck was and what it was doing during the concealed period.

Back-End Record Alteration

The most technically sophisticated fraud involves a third-party service or carrier back-office staff member altering ELD records after the fact, either through exploits in ELD software or through direct manipulation of the underlying data. This category of fraud has grown significantly since the ELD mandate took effect.

ELD tampering has become so widespread that sales agents are cold-calling motor carriers offering “ELD editing” services. One such company, Logbook Hub, advertises on Facebook that it can “FIX your logbook” for $30 a week. CVSA’s Roadside Inspections Specialist, Jeremy Disbrow, has described a scenario where carriers instruct their drivers to call when the drivers run out of available time. The carrier then “contacts a third party who is able to quickly alter the records to eliminate any violations”, without any record in the ELD file that edits were made.

One industry veteran, Dave Moss, reported that at his last company, his logs were “edited overseas.” When he raised the issue with management, management told him, “We have to do this to make money.

The Economic Pressure Behind the Fraud

The economic stakes explain why this fraud has become industrialized. A carrier operating with falsified logs can move more freight per driver per week than a fully compliant competitor. The resulting cost differential is significant enough to affect contract bids and rate negotiations. Compliant carriers lose work to non-compliant ones. Some industry observers have characterized ELD fraud not just as a safety problem but as market distortion: it penalizes honesty and rewards falsification, with the cost externalized onto the public in the form of crash risk.

Jeremy Disbrow, CVSA’s Roadside Inspection Specialist, stated that these third-party companies are “completely fabricating the record to show a compliant ELD file without any violations, and in many cases, even falsify[ing] electronic supporting documents to match the ELD file.” Federal ELD technical specifications require that any edits to a record be flagged and identifiable to safety officials. Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.30, a motor carrier must not alter or erase, or permit or require alteration or erasure of the original information collected concerning the driver’s hours of service, the source data streams used to provide that information, or information contained in any ELD. When records are altered without triggering edit indicators, inspectors confronting the data cannot tell it has been changed.

Inspector Findings

In 2025, falsification of records of duty status was the second most-cited driver violation in CVSA inspection data, with 58,382 violations recorded. And five of the top ten driver violations were related to hours-of-service or ELD compliance. In response, CVSA has designated ELD tampering as the driver focus for its 2026 International Roadcheck.

2025 CVSA Inspection Data

  • 58,382 -records-of-duty-status violations
  • 2nd most-cited driver violation was falsification of records of duty status
  • 5 of 10 of the top ten driver violations related to hours-of-service or ELD compliance

Roadside inspectors are finding complete altering of records of duty status (RODS) without any indication that they were edited at all. Per ELD technical specifications, driving time detected by the ELD cannot be reassigned to a non-driving duty status. Any edits that are made to the record must show that they were edited such that the edits are identifiable to safety officials. However, in practice, inspectors are encountering altered RODS with no indications of edits.

Disbrow described the detection challenge as follows:

“The falsifications are often many hours or days off from what actually occurred. For example, a fuel receipt and bill of lading may say the driver was in Fargo, N.D., on Jan. 1 at 11 a.m., but the record of duty status shows the driver picked up in Fargo on Dec. 30 and was in Santa Fe, N.M., on Jan. 1. . . . The inspector can prove the ROD is false but cannot determine when the driver was actually driving or resting because the entire record is inaccurate.”

The issue of record falsification is known to CVSA inspectors. Disbrow stated that inspectors around the country agree that ELD fraud is not isolated incidents.

ELD tampering is happening on an “industrial scale”. Businesses are created to help motor carriers elude HOS regulations. “This type of tampering cannot happen unintentionally. It is not a simple error in a record of duty because a driver accidentally made a mistake,” says Disbrow.

New CVSA Out-of-Service Criteria

To address this issue, CVSA updated its North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria to address tampered ELD records. The New OOS Criteria distinguishes between traditional “false log” violations and false-log violations resulting from ELD tampering.

Traditional “false log” violations are misuse of personal conveyance or failure to log into the ELD. These types of violations are easier for inspectors to detect. When “a driver is over hours at the time of the inspection…inspectors can usually determine how much rest was actually taken and whether the driver should be placed out of service.”13

More concerning, however, are records of duty status that have been reengineered, reprogrammed, or otherwise tampered with because the ELD does not accurately record or retain the required data. These altered logs may show no indication that any changes were made. For false-log violations that result from ELD tampering, new out-of-service criteria prescribe a specific violation. Drivers will also be placed out-of-service for 10 hours if records have been so thoroughly altered that inspectors cannot determine the last rest period.

  • Traditional False Log
  • Misuse of personal conveyance or failure to log into the ELD.
  • Easier for inspectors to detect.
  • Inspectors can usually determine how much rest was actually taken and whether the driver should be placed out of service.
  • ELD Tampering
  • Records are reengineered, reprogrammed, or otherwise tampered with, which may show no indication that any changes were made.
  • Drivers will be placed out-of-service for 10 hours if records have been so thoroughly altered that inspectors cannot determine the last rest period.

 

Sources

 

Freight Forward: DOT’s Roadmap for Trucking’s Next Era

Scopelitis

The U.S. DOT’s newly released 2026 National Freight Strategic Plan may not be the type of document most trucking professionals read cover to cover, but it provides an important look at where federal freight policy is heading over the next several decades. While previous freight strategies often focused heavily on infrastructure needs and longstanding operational challenges, this plan spends considerable time looking ahead at how technology, security, supply chain resilience, and workforce development will shape the future of freight transportation.

The plan begins from a simple reality: trucking remains the foundation of the American economy. Trucks move nearly two-thirds of domestic freight by weight and more than 70 percent by value, connecting manufacturers, ports, distribution centers, retailers, and consumers. USDOT expects freight volumes to continue growing through at least 2050, driven by population growth, e-commerce, energy production, and domestic manufacturing expansion. In other words, regardless of how freight transportation evolves, trucking will remain the industry’s central mode.

The plan addresses familiar concerns such as congestion, safety, and truck parking, but these issues are largely presented as challenges to be managed to support future growth. Instead, some of the most interesting portions of the plan focus on how freight transportation itself may change over the coming years.

One of the clearest themes throughout the plan is the increasing role of technology-enabled freight operations. USDOT envisions a future freight network that is not only larger but significantly more connected and data-driven. The agency highlights investments in digital infrastructure, real-time traffic information, freight data sharing, logistics technology, and intelligent transportation systems designed to improve the efficiency of freight movement across all modes.

For trucking, that means greater access to tools that can optimize routing, reduce delays, improve asset utilization, and provide better visibility into freight movements. While dispatch systems, telematics platforms, and predictive analytics are already common in many fleets, the federal strategy suggests these technologies will become increasingly integrated into the broader transportation network.

The plan also pays significant attention to Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technologies and connected vehicle systems. These technologies allow trucks to communicate with traffic signals, roadside infrastructure, work zones, and other vehicles using real-time data. In practical terms, future drivers could receive automated warnings about traffic backups, roadway hazards, weather conditions, crashes, or lane closures well before those conditions become visible. For fleets, connected vehicle technologies offer the potential to improve efficiency while further reducing crash risk.

Another notable aspect of the strategy is its balanced discussion of automation. Public discussions often portray autonomous trucks as either an imminent revolution or an existential threat to professional drivers. DOT’s plan takes a more measured approach. It acknowledges that automated trucking technologies are advancing and that testing of highly automated Class 8 trucks has already begun in certain operating environments. At the same time, the plan makes it clear that professional drivers will continue to play a critical role in freight transportation for the foreseeable future.

Instead of focusing solely on driverless operations, the plan emphasizes automation as a tool that can improve productivity, increase safety, and support freight movement in a growing economy. Many of the technologies highlighted—advanced driver assistance systems, automated braking, lane-keeping capabilities, and predictive safety technologies—are already in use in many commercial vehicle fleets today. The freight system envisioned by USDOT is one in which drivers increasingly work alongside sophisticated technology rather than being replaced by it.

The plan also demonstrates a growing federal focus on supply chain resilience. Lessons learned from pandemic disruptions, extreme weather events, and global supply chain bottlenecks have substantially influenced the strategy. USDOT emphasizes the importance of creating freight networks that can adapt to disruptions while continuing to move goods efficiently. For trucking, this means greater attention to freight network redundancy, improved freight planning, stronger intermodal connections, and investments designed to keep essential supply chains functioning during emergencies.

Security emerges as another key priority. The plan specifically highlights the rapid growth of strategic cargo theft, a sophisticated form of freight crime involving fictitious carriers, fraudulent identities, forged credentials, and cyber-enabled schemes that divert loads before they reach their destinations. Unlike traditional cargo theft, these incidents often exploit weaknesses in digital freight matching and transportation management systems. As a result, the plan encourages stronger authentication procedures, enhanced cybersecurity protections, improved information sharing, and greater collaboration between industry and law enforcement.

Finally, the strategy recognizes that even the most advanced freight network still depends on people. The plan acknowledges workforce challenges facing the transportation sector and emphasizes the importance of recruiting, training, and retaining the next generation of transportation professionals. While drivers remain central to this discussion, the workforce conversation extends beyond operators to include technicians, logistics professionals, technology specialists, and other skilled workers needed to support an increasingly sophisticated freight system.

The bottom line is that the 2026 National Freight Strategic Plan is not simply a discussion about highways, congestion, or infrastructure funding. It is a forward-looking vision for how freight transportation may evolve over the coming decades. For trucking, the most important takeaway may be that the future of freight is expected to be more connected, automated, data-driven, and resilient than ever before. The companies and drivers that successfully adapt to those changes will likely be best positioned to thrive as the next generation of freight transportation takes shape.

 

The Industry’s Own Crackdown: A Year of Trucking Resurgence, By the Numbers

Doug Marcello

In fall 2025, TAEC — the Trucking Association Executives Council, a federation of state trucking associations formalized in 1962 — released an action plan called Trucking Resurgence: The Fight for Fairness and Safety. It was a blunt acknowledgment from inside the industry: bad actors had exploited gaps in CDL issuance, safety data systems, and electronic logging oversight, and the professionals and companies upholding real standards were paying the price — in cost, in reputation, and in courtroom exposure.

Six months later, TAEC has published a progress report. For anyone defending trucking litigation, it’s worth reading closely — not as a press release, but as a sourced counter-narrative to the story plaintiff’s counsel tells juries.

Seven Priority Areas, One Year of Enforcement

The original plan identified seven scope areas: CDL integrity, reforming the safety data system, cross-border workforce integrity, non-domiciled CDL reform, English language proficiency enforcement, combating trucking fraud, and electronic log integrity. The progress report tracks measurable action in each.

CDL INTEGRITY

Federal regulators removed nearly non-compliant training providers from the federal registry, with 550 fraudulent CDL schools shut down outright. Additional rulemaking is underway to eliminate self-certification in CDL training — a gap that has been a recurring theme in negligent hiring and entrustment claims.

REFORMING THE SAFETY DATA SYSTEM

USDOT launched the MOTUS registration platform, intended to improve carrier identity verification and reduce fraudulent registrations tied to chameleon carriers — shell entities that re-register under new names to escape safety histories. The report is candid that the rollout has faced technological setbacks, but notes hundreds of high-risk carrier investigations have already been completed, with FMCSA and state MCSAP partners conducting additional enforcement operations focused on driver training and principal-place-of-business verification.

NON-DOMICILED CDL REFORM

New federal eligibility standards are projected to make roughly 97% of existing non-domiciled CDL holders (194,000+) ineligible over a multi-year period, with some states moving to immediate revocations. This is likely the single most consequential data point in the report for negligent hiring defense — it directly addresses driver qualification gaps that plaintiff experts have used to argue systemic industry recklessness.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Federal out-of-service enforcement was reinstated, resulting in 27,000+ OOS violations issued nationwide. Multiple states have layered on their own testing requirements and penalties.

COMBATING TRUCKING FRAUD

States have expanded criminal penalties for cargo theft and proposed specialized task forces. At the federal level, the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA) — aimed at organized cargo theft, supply chain crime, and freight fraud — has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

ELECTRONIC LOG INTEGRITY

Federal regulators removed 76 non-compliant ELD platforms from approved registries and blocked 426 more from entering the marketplace, with work underway on stronger certification requirements, including ending self-certification.

Twenty States, One Direction

At least 20 states — including Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Arkansas, and Virginia — have enacted or introduced legislation aligned with the Trucking Resurgence plan, addressing CDL integrity, English proficiency, non-domiciled CDL oversight, cargo theft, and driver qualifications. Many more states have updated policies and enforcement guidance without formal legislation.

Why This Matters for Nuclear Verdict Defense

The core reptile-theory argument asks jurors to see the trucking industry as a monolith that prioritizes profit over safety and only changes under threat of punishment. This report — sourced to a coalition of state trucking associations working with federal regulators — tells a different, verifiable story: an industry that identified its own weak points and organized, at its own initiative, to close them.

That doesn’t make any individual defense case easier by itself. But it is durable, citable context for shaping the broader narrative your firm and your clients are telling outside the courtroom — which increasingly shapes what happens inside it.

The Gap Nobody’s Fixed Yet

The report’s most sobering section isn’t about wins — it’s about capacity. FMCSA regulates close to 8 million entities with 1,118 employees, or one employee per 7,155 regulated entities. The FAA, by comparison, has 46,000 employees overseeing 1.7 million entities — a ratio of roughly one to 38. FMCSA’s 2026 budget request is a little over $1 billion; the FAA’s is over $27 billion.

The Truckload Carriers Association has developed a 10-point FMCSA Modernization Plan — endorsed by TAEC — addressing staffing, a unified registration system, real-time fitness ratings, and standardized crash data collection, among other reforms. That’s next week’s story, alongside a look at what a properly resourced FMCSA could mean for how carriers, brokers, and their counsel manage risk going forward.

Big battle brews over small stretch of spectrum

NextNav sparks policy debate with GPS backup proposal

 

Connor D. Wolf

The federal review of a proposed backup geolocation network has drawn intense scrutiny as stakeholders, including the trucking industry, battle over its potential downsides.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering a rulemaking petition from technology firm NextNav, which has requested that a portion of the wireless spectrum band be reconfigured to enable a 5G terrestrial positioning, navigation and timing network that would complement GPS technology.

The proposal, which moved to an interagency review in March 2026, has drawn increased attention this year from groups such as American Trucking Associations.

“ATA, partners throughout the trucking industry and a broad coalition of stakeholders including retailers and aviation, all strongly oppose this petition because of the important use cases of the spectrum for existing supply chain services,” ATA President Chris Spear said while testifying at a June 9 hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety.

The same band of spectrum currently supports asset and shipment tracking, transponders and other systems that rely on radio-frequency identification.

“All modes of freight transportation have made significant investments in RFID-based solutions,” Spear said. “The lower 900 MHz band is used in trackers for supply chain security to thwart cargo theft, track equipment and inventory, bypass tolls and bypass weigh stations.”

Spear stressed that ATA recognizes the importance of strengthening PNT capabilities but warned that any effort to develop a terrestrial GPS backup system must be carefully balanced against the needs of existing spectrum users.

The NextNav petition has generated a range of views across a variety of industries and interests.

“Everybody has an ox to gore here,” said Avi Rosenthal, the chairman of the opposition group Z-Wave Alliance. “You can make an argument that the retail and the trucking industries are going to be more affected because they have more physical devices out there.”

Rosenthal is among the opponents who still believe there needs to be a secondary PNT network. He views it as a critical infrastructure issue. But he also noted there are about a dozen other proposals that don’t require a lower-band takeover.

“GPS underpins modern infrastructure, and relying on one system leaves America vulnerable,” Renee Gregory, vice president of regulatory affairs at NextNav, told Transport Topics. “We’re on a mission to help close that gap with a ground-based 5G-powered 3D PNT solution that can complement and back up GPS with no cost to taxpayers.”

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee held a hearing examining PNT capabilities in June. Lawmakers questioned stakeholders on the issue, especially its potential for network interference. NextNav said its proposal leverages licensed spectrum and the existing 5G ecosystem to provide that extra layer of protection in a way that still allows unlicensed users.

A spectrum of views

“Most of the opponents in the FCC docket actually agree with the need for backup GPS and a reliable [PNT] network,” said Lauren Bresette, associate director of government relations at the Security Industry Association. “But their specific proposal would cause more harm than solutions, and there’s also debate about whether it would be effective.”

Bresette added that this lower range is valuable to the security industry due to a rule that requires licensees to prove that they’re not causing harmful interference. She warned the change would disrupt devices with long-range frequency connections like tolling, port security and RFID tags.

“Precision GPS applications such as agriculture and construction rely on terrestrial radio links that are transmitted in the lower 900 MHz band,” said Lisa Dyer, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance. “Any effort to broadcast high-power 5G signals in the lower 900 MHz band as indicated in NextNav’s application will overwhelm those radio links.”

Dyer warned that it could jeopardize economically important precision PNT applications. She also urged federal regulators not to put their thumb on the scale for a particular solution, since market-driven innovations have already been shown to work for similar issues.

“Part of their proposal is restructuring some of their existing licenses in the band in order to do high-power operations, and then also removing that requirement that they prove they don’t cause harmful interference for unlicensed devices,” Bresette said. “Things like alarm systems.”

An economic report by The Brattle Group, commissioned by NextNav, estimated that a one-day global GPS outage would cost the U.S. economy $1.6 billion and indicated that NextNav’s terrestrial backup would act as a $10.8 billion insurance policy against satellite outages.

“The need for greater resiliency in lifesaving and mission-critical terrestrial PNT technologies has been acknowledged by four presidential administrations,” said Paroma Sanyal, telecommunications industry expert at Brattle. “Yet few proposals have provided a clear path to a robust solution without substantial government intervention or taxpayer funding.”

Beyond the NextNav proposal, the government is also exploring the backup GPS issue more generally and could move on to other proposals, said Bresette of the Security Industry Association.

“The Department of Transportation is testing nine alternative options,” Bresette said. “None of them, other than the NextNav proposal, would even touch the lower 900 MHz.”

Rosenthal suspects the amount of pushback against the NextNav proposal led to the delayed review process, with the typical three- to four-month process stretching more than a year.

How FMCSA revived the English-language proficiency rule

ederal enforcement now sidelines about 2,000 drivers a month, ATA VP says

Steve Brawner

Federal enforcement of a long-dormant English-language rule is now sidelining about 2,000 drivers a month with out-of-service violations, an American Trucking Associations executive said.

The current enforcement environment reflects a return to a rule that dates to 1937 but was unevenly applied for much of the past decade. A 2016 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration guidance document was interpreted by many agencies to mean drivers should not be placed out of service for English-language deficiencies, resulting in minimal enforcement across states.

“Basically between 2016 and last year, there were next to no out-of-service violations for English language,” said Brenna Lyles, ATA’s vice president of safety policy. “It just wasn’t a consistently enforced violation across states, across jurisdictions.”

That changed in June 2025, when roadside inspectors began placing drivers out of service if they were not proficient in English, following an executive order issued earlier that spring and subsequent action by FMCSA.

In the months since, enforcement has settled into a steady pattern. Lyles said there have been some minor procedural adjustments and an initial learning curve as states aligned their approaches, but there have been no significant surges or declines in violations.

“At this point, we are seeing pretty consistent application of the rule,” she said. “States needed some time to update procedures or seek direction, but that implementation phase has largely passed.”

Consistency concerns

Even as enforcement has stabilized, questions remain about how proficiency is determined and whether the process yields consistent results nationwide.

The evaluation includes a two-part test. First, an officer conducts an interview with the driver, asking questions related to routine job duties. Second, the driver must correctly identify or interpret common road signs. While the signage portion is more objective, the interview component does not rely on a standardized scoring system, leaving room for interpretation by individual officers.

That subjectivity has become a central concern for some carriers and industry groups.

“We have had carriers whose drivers have passed English-proficiency stops in Texas and failed them in Arkansas,” said John Esparza, president and CEO of Texas Trucking Association. “What is proficiency? Define it for us so that we can train to it, and more importantly, ensure we are putting safe drivers on the road.”

The variability reflects the inherently human element of roadside inspections, even as industry groups and regulators work to promote consistency.

Lyles said the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance has provided guidance to enforcement agencies and emphasized documentation standards. Officers are instructed to base interview questions on a driver’s day-to-day responsibilities and to follow a defined sequence of steps during inspections.

If a carrier disputes a violation, it can seek redress through FMCSA’s DataQs system.

“We work closely with our partners at CVSA, and they have been diligently working on this,” Lyles said. “The procedures are clear and the guidance is straightforward in terms of what officers need to do.”

While the debate over subjectivity continues, the rule itself has prompted little change for many fleets, particularly those that already emphasized safety and compliance in their hiring practices.

“Our policies have always been the same and straightforward,” said Matt Godfrey, president of ABF Freight. “All of our drivers have to meet all federal driver qualification standards as part of the application process.”

Godfrey said English proficiency has long been treated as a basic safety requirement, and the renewed enforcement has simply reinforced existing expectations.

“I support it because English-language proficiency is a safety issue,” he said. “Drivers need to be able to read road signs, respond in case of emergencies, communicate with law enforcement, and work effectively with customers and teammates.”

Other carriers expressed similar views. Averitt Express said it requires proficiency as part of its hiring process and uses multiple steps to verify that new drivers meet the standard. Averitt Express ranks No. 29 on the for-hire TT100.

FedEx Freight said it complies with Department of Labor and FMCSA regulations and supports consistent enforcement, noting that uniform application of rules helps reduce risk and supports predictable operations. FedEx Corp. ranks No. 2 on the for-hire TT100.

In some cases, companies have gone a step further. Private firms have begun developing training tools tailored to trucking, including English-language learning platforms designed to help drivers build job-specific communication skills.

For smaller fleets, the impact of the tougher stance has been more visible.

Alan Riels, owner of Crossett, Ark.-based Dedicated Logistics, said the policy has affected his company in a positive way. His roughly 85-truck dry van operation would not hire a driver if there were any question about English proficiency.

Those standards, he said, are reinforced by experience.

Safety Director Scott Richardson said company equipment has been involved in multiple incidents with drivers who could not communicate with responding officers. In one case, a driver involved in an accident in an Indianapolis parking lot spoke no English, making it difficult for authorities to assess the situation.

Beyond enforcement at roadside inspections, additional policy changes are reinforcing the requirement across the broader labor pipeline.

Policy pressure

The Department of Labor now requires employers to include English-language proficiency standards in job orders and applications for temporary or permanent labor certification for foreign drivers. Employers that fail to meet the requirement receive a notice of deficiency, and processing of their applications is paused until the issue is corrected.

The FMCSA rule applies not only to U.S.-based drivers but also to those entering the country from Canada and Mexico. A limited exception exists in certain commercial border zones with Mexico, where drivers may be cited for violations but are not placed out of service.

States have also begun to take complementary steps.

On June 1, the Texas Department of Transportation announced that commercial driver license and commercial learner permit knowledge exams will be administered only in English. Previously, the written portion of the test was offered in English and Spanish, while the skills test has long been conducted exclusively in English.

Interpreters are not allowed during any part of the testing process.

Esparza said most carriers in Texas have not raised concerns about the change because they already expect drivers to meet English-proficiency requirements. However, he noted that the interstate nature of trucking means drivers must meet standards not only in their home state but across multiple jurisdictions.

That reality underscores the industry’s call for greater clarity.

“The folks I’ve talked to had zero concern about going full English because they had confidence in the drivers they’ve hired,” Esparza said. “But when you have a system that can be interpreted differently, that creates challenges for carriers that operate across state lines.”

Over time, he expects those challenges to diminish as enforcement practices become more uniform and as both regulators and industry participants gain more experience with the rule.

He also believes the renewed focus on enforcement ultimately serves a broader purpose.

“We should expect that people driving in our state should speak English, period, end of story,” Esparza said. “That’s the way it’s always been, and it’s as it should be for very specific reasons of safety.”