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.
