International Roadcheck 2026
CVSA’s International Roadcheck is this week. From May 12–14, inspectors across North America will be conducting nearly 15 inspections per minute, with two clear focal points: ELD tampering and falsification, and cargo securement.
Together, those two areas accounted for more than 90,000 violations in 2025 alone. That number deserves more than a passing glance.
Why the ELD Number Keeps Climbing
Last year, falsification of records of duty status was the second-most-cited driver violation, with 58,382 violations. What’s worth paying attention to is why we saw this many violations in 2025, and why that number keeps climbing. It’s unlikely the industry is full of bad actors, so what’s actually going on?
The honest answer is that it’s complicated, and that’s a key part of the problem.
HOS rules are dense. Exemptions vary by cargo type, state, and operation. Drivers navigate them under real-time pressure, on devices they may not have been thoroughly trained on. The ELD landscape itself has been shifting: FMCSA revoked 38 ELDs in 2025, an increase of more than 80% over 2024, and 27 more have been removed by March 2026. Drivers aren’t just navigating regulations. They’re using technology that varies fleet to fleet and is under increasing federal scrutiny.
When the conditions for error are that consistent, the errors will be consistent too.
Now, we add driver turnover to that equation, and it gets murkier. Annual turnover rates at large truckload carriers routinely exceed 90%, and more than 30% of newly hired drivers leave within their first three months on the job. That means a decent portion of any large fleet’s drivers at any given time are still learning the routes, the operation, the HOS rules, and the ELD, which may be different from their last carrier. Getting all of that right, consistently, under schedule pressure, is difficult.
That’s not to say there are no bad actors looking to manipulate their ELD data. CVSA acknowledges this directly, stating that some records are deliberately manipulated with no edit history to indicate the record was changed, which is exactly what inspectors are trained to look for this year. That’s a different problem than a driver who genuinely didn’t know a short-haul exemption applied to their run, or who made an entry error under a tight delivery window and didn’t know how to correct it properly.
Each situation calls for a unique response. Treating documentation errors as bad intent doesn’t reduce violations. It just makes drivers less likely to ask for help when they need it.
The Systems Problem, And How Fleets Are Solving It
If inaccurate ELD entries often come from confusion rather than intent, the point of intervention is before the violation, not after.
- Keep the Conversation Going: Talking to drivers about HOS expectations should be an ongoing conversation, revisited when regulations change, when new drivers join, and before high-visibility enforcement windows like Roadcheck. Plain language matters more than technical accuracy here; a driver who understands why a rule exists is more likely to apply it correctly than one who memorized a policy document.
- Make it Safe to Ask Questions: It’s also key that drivers feel safe to ask questions. When the culture treats a question as a red flag, drivers stop asking and start guessing. When they know they talk to someone who will listen and not blame, they usually do. It sounds simple, but in practice, it changes everything.
- Let the Data Talk: At Idle Smart, we’ve found that the most productive conversations happen when both sides are looking at the same reliable operational data. Managers don’t have to question what they’re hearing. Drivers don’t have to worry about being blamed for something that objective data can clarify. When you start from a shared foundation rather than a disputed account of what happened, coaching conversations stay focused on moving forward rather than relitigating the past.
Roadcheck Is 3 Days. Compliance Culture Is 365.
There’s a version of Roadcheck week that feels like a fire drill, and a version that feels like a Tuesday. The difference is usually whether compliance is something your team lives every day, or something they prepare for three days a year.
Building that culture isn’t complicated, but it does require intention and communication. Ensuring drivers understand the rules, trust that questions won’t be held against them, and have access to accurate data when things get murky is critical to building a culture where compliance is part of the drill.
If you’re thinking through what strong communication and driver adoption look like for your fleet, I’d love to be a resource.