Truck Inspections Fell 20% Since 2016 as Feds Launch Separate Crackdown on Fraudulent CDL Schools

Government inspectors are checking commercial trucks less often, even as more of them are on the road. That's the finding of a CBS News investigation of millions of federal records, and it lands the same week federal regulators are running a separate, high-profile crackdown on trucking schools accused of certifying unqualified drivers.

The Inspection Gap

CBS News senior investigative data journalist Steve Reilly found that roadside inspections per mile driven have fallen roughly 20% since 2016, even as truck traffic has grown. The analysis identified more than 2,000 deaths since 2019 in crashes involving trucking companies that held federal operating authority but had no roadside inspection on record before the crash, including 621 deaths in 543 crashes since 2024, according to CBS News.

The report doesn't claim an inspection would have prevented any specific crash. It documents a pattern: thousands of companies with federal authority to operate coast to coast have never been inspected, before or after a crash, according to CBS News.

One example CBS cited: a truck operated by Next Level Express Inc. slammed into an SUV parked on the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike last December, killing two parents and their daughter and injuring a second daughter. In the decade before the crash, none of the company's trucks or drivers had been subjected to a single roadside inspection, according to the CBS News investigation. Forever Delmarva, which carried the CBS wire report, put the death toll since 2024 at more than 600, consistent with CBS's own 621 figure.

A Separate Crackdown on Driver Qualifications

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced it is shutting down 110 commercial trucking schools tied to more than 5,000 drivers who failed federal English-language proficiency tests, some of them illegal immigrants, according to the Daily Wire. FMCSA is also closing 160 additional CDL schools for inadequate facilities: unlicensed instructors, no classroom space, and in one case, a school that claimed a school bus in its backyard qualified as a classroom, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

"You have to speak English to operate a commercial motor vehicle. I didn't create that rule, President Trump didn't create that rule; that rule has been in place for decades," Duffy said, according to the Daily Wire. FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs said investigators visited 400 driving schools and found 40% failed to meet federal requirements. "When schools certify underqualified drivers, these drivers get behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck, and they kill people," Barrs said.

Duffy appeared with Dalilah Coleman, a 7-year-old girl left with a traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and developmental delays after a 2024 crash involving an illegal immigrant trucker, according to the Daily Wire. In a separate interview with Fox Across America, Duffy described states relying on third-party testers who issue commercial licenses to drivers who don't speak English and never actually trained, saying the goal is to push fraud off the road so "rates come up a little bit" for legally operating American drivers. FMCSA has also opened an audit of states and the third-party testers they authorize to certify drivers.

Loosening Hours as Diesel Spikes

Duffy's department took a different kind of action this week: a 90-day waiver, effective Sept. 16, letting fuel truck drivers operate up to 16 hours in a 24-hour window instead of 14, provided they still take 10 consecutive hours off duty before resuming work, according to the Epoch Times. FMCSA said the move is meant to prevent gasoline and diesel supply disruptions as diesel hit $6.40 a gallon on Sept. 17, up from $5.98 a week earlier and $3.70 a year ago, according to AAA data cited by the Epoch Times.

That tradeoff raises a safety concern. The National Transportation Safety Board has previously warned that hours-of-service exemptions raise fatigue risk, a warning issued after a fatal 2021 crash involving a driver operating under an agricultural exemption. "Drivers operating under an hours-of-service exemption are at a greater risk of fatigue: an unacceptable and avoidable danger to every road user," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in March 2023, according to the Epoch Times. FMCSA's position is that the waiver is temporary, preserves the 10-hour rest requirement, and addresses a supply problem that could otherwise raise costs across the economy. Whether 90 days of extended hours meaningfully raises crash risk for fuel haulers specifically is not addressed by any source here.

When Inspections Do Happen, They Find Problems

Targeted enforcement operations show what routine inspections can catch. A Saskatchewan brake-safety operation over three days in late August put 103 of 294 inspected commercial vehicles out of service, more than a third, with 62 tied to brake defects, according to FreightWaves. A Missouri State Highway Patrol operation on Sept. 1 found 94 violations among 38 inspected trucks on Interstate 70, including a trailer whose brakes had been removed and whose brake hose was clamped shut, FreightWaves reported.

The question remains whether the inspection rate itself will recover. CBS News found the decline has run for a decade regardless of which administration controlled FMCSA, and neither the department's current fraud crackdown nor its fuel-hauler waiver directly addresses the roadside inspection shortfall the investigation identified. The results of FMCSA's audit of state licensing testers, announced this month, have not yet been made public.