Preventable Problems? What FMCSA Violation Trends May Be Telling Us About Freight Operations

The operational reality behind these situations was usually more complicated than a driver simply “forgetting” to report a problem.

Where I worked, drivers completed their pre-trip and post-trip inspections electronically through a company DVIR system. Drivers were required to inspect every piece of equipment; tractors, trailers, dollies, etc. The DVIR recorded their driver code, unit numbers, and any defects discovered during inspection. Defects could be categorized and expanded on through a notes section that allowed drivers to describe issues in greater detail.

The process itself, at least on paper, was structurally sound.

DVIRs were reviewed by the shop daily. Repairs were completed when possible, and if equipment needed to be placed out-of-service it would be removed from operations until the shop had the parts and time to complete repairs. Drivers were also expected to review previously reported defects and acknowledge repairs before operating the equipment again. In theory, the process created multiple layers of accountability between drivers, maintenance, safety, and operations.

But operational reality rarely functions perfectly.

One of the most common breakdowns occurred when a driver documented a defect once and never reported it again afterward. If the repair was delayed and the issue was not continuously documented, the defect could gradually disappear into the background of daily operations. The shop did have systems capable of tracking repairs and DVIR records remained searchable for months at a time, especially reports tied to equipment with defects. However, operational systems are only as effective as the consistency of the people and processes interacting with them.

And consistency becomes difficult in a 24-hour operation.

Drivers worked across multiple shifts. Supervisors changed throughout the day. Freight volume fluctuated constantly. Communication between operations and maintenance often depended on managers repeatedly reinforcing expectations shift after shift. Much of my role in operations involved mediating between drivers and the shop, ensuring drivers understood how defects needed to be documented while also ensuring maintenance understood the operational urgency behind unresolved repairs.

Even with systems in place, gaps could still form.

Drivers performing inspections would often see previously reported defects appear again during the next DVIR process. At that point they were expected to confirm whether the repair had been completed or whether the issue still existed. In practice, this created another potential failure point. A rushed driver trying to get equipment on the road might move through the inspection process quickly without fully verifying the repair. On the other side, unresolved defects could remain buried beneath new write-ups, competing priorities, and overloaded maintenance workflows.

There wasn’t a lack of concern for safety, either.

Safety was discussed constantly. It was part of daily conversations, shift meetings, management calls, and interactions with regional leadership. Safety managers, directors, supervisors, and operations personnel all understood the importance of reducing violations and maintaining safe equipment. The issue was rarely whether people care about safety; the issue was whether process systems, communications workflows, and accountability structures were consistently strong enough to prevent defects from slipping through the cracks of a fast-moving freight network.

Throughout my years working in various operational management roles at a major Nationwide LTL Carrier, I gradually developed a bias towards believing that most of the problems I dealt with every day were preventable in some way.

Damaged freight arriving inbound? Preventable. Proper securement, careful loading practices, and better handling procedures could often stop damage before it occurred.

Freight damage during loading operations? Preventable. Freight generally does not fall over, get crushed, or become punctured without some breakdown occurring somewhere in the process.

Customer service escalations over delayed freight? Preventable. Sometimes the operational issue itself created frustration, but often the larger frustration came from customers feeling like nobody was truly taking ownership of the problem or providing a clear solution.

Other small operational situations reinforced this mindset.

I still remember drivers occasionally reporting major air leaks on equipment only for someone to walk outside and discover that an air tank valve had simply been left open. The “mechanical failure” was not always mechanical at all. Sometimes it was process. Sometimes communication. Sometimes oversight. Sometimes urgency. Sometimes human error.

Over time, after seeing enough situations like these repeatedly, I started wondering how many operational problems throughout transportation were not random failures at all, but instead the result of preventable breakdowns occurring somewhere upstream in the process.

That curiosity is what eventually pushed me toward the FMCSA inspection data.

Initially, I was not even trying to prove anything. I simply wanted to understand the data itself. What were the most common roadside violations? Which categories appeared most frequently? Were there patterns hidden inside the numbers that reflected the kinds of operational issues I had spent years dealing with firsthand?

Immediately, a category stood out. Lighting violations.

Honestly, seeing lighting violations at the top of the list was not surprising to me at all. Lighting problems are often visible. They are often inspection-detectable, and in many situations they may be identifiable long before a roadside inspection occurs. That immediately brought me back to the operational conversations I had experienced for years surrounding inspections, unresolved defects, repair tracking, and process consistency.

That was the point where curiosity turned into deeper analysis.

At the same time, I also understood the danger of allowing my own bias to dictate the conclusions. Not every roadside violation is preventable. Not every defect can be identified during a pre-trip inspection. Mechanical failures occur unexpectedly. Freight environments differ from carrier to carrier, and roadside enforcement itself can vary depending on inspection emphasis and regional priorities.

So instead of simply labeling categories as “preventable”, I started approaching the data from a more measured perspective.

Could some categories reasonably be grouped into detectable or maintenance buckets? If so, how much of total roadside violation activity would those categories represent? And more importantly, were those categories trending upward relative to inspection activity itself?

The deeper I explored the data, the more the trends began reflecting operational questions I had already spent years thinking about.

Using FMCSA roadside inspection data, I grouped several major categories into inspection-detectable violations and maintenance-related buckets. These included categories such as lighting, brakes, tires, load securement, emergency equipment, suspension, steering mechainnisms, coupling devices, and periodic inspection violations.

The goal was not to claim every violation was preventable.

Instead, the goal was to identify categories commonly associated with vehicle condition, maintenance programs, or defects that may be identifiable through inspection and repair workflows.

The findings were striking.

In 2024, FMCSA roadside inspections recorded 4,117,755 total violations. Of those, approximately 2,428,545 violations, nearly 59%, fell into detectable or maintenance-related categories. In 2025 that percentage rose to 60% and YTD in 2026 it hovers around 60.5%.

The consistency and scale of these categories raise important operational questions.

If many defects are truly unpredictable mechanical failures, then trends in detectable violations should remain relatively stable over time relative to inspection activity itself. But if violations tied to lighting, brakes, tires, load securement, and other visibly identifiable defects continue increasing faster than inspection volume, then it raises another possibility; some portion of these violations may stem from operational processes failing long before a roadside inspection ever occurs.

Inspection activity itself did increase between 2024 and 2025. FMCSA inspections increased from approximately 2.64 million inspections in 2024 to roughly 2.92 million inspections in 2025, an increase of approximately 10%.

But total recorded violations increased roughly 18% during the same period.

Some variation should be expected. More inspections generally create more opportunities for violations to be discovered. But when several major detectable categories begin increasing substantially faster than inspection activity itself, the trend becomes more difficult to ignore.

Lighting violations, the single largest violation category, increased approximately 24% year-over-year between 2024 and 2025.

Brake-related violations categorized under “Brakes - All Other” increased approximately 29% during the same time-frame.

When looking at violations relative to inspection activity itself, the trend becomes even clearer.

Lighting violations increased from approximately 0.234 violations per inspection in 2024 to 0.264 in 2025 and 0.281 as of 2026 YTD.

The same upward directional trend appeared across several major categories including lighting, brakes, tires, load securement, and brake adjustment violations.

To better understand whether these trends were continuing into 2026, I also annualized the current year-to-date inspection and violation activity to create a projected year-end comparison. These projections assume inspection and violation activity continue at a pace generally consistent with current trends and should be viewed as directional estimates rather than finalized totals. Actual year-end results may vary depending on enforcement emphasis, seasonal freight activity, economic conditions, and operational changes throughout the remainder of the year.

The difficult part about interpreting these trends is that there likely is no single explanation.

Freight operations are complex environments built around constant movement, strict service timelines, staffing limitations, customer expectations, and operational pressure that exists around the clock. In theory, safety procedures, maintenance workflows, inspection processes, and operational oversight all work together to create multiple layers of protection against preventable defects reaching the road. In practice, however, operational reality can slowly erode process consistency over time.

A common response from employees whenever safety procedures broke down was some variation of, “You expect us to get all of this work done, so I’m just doing what I have to.”

That pressure existed at nearly every operational level.

Drivers felt pressure to complete pickups and deliveries before customer closing times. Linehaul operations worked around tightly controlled cut times where freight had to move in order to maintain service commitments across the network. Supervisors balanced dispatching, dock operations, customer calls, staffing problems, and last-minute operational changes simultaneously. Managers attempted to oversee compliance, safety, maintenance coordination, service performance, and operational productivity all at once.

Nobody explicitly instructed employees to ignore safety procedures.

But in busy operations, pressure has a way of quietly reshaping priorities.

Shortcuts become easier to justify. Smaller defects get pushed behind larger operational problems. Known equipment issues remain unresolved longer than they should. Managers become stretched too thin to consistently audit procedures. Supervisors finish long operational days without wanting to spend additional unpaid hours reviewing DVIR compliance. Maintenance shops, often struggling with staffing limitations or repair backlogs themselves, prioritize the most severe issues first while smaller defects continue waiting for available time and resources.

But what really stood out was that there wasn’t a lack of safety awareness.

Safety was discussed constantly. Drivers received daily reminders about inspections, load securement, paperwork, hazardous materials compliance, and equipment condition. Managers regularly communicated with safety personnel, regional leadership, and operational teams about reducing violations and improving FMCSA performance metrics. Safety conversations were both proactive and reactive because everyone understood how important those metrics were to the company.

The challenge was consistency.

Freight networks operate continuously across multiple shifts, departments, facilities, and operational systems that are often far more fragmented than people outside the industry realize. Dispatch systems, dock systems, customer service systems, maintenance systems, and operational reporting systems may all interact with each other while still functioning independently. Information can be escalated, documented, and communicated correctly while still gradually losing urgency beneath the weight of larger operational problems competing for attention every hour of the day.

And none of these operational realities are unique to a single carrier.

Something that became obvious while speaking with peers across the industry, was how similar many operational challenges sounded regardless of the company. Different names, different terminals, different regions, but often the same pressures, same struggles, same workflow bottlenecks, and same competing priorities.

That does not automatically mean detectable violations are becoming more common because carriers care less about safety.

If anything, most operations personnel care deeply about safety.

But it may suggest that the day-to-day environments surrounding those safety processes are becoming increasingly difficult to manage consistently at scale. And if that is true, then the increase in detectable violations may reflect something much larger than individual behavior alone.

After looking through the data, I do not believe the transportation industry lacks awareness of safety.

If anything, most carriers talk about safety constantly.

The larger question may be whether workplace environments are structured in ways that allow safety processes to be executed consistently day after day under real-world freight pressure.

One thing I increasingly came to believe during my time in operations was that many carriers underestimate how much operational workload exists at the supervisory and management levels. Front-line staffing is often viewed as the primary operational solution, but many of the people responsible for enforcing compliance, auditing procedures, coaching employees, coordinating repairs, and maintaining process discipline are already balancing overwhelming operational responsibilities throughout the day.

Maintaining consistent process oversight becomes increasingly difficult when operational teams are mentally stretched across dozens of competing priorities every hour.

Freight operations rarely slow down long enough for those pressures to disappear. That may be part of why group meetings and broad policy discussions often struggle to create long-term behavioral improvement by themselves. Safety conversations can happen weekly or monthly while the operational realities affecting driver behavior, inspection consistency, repair tracking, and process discipline continue occurring every single day.

Meaningful improvement may require something more consistent and operationally embedded.

More dedicated coaching. More process auditing. More workload balancing. More investment into systems that are centralized, integrated, and designed around operational usability rather than fragmented across disconnected platforms and legacy software. More personnel focused specifically on compliance, process improvement, and frontline operational support instead of simply adding additional responsibilities onto already overloaded supervisors and managers.

Because ultimately, safer operations are rarely created through policies alone.

They come from consistent execution. They come from systems that work, people who are trained properly, managers who have time to coach and audit, and operational environments where safety processes can realistically be followed every single day.

And if the trends in vehicle-condition violations continue moving upward relative to inspection activity itself, then the industry may need to start asking whether existing operational structures are truly built to support the level of process consistency modern freight networks now require.

I do not think there is a single solution to these problems.

But I do believe they are worth examining more closely.

And I believe the data suggests the conversation is worth having.

Saikko Pulse is an independent freight intelligence and transportation analytics platform focused on data analysis, operational trends, safety insights, and process improvement within the freight industry.
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