The 2025 numbers
CVSA's 72-hour International Roadcheck in May 2025 produced 56,178 inspections across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The vehicle out-of-service rate was 18.1 percent and the driver rate 5.9 percent. That means nearly one truck in five was restricted from travel until violations were fixed. The top vehicle violation categories were brake systems and tires, with 2,899 tire-related out-of-service violations alone, about a fifth of all vehicle OOS violations. The 2025 focus areas were tires and false records of duty status.
What fails first on oilfield trucks
Brake violations are rarely one dramatic failure. They are air leaks, worn linings, cracked drums, and slack adjusters out of adjustment, the accumulated result of deferred maintenance. Tires fail on tread depth below the FMCSA minimums of 4/32 inch on steer axles and 2/32 elsewhere, on cuts and bulges that expose belts, and on underinflation. CVSA's out-of-service criteria are stricter than the FMCSA minimums: 2/32 inch on steer tires and 1/32 on others. An oilfield truck that spends its life on lease roads and caliche eats tires and brakes faster than a highway truck, so the PM interval has to be shorter, not the same.
The driver side
Driver out-of-service orders come from logs, credentials, and documentation: hours of service violations, missing or expired medical cards, and records of duty status that do not match the truck's actual movement. False RODS accounted for 10 percent of driver OOS violations in the 2025 blitz. The ELD record, the medical certificate, and the driver qualification file are all checked at the roadside, and they are all created before the truck leaves the yard.
The pre-trip inspection is the cheapest compliance tool a fleet owns. A structured walk-around that checks brakes, tires, lights, securement, and documents catches the majority of roadside failures before they happen. The discipline is the same one that keeps fuel costs and tire costs under control: a checklist, executed every time, with the record kept. If inspections are done from memory and the PM record lives in a drawer, an operations audit will show where the fleet is one inspection away from a very expensive day.