Roadcheck 2026: Toughest states for HOS violations, ELD tampering and securement in focus

Just how likely is any given owner-operator to be inspected during the next installment of the Roadcheck inspection event? It's slated for May 12-14 next week, and if the 2025 event provides a roadmap, your chance is about 1 in 5. Just post-Roadcheck last year a few thousand of you weighed in with answer to the question shown in a chart you'll find at https://overdriveonline.com/15824079 21% of poll respondents reported being inspected during the three days of the 2025 event. A lot's been made in some recent years of how routine, really, those three days can feel in certain areas of the country, but the 21%-inspected number is well more than the roughly 15% of owner-operators who reported an inspection of some kind during the fully seven-day late-summer Brake Safety Week the prior year in 2024. So maybe it's true: Roadcheck really is more of an all-hands-on-deck sort of inspection event. *Sign up for our newsletter *https://bit.ly/overdrivesubscribe for more inspections and Roadcheck coverage, hours of service news and views.** In this week's Overdrive Radio, sit in on my CCJ colleague and editor Jason Cannon's talk with Travis Baskin, head of regulatory affairs for the Motive company, about the 2026 Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Roadcheck, and ways owner-ops, drivers and small fleet owners might prepare for a focus on false logs. And not just as a result of the kinds of whole-cloth backend electronic logging device manipulation we're seeing new evidence of just today with a report from Overdrive's Alex Lockie about one driver's experience at a carrier CBS News linked to the Super Ego network of so-called "chameleon" fleets: https://overdriveonline.com/15823957 Regular readers will recall false logs was also the focus last year, CVSA’s annual campaign particularly keying in on misuse of personal conveyance, with results that showed hours of service as the single biggest out-of-service violation category. The year overall marked something of a sea change for the false-logs category as inspectors focused on PC misuse and were increasingly aware of ELD manipulation, too. 2026 false-log violation rates are on pace through March to hit the big totals seen in 2025 nationwide. This year, you can expect PC to remain in focus, and CVSA has created a new violation code for backend hours manipulation by a fleet or operator in concert with an ELD provider. So far, our sister data company RigDig’s accounting of violations hasn't caught up to the code coming into play in the data just yet -- it began to be issued April 1 this year with the annual OOS criteria update. Yet today we can show you some new rankings of states by their propensity to focus closely on and catch hours violations: https://overdriveonline.com/15824079 Indiana’s sitting at the very top of that list, issuing just more than 1 in every 4 violations in 2025 for hours infractions. Behind Indiana, all at higher than 20% hours violations, are Kansas, Oregon, South Dakota, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Colorado. On the logbook fraud front, too, it’s not just backend manipulation by a fleet or ELD company at issue, Travis Baskin notes. You’ve probably heard the “ghost driver” terminology, an electronic variant on the extra-logbook-under-seat approach to making it look right. Baskin, speaking to Cannon just ahead of CVSA’s annual workshop event early last month, said "this is the type of stuff I know that the CVSA is very well aware of," Baskin said. "I know there's going to be a focus on this type of behavior." Take a listen to the podcast for more, and find Roadcheck resources in the post that houses it at https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive... Primer on PC use: https://overdriveonline.com/15290807