CVSA Conducts Surprise Hazmat Inspection Blitz
When the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) typically does an inspection blitz, it is announced months in advance. This allows fleets to ultimately prepare ahead of time to get a better score and keep the road safer for all, but what do companies do when inspectors are not looking?
That is what the CVSA wanted to find out as it conducted a five-day inspection marathon of hazardous materials and dangerous goods trucks from June 8th to the 12th in 2026, across both the United States and Canada. Here are the results of what they found.
Details
Their published findings can be found on the relevant webpage, but as a summary:
- 5046 vehicles were inspected in the 120 hours of the inspection blitz.
- 683 of the vehicles inspected were placed out-of-service, a rate of 13.5%.
- Vehicles inspected ran the gauntlet of different types of shipments, ranging from flammable gases (678) to flammable liquids (2584) and radioactive materials (11). In total 5707 packages were inspected, meaning that some vehicles contained more than one, which makes sense for a truck carrying fireworks that would come in multiple boxes as opposed to a truck hauling gasoline for delivery at a station, which would count as one large package.
- The most common out-of-service violation was cargo securement (128), followed by shipping paper violations (57). While more shipping paper violations occurred at 265, only 57 were so egregious as to put the delivery vehicle out of service.
Conclusion
Vehicles carrying hazardous materials or dangerous goods are held to an even higher standard than the already high standards truckers are placed under when compared to the average driver on the road.
As such, it makes sense that the failure rate of 13.5% is lower than the average 18.4% for all trucks inspected during the International Roadcheck for 2025.
If your fleet hauls hazardous or dangerous items, it is imperative that more so than even normal truckers that your vehicles and drivers are in tip-top shape, paperwork in order, and cargo secured.
That higher standard even entails surprise inspections rather than ones given months of warning in advance, but if hazardous and dangerous goods haulers score better on a surprise inspection than the average driver does on one given ample prep time, it shows that these drivers and their fleets take their jobs very seriously!
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