A stay-away line is heat, not a second incident

A last line that says stay away is not a second thing that happened. It is the last carrier telling the next desk how done they are. Read it as heat. The hire turns on the sentence that came before it — left the truck, never showed, stole fuel — not on the temperature of the closer.

Among the reviews carriers left on CDLScan, 32.2% contain a verdict. That figure describes those reviews, not drivers in general: carriers write after a bad run, so the share tells you what shows up once someone bothers to report it.

A verdict is not an incident. Stay away, waste your time, don’t hire, avoid this driver — that is the author’s recommendation to you. It is not a fact about the driver. Do not add 32.2% to abandonment, to a no-show, or to theft and call the sum a failure rate. Those are different registers, and stacking them double-counts the same write-up.

The closer is attitude. The scene is the event.

The language of the closer is short: stay away, waste time, don’t waste, don’t hire. The language of the scene is specific: abandoned truck, left truck, never showed, flight ticket, stopped answering, cash advance. One tells you what happened. The other tells you the author wants you to hang up.

What rides with a verdict, across the whole corpus, looks a lot like the corpus itself. An abandoned truck sits in 32.3% of verdict reviews — against a 33.5% base rate, essentially chance. Aggression sits in 16.0%. Drugs or alcohol sit in 14.3%. A crash or damage sits in 13.9%. Late or missed deliveries sit in 11.1%. Theft sits in 10.3%. Going unreachable sits in 9.5%. Paid travel sits in 7.9%.

That mix is the point. A stay-away line does not point you at one failure type. It points you at a carrier who decided to warn the next desk. The useful screen is still the scene.

Almost all of those write-ups already carry the lowest rating: 94.8% of the whole corpus sits on the floor. Inside that floor, verdict language is 33.4%. Above the floor — the thin 5.2% slice with a 2 or better — it falls to 9.3%. That is a 24.1-point drop, the steepest rating split in this data. Heat concentrates where the star is already the floor. A milder star still does not turn a stay-away line into a pass, and it does not turn a missing scene into a finding.

I will not build a hiring philosophy on 5.2%. I will use it the way the data allows: as a contrast that shows the closer is heat, and a rating above the floor is not a character reference.

How we count these shares is on the methodology page. The companion essays are what a lowest rating actually contains, what it means that almost every review is already a 1, and abandoned-truck wording. Abandoned-truck mentions off the floor are in abandoned-truck review rating.

Why recruiters hire off the closer

Because it is short. Because it feels like a conclusion. Because a desperate desk would rather copy stay away into the notes than read left the truck, never showed, or stole fuel.

If you treat every verdict as “do not hire, period,” you will skip files that still contain a usable scene — a late load, a dented fender, a family reason — and you will also skip the files where the scene is the whole point. 32.2% of reviews contain a closer. That means most of them do not. The ones that do still need the sentence that came first.

If you treat a review with no closer as a pass, you will also misread the file. An abandoned-truck mention does not need stay away sitting next to it to be a walk-off screen. A no-show does not need don’t hire to be an empty chair. The event does the work. The closer is optional heat.

The pattern I’d watch for is the gap between the last line and the rest of the paragraph. Typical sequence, built from the mix, not from one person’s file: you open a profile, see stay away, and stop. Or you see no closer and skip it. In both cases you skipped the sentence that would have changed the hire. The verdict was never the screen.

The closer itself has climbed. Verdict language ran 19.6% of reviews in 2018, 20.2% in 2019, 23.9% in 2020, 26.8% in 2021, 32.5% in 2022, 32.6% in 2023, 33.8% in 2024, and 37.2% in 2025. I stop that line at 2025. 2026 is still open. Carriers are ending more write-ups with a recommendation. That is a fact about how reviews are written, not a fact about how drivers behave.

What official reports do with a verdict

Nothing. PSP, an MVR, and the Clearinghouse do not store stay away. They store filed crashes, inspections, license actions, program events. A review that ends in don’t hire and a review that ends with a date and a location look the same to those systems: they look like nothing.

That is why the scene still matters, and why the closer cannot replace it. The packet you already buy is silent on both. The write-up is not. Read the event. Use the verdict only as heat.

A clean PSP on a stay-away history is the default, not a finding. The filing systems were not built to hold a carrier’s recommendation to the next desk. The review is. Check the name before you spend, not after you have already decided the last author was either gospel or noise.

I am not going to pretend this is an independent study. CDLScan is the source, and I write from the data they share. Verdict language is in about a third of what carriers bother to write down, it concentrates on the lowest rating, and it is not a second incident.

What to do with a stay-away file

Open the write-up. Ask what happened before you ask how it ends.

If the sentence is left the truck, dropped the truck, abandoned the equipment — treat it as a walk-off screen even if the closer is loud. Ask where the last truck was left, who recovered it, and whether the trailer was still loaded.

If the sentence is never showed, flight ticket, ticket never — treat it as an onboarding screen. The closer does not turn an empty chair into a walk-off.

If the sentence is stay away and nothing else, you have heat without a scene. That is still a reason to look the name up. It is not a reason to write “do not hire” into your own notes as if you had verified an event.

Do not average closers and call it a score. 32.2% of this corpus already ends in a recommendation. An average here is a measurement of how often carriers warn the next desk, not of how often drivers fail.

Then look the name up across write-ups, not across last lines. Check it on CDLScan before you spend. It takes less than a minute. The useful part is the scene, not the temperature of the closer.

Frequently asked questions

Does 32.2% mean a third of drivers should not be hired?

No. 32.2% is the share of reviews, among those carriers left on CDLScan, that contain a verdict. It is the author’s recommendation to the next desk, not a fact about the driver, and it describes those reviews, not drivers in general.

Can I add the verdict share to the abandonment share?

No. They are different registers. Many write-ups contain both a scene and a closer. Stacking the percentages double-counts the same review.

If there is no stay-away line, is the file clean?

No. An abandoned truck, a no-show, or a missing fuel card does the work without a closer. Read the scene. Do not treat a missing recommendation as a pass.

Why does verdict language drop 24.1 points off the floor?

Because heat concentrates where the carrier already reached for the worst score. Above the floor, 9.3% of reviews still end in a closer. That slice is small. Use it as contrast, not as a second product.

Will a clean PSP tell me the last carrier overreacted?

No. Official reports do not store stay away. A clean packet means the filed items are clean. It does not classify a closer, and it does not explain a 1 versus a 3.

What should I tell a hiring manager who quotes the last line?

Give them the event and the year, not the closer. Stay away is attitude toward the reader. Left the truck is the screen.

Where do I read the write-ups?

On CDLScan, before you hire. Look at what happened. Use the verdict only to know how done the last carrier was.