The no-show and the walk-off are different people

Among the reviews carriers left on CDLScan, 33.5% mention an abandoned truck. 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. It is tempting to treat every early failure as the same hire gone wrong: they did not stay. The write-ups do not support that.

Only 1.2% of abandonment reviews also mention a no-show. If the two events were independent, you would expect about 5.3% — the no-show share of all reviews. The observed overlap is about a quarter of chance. Lift is 0.23. Rare together is not the same as impossible. It is a strong hint you are looking at two populations.

Paid travel with no arrival is even thinner against abandonment: 1.5% of abandonment reviews also mention it, against a 6.0% base rate. Lift 0.25. Backing out before the start date sits at 0.6% of abandonment reviews against a 1.6% base. Lift 0.39. The people who never take the seat and the people who take the truck and leave it are not writing the same paragraph.

Two failures, two clocks

A no-show is an onboarding loss. You spent a ticket, a hotel, a recruiter’s week. You did not hand over a unit. The language is never showed, didn’t make orientation, flight ticket unused.

An abandoned truck is an operations loss. The unit is somewhere that is not your yard. Sometimes the trailer is still loaded. Sometimes the phone has already died. The language is left the truck, dropped the truck, abandoned the equipment, went home.

Those clocks do not usually share a review because they do not usually share a person. The driver who never arrives cannot leave your tractor at a stop. The driver who leaves your tractor at a stop already arrived.

Quit-early is the awkward neighbor, and it does not rescue the myth of one population. In reviews that mention quitting in the first days, 48.2% also mention an abandoned truck — lift 1.44, above chance, on a small category (0.7% of all reviews). That is the person who started and left fast, which is still a start. Against no-shows, quit-early barely shows up: 1.8% observed versus 5.3% expected, lift 0.34. Even “left in the first days” belongs with the walk-off, not with the empty chair.

How we count these shares, and why year totals cannot be compared, is on the methodology page.

Why recruiters mash them together

Because both waste a week and both look like “they didn’t work out.” Because both are mostly invisible on PSP, an MVR, and the Clearinghouse. Because a desperate desk wants one screen that catches every early loss.

One screen will not. The application before a paid ticket is urgency plus a thin last job plus a quiet packet. The application before a walk-off is a short stint, a hole, and a previous carrier who already used left-the-truck language. If you only hunt for ticket-and-no-show, you will hire the person who is pleasant at orientation and gone on load two. If you only hunt for abandonment, you will buy flights for people who have already done this to someone else.

The share of reviews mentioning an abandoned truck rose from 18.8% in 2018 to 40.4% in 2025. Paid travel with no arrival rose from 1.7% to 5.7% over the same complete years. No-show mentions moved from 3.7% to 4.9%. I stop those lines at 2025. Both problems grew. They still do not sit in the same write-up.

The pairing that does sit together is paid travel and a no-show: 27.5% of paid-travel reviews also mention a no-show, about five times chance. That is an onboarding pair. It is unpacked in paid travel and a no-show. Abandonment’s own climb is in the share of reviews mentioning an abandoned truck.

What official reports see — and what they don’t

Neither population is what those reports were built to hold. A no-show is not a crash. An abandoned truck is usually not a filing. A clean packet can sit on top of either failure. The difference is where the next clue lives.

For the never-starts, look at previous tickets and empty orientation days. For the walk-offs, look at previous recoveries and “left the truck” language. Previous-employer forms help the second group more than the first, and they still fail often. The last desk may confirm dates and leave the story in a review instead of a form.

Drugs or alcohol are the exception that proves the split. They show up in 31.3% of paid-travel reviews and only 3.6% of abandonment reviews — lift 0.31 against abandonment. The official system that can catch a test event is pointed at the onboarding population more than at the walk-off. Do not let that make you treat abandonment as a drug article. The data says the opposite.

What to do with two screens

Run two short checks, not one vague “will they stay.”

Before you buy a ticket: search the name for paid travel, never showed, didn’t make orientation. Ask when they can start if the flight waits. That screen is for the empty chair.

Before you assign a truck: search the name for left the truck, abandoned equipment, went home, stopped answering. Ask where the last truck was left and who recovered it. That screen is for the walk-off.

If either history is already written down, stop and read it. Check the name on CDLScan before the spend. It takes less than a minute, and it is where both populations actually sit — usually in different write-ups.

Frequently asked questions

Does a 1.2% overlap mean a no-show never later abandons a truck?

No. Rare together is not impossible. It means that in the reviews carriers left on CDLScan, the two events almost never share a paragraph. Do not run one screen and assume you covered both.

Why use lift instead of just the 1.2%?

Because 1.2% needs a baseline. No-shows are 5.3% of all reviews, so chance would put them in about 5.3% of abandonment reviews. 1.2% is about a quarter of that. Lift 0.23 is the short way to say “far below chance.”

Which failure is more common in the reviews?

Abandoned-truck mentions are in 33.5% of the reviews. No-shows are in 5.3%. Paid travel with no arrival is in 6.0%. The walk-off is the bigger write-up. The empty chair is the more expensive surprise per dollar spent before day one.

Can I use quit-early as a bridge between them?

Not cleanly. Quit-early travels with abandonment (48.2%, lift 1.44) and against no-shows (lift 0.34). It is a fast start-and-leave, still a start.

Will a clean PSP tell me which type I have?

No. Both types are usually unfiled. A clean packet means the filed items are clean. It does not classify the next failure.

What should I ask on the reference call?

For a thin onboarding history: did you buy them a ticket, and did they arrive. For a short completed stint: where was the last truck left, and who picked it up. Those are different questions.

Where do I look the name up?

On CDLScan, before you buy the ticket or assign the truck. The two populations are already written down. They are usually not written down together.