Buy the orientation ticket after you check the name

The orientation ticket is the last dollar you should spend, not the first. Paid travel with no arrival used to be a rare write-up. It is not rare anymore, and the jump sits in one hiring year rather than a slow creep. If you buy the flight before you look the name up, you are paying for a failure previous carriers already described.

Among the reviews carriers left on CDLScan, 6.0% mention paid travel with no arrival — a flight, a bus, a ticket the carrier bought, and a driver who never started. 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.

The floor moved in 2021

The share of reviews mentioning paid travel with no arrival ran 1.7% in 2018, 3.4% in 2019, 3.5% in 2020, 6.1% in 2021, 6.2% in 2022, 6.1% in 2023, 7.1% in 2024, and 5.7% in 2025. I stop that line at 2025. 2026 is still open; using it as an endpoint would fake a climb the year has not earned.

2021 is the break you should not smooth over. The share went from 3.5% to 6.1% in a single complete year and then stayed on that higher floor. I would not read 2024’s 7.1% as a new regime and 2025’s 5.7% as a fix. After 2021 the rare case stopped being rare. How these shares are counted is on the methodology page. Compare percentages inside each year, not year totals: the corpus grew, and a bigger pile of reviews is not a finding.

That same window is when abandoned-truck mentions dipped and onboarding losses did not. The longer climb in walk-offs is in abandoned-truck mentions over eight years. Paid travel is the onboarding version of the same pressure: you spent before the person ever sat in the seat.

What sits in the same write-up

The language is a ticket and an empty seat. Carriers write about a flight ticket, a plane ticket, a booked flight, a bus ticket, a driver who never showed, a ticket that never got used, someone who stopped answering the phone the day before the flight. That is the incident register.

Stay away and waste your time are a different register. Those are the author’s recommendation to the next recruiter, not a description of what the driver did. In 42.3% of paid-travel reviews the carrier also writes a verdict. That is a fact about how these reviews end, not a fact about the driver. Read the scene. Do not hire off the temperature of the last sentence.

The companions that matter for hiring are operational. In 31.3% of paid-travel reviews the carrier also mentions drugs or alcohol. In 27.5% they also mention a no-show. In 15.6% they also mention going unreachable. In 10.6% they also mention theft or money games. Abandonment sits in only 8.4% of this slice.

Read those denominators. 27.5% is 27.5% of paid-travel reviews, not of all reviews, and not of all no-shows. The overlap with a no-show is usually the same story told twice, and that pairing is unpacked in when a paid ticket also means a no-show. The application flags that sit in front of the ticket are in paid-travel red flags on the application.

I treat the drug-and-alcohol pairing as a second clock, not as color. A ticket, a missed test, and a quiet phone are a week, not three unrelated problems. Screening only for an abandoned truck will miss this population. 8.4% overlap means most of these write-ups never become a tractor at a truck stop. They die at the airport.

What was visible before you bought the ticket

The pattern I’d watch for is the order of asks. Travel this week. Background not done. A gap between two carriers and a previous write-up that already used never showed, booked flight, or stopped answering. Those words are not a violation code. They are a reason to look the name up before you spend.

Typical sequence, built from how these reviews cluster, not from one person’s file: two carriers in a year and a hole between them. They want a flight tomorrow. Orientation is confirmed. The ticket is bought. The phone goes quiet the night before, or they never get on the plane, or they land and do not walk into the building. Sometimes a drug test is in the same paragraph. Sometimes the next line is that they stopped answering.

People who started cleanly can usually tell you where they slept the night before orientation and who picked them up. People who bounced often skip the building and jump to a family reason. The difference is the arrival, not the adjective.

The 2021 jump is a reminder about process, not about a personality type. In a desperate hiring year the ticket got cheaper than time. If your screen is “did they ever take a truck,” you are watching the wrong failure. This one never takes the truck.

Why the reports you already buy stay quiet

PSP, DAC, MVR, and the Clearinghouse hold what someone filed: a roadside inspection, a recorded crash, a failed test, a license action, a previous-employer reply that actually got answered. Never arriving to orientation is an employment mess, not a filing. Nobody sends a unused plane ticket to FMCSA. A clean PSP is doing its job when it is silent on this.

Previous-employer calls should catch it and often do not. The last carrier answers the box they are willing to answer. Eligible for rehire can come back blank while the same desk will later write that they paid for a flight and the driver never showed. The behavior lives in carrier-to-carrier memory, and most of that memory never becomes a query result.

I am not going to pretend this is an independent study. CDLScan is the source, and I write from the data they share. Paid travel with no arrival is common enough in what carriers bother to write down, it became more common after 2021, and the packet you already run is not designed to hold it.

What to do before you spend

Run the name before you buy the ticket. Search what previous carriers wrote, not only what the state and FMCSA stored. If you see flight ticket, never showed, booked flight, or stopped answering next to a paid ticket, treat that as a stop even when the MVR is dull.

Ask the candidate to walk the last start that did not happen. Where was orientation. Who bought the ticket. What will the previous carrier say if you call. Then make the call. Five open questions beat a rehire box; the version I use is in the reference questions that beat eligible-for-rehire.

If you already bought the flight, freeze the next dollar until someone has looked. Do not add a hotel, a drug-test slot, or a truck assignment on top of a quiet phone. A clean packet on Monday morning does not tell you whether this person walks into the building on Tuesday. Those are different claims.

The 6.0% share is not a reason to stop covering travel for people you have actually checked. It is a reason to stop treating the ticket as the moment you relax. Check the name on CDLScan before the spend. It takes less than a minute.

Frequently asked questions

Does 5.7% mean about one in twenty drivers will take a ticket and vanish?

No. 5.7% is the share of 2025 reviews that mention paid travel with no arrival, among reviews carriers left on CDLScan. Carriers write after a bad run. It is not a rate for all CDL holders.

Why ignore 2026 if the year is already on the chart?

Because 2026 is incomplete. The last complete year is 2025 at 5.7%. Using a partial year as an endpoint would fake a direction the year has not earned.

What changed in 2021?

The share went from 3.5% in 2020 to 6.1% in 2021 and then stayed on that higher floor. Do not smooth that jump. After 2021 this stopped being a rare write-up.

If PSP and MVR are clean, can I skip carrier reviews?

You can, and you will miss the class of problem these reviews are full of. Clean official reports mean the filed items are clean. An unused plane ticket is rarely filed.

Is every paid-travel write-up a no-show?

No. 27.5% of paid-travel reviews also mention a no-show. That is a heavy overlap, not the whole slice. Drugs or alcohol sit in 31.3%. Going unreachable sits in 15.6%.

What should I ask before I buy the ticket?

Ask where the last orientation was, who paid, whether they walked into the building, and what the previous carrier will say. Then go read what previous carriers already wrote.

Which related signal is worth a second screen?

A drug or alcohol mention in the same history, and a stretch where the driver went unreachable. Both travel with paid travel often enough to matter. Neither will necessarily hit the reports you already buy.