Silent-phone mentions in reviews roughly doubled

A driver who stops answering is not a no-show and not yet an abandoned truck, even though recruiters file all three in the same drawer. The phone going dead is usually the last thing you hear about, after the unit is already out and a customer is already waiting. Treat silence as its own screen, not as a footnote to a walk-off.

Among the reviews carriers left on CDLScan since 2018, the share that mention a driver going unreachable rose from 4.7% in 2018 to 9.6% in 2025. Those figures describe the reviews, not drivers in general: carriers write when something went wrong, so the shares tell you what shows up once someone bothers to report it. Across the full period, going unreachable is in 8.0% of the reviews in the set CDLScan shared with me.

The climb is not a straight line

The share of reviews mentioning a driver who went unreachable ran 4.7% in 2018, 5.0% in 2019, 4.8% in 2020, 6.6% in 2021, 7.4% in 2022, 7.6% in 2023, 8.2% in 2024, and 9.6% in 2025. I stop the trend at 2025. 2026 is still open; using it as an endpoint would claim a jump the year has not earned.

2021 is the break you should not smooth over. For three years the share sat near 5%. Then it jumped to 6.6% and never came back. That is the same window where paid travel with no arrival rose and no-show mentions rose with it. Mid-route abandonment eased for twelve months. Onboarding losses and silence did not. How we count these shares 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.

The pattern I’d watch for is the gap between a quiet 2020 and a loud 2021. Freight and hiring were both ugly. The reviews from that year talk less about a tractor already sitting at a stop and more about people who stopped answering before anyone recovered anything.

What “went unreachable” actually looks like

Carriers write about a driver who stopped answering, stopped responding, never answered, would not take phone calls, or went silent on calls and messages. The language is about the phone, not the tractor — until it isn’t. In 35.2% of these reviews the carrier also mentions an abandoned truck. Silence and a walk-off are often the same story told from two ends: dispatch lost the driver, then someone found the unit.

That still leaves most of these reviews without an abandoned-truck mention. Going unreachable is not a synonym. In 17.8% of them the carrier also mentions drugs or alcohol. In 11.6% they also mention paid travel with no arrival. In 10.8% they also mention late or missed deliveries. In 10.3% they also mention a crash or damage. In 8.7% they also mention a no-show.

Read those companions as sequence, not as one personality type. A late load, then shorter answers, then none, is a different recovery from a flight ticket that never turned into orientation. The first one costs you a customer and a tractor hunt. The second one costs you a ticket. Both show up next to “stopped answering,” and screening for only one of them will miss the other.

A stay-away recommendation sits in 38.1% of these reviews. That is the author’s verdict, not a description of the driver. I treat it as a signal that the desk was angry enough to write, not as a fact you can put in a file.

What was visible before the phone went dead

Silence is expensive because it happens after you have already spent: a truck assigned, a first load, sometimes a hotel and a flight ticket. The useful question is what in the file should have slowed you down.

The pattern I’d watch for is a previous carrier who already used the same words: stopped answering, never answered, would not take calls. Those words are not a violation code. I also watch the order of asks — paid travel before the background is done, a start date that keeps sliding, a phone that already drops during recruiting. None of those is proof. Together with a thin employment history, they are a reason to look the name up before you dispatch.

Typical sequence, built from how these reviews cluster, not from one person’s file: two carriers in a year and a hole between them. Slow references. They start. The first load is late. Dispatch gets shorter answers, then none. Sometimes the tractor is still moving. Sometimes it is already at a truck stop. In this corpus that is not a once-in-a-career fluke.

Do not collapse this into the no-show screen you already run. A no-show never made it to orientation. Going unreachable often did. The overlap exists — 8.7% of these reviews also mention a no-show — but the expensive version is the one that starts and then ghosts you under load. Longer on the walk-off itself: abandoned-truck mentions in reviews. Longer on a loaded box: walking off a loaded trailer.

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. Stopping answering is an employment mess, not a filing. Nobody sends a silent phone 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 is busy, cautious, or answers the regulation and not the question you meant. “Eligible for rehire” can come back blank while the same desk will later say the driver stopped answering. The behavior lives in carrier-to-carrier memory, and most of that memory never becomes a report. Longer version: why PSP comes back clean on an abandoned truck.

That is the argument for looking the name up in reviews other carriers already left. I am not going to pretend this is an independent study. CDLScan is the source, and I write from the data they share. This problem is common in what carriers bother to write down, it has gotten more common, and the packet you already run is not designed to hold it.

What to do before you dispatch

Run the name before you hand over the keys. Search what previous carriers wrote, not only what the state and FMCSA stored. If you see stopped answering, never answered, or would not take calls, treat that as a stop even when the MVR is dull.

Ask the candidate to walk the last two exits. When did they last speak to dispatch. Who recovered the truck if they left it. What will the previous carrier say if you call today. People who resigned cleanly can usually tell that story without sanding off the location and the last phone call. People who went silent often skip the recovery and jump to home time or a family reason.

If you already paid travel, freeze the next dollar until someone has looked. If they are already on a load, the question is not “are they eligible for rehire.” The question is whether anyone in the last year already wrote that this name stopped answering.

The rising share is not a reason to become paranoid about every applicant who misses a call. It is a reason to stop treating a clean PSP as “this person stays on the phone.” Those are different claims. Check the name on CDLScan before the spend. It takes less than a minute.

Frequently asked questions

Does 9.6% mean one in ten drivers will go unreachable?

No. 9.6% is the share of 2025 reviews that mention a driver going unreachable, 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. Using a partial year as an endpoint would fake a jump the year has not earned. The last complete year is 2025 at 9.6%.

What changed in 2021?

The share jumped from 4.8% to 6.6% and did not come back. That is the same window where paid-travel-with-no-arrival mentions rose. Do not read the earlier flat years as a fix that later failed. The reporting of silence got louder and stayed louder.

Is going unreachable the same as abandoning the truck?

No. 35.2% of these reviews also mention an abandoned truck, which is a real companion and not a coincidence. The rest do not. Screen both. One is a silent phone. The other is a unit you have to recover.

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. A driver who stopped answering is rarely filed.

What should I ask on the call if the timeline looks thin?

Ask when they last spoke to dispatch, who picked up the truck if they left it, and what the previous carrier will say if you call. Then go read what previous carriers already wrote.

Which related signal is worth a second screen?

Drugs or alcohol in the same history, and paid travel with no arrival. Both travel with going unreachable often enough to matter. Neither will necessarily hit the reports you already buy.