ANNUAL REPORT · 2026

STATE OF DRIVER RELIABILITY

Eight years of what carriers wrote about the drivers they hired — what got worse, what got better, and which red flags travel together.

Read the findings → How we count

FIVE THINGS THE DATA SAYS

19% → 40%

Abandonment mentions doubled over eight years

1 IN 3

Paid-travel cases also mention drugs or alcohol

13.9%

Aggression or threats, steady across the period

DOWN

Cash advance mentions fell from 5.8% to 2.9%

70.8%

Where a loaded trailer is mentioned, the review usually describes the driver walking off too

WHAT'S INSIDE

01 The eight-year climbWhat rose, what fell, and the one year the trend broke. 02 What travels togetherTwelve pairs of categories that show up in the same review far more often than chance. 03 Two populationsThe driver who never starts and the driver who leaves barely overlap. 04 The language of a verdictA third of reviews carry a recommendation rather than a description. 05 What we checked and did not findNo seasonality, no geography, no tenure — and why that matters.

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The abandonment trend updates as new reviews come in. Embed it and it stays current — attribution links back here.

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THE NUMBERS ARE THE ARGUMENT. THE NAME IS THE ANSWER.

Every figure in this report came from carriers writing about a specific driver. Check the one in front of you.

Look up a driver →

Source: CDLCareers, from reviews carriers left on CDLScan, 2018–2025. Shares describe those reviews, not drivers in general: carriers overwhelmingly write a review after a bad experience. How we count.

2026 is still running, so every trend on this page is drawn to the last complete year rather than to today.