Methodology
WHERE EVERY NUMBER HERE COMES FROM.
One source, one script, one caveat that never gets dropped. If you want to argue with a figure on this site, this page tells you exactly what to argue with.
Last reviewed August 2026.
The source
Reviews that carriers wrote about drivers they employed, on CDLScan, from 2018 onward. Not surveys, not FMCSA filings, not anything scraped from job boards.
The three fields used
Who the review is about, the rating, and the comment text, plus the date it was written. Nothing that identifies a driver is read, stored or analysed.
One script, no hand counting
Every share on this site is produced by the same script against the same file. Numbers are never estimated, adjusted or carried over from one category to another.
THE ONE THING THAT CHANGES HOW YOU READ ALL OF IT.
Nobody writes a review about the driver who did the job and went home. Carriers write when something went wrong. So every share on this site describes reviews — never drivers as a population.
WHAT THIS DATA CANNOT SAY
40% of truck drivers abandon their trucks.
Reviews are written when something went wrong. A sample like that cannot carry a claim about drivers as a population.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY SAYS
Among the reviews carriers left on CDLScan, the share mentioning an abandoned truck rose from 19% in 2018 to 40% in 2025.
HOW A REVIEW BECOMES A CATEGORY.
Categories are assigned by matching the wording carriers actually use, not by judgement. One review can land in several. Shares are published inside the piece that uses them, with the period they cover. About a seventh of reviews match no category at all, and those are left out of category figures rather than forced into one.
| Category | What puts a review in it |
|---|---|
| Abandoned truck | the driver is described as abandoning, leaving or walking off from the truck |
| Paid travel, no arrival | the carrier paid for a flight, a bus or a relocation and the driver never started |
| Cash advance | an advance, a fuel advance or a comcheck is mentioned before the driver stopped working |
| Went unreachable | calls and messages stopped being answered, or the driver could not be reached |
| No-show | the driver never showed up for orientation, for the truck or for a scheduled start |
| Aggression or threats | anger, threats, cursing or an exchange the carrier describes as hostile |
| Left with the load | the trailer was loaded, or the load was dropped, when the driver stopped |
How many reviews there are
Not the exact count, not a rounded one, not "more than" anything. Only shares, and the period they cover.
What a review said
No sentence from the source is ever reproduced, with or without names removed. Only the pattern across many of them.
Who it was about
Nothing here identifies a driver. A name only gets looked up on CDLScan, by the carrier who has a reason to look it up.
READING A YEAR-OVER-YEAR FIGURE
The database grows every year, so the raw number of reviews in any category grows with it. That growth means nothing on its own. Only the share within a single year is comparable to the share within another.
- Shares within a year are compared
- Raw counts between years are never compared
- Years with a thin sample are left out entirely
- The current year is partial, so trend lines are drawn to the last complete one
Found a figure that looks wrong
Send the sentence and the page. If the query behind it doesn't reproduce, the piece gets corrected and the change is noted at the bottom of it.
Report a figure →Who writes this and who pays for it
Dave Richmond writes every piece. CDLScan provides the data and the links here point there. Both facts are stated on every page, and neither buys a number.
Read the disclosure →NOW THE NUMBERS ARE WORTH SOMETHING.
You know what the data is and what it isn't. The next step is the only one that touches the driver in front of you.
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