Right now, as you read this, thousands of CVSA-certified inspectors across North America are pulling commercial motor vehicles into weigh stations, pop-up checkpoints and roadside inspection sites as part of International Roadcheck 2026. For 72 hours, from May 12 through 14, roughly 15 trucks per minute will undergo the 37-step Level I inspection, the most comprehensive roadside evaluation in the world.
The industry conversation around Roadcheck is predictable every year. Brake adjustments. Tire tread depth. ELD compliance. Cargo securement. The usual compliance checklist stuff that fleet managers and safety directors obsess over each May. This year is no different on the surface, with CVSA naming ELD tampering and cargo securement as its 2026 focus areas.
The missed conversation about Roadcheck and trucking enforcement more broadly, which almost never happens. It is a conversation about national security. About criminal interdiction. About the fact that the same 80,000-pound vehicles hauling America’s freight are also hauling drugs, trafficking human beings and, in the hands of the wrong people, functioning as weapons of mass destruction.
The trucking industry prefers to frame enforcement as a safety and compliance exercise, full stop. The data, the case files and the body count tell a different story.
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck containing 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane and diesel fuel in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02 a.m., he detonated it. The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children in the building’s day care center, and injured more than 675 others. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.
At the time, federal oversight of commercial motor vehicles was buried inside the Federal Highway Administration, an agency whose primary mission was building and maintaining highways. Trucking safety was a side desk inside a road construction agency. The Office of Motor Carrier Safety, as it was known, had inherited regulatory authority from the Interstate Commerce Commission when the ICC was abolished in 1995, the same year McVeigh demonstrated what a truck could do in the wrong hands.
Understanding the timeline of federal trucking oversight is worth it because it explains how we got here. The ICC’s Bureau of Motor Carriers wrote the first federal truck safety rules in 1936. When the Department of Transportation was established in 1966, the ICC’s safety authority transferred to DOT and was delegated to FHWA. For the next 34 years, trucking safety lived inside a highway agency. It was not until a series of high-profile bus and truck crashes in the late 1990s, combined with an annual CMV fatality count of 5,374 in 1998 alone, that Congress finally carved out the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as a standalone agency effective January 1, 2000, under the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999.
The political will to create FMCSA did not come from a single event but the post-Oklahoma City enforcement environment, in which FHWA’s Office of Motor Carriers suddenly found itself at the intersection of national security and commercial vehicle regulation, was part of the backdrop. A truck had just killed 168 Americans. The agency responsible for truck safety was three bureaucratic layers deep inside an organization that poured concrete for a living.
Three decades later, the lesson of Oklahoma City has been largely forgotten by the trucking industry, even as the rest of the world has learned it the hard way. The use of commercial vehicles as instruments of terror is an accelerating global phenomenon.
On July 14, 2016, a Tunisian-born man drove a rented 19-ton cargo truck for more than a mile along the packed Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, during Bastille Day celebrations. He killed 86 people and wounded more than 430 in the span of four minutes and 17 seconds. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Five months later, on December 19, 2016, a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker hijacked a Scania semi-trailer truck in Berlin, murdered the original driver, and plowed the rig into a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz. Twelve people were killed and 56 were injured. On October 31, 2017, Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national who had entered the United States through the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, rented a Home Depot pickup truck and drove it down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring 13. Public records showed Saipov held a commercial driver’s license. He held a commercial truck license AND had his own DOT authority. He wasn’t just a CDL holder working for someone else. He was a registered motor carrier with FMCSA. The system gave him a CDL, gave him operating authority, and nobody flagged him, even though federal agents had interviewed him in 2015 about his contacts with two suspected terrorists and had declined to open a case.
On January 1, 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Houston, rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people and injuring at least 57. An ISIS flag was recovered from the vehicle. The FBI also found two rudimentary pipe bombs in coolers nearby. It was the worst vehicle ramming attack in United States history.
West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center noted in a March 2025 analysis that by 2016, vehicle ramming had become the most lethal form of terror attack in Western countries, responsible for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths in the West that year. The technique’s appeal is straightforward. Vehicles are ubiquitous, require no special materials or expertise to weaponize, and are extraordinarily difficult to defend against in open public spaces.
Al-Qaeda understood this early. Inspire magazine, the English-language publication of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, actively promoted vehicle-ramming tactics before the technique proliferated globally. The Islamic State adopted and amplified the strategy. In February 2025, the House Homeland Security Committee introduced the Department of Homeland Security Vehicular Terrorism Prevention and Mitigation Act, legislation requiring DHS to produce annual reports on emerging vehicle-ramming threats and countermeasures.
The common thread across these incidents is the vehicle itself. The trucking industry’s 11 million registered large trucks and buses are not just economic assets. They are potential force multipliers for anyone with violent intent and the ability to get behind the wheel.
In November 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 31-year-old Akhror Bozorov in Kansas while he was working as a commercial truck driver. Bozorov, an Uzbek national, had been wanted by Uzbekistan authorities since 2022 for belonging to a terrorist organization. He is accused of distributing jihadist propaganda online and recruiting individuals to join the jihad movement.
Bozorov had crossed the U.S. southern border in February 2023 and was apprehended by Border Patrol, released, and subsequently granted work authorization. He obtained a Pennsylvania-issued commercial driver’s license in July 2025. A photograph of his CDL, released by the Department of Homeland Security, showed it was issued as a nondomiciled license. It was also a Real ID.
Pennsylvania State Republican Chairman Greg Rothman called it “a national security breach right here in Pennsylvania,” demanding to know how someone with terrorist ties passed every check required to operate an 18-wheeler. PennDOT stated that it had followed its standard process, running applicants through the DHS SAVE verification database, which confirmed Bozorov’s lawful presence in the country. The federal system cleared him.
Bozorov was not an isolated case. In October 2025, Homeland Security arrested a man who had been issued a New York commercial driver’s license under the name “No Name Given Anmol.” In August 2025, an undocumented immigrant named Harjinder Singh, who held a California-issued CDL, killed three people on the Florida Turnpike after making an illegal U-turn with an 18-wheeler. Singh had crossed the Mexico border into California in 2018.
In September 2025, FMCSA issued an interim final rule barring states from issuing CDLs or commercial learner’s permits to drivers domiciled in a foreign jurisdiction without proper documentation and a mandatory SAVE immigration status check. The agency’s review of Pennsylvania’s nondomiciled CDL practices found systemic issues. The U.S. Department of Transportation demanded that Pennsylvania immediately pause issuance of all new nondomiciled CDLs, conduct a comprehensive internal audit and void all noncompliant licenses.
The national security conversation about trucking extends well beyond terrorism. Commercial motor vehicles are the arterial system of American criminal enterprise, and the evidence is overwhelming.
The FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative, launched in 2004 after analysts at the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation noticed a pattern of murdered women’s bodies being dumped along Interstate 40, has compiled a roster of more than 850 murders believed to be connected to long-haul truck drivers. Approximately 450 potential suspects have been identified, many of them active or former commercial drivers.
Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, who spent a year riding more than 2,000 miles in a semi-truck researching the phenomenon, described the profession’s appeal to serial predators in blunt terms. An 18-wheeler is a mobile crime scene. A killer can pick up a victim in one jurisdiction, commit murder in a second and dump the body in a third, all in the same shift. The mobility, anonymity and jurisdictional fragmentation that define long-haul trucking also define the ideal operating environment for serial violence. I went on to cover this both on X and in my new book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Trucking: How We Built, Broke, and Can Still Save American Trucking.
The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program identified that the majority of victims were women living high-risk, transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse or sex work, who were picked up at truck stops. The initiative remains active, and the FBI is using truck company logs, fuel receipts and forensic genealogical DNA to build case timelines against suspects. Two hundred of the 850 linked killings remain unsolved.
Drug trafficking through commercial vehicles operates at industrial scale. Mexican cartels, principally the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, use personally owned vehicles, rental vehicles and tractor-trailers on interstate highways as primary smuggling conveyances. In January 2023, federal agents intercepted a tractor-trailer carrying 1.4 million fentanyl pills after monitoring wiretapped phone conversations about the shipment. In a separate May 2023 bust, authorities seized 480,000 fentanyl pills, 72 kilograms of methamphetamine and a loaded handgun from another semi-truck. A long-running investigation into the Valenzuela Transnational Criminal Organization, a Sinaloa Cartel component, led to charges against 109 defendants and the seizure of approximately 2,000 kilograms of cocaine and fentanyl, more than $16 million in cash and 21,000 rounds of ammunition from a commercial truck yard in Otay Mesa, California.
In February 2024, the FBI announced the results of Operation Dead Hand, which dismantled an organized crime network that used long-haul semi-trucks to transport cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin from Los Angeles to Canada through the Detroit Windsor Tunnel, the Buffalo Peace Bridge and the Blue Water Bridge. The investigation documented approximately 845 kilograms of methamphetamine, 951 kilograms of cocaine, 20 kilograms of fentanyl and 4 kilograms of heroin moving through the network. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a separate investigation resulted in the seizure of two tractor-trailers with hidden compartments specifically built for narcotics smuggling, along with 328 kilograms of cocaine, 26 kilograms of fentanyl, 60 firearms and more than $2.4 million in drug proceeds.
Human trafficking, too, moves by truck. CVSA itself has acknowledged this piece. In May 2026, just days before International Roadcheck began, CVSA announced a human trafficking awareness initiative tied to the upcoming international football competition. The alliance recognizes that commercial vehicle operators and enforcement personnel are uniquely positioned to identify trafficking indicators at truck stops, rest areas and inspection points.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the federal government moved aggressively to secure certain segments of surface transportation. The 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 mandated security training for frontline employees in higher-risk surface transportation operations. The Transportation Security Administration eventually published its Security Training for Surface Transportation Final Rule in March 2020, requiring TSA-approved security training for employees performing security-sensitive functions.
The rule’s applicability is narrow. It covers higher-risk freight railroads, public transportation agencies, passenger railroads and over-the-road bus companies operating fixed-route service in 10 designated high-density urban areas. Over-the-road buses, those motorcoaches with elevated passenger decks and under-floor baggage compartments, are covered because of their visibility, publicly available schedules, ease of boarding by unknown individuals and access to high-consequence locations. TSA identified 127 surface transportation operations as high risk. The GAO reported in April 2022 that TSA had approved approximately 73% of submitted training programs.
Hazmat endorsement holders already undergo TSA security threat assessments under 49 CFR 1572, a requirement that has been in place since 2003. Drivers who want to haul explosives, flammable materials or other dangerous goods must submit fingerprints and pass a background check administered through TSA’s vetting infrastructure.
General freight carriers, however, operate in what amounts to a security void. There is no TSA-mandated security training for the standard Class 8 tractor-trailer driver hauling dry van freight on the interstate. There is no security coordinator requirement. There is no security awareness curriculum. There is no “observe, assess and respond” framework.
TSA did create a Trucking Security Program and developed T-START, a set of five security guidance modules for highway transportation companies. The program has not been funded since fiscal year 2009. It exists on paper. It does not exist in practice for the vast majority of America’s 521,000 active interstate freight motor carriers.
The logic behind the gap is understandable from a risk-based resource allocation standpoint. Motorcoaches carry dozens of passengers and are high-visibility soft targets. Hazmat vehicles carry materials that can be weaponized or create catastrophic environmental damage. A dry van hauling consumer goods presents a different risk profile.
The logic breaks down when you consider the operational reality. The same CDL that authorizes a driver to haul pallets of bottled water also authorizes that driver to operate an 80,000-pound vehicle through a crowded urban core. The same tractor-trailer that legitimately crosses the U.S.-Mexico border 21,359 times per day on average, per Bureau of Transportation data, is the same vehicle that cartels use to move 1.4 million fentanyl pills at a time. The same commercial vehicle network that the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative has linked to 850 murders is the same network that operates with zero formalized security training requirements for the majority of its participants.
Akhror Bozorov did not need a hazmat endorsement to be dangerous. He needed a CDL. He got one.
International Roadcheck is marketed as a safety initiative, and it is, but strip away the compliance language and look at what actually happens during those 72 hours. Law enforcement officers across three countries are conducting a coordinated enforcement operation targeting commercial motor vehicles and their operators. They are checking driver credentials, verifying identity documents, examining vehicle condition, reviewing electronic logging records for evidence of falsification and inspecting cargo securement.
That is interdiction infrastructure.
Every driver credential check is a potential hit against criminal databases. Every ELD review is a potential window into falsified movements. Every cargo inspection is a potential discovery of contraband. The 56,178 inspections conducted during the 2025 Roadcheck generated 13,553 vehicle out-of-service violations, 3,317 driver out-of-service violations and 177 hazardous materials violations. The secondary value of those inspections, the criminal intelligence generated by tens of thousands of law enforcement contacts with commercial vehicle operators in a 72-hour window, is never quantified or discussed publicly.
CVSA itself coordinates with FMCSA, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators and Transport Canada. The cross-jurisdictional, cross-agency architecture of Roadcheck mirrors the architecture of a national security operation because, in practical terms, that is part of what it is. This is the equivalent of the HSIN Intel Network post McVeigh.
The carriers who voluntarily park their trucks during Roadcheck week, and the industry openly acknowledges that this happens, are self-identifying as operators who cannot survive a 37-step inspection. That is a safety concern. It is also a security concern. A carrier that falsifies ELD records, operates with defective equipment and avoids law enforcement contact is also a carrier that is operationally invisible to the enforcement and intelligence infrastructure that Roadcheck represents.
The trucking industry moves 72.6 percent of the nation’s freight tonnage. It is the backbone of the American economy. The overwhelming majority of the millions of men and women who drive trucks are hardworking, law-abiding professionals who keep the country running.
The same characteristics that make trucking economically indispensable, its scale, its mobility, its distributed operational structure, its cross-jurisdictional reach, and its low barriers to entry, also make it an attractive operating environment for criminal and terrorist actors. The data is unambiguous. Terrorists have used commercial vehicles to kill hundreds of people worldwide. A wanted jihadist recruiter obtained a U.S. commercial driver’s license and was driving commercially when arrested. Cartels move industrial quantities of narcotics by tractor-trailer. Serial killers exploit the anonymity and mobility of long-haul trucking. And the majority of the nation’s freight carriers operate without any formalized security training whatsoever.
The question is not whether trucking has a national security dimension. The question is why the industry and its regulators continue to treat enforcement as though it does not.
International Roadcheck is the largest targeted commercial vehicle enforcement program in the world. It has been running since 1988, and more than 1.8 million inspections have been conducted under its banner. FMCSA, under Administrator Derek Barrs, is running the most aggressive enforcement posture in the agency’s 26-year history, with 60+ ELD devices revoked since January 2025, new out-of-service criteria for ELD tampering effective April 1, 2026, and a 28 percent increase in enforcement activity.
That is all progress but until the industry and its regulators are willing to have an honest conversation about the security dimension of what they do, until general freight carriers are brought into a security awareness framework comparable to what motorcoaches and hazmat operators already have, the blind spot remains.
The next Timothy McVeigh, the next Sayfullo Saipov, the next Akhror Bozorov does not need to build a bomb or board an airplane. He just needs a truck and right now, we are making it remarkably easy to get one.
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