A new inspection bulletin from the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance of enforcement and industry outlines changes in procedure for documenting what's traditionally known as a false-logs violation.
Such a violation is marked when an inspector determines a driver recorded a status on his/her paper log or electronic logging device contrary to the real schedule. Come April 1, when the CVSA's annual updates to its North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria go into effect, inspectors will now differentiate between:
- Traditional "false log" violations of 49 CFR 395.8(e)(1), and
- False-log violations that are the result of the growing issue of ELD tampering, which will be recorded as violations of 49 CFR 395.8(e)(2).
The news comes after Overdrive reporting revealed CVSA at work on the bulletin last year, amid a growing trend of false-log violations clearly in evidence through the end of the year. Overdrive sister company RigDig's accounting of such violations in federal data shows inspectors clearly harder at work in 2025 compared to prior years.
When the new OOS criteria go into effect, a key differentiating factor separating the two types of false-log violations and associated OOS orders will be whether or not the inspector can "determine approximately when the actual drive and rest periods occurred," said CVSA Roadside Inspection Specialist Jeremy Disbrow, speaking Tuesday, February 10, as part of a CVSA primer on OOS criteria changes.
Say a driver utilizes personal conveyance to attempt to cover over the end of an 11-hour drive or 14-hour duty period, yet just continues to advance the load for three more hours. "That driver would be declared out-of-service until the eligibility to drive is re-established," Disbrow said.
In such a case, a 10-hour OOS order would be most likely, though a variety of false-log scenarios could result in shorter or longer periods.
For violations determined to be tampering-related, inspectors will have no ability to make a determination of just when the last rest or drive period was established. Disbrow gave an example provided by Oregon's Department of Transportation -- it's also featured in the new inspection bulletin -- in which inspectors digging back into a driver's logs were able to use a fuel receipt from Strafford, Missouri, to show a driver's ELD had been shifted back at least three days.
At the date and time for the fuel receipt, the log line showed the driver off-duty all day in Arizona, more than 1,000 miles away.
In such cases of ELD tampering, where a false-log violation is clear yet evidence of editing is not preserved in the device (contrary to regulatory requirements for ELD providers' devices) and it's impossible to determine the last rest period, the out-of-service order will be automatically 10 hours off.
Why? "Because the entire thing is a work of fiction," Disbrow said.
New out-of-service criteria go into effect on April 1, and CVSA outlined a variety of other, mostly fairly technical changes upcoming via the document at this link.
[Related: ELD tampering: CVSA drafts new inspection bulletin to combat 'dangerous trend']
Other OOS updates of note:
- Possession of alcoholic beverages by commercial drivers clarified as an OOS violation only if it's beer or wine of greater than 0.5% alcohol concentration by volume, or a distilled spirit of any kind.
- Intrastate drivers found to be hauling interstate loads in violation of the restriction on their licenses should only be placed out-of-service if the roadside stop occurred in a state outside of the one that issued their license. Otherwise, a Pennsylvania-licensed driver, for instance, with a load bound for New York but inspected in Pittsburg, should only be found in violation, not out-of-service.
The new out-of-service criteria handbook is available via this link to the CVSA store. As noted, download and inspect the OOS changes for 2026 via this link.
