Out-of-Service Rate Explained: Driver, Vehicle, and the FMCSA National Average

During a roadside inspection, an officer checks the driver and the vehicle against the federal safety regulations. When a violation is serious enough, the driver or the truck is placed "out of service" — meaning it can't move again until the problem is fixed. The out-of-service (OOS) rate is the share of a carrier's inspections that ended in one of those orders.

FMCSA tracks two separate rates because they tell you different things. The driver OOS rate covers violations tied to the person behind the wheel — hours-of-service, licensing, medical certification, logbook issues. The vehicle OOS rate covers the equipment — brakes, tires, lighting, steering, cargo securement. A carrier can be clean on one and ugly on the other, and the split usually points straight at where the problem lives.

The rate is built from the carrier's inspection record over a rolling 24-month window, so it reflects recent operating behavior rather than a one-time event. It is a percentage of inspections, not a percentage of trucks or loads.

The numbers only mean something next to a benchmark. FMCSA publishes national averages it uses as the comparison point, and they sit in very different places for drivers and vehicles. As a concrete anchor, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's 2025 International Roadcheck — a 72-hour, 56,178-inspection North American sweep — recorded a vehicle out-of-service rate of 18.1% and a driver rate of 5.9%, roughly the spread to expect: drivers in the low single digits, vehicles several times higher.

• Driver OOS national average is low. Driver violations serious enough to ground someone are relatively rare, so the national average runs around 5 to 6 percent. A carrier noticeably above that is putting unqualified or non-compliant drivers on the road more often than the typical fleet.
• Vehicle OOS national average is much higher. Equipment problems are far more common, so the vehicle bar is higher — roughly one in five inspections nationally results in a vehicle being pulled, in the high-teens to low-20-percent range (18.1% in CVSA's 2025 Roadcheck). A carrier well above that is more likely deferring maintenance.
• Read each rate against its own average. A 15% driver OOS rate is alarming; a 15% vehicle OOS rate is below average. The same percentage means opposite things depending on which rate you're looking at. Never compare a carrier's number to a single generic threshold.
• Both can be true at once. A carrier with a low driver rate but a high vehicle rate points to a maintenance problem, not a hiring problem. The reverse points at driver qualification and hours-of-service discipline. The pattern tells you what to ask about.

These averages move year to year as FMCSA recalculates them, so treat them as reference ranges rather than fixed lines. The relationship — drivers low, vehicles several times higher — holds steady.

The single biggest mistake brokers make is trusting a percentage without checking how many inspections it's built on. A rate is only as reliable as its sample size.

• Check the inspection count first. A 50% vehicle OOS rate on two inspections — one truck got pulled — is noise. The same 50% on eighty inspections is a pattern. Always look at the denominator before you react to the number.
• Small carriers swing wildly. A one- or two-truck operation might have only a handful of inspections in the whole 24-month window. One bad day can spike the rate to something that looks catastrophic but isn't statistically meaningful yet.
• Zero isn't always good. A brand-new authority with zero inspections shows a 0% OOS rate by default — because nothing has been measured. Absence of data is not a clean record; it's a different risk profile, and one worth treating with caution.
• Look at the trend, not just the snapshot. A rate climbing over recent inspections is worse than the same number that's been flat or improving. The direction hints at whether the carrier is fixing problems or accumulating them.

On a paid CarrierClear lookup, the OOS rates are shown next to the national average along with the carrier's inspection and crash history, so you can see whether a high number is built on real volume or a thin sample. That context is the difference between a useful number and a misleading one. It's information to weigh, not a pass-or-fail verdict.

Once you've confirmed the sample is large enough to trust, a high rate becomes one of the more honest indicators of operational risk on a carrier. It reflects how they actually run, as measured by federal officers, not how they describe themselves on an onboarding form.

• Driver OOS well above average on real volume. Repeated hours-of-service or licensing failures suggest the carrier pushes drivers past legal limits or doesn't vet qualifications closely. That's the kind of pattern associated with fatigue-related incidents.
• Vehicle OOS well above average on real volume. Persistent brake, tire, and lighting failures point to maintenance being skipped to keep trucks earning. Equipment that fails inspection can fail on the road too.
• High OOS plus a poor safety rating. When elevated OOS rates line up with a Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating, you're seeing the same issue from two angles. Read them together, not in isolation.
• High OOS plus crash history. A high OOS rate describes conditions that raise crash risk; the crash record shows whether those conditions have already produced one. Both showing up is a strong signal to slow down and look closer before you tender.

OOS rate is not a verdict on its own — it's one input. A carrier with elevated rates but strong insurance, clean authority, and no double-brokering or chameleon signals is a different situation than one with elevated rates and a pile of other warnings. The point is to weight it correctly, with its sample size in view, alongside everything else on the record. For a brand-new operation with no inspection history, see how to read new-authority carrier risk.