For most carriers, CSA scores have always been a DOT enforcement matter - something you watched because of compliance reviews and warning letters. If your scores were elevated but you were still getting loads, the urgency was easy to ignore.
That changed on May 14, 2026.
In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that freight brokers can be held liable under state negligent hiring laws when they book loads with carriers who have known safety problems. The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act - the federal shield brokers have historically used to block these lawsuits - does not apply. The case involved C.H. Robinson, one of the country's largest brokers, and a carrier that held a Conditional safety rating at the time of the booking.
The implications for carriers are direct: brokers now have a legal and financial incentive to tighten who they put freight on. C.H. Robinson has already begun removing carriers from its approved list based on safety data. Others are following. Your CSA scores - and your ability to demonstrate a documented safety program - are now part of the commercial conversation whether you're ready or not.
The good news is that CSA scores can be improved. Here's how.
First: Understand How Your Scores Actually Work
Your CSA scores are calculated through FMCSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS), which analyzes roadside inspections, crash data, and compliance review findings over the past 24 months. Your score in each BASIC category is a percentile ranking from 0 to 100 - lower is better. A score of 75 means 75% of comparable carriers outperformed you.
As of 2026, FMCSA has restructured the SMS categories. The scoring now covers six BASIC categories:
- Unsafe Driving - Speeding, reckless driving, distracted driving, lane violations (intervention threshold: 65th percentile)
- Hours-of-Service Compliance - Log violations, driving beyond limits, ELD issues (intervention threshold: 65th percentile)
- Driver Fitness - Expired CDLs, invalid medical certificates, missing endorsements (intervention threshold: 80th percentile)
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol - Drug and alcohol violations, including test refusals (intervention threshold: 80th percentile)
- Vehicle Maintenance - Equipment defects, lighting, brakes, tires, cargo securement (intervention threshold: 80th percentile)
- Crash Indicator - History of crashes weighted by frequency and severity (intervention threshold: 65th percentile)
One thing many fleet managers don't fully appreciate: violations aren't weighted equally by age. The SMS uses a three-tier time multiplier. Violations from the past six months carry a 3x weight. Six to twelve months ago: 2x. Twelve to twenty-four months: 1x. After twenty-four months, they fall off entirely.
That means a clean stretch of six months moves the needle faster than most people expect - but it requires an active, consistent safety program, not a hope-and-wait approach.
What Actually Improves CSA Scores
1. Address Driver Behavior Before It Becomes a Violation
The Unsafe Driving BASIC is one of the most visible to brokers and one of the most trainable. Speeding, following distance, seatbelt compliance, distracted driving - these behaviors show up in roadside inspections and, more significantly, in crash events. The violation weights are high: texting while driving carries a severity weight of 10 (the maximum). Speeding over 15 mph over the limit: 9.
Ongoing, documented driver training is the most direct lever here. Not a one-time orientation video - a sustained training cadence that covers defensive driving, distraction awareness, and professional driving standards. Brokers who vet by CSA scores want to see that you have a program, that it runs regularly, and that you can prove it.
2. Make Pre-Trip Inspections Non-Negotiable
Vehicle Maintenance violations are among the most common CSA score drivers for fleets that don't have a disciplined pre-trip process. Lighting, brakes, tires, cargo securement - these are inspection targets every roadside officer checks. A driver who skips or rushes through the pre-trip puts the entire fleet's score at risk for a problem that takes two minutes to catch in the yard.
A documented pre-trip checklist, combined with training on what to look for, directly addresses this BASIC. The documentation matters as much as the inspection itself - if you can't show a record of the process, you can't defend it.
3. Keep Driver Qualification Files Current
Driver Fitness violations - expired CDLs, invalid medical certificates, wrong endorsements - are entirely preventable. They're administrative failures that happen when qualification file management isn't systematic. For fleets of 50 or more drivers, tracking expiration dates manually is how things fall through the cracks.
Build a process, assign accountability, and train supervisors on what a complete qualification file looks like. This BASIC should read zero. If it doesn't, something in your administrative process is broken.
4. Train HOS Compliance Rigorously and Continuously
Hours-of-service violations remain one of the highest-volume BASIC categories industry-wide. ELD adoption reduced some categories of falsification, but it didn't eliminate driver confusion about the rules themselves - especially around exceptions, splits, and the specific calculations that differ by operation type. Tank and bulk operations have their own wrinkles.
Regular HOS refresher training is not optional for a fleet that wants to protect its SMS standing. One misunderstood rule, repeated across a driving population, can move a percentile significantly.
5. Challenge Incorrect Data Through DataQs
Not every violation on your record is accurate. Officers make data entry errors. Inspections get miscoded. Crashes get attributed incorrectly. The FMCSA DataQs system exists to challenge these errors - but most fleets either don't use it systematically or only respond when they receive a warning letter.
Pull your SMS data monthly. When you see a violation that was incorrectly recorded, submit a DataQs request with supporting documentation. Removed violations improve your score immediately rather than waiting for time decay. This is one of the fastest improvement levers available if you have inaccurate data on your record.
6. Check Your Preview Scores Now
FMCSA has a 2026 SMS Prioritization Preview tool at csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/prioritizationpreview that shows your scores under the updated methodology before the system fully launches. If you haven't reviewed your preview scores, do that before anything else. The changes to violation weighting under the new system affect which BASICs you should prioritize - and what a realistic improvement timeline looks like.
The Documentation Problem Most Carriers Don't Know They Have
Here's what the Montgomery ruling surfaced that wasn't obvious before: it isn't just about having good scores. It's about being able to demonstrate that you take safety seriously in a way a broker - or a plaintiff attorney - can review.
Major brokers like Werner use CSA scores as part of their carrier vetting process and have signaled they look for more than a satisfactory safety rating. They look at the full picture. Most carriers don't have a safety rating at all - only CSA scores. And many carriers have no documented training program to show alongside those scores.
A broker who hires a carrier with elevated BASIC scores and no evidence of a safety program now has a significantly harder time defending that decision in court. That means they're less likely to make it. The carriers who protect their load access after Montgomery won't just be the ones with clean scores - they'll be the ones who can show the work.
What "showing the work" looks like:
- An ongoing training program with a documented curriculum that covers the BASIC categories
- Completion records that show which drivers completed which courses and when
- A regular training cadence - not annual orientation, but monthly or quarterly touchpoints
- Audit-ready records that can be pulled and shared with a broker or compliance reviewer on request
- A paper trail that predates any incident - not a program you stand up after something goes wrong
A Note on Timeline
If you're looking at your CSA scores today and they're elevated, the path to meaningful improvement is a 6-to-12-month discipline. The 3x weight on recent violations means that getting clean now matters more than anything else. But you need to start now - not after your next broker review or your next renewal.
The carriers who are going to be most affected by the post-Montgomery vetting environment are the ones who don't take action in the next 90 days. The ones who get ahead of this - who implement a documented training program, clean up their inspection process, and can walk into a broker qualification conversation with something to show - are going to be in a very different position than the ones who wait.
How Sentry Road Helps
Sentry Road is a safety and compliance training platform built specifically for transportation and industrial operations. Our LMS delivers FMCSA-relevant training on the topics that move CSA scores - defensive driving, HOS compliance, pre-trip inspections, driver fitness, and more - with full completion tracking, quiz scoring, and timestamped records you can share with brokers or present in a compliance review.
For fleets of 100 or more drivers, we can build custom training courses around your specific operations in five business days. Every course is audit-ready by design.
If you want to talk through where your scores stand and what a training program would look like for your fleet, I'm happy to have that conversation. No pitch deck - just a practical discussion about where you are and what would move the needle.
Schedule a CSA Score Diagnostic Call | sentryroad.com | jtormey@sentryroad.com