The US Department of Transportation plans to use artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to combat fraud and undocumented drivers in the trucking industry, amid calls for transparency and safeguards.
The Department of Transportation says it will lean on artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to tighten enforcement in the trucking industry, targeting fraud and carriers that employ undocumented drivers, Deputy Secretary Steven Bradbury said on Monday at the...
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Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting.
Bradbury said the administration is “embracing AI, leaning into it,” and plans to “use AI to accelerate our rulemaking process and really achieve much quicker turnaround in terms of the drafting of proposed rules, the digesting of comments, etc.” He told the conference the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration faces a longstanding manpower shortage in fighting fraud and that new technology could help fill that gap. “We also want to use advanced data analytics to improve the accuracy and the effectiveness of our enforcement efforts,” Bradbury said. “One example of that is to identify fraud in the trucking industry and identify instances where trucking companies are using illegal foreign drivers.”
Industry specialists and enforcement advocates say there are clear, practical applications for such tools. Dale Prax, head of the vetting service Freight Validate, told Overdrive that AI could help FMCSA detect imminent hazards and place the highest-risk carriers out of service more rapidly by linking real-world signals , crash trends, out-of-service spikes, hours-of-service violations, equipment defects and inspection volatility , to automated intervention. “AI could quickly identify recycled phone numbers, undisclosed affiliations with other FMCSA-regulated entities, discrepancies in identity between Secretary of State business filings and FMCSA data,” Prax said, adding that hidden affiliations between carriers could be connected “in minutes, not after a crash, a claim, or a victim.”
Prax also flagged AI use to identify CDL training or testing “mills” where graduates quickly rack up violations, and to speed issuance of carrier safety ratings so proven safe operators are fast-tracked while higher-risk entities are prioritised for review. With recent agency figures showing a large majority of carriers lack a current safety rating, he said faster, data-driven ratings are “vital right now.”
The department’s interest in machine learning techniques follows other enforcement moves by the current administration. According to the Department of Transportation, on November 12, 2025 Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy announced that the California Department of Motor Vehicles had issued 17,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licences to foreign drivers and that those licences were being revoked after an FMCSA audit. Separately, on December 1, 2025 the department said it removed nearly 3,000 CDL training providers from FMCSA’s Training Provider Registry for failing to meet standards and placed an additional 4,500 providers on notice for potential noncompliance. The department said those actions were part of a broader push to crack down on poorly trained or improperly credentialled drivers and providers.
Those enforcement steps illustrate the kind of outcomes Bradbury and industry figures say AI could support: faster identification of problematic training pipelines, closer cross-checking of licence and employment records, and automated flags for carriers that appear to game registration systems with recycled numbers, PO boxes or shell affiliations.
Civil liberties and privacy advocates, however, warn that automated screening and data-matching raise risks of erroneous enforcement and improper disclosure. The department has not provided technical details of how immigration records or I-9 documents would be compared to commercial driver licences or employment records. Overdrive asked the Department of Transportation for more specifics about planned uses of advanced technologies to find “illegal drivers” or fraudsters; the agency had not provided a detailed blueprint at the time of Bradbury’s remarks.
Bradbury also said the administration seeks to reform the rulemaking process to “unleash the power of American innovation,” using AI to shorten regulatory timelines. Observers note a tension between speed and due process: accelerated drafting and comment digestion could push through changes more quickly, but may also limit the time available for stakeholder review.
As regulators test the boundaries of algorithmic enforcement, FMCSA already has emphasised non-technological reforms in recent years, including an overhaul of its registration system intended to reduce fake carriers using false addresses. Industry vetting firms say AI would be additive rather than replacement technology, helping to prioritise scarce enforcement resources and provide brokers, insurers and shippers with richer safety signals when selecting carriers. Prax argued this may become increasingly important as courts consider broker liability in carrier selection, saying “we need AI to help give brokers data to look at rather than hold them accountable for something they have no concrete safety information to base their decisions on.”
The department’s public statements frame AI and analytics as tools to protect safety and the livelihoods of American truckers. Critics will be watching for concrete safeguards, transparency about data sources and accuracy, and clear legal authority for any immigration-records matching or similar measures before those capabilities are rolled out at scale.
Source: Noah Wire Services
