If brakes felt like they were eating up more roadside-inspection time over the past 12 months, you weren’t imagining it. New analysis of FMCSA roadside-inspection data through February 2026 shows brake-related violations running well ahead of last year, and the gap is widening.

In February 2026, “Brakes — All Others” violations climbed to 29,079, up from 23,843 a year earlier. That’s a 22% year-over-year jump. “Brakes Out of Adjustment,” the other major brake citation, rose 18.8% over the same window. Put the two together, and brake violations as a whole are up roughly 21% YoY, easily the fastest-growing slice of the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC, which itself is up 14.3%.

For safety managers, those numbers translate into measurably more out-of-service orders, more CSA score damage, and more conversations with insurance underwriters who are watching the same data.

A two-year trend, not a one-month blip

The chart below shows the monthly path of both brake series from May 2024 through February 2026. Two patterns jump out.

The seasonal pattern hasn’t gone away. Brake violations peak in late summer, August in particular, and dip in late fall. Every August roadside-inspection blitz puts a visible bump in the line.

But the floor keeps rising. The “trough” months of late 2025 (November and December) are running roughly 12–15% higher than the same months a year earlier. That’s the real story. Even in the quietest enforcement months, fleets are getting written up for brake problems at a higher baseline rate than they were in 2024.

Texas, California, and Illinois are leading the surge

The increase isn’t evenly distributed. Five states accounted for the bulk of the year-over-year growth in brake violations between February 2025 and February 2026.

Texas saw the steepest climb at +30.5%, going from 9,163 brake violations in February 2025 to 11,956 in February 2026. California followed at +27.9%, Washington at +26.5%, Illinois at +21.9%, and Ohio at +21.1%. Carriers running lanes through those states , especially I-10, I-5, and I-80,  should expect more rigorous brake inspections than they saw a year ago.

A handful of states went the other way. Pennsylvania (-7.1%) and Georgia (-5.5%) posted small declines, but those are exceptions to a clear national trend.

Mid-sized fleets are getting hit hardest

Here’s the number that should keep mid-sized carriers up at night: fleets in the 11–100 truck band saw brake violations rise 28% year-over-year in February, outpacing both the smallest operators (+20% for 1–10 truck fleets) and large carriers (+15% for 100+ fleets).

That pattern usually means one thing: maintenance practices that worked for an owner-operator haven’t scaled to a 50-truck operation. Pre-trip discipline gets uneven across drivers, PM cycles slip when the shop is overloaded, and brake adjustments that used to get caught in a quick yard walk-around now go unnoticed until DOT catches them.

What’s actually driving the increase?

A few factors are converging. Equipment is older — average tractor age in U.S. fleets ticked up again in 2025 as new-truck orders slowed. Driver turnover remains high, which means more pre-trips are being done by drivers who are new to that specific tractor and trailer. And several states added enforcement officers in 2025 with a specific focus on brake compliance, after CVSA flagged brake systems as the #1 out-of-service contributor in its 2024 International Roadcheck.

None of those factors are going away in 2026.

What fleet managers should do this quarter

The fix isn’t glamorous, but it works. Three actions, in order of impact:

1. Audit your 90-day brake inspection cycle. If you’re stretching to 120 days because the shop is backed up, you’re playing roulette. Pull the dates on your last 10 brake inspections and look for the gap.
2. Train pre-trip brake checks specifically. Most drivers can spot a flat tire. Fewer can identify a 1/4-inch pushrod stroke past the slack adjuster’s max. Even a 30-minute refresher session moves the needle.
3. Pull your CSA Vehicle Maintenance percentile quarterly. If it has crept up two quarters in a row, you’re inside the trend the data is describing — and the next roadside inspection is more likely to be a full Level I.

The roadside data doesn’t lie. Brakes are now the single most reliable way to lose a load to an OOS order, and the trend isn’t peaking, it’s accelerating.

 

Worried about where your fleet stands? Fleet-Connection helps small and mid-sized carriers get ahead of CSA score creep before it costs you a contract or a renewal. Drop us a line and we’ll walk through your Vehicle Maintenance percentile alongside the violations DOT actually wrote on your trucks.