One-year scorecard: $300M parking, speed-limiter dead, ELP back, state CDL audits. Still not your FSC

What the notice actually said

A year-end recap is a table of contents. It is a terrible rate confirmation. USDOT’s May 1, 2026 scorecard measures a year of EO 14286 and stacks items that already have their own dates: parking grants, a withdrawn limiter proposal, HOS pilots, ELP out-of-service, state CDL audits, DataQs clocks, and a complaint-database upgrade. If you only read this page, you will know the map. You will not know which file hits your Monday truck.

The parking number in this recap is more than $300 million in grants since April 2025 — a later tally than the June 2025 “more than $275 million” package story. The Mid-America Trucking Show is cited with more than 53,000 attendees in March 2026. A show is a show. It is not a rule.

State money is listed as separate checks: California $40 million on ELP, California $160 million on non-domiciled CDLs in January 2026, New York $73 million in April 2026. Twenty-six states drew enforcement actions in the non-domiciled audit; more than 30 were identified as non-compliant issuers. Those are DMV files. They are not a Midwest fuel surcharge.

The same piece says FMCSA told motor carriers, shippers, receivers, and brokers they cannot pressure drivers to break safety rules, and that official guidance exists for drivers who get that pressure. The pre-2000 model-year ELD exemption was affirmed — relevant to antique iron, not to a 2024 Volvo. DataQs was upgraded in April 2026. NCCDB picked up mobile access and new complaint types for brokers and training providers.

California, the scorecard says, began ELP enforcement in January 2026 after the October withholding. That sentence belongs on the ELP money page as much as here. Do not flatten a year of files into one rumor about “the new administration’s trucking law.”

What it changes on Monday

If a broker forwards this release as “see, rates should drop,” hang up. Parking grants and CDL audits do not move DAT. They can move who is left on the road. Monday’s quote is still empty, miles, drop versus live, and a window the ELD can survive.

What a hire does this week is still CDL, Clearinghouse, medical, and English sufficient to do the job. What an appointment does this week is still HOS plus a dock that might not start. The scorecard does not rewrite either sentence. See deferred loading when the shipper is the clock, and the packet when someone wants a named MC instead of a remix.

Read the individual files before you argue from the index. Parking versus limiter share a June 2025 URL and are not the same job. ELP has a rescind date, an OOS date, and a California money date. ELD purges have April 14 and May 4 and a later five. DataQs has 21, 21, and 45. DataQs and Midwest lanes are the working pages; this one is the shelf list.

Pre-2000 ELD exemption: not our fleet. We run 2020-and-newer Volvo power. Do not call dispatch to ask whether a 1998 day cab can skip Motive. That is a different iron conversation we are not in.

What we will — and will not — do

We are the named MC that still answers — MC# 875229, Lake Bluff, a desk that will quote or pass in about 30 minutes. We will not treat a cabinet scorecard as a reason to cut a rate or to invent a surcharge.

We will not mash a year’s headlines into one shipper email. If a file changes how we hire or dispatch, it gets its own date on this blog. Until then, the packet is still W9, COI, and authority.

Freight: get a quote or call +1 (847) 702-8181. Drivers: apply. Individual Industry News notes are linked across this section on purpose.