The Six Roadside Inspection Levels

2026-09-048 min

North American Standard Inspection Program

The levels are set by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, not by 49 CFR — but what an officer checks against at every level is the federal regulations, and an out-of-service condition comes from the CVSA out-of-service criteria.

Low-poly render of a truck pulled into a weigh station — Pulled in. What happens next depends entirely on the level.

The six levels

Level	Name	Covers	Under the truck?
I	North American Standard	Driver and vehicle, full	Yes
II	Walk-Around	Driver and vehicle, what is reachable standing	No
III	Driver-Only	Credentials, hours, medical card	No
IV	Special	One item, usually for a study	Varies
V	Vehicle-Only	The vehicle, driver need not be present	Yes
VI	Enhanced Radioactive	Select radiological shipments	Yes

Level I and Level III are the two most drivers meet. Level I is the full one — the inspector goes under the truck — and it is the one that earns a decal if you pass clean. Level III never touches the vehicle at all and is entirely about your paperwork.

What the officer asks for

01Licence, with the right class and endorsements for what you are pulling.
02Medical certificate, unexpired — up to 24 months and often shorter.
03Record of duty status, transferred from the ELD or handed over on paper, plus the 8-day cab pack.
04Shipping papers, and hazmat documentation where it applies.
05Evidence of the periodic inspection — the report or the sticker, on that unit.

Out of service

An out-of-service condition means the truck or the driver does not move until it is corrected. On the driver side that is usually hours: over the limit, and the driver waits until enough time has passed. On the vehicle side it is a defect from the CVSA criteria — brakes out of adjustment beyond the limit, a steering defect, a tyre below depth.

Out-of-service risk. An out-of-service order is not negotiable at the roadside and there is no fee to make it go away. The only thing that ends it is the correction.

Low-poly render of an empty weigh-station scale platform — An out-of-service order ends at the scale, not at the next exit.

What happens afterwards

Every inspection — clean or not — goes onto the carrier's record. Violations carry a severity weight and a time weight, and both feed the BASIC percentiles. A clean Level I is not neutral either: it is evidence in the denominator, and a carrier with many clean inspections absorbs the occasional bad one far better than one that is rarely inspected at all.

You may challenge a violation you believe is wrong through FMCSA's DataQs process. It is worth doing: an incorrect violation sits on the record for two years otherwise.