Operation Highway Shield, the federal roadside truck-inspection campaign that has already swept through Florida, Arkansas and Virginia, has now reached Maryland and Washington, D.C. — and the numbers released this week show inspectors taking nearly 300 trucks and drivers off the road in Maryland alone.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said it partnered with Maryland law enforcement for a coordinated round of roadside inspections of commercial trucks and buses. Of 941 commercial motor vehicles inspected in Maryland, inspectors placed 191 vehicles and 92 drivers out of service for violations of federal or state safety requirements, according to FMCSA figures reported by FreightWaves on November 9.
Who ran the Maryland operation
FMCSA said its Maryland Operation Highway Shield campaign involved the Maryland State Police, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Comptroller of Maryland. The coordinated inspections focused on safety and regulatory violations involving commercial trucks and the people driving them — vehicle condition, driver qualifications and motor-carrier compliance.
FMCSA did not provide a breakdown of the Maryland violations, and it did not specify how many of the 92 drivers were taken out of service for English-language proficiency deficiencies — a category that has featured heavily in earlier phases of the campaign and matters directly to immigrant truck drivers, including many Punjabi drivers working the I-95, I-70 and I-270 freight corridors through Maryland.
Washington, D.C.: 125 inspections, 193 violations
In the District of Columbia, FMCSA inspectors joined officers of the Metropolitan Police Department to inspect large trucks and buses. The November 6 enforcement update reported 125 inspections, 193 violations and 50 out-of-service violations. The agency did not disclose how many individual drivers or vehicles were placed out of service in the District.
An out-of-service order ends a trip on the spot: the truck does not move until the violation is fixed, and a driver placed out of service cannot legally drive until the issue is cleared. On the busy I-95 corridor through Maryland and the capital region, that can mean a missed delivery, a towed load and a compliance record that follows both driver and carrier.
A campaign that keeps widening
Maryland and Washington are the latest stops in a rapidly expanding federal campaign. An October 27–29 operation in Arkansas carried out 1,724 inspections in 48 hours and placed 393 drivers and commercial vehicles out of service, identified 183 English-language proficiency violations, referred 74 immigration violations to federal enforcement, made 44 criminal arrests and recovered one stolen trailer, according to a November 4 statement by the U.S. Department of Transportation. A separate operation in Stephens City, Virginia, identified 100 violations during 86 inspections and placed 11 vehicles and two drivers out of service, including one driver for an English-language proficiency violation.
Separate state and local actions reported in the same week underline what inspectors are finding. In Culpeper County, Virginia, a sheriff-led campaign with seven partner agencies ran 22 inspections and documented 148 violations, placing 14 vehicles out of service and citing two drivers for operating without a valid commercial driver's licence. In Salem, Oregon, officers inspected 12 trucks on November 5 and found 48 equipment violations and nine driver violations, placing nine vehicles and five drivers out of service. In Wallkill, New York, a multi-agency operation on the State Route 302 and State Route 17M corridors found 248 violations and placed 19 trucks, six trailers and six drivers out of service.
In Arizona, commercial vehicle troopers stopped a truck hauling a mobile office weighing about 25,000 pounds on State Route 202 in the Mesa area on November 2 and found it had no functioning trailer brakes and an inoperative emergency breakaway device; the truck and trailer were placed out of service until repairs are completed.
33,000 drivers sidelined over English proficiency nationwide
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's November 4 enforcement update, federal authorities have placed 33,000 commercial drivers out of service nationwide for failing English-language proficiency requirements since President Donald Trump's April 2025 executive order. The department also reported revoking 31,000 improperly issued commercial driver's licences and closing nearly 10,000 commercial driving schools it characterised as operating improperly.
For Punjabi and other immigrant truckers — a large share of the long-haul workforce on the East Coast — the practical lesson from the Maryland numbers is to treat every trip as inspection-ready: licence and medical card in order, paperwork organised, brakes, lights and tyres checked before rolling, and enough working English to answer an inspector's questions and read road signs, which is the standard inspectors are now applying at the roadside.
What happens next
FMCSA has not announced the next Operation Highway Shield locations, but the pattern of the campaign — Florida in March, a multi-state Midwest phase in July, Arkansas in October, Virginia earlier this month and now Maryland and Washington — points to continued roadside blitzes on major freight corridors rather than a one-off effort. Carriers and drivers operating through Maryland should expect further inspection waves, and Awaaz Punjab will report the next phase's results, including any breakdown of English-proficiency and licensing violations, when the agency releases them.