The Sticker
on the Truck

Your RV is only as safe as the truck pulling it. You can’t see inside a transporter’s maintenance records, but there is one thing you can check in five seconds: a small sticker on the truck’s windshield.

What CVSA Means

CVSA is the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, an association of commercial vehicle safety officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico. That’s the three flags along the bottom of the decal. It sets the standards roadside inspectors use, so a truck inspected in Texas is measured against the same procedure as one inspected anywhere else in North America.

How to Read the Decal

• The big number is the year. It’s the last digit of the year the decal was issued, so a 6 means 2026.
• The color is the quarter. Green is January to March, yellow is April to June, orange is July to September and white is October to December.
• The clipped corners are the month. A decal issued in the first month of a quarter has both upper corners cut off, the second month has the upper right corner cut off, and the last month has none cut. The decal in the photo is white with the upper right corner cut, which means November.
• It expires quickly. A decal is good for the month it was issued plus two more months, so an old sticker means an old inspection.
• It has to be earned. Only a Level I or a Level V (vehicle-only) inspection can produce one, and only when the inspector finds no critical violations. The decal reflects the condition of the truck, not the driver.
• Where to look. On a truck, it goes on the lower right corner of the passenger’s side of the windshield.

What a Level I Covers

A Level I follows a standard step-by-step procedure and looks at both the driver and the truck. On the driver’s side, the inspector checks the license, the medical examiner’s certificate and the hours-of-service records. On the truck, they go over the brakes, tires and wheels, steering, suspension and lights, and the coupling equipment that connects the truck to the trailer. For a fifth wheel or gooseneck, that means the hitch itself. The inspector also gets underneath the truck.

This is separate from the annual inspection a commercial truck needs. The annual inspection is a documented check the carrier arranges. A Level I is an inspector’s check, done on their schedule.

Why It Matters When Your RV Is Behind the Truck

• An out-of-service order stops the trip. A truck with a critical problem can’t keep moving until it’s fixed. Your RV sits wherever the truck stopped, and your delivery date, campground reservation or arrival plans wait with it.
• The parts being checked are the parts your RV leans on. Brakes, tires and the hitch connection carry the load of a heavy RV on every mile. Brakes and tires are also among the most common out-of-service vehicle violations in CVSA’s annual roadside inspection results.
• It’s someone else’s check. You don’t have to take a transporter’s word that the truck is sound. An inspector who has no stake in the job looked at it.

What a Decal Doesn’t Tell You

A decal is a snapshot of one truck on one day. It says nothing about the company’s insurance, its operating authority or its record over time. For those, use the public record: FMCSA publishes each carrier’s authority, insurance filings and safety data, and our Verify Carrier tool lets you look up any carrier by name or USDOT number. If you’re not sure what the numbers on a truck’s door mean, start with What Are All Those Numbers? and How Do I Know an RV Transporter Is Legit?

Ours

The decal in the photo above is ours. On November 1, 2026, our truck was randomly selected for a Level I inspection at a Texas commercial vehicle inspection station on I-30. We passed and delivered.

Nobody gets a heads-up before a Level I. That’s what Mission Ready means to us: the truck is ready for an inspection any day, so your RV arrives mission ready. Ask any transporter you’re considering the same question.

Sources: CVSA, Application of Decals, About Inspection Decals and Inspection Procedures.