What Cal/OSHA's Trucking and Warehouse Investigations Show

Our trucking and warehousing citation breakdown shows what inspectors cite in the industry. This page is the layer underneath: CompliantCA’s analysis of the 724 published accident investigations on California trucking (NAICS 484) and warehousing (NAICS 493) inspections, with events from 2010 through 2025 — the reportable injuries and deaths whose case files have been released into the federal investigation data.

These are closed, published investigations — files release years after the event, so recent years are incomplete, and this page makes composition claims on sixteen years of closed cases, never trend claims.

Same supply chain, three times the fatality share

The two sectors produce case files at similar volume — and trucking’s end in a death nearly three times as often. Warehousing sits well below the all-industry baseline; trucking sits nearly double it. The mechanism table below accounts for most of the gap: the deadliest events in this data involve vehicles moving near people, and trucking work involves vehicles moving near people all day.

The forklift injures; the truck kills

Counted by what the investigation’s own event description names (patterns can overlap):

The forklift is the most-named machine in the files and one of the least fatal — 108 investigations, 6 deaths; the typical forklift file describes crushed feet and fractures. Struck-by files — a worker backed over, run over, or pinned by a truck or trailer — carry 29 of the deaths, the most of any mechanism. Falls from trailers, cabs, and docks account for 16 more, and caught-between and pinning events for 15. The 58 pallet files, all nonfatal, are the most common minor-injury pattern in the set.

The calendar, unlike heat illness, is close to flat — August is the highest month (91 files) but every month holds 41 or more.

What gets cited after

On these investigations with events from 2020 onward (the window our citation data covers):

The written program leads, as it does across California enforcement, and the forklift standards — §3650’s operating rules and §3668’s operator training — fill two of the top five. In San Jose’s citywide data, §3650 carries the highest average penalty of any standard in the top ten, at $10,679 per citation.

Free IIPP template. The §3203 program that leads the citation table — one section for each of the eight elements listed in §3203(a), plus the inspection and training record forms §3203(b) requires. PDF, no account. Request the template →

Methodology

CompliantCA computed this analysis from the OSHA accident investigation tables in the U.S. Department of Labor enforcement dataset (the OSHA Information System), which includes Cal/OSHA because California operates an OSHA-approved State Plan; two of the 724 files are federal-jurisdiction employers, the rest Cal/OSHA investigations. Scope: investigation summaries linked to California inspections whose industry code is truck transportation (NAICS 484) or warehousing and storage (NAICS 493), with event dates January 2010 through December 2025. Mechanism rows count patterns in the investigations’ own event descriptions and can overlap; the match set was reviewed by eyeball. Fatality shares compare against all published California investigations in the same window. Publication lag governs the data: investigation summaries release after cases close, typically years later, so recent years are incomplete and no year-over-year claim is valid from these files — every claim here is composition on the closed-case set. Citation counts cover events from 2020 onward only, matching our enforcement-data window, excluding rows flagged deleted, grouped to the base section. Package delivery couriers (NAICS 492) are not included in either sector here. Data as retrieved 2026-08-29.

An investigation count says what was reported and investigated, not the full toll — and not what any employer must do. The standards themselves say that: §3650 and §3668 for industrial trucks, §3203 for the program behind all of it.