Editorial standards & corrections
How CDLWire picks stories, checks them, and fixes them when we get something wrong.
Story selection
A morning publishing run is scheduled every day at 7 AM Central; a second run at 5 PM Central publishes only on material new developments. Each automated edition carries up to seven stories — there is no minimum, and either run can publish nothing. (Older editions, assembled before the current automated workflow, were put together differently and may carry more.) If nothing meets the bar, the site simply doesn't change that cycle.
Sources
Every news story names and links its original source on the page, in a dedicated Sources box. We read the trucking press and official channels daily, including FreightWaves, Overdrive, CDLLife, Transport Topics, Commercial Carrier Journal, The Trucker, FleetOwner, Land Line (OOIDA), TruckingInfo, the FMCSA newsroom for regulatory moves, the EIA for diesel prices, and DAT for spot rates.
Our stories are summaries with links, not independent reporting. We never invent stories, quotes, or numbers — if a fact isn't in the source, it isn't in our story.
Source verification
Before anything publishes, every candidate story goes through a separate AI verification pass: an AI agent — not the one that drafted the edition — opens each linked source and checks names, numbers, dates, whether claims are alleged or confirmed, and whether the story is genuinely current. Each story gets a verdict: pass, qualify (publish only after the required rewrite is applied), or omit. Stories that can't be substantiated don't ship. Editions that pass verification and the technical checks below may publish automatically — a person does not routinely approve every story before it goes live.
Pre-publication technical checks
Separately, no edition goes live until it passes an automated publishing gate that refuses the deploy if any check fails. It verifies every internal link resolves, every article page carries its headline, canonical URL, and social metadata, publication timestamps reflect the actual recorded publish time — or the known publication date for older stories — never invented, and the search index and sitemaps stay consistent. A failed check stops the publish — a broken edition never ships.
Updates
When a story develops after publication — new numbers, a carrier response, a second-day follow-up — we add a visible, dated update notice to the story rather than silently rewriting it. The notice carries the time it was added, in Central Time.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we fix it in the open: a visible Correction notice goes on the story, timestamped, describing what changed. The original error isn't hidden — the notice explains the correction.
Retractions
If a story has to be withdrawn entirely, its URL stays live showing only a retraction notice with the reason (shared links don't break), and the story is removed from the homepage, topic pages, search, and sitemaps, and marked noindex so search engines drop it.
Report an error
Spotted a mistake? You can report it by sending a message to the Tri-State Area Driver Facebook page — include the story's headline (or its URL) and what you believe is wrong. If you have the correct information or a source, send that too.
We can't promise an instant reply, and we can't guarantee every message is seen the moment it arrives. But substantiated errors are corrected visibly on the page, with a dated correction notice.