Every Aggregator Is Telling CRST Drivers They Have Until October 5 to File a Claim. There Is No Claim Form. The Settlement Pays Automatically, the Average Is $1,874.10, and the Only Thing October 5 Can Do Is Take You Out of It.

The court-authorised settlement website lays out three options. Under the one headed DO NOTHING it prints, as the deadline, the words “No Deadline.” Its FAQ is equally direct: “You do not need to do anything to receive your Individual Class Payment and/or Individual PAGA Amount.” Kroll mails cheques. That is the whole process.

The mislabel is harmless in one direction and expensive in the other. Ignore the date and you are still paid. Act on it — send the form in because you think you must — and you have excluded yourself from an average recovery of $1,874.10.

The third item on that list is the one worth real attention, and nobody covers it: your cheque is sized by the number of qualifying workweeks the company's records show for you. If that count is wrong, October 5 is your one chance to say so, in writing, by post.

The certified class, in the order's own words:

“All current and former employees that had a residential address in California and performed work as a truck driver for CRST … who were compensated by a piece-rate from August 9, 2017, through the date of the Court's April 10, 2023 order amending this class definition, excluding the participants in the settlement in Montoya v. CRST Expedited, Inc.”

Four things decide it, and driver seniority is not among them: a California residential address, work as a CRST truck driver, piece-rate pay during the window, and no participation in the Montoya settlement. The documents draw no distinction between trainees, lead drivers and team drivers. What matters is how you were paid — someone paid hourly or a flat rate during orientation is outside the class for that time.

A narrower PAGA group covers the same drivers from August 9, 2020 to April 10, 2023 and gets a second, smaller amount. You cannot opt out of the PAGA portion.

One detail that changes the maths: qualifying workweeks are counted across a release period running to March 1, 2026 — longer than the class definition — but weeks from May 1, 2023 onward count at only 25 percent.

Non-reversionary means nothing goes back to CRST — the whole fund is spent on the class, the fees and the costs. The $1,874.10 is the court's own figure, and it checks out: $8,455,964 divided by 4,512. It is an average, not a promise; individual cheques are pro rata by workweeks, so a driver with three years of qualifying weeks gets far more than one with three months.

For scale, the judge compared it to a similar trucking case, Leuzinger, where the average was $206.98. This settlement is roughly nine times that per person.

Payments split three ways for tax: a third as wages on a W-2, a third as interest and a third as penalties, both on a 1099. Uncashed cheques expire after 180 days and roll into a second distribution.

This is a California wage case, not a federal one. The Fair Labor Standards Act appears in the release, not in the claims. The court put the dispute in one sentence: whether CRST's mileage-based piece-rate plan “was sufficient to compensate the CA Truck Drivers for their non-driving time.”

Non-driving time is the whole argument. CRST paid by estimated miles. The complaint said that model leaves unpaid the hours a driver spends waiting at a customer, broken down, held up by weather, on layover, and in the sleeper berth — and that once those hours are counted, the pay falls below California's minimum wage. Alongside that ran claims for paying on estimated rather than actual miles, unreimbursed business expenses under Labor Code § 2802, inaccurate wage statements under § 226, late final pay under §§ 201–203, unfair competition, and PAGA penalties including unreimbursed pre-employment physicals.

Two questions were genuinely open and are why a settlement rather than a verdict ended it: whether California law reaches time a driver spends outside California, and whether layover and waiting time is really “subject to the control” of the employer. CRST denies liability throughout, and the settlement is not an admission.

CRST has been sued repeatedly over driver pay, and the press coverage blurs them together. If you are trying to work out which one you are in:

Every story you have read about CRST and trainee wages belongs to Montoya. This case is about how miles were paid to California drivers.

• To be paid: nothing. Kroll has the class list from CRST's records. Payment follows the final approval hearing and the expiry of any appeals — CRST funds within 30 days of the effective date, cheques go out within 15 days after that.
• Make sure your address is current. This is the single practical risk in an automatic-payment settlement: the cheque goes to the last address on file, and drivers move. The administrator can be reached at (833) 930-1150 or through truckingdriversettlement.com.
• Check the workweek count on your notice. If it looks short, dispute it in writing, postmarked by October 5, 2026. That is the only deadline that can cost you money by being missed.
• Do not opt out unless you intend to sue CRST yourself over the same period and the same pay practices. Opting out means giving up the payment and keeping the right to bring your own case.

The final approval hearing is set for November 16, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific in Courtroom 5D, 350 West 1st Street, Los Angeles. Nothing is paid before it, and preliminary approval is not final approval.