CRST’s $14.5 Million Driver Settlement Is Past Its October 5 Deadline — but No Driver Gets Paid Until Judge Wright Rules at the November 16, 2026 Hearing, and a New Court Filing Landed October 13

Short version for drivers: you do not have to do anything, and no money has gone out yet. The CRST Expedited minimum wage settlement — formally Huckaby v. CRST Expedited, Inc. — pays automatically. The October 5, 2026 date that many listings still call a “claim deadline” was the postmark deadline to opt out, to object, or to dispute the number of workweeks CRST’s records show for you. That date has passed. If you did none of those things, you stay in the settlement and are paid if the court approves it.

What happens next is all in the court file. The public docket for the case shows a new entry dated October 13, 2026: document 187, labelled only “Notice (Other).” The docket feed carries no description, and the document is not in the free RECAP archive, so we cannot tell you what it says. It is the first entry since the preliminary approval on June 4, 2026 (document 186).

The next filing has a known date. The preliminary approval order, as its text appears in public docket summaries, says that “no later than twenty-eight (28) days before the Final Approval Hearing, Huckaby shall file with the Court a motion for final approval of the settlement” together with the application for attorneys’ fees and costs. With the hearing set for November 16, 2026, that is October 19, 2026 by our count. That motion is normally where the number of opt-outs and objections, and the final per-driver figures, first appear. We could not open the order itself today and quote the requirement from that summary.

Money moves only after final approval. Under the timetable published with the settlement, once the judgment becomes effective — after any appeal period — CRST funds the settlement within 30 days, and Kroll mails checks within 15 days after that. Nobody receives a check before the November 16 hearing.

No, not everyone gets the same amount. Each driver’s share is pro rata by the number of qualifying workweeks in CRST’s records, so someone who drove three years in the class period receives far more than someone who drove three months. Drivers in the narrower PAGA group — the same drivers from August 9, 2020 to April 10, 2023 — get a second, smaller payment from the $181,250 set aside for them.

The only official per-person number is an average. When we read the preliminary approval papers on September 4, 2026, the court’s own figure was $1,874.10 per class member: about $8,455,964 left for the class after requested fees, costs and administration, divided among 4,512 drivers. Class counsel asked for attorneys’ fees of up to $4,833,333, one third of the fund. Those are requests, not awards: the judge decides the fees at the final approval stage. The settlement is non-reversionary, so no money returns to CRST.

Uncashed checks expire after 180 days and are redistributed in a second round. The single most important thing a driver can do now is keep the mailing address on file current — the check goes to the last address Kroll has.

• If you did nothing: you are in. The settlement website’s wording is that “if you do nothing, you will receive an Individual Class Payment and Individual PAGA Amount, if applicable, should the Court grant final approval of the Settlement.”
• If you moved: give Kroll your new address — (833) 930-1150, or through truckingdriversettlement.com.
• If you sent an opt-out: you are out of the class payment and keep the right to sue CRST on your own over the same pay practices.
• If you want to follow the case: the final approval hearing is November 16, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. Pacific, Courtroom 5D, 350 West 1st Street, Los Angeles. The deadline to file a written objection was October 5, 2026.

There is no form to file, today or later. A listing that still shows “Claim Form Deadline 10/05/2026” — Top Class Actions does, in the same box that says no claim form is required — describes the opt-out date, not a filing requirement.

The court-appointed administrator is Kroll Settlement Administration, and the official site is truckingdriversettlement.com. Because the settlement has no claim form, any message that asks you to “file a claim,” confirm bank details through a link, or pay a fee to release your payment does not match the settlement’s own instructions. Payment comes as a mailed check after final approval. If in doubt, call Kroll at (833) 930-1150 using the number you look up yourself, not one in the message.

A note on the official site: as of October 17, 2026, truckingdriversettlement.com refused our automated requests with a security block, so we could not re-read its pages today. The facts above about the notice and the payment process come from our reading of the site and the court papers on September 4, 2026. Drivers can open the site normally in a browser.

It is a California wage-and-hour class action about how CRST paid its long-haul drivers. CRST, an Iowa-based carrier, runs team trucks: in the court’s words, “when one driver is on duty driving, the other driver is typically off duty inside or outside the truck’s sleeper berth.” CRST says it pays “load pay,” a flat rate built from “a split of the number of computer-estimated miles associated with a load” times a per-mile rate, covering “all driving and nondriving tasks.” The driver who brought the case alleged that CRST promised pay on actual miles and that the piece-rate model left non-driving time unpaid, pushing pay below California’s minimum wage.

The court certified a class on October 3, 2022, for the minimum-wage, contractual-wage and unfair-competition claims, then narrowed its end date on April 10, 2023. The class covers drivers with a California residential address who were paid by a piece rate from August 9, 2017 to April 10, 2023, excluding participants in the separate Montoya v. CRST Expedited settlement in Massachusetts. On April 1, 2025, Judge Wright denied both sides’ motions for summary judgment and CRST’s bid to decertify the class, finding a genuine dispute over what the “piece” was — noting, for instance, recruitment talking points that said “[m]iles = money.”

The case was set for trial on January 20, 2026. On December 18, 2025, both sides told the court they had settled; the next day the judge took the trial off calendar and ordered the preliminary approval motion filed by March 18, 2026. CRST denies wrongdoing, and the settlement is not an admission. Older headlines about CRST trainee pay belong to Montoya, not this case.

Three things will show whether the hearing goes smoothly. First, the final approval motion due around October 19: it should report how many drivers opted out or objected by October 5 and give the administrator’s final numbers. Second, the fee ruling: Judge Wright will decide how much of the requested $4,833,333 to award. Third, the content of the October 13 notice, which may be procedural; we will read it once it becomes publicly available.

If you came here asking which settlements are paying out right now: this one is not. Payment depends on final approval and the end of any appeal period, so the earliest checks are weeks after November 16, 2026, not before. Our news desk tracks settlements that are already paying.

What we did not verify today: the official site and the June 4, 2026 order were not reachable in a form we could save on October 17, 2026. The dollar figures in this article come from our reading of the order, the preliminary approval motion and the settlement website on September 4, 2026; the docket entries for December 2025 and October 13, 2026 come from the federal court record as of today.