After a fatal accident caused by a non-English-speaking trucker with a commercial drivers’ license (CDL), President Trump ordered the Department of Transportation to review the non-domiciled CDLs issued by each state over the past four years. This is a massive victory for highway safety – preventing further loss of American lives.
Just five years ago, new truckers had to produce a birth certificate, speak English and confirm state residency to even qualify for a CDL. If the driver couldn’t speak English, he couldn’t get a driver’s test. Today, any evidence of a work permit or foreign visa is enough to qualify for a non-domiciled CDL.
In 2022, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Administration (FMCSA) set high, federal standard training requirements through the Entry Level Driver Training rules. The goal was to make highways safer, in conjunction with state commercial driver training laws that have been in place for decades. But these new rules have more exemptions than the federal tax code. Employers, municipalities and on-line video providers, posing as educators, now provide commercial driver training through unchecked “self-certification.”
Consider for a minute that almost every state requires 16-year-olds to attend a state licensed driver training program before they can get behind the wheel of an automobile. But, as Teamsters President Sean O’Brien just testified in the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, if you want to drive an 80,000-pound truck on our nation’s highways, there is no oversight or enforcement of the new FMCSA rules. Because of the lack of enforcement, the fraud and abuse are profound as the FMCSA has allowed unqualified “CDL training providers” to recruit and train unqualified truck drivers, who ultimately degrade the American truck driving workforce and put the unsuspecting general public at risk every day.
The results have been catastrophic. According to the National Highway Safety Administration, 153,472 highway truck accidents resulted in 5,472 highway fatalities in 2023, a 40 percent increase from 2014. The 2024 data show similar fatality rates. The odds of getting killed by a truck driver is from 20 times greater than flying on a U.S. airline.
Over 30,000 commercial driving schools are now approved by the FMCSA but only 2,100 of these are state licensed. As founder and CEO of one of the nation’s largest commercial truck driving schools, I know firsthand that the largest employers or truckers make up only 10% of the trucking industry. These employers are rumored to be rejecting nearly half of truck driver applicants as they have strict safety guidelines and driver evaluation criteria.
But the $1 trillion U.S. trucking industry is 90% comprised of companies with 10 drivers or less with thin margins. These employers lack compliance and safety departments and are hiring individuals trained at unqualified schools. These are the trucking companies you never heard of that are in the news everyday causing another fatality. Everyone wants cheaper prices, and no one wants burdensome regulations, but at what cost?
In a letter to the FMCSA, the American Trucking Association outlined the problem and lambasted the agency for being too “insufficiently robust to shield prospective drivers and the motoring public from fraudulent and non-compliant training entities that fast-track CDL applicants with minimal, if any, training.”
Some states aren’t waiting for the FMCSA to take action and are taking matters into their own hands. California, which was second in the nation in most highway fatalities in 2023, unanimously passed a bill to eliminate nefarious commercial-driving schools in the state. Florida and Colorado, among others, are sending cease-and-desist letters to unlicensed commercial training schools who assert that they are exempt because of “new federal rules” and ignoring state laws.
President Trump’s requested study, coupled with his Executive Order requiring commercial truck drivers to be proficient in English, should disqualify many recently minted unqualified commercial drivers, if properly enforced. Substandard training providers who falsely attested in the Federal Training Provider Registry, should not only be removed from the program but also face the same explicit penalties as those who abused the Paycheck Protection Program after the pandemic. That alone would prevent unqualified drivers from getting behind-the-wheel and putting us all at risk.
American truck drivers move more than 70% of all freight across the country. They keep supply chains running – from delivering food and medicine to stocking shelves and fueling factories. Their hard work, often behind the scenes, keeps America moving and they deserve to be well-compensated.
The trucking industry applauds President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy for already doing so much to protect America’s truck drivers and our highways. We look forward to working alongside them to go a step farther and enforce the FMCSA rules and protect the American public by eliminating nefarious CDL training schools.
With approximately 3.000 accidents and 100 fatalities each week caused by heavy trucks, the trucking industry and general driving public can’t wait much longer.
Steve Gold is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of 160 Driving Academy and the Truckers Network Association.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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