STEVE GOLD: Record Trucking Related Carnage Is No Accident

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.