A Department of Transportation (DOT) review found that 44 percent of the nation’s approximately 16,000 truck driving schools may not comply with government licensure requirements and could be forced to close.
“This administration is cracking down on every link in the illegal trucking chain. Under [President] Joe Biden and [former Transportation Secretary] Pete Buttigieg, bad actors were able to game the system and let unqualified drivers flood our roadways. Their negligence endangered every family on America’s roadways, and it ends today,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a Dec. 1 statement.
The DOT said 3,000 commercial driver license training providers have been removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Training Provider Registry due to the violations. An additional 4,500 training providers were put on notice for possible noncompliance.
The reasons for removing providers include falsifying or manipulating training data, lack of compliance with required curriculum standards, facility conditions, or instructor qualifications, and the failure to maintain accurate documentation, or the refusal to provide those records during the federal audit.
The Training Provider Registry is a complete list of providers authorized to offer federally required Entry-Level Driver Training for students in pursuit of their Commercial Driver’s License. According to the DOT, the agency is “focused on raising the standard for roadway safety through accountability, compliance, and enforcement.”
This decision is part of the first steps in the agency’s review of the training providers.
“If you are unwilling to follow the rules, you have no place training America’s commercial drivers. We will not tolerate negligence,” Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek D. Barrs said in the DOT statement.
The enforcement effort is the latest step by the Trump administration to ensure that truck drivers are qualified to hold their commercial license.
Duffy has also threatened to revoke federal funding to California and Pennsylvania over the issue and suggested restrictions on the ability of immigrants to obtain a commercial driver’s license. However, the proposed changes face legal challenges.
“Under President Trump, we are reining in illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” Duffy said.
In Florida recently, an illegal immigrant was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide after he allegedly make an illegal U-turn in an 18-wheeler on the Florida Turnpike, about 50 miles outside of West Palm Beach. A minivan with three occupants was unable to avoid the truck’s trailer as it stretched across the lanes and crashed into it.
