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DOT Moves to Close Additional 550 CDL Schools
Federal Review Links Poor Training Practices to Growing Concerns Over Commercial Driver Safety
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Key Takeaways:
- USDOT is announcing plans Feb. 18 to close more than 550 active commercial driving schools after inspectors found unqualified instructors, inadequate testing and other safety failures.
- The action follows fatal crashes and a broader federal push to address states issuing commercial licenses to ineligible immigrants, with inspectors citing 448 schools for basic safety violations.
- Federal officials say the closures continue an ongoing safety crackdown, as 109 schools also withdrew from the registry after learning inspectors planned to visit.
More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the Transportation Department announced Feb. 18.
This is USDOT's latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike the previous action last fall todecertify up to 7,500 schoolsthat included, this latest action is focused on active schools with significant shortcomings that inspectors identified as having significant shortcomings in 1,426 site visits completed in December.
USDOT has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver licenses to immigrants who shouldn't have qualified for them ever since a truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Floridathat killed three peoplein August. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana earlier this month that killed four, have only added to the concerns.
RELATED: Florida Eyes $50,000 Carrier Fine for Undocumented Drivers
Duffy said 448 schools failed to meet basic safety standards.Inspectors found such deficiencies as employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students' skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned inspections were planned.
We’re putting the brakes on CDL mills 🛑
Unqualified drivers DO NOT BELONG on our roads, and we’re holding the industry to a higher standard!
The buck stops HERE 🇺🇸🚚 — Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy)
“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel,” Duffy said.
Established Schools Welcome Effort
The list of schools officials want to decertify now are generally smaller ones, including a number of programs run by school districts. Five of the bigger, more reputable schools represented by the national were audited but those all passed.
PERSPECTIVE: Safety Requires Rooting Out CDL Mills
Jeffery Burkhardt, chair of the national trucking schools group, said established schools welcome the enforcement effort to eliminate bad schools that aren't meeting the standards. He said these audits mark the first time regulators have enforced the standards for driving schools that were passed in 2022.
“You know, the good players have no problem with it. Absolutely none,” said Burkhardt, who is also is senior director of operations at Ancora, which provides CDL training at colleges, community colleges and companies.
Another 97 schools are under investigation for compliance issues.
Limited Oversight in the Past
Part of the industry problem is that schools and trucking companies can essentially self-certify themselves when they apply to begin operating, observers note, and questionable operations might not be caught until much later when the gets a chance to audit them.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many students were enrolled at these schools that are being decertified or how many graduated with questionable qualifications. A Transportation Department spokeswoman said officials may follow up on those graduates later. Burkhardt said that hopefully most of the unqualified drivers were weeded out before they got on the highway by the skills tests states administer before handing out commercial licenses.
There is steady demand for truck drivers because there is high turnover in the industry, and it has been difficult to attract enough drivers willing to spend days away from home delivering heavy loads. But there is some cushion in the industry right now because there are currently more drivers than needed in the midst of a 10% drop in shipments since 2022 owing to economic uncertainty. Nonetheless, many trucking companies still struggle to find enough well-qualified drivers with clean records.
Other Enforcement Actions
Besides threatening to withhold federal funding from states that don’t clean up their CDL programs, the administration has demanded truck driversmeet English-language proficiency standards. California is the only state toso far, with the federal government planning to withhold $160 million.
USDOT is threatening to withhold $128 million from Illinois after the latest state audit announced earlier this week found problems with nearly 20% of the 150 licenses they reviewed. The most common problems uncovered in state audits across the country have been licenses that remained valid long after an immigrant's authorization to be in the U.S. expired and instances when the states couldn't show that they checked a driver's immigration status before giving them a license.
ʰDzin 10 states so far, including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, South Dakota and Texas.
