The U.S. Department of Transportation is threatening to shut down thousands of truck driving schools, part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on trucking schools and drivers.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The Transportation Department is threatening to shut down thousands of truck driving schools as part of the Trump administration’s escalating crackdown on the U.S. trucking industry.
The DOT announced Monday that it plans to revoke the accreditation of nearly 3,000 trucking schools unless they comply with federal requirements within 30 days, and warned that another 4,000 schools could face similar action.
“We are ruling out illegal and reckless practices that put poorly trained drivers behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
The names of the targeted schools were not immediately released. According to the DOT, together they represent more than 40% of the country’s 16,000 authorized training providers. The department has accused them of falsifying or manipulating training data, neglecting to meet required curriculum standards and instructor qualifications, and failing to maintain or share accurate records.
The crackdown on trucking schools is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to ensure that drivers are qualified and competent to hold a commercial driver’s license, or CDL.
The DOT has also proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can get a CDL, but a federal appeals court blocked those rules last month. The push for stricter rules coincides with a series of fatal crashes involving foreign-born truck drivers — including a fatal crash in Florida in August that killed three people.
Secretary Duffy argues that the restrictions are urgently needed because there are too many foreign-born truck drivers who do not know the rules of the road, and do not speak English well.
But critics of the administration argue that there is no data to support this claim, despite some high-profile crashes that have attracted significant attention from conservative media. He says pushing for strict rules is the same as an immigration crackdown by any other name.
All of this leaves immigrant truck drivers in a difficult position – especially those who have been in the business for a while.
“The safety action was a long time coming,” said Pawan Singh, owner of a small trucking company in Northern Virginia.
In an NPR interview last month, Singh acknowledged that many schools are turning out drivers without giving them the skills to safely operate an 18-wheeler — though he says the problem isn’t limited to newly-trained immigrant drivers. “An untrained driver is dangerous whether they were born here or born abroad.”
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