The Department of Transportation Monday announced the removal of nearly 3,000 training providers from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Training Provider Registry, pointing also to more than 4,500 companies proposed for removal.
DOT Secretary Sean Duffy and his FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs rattled sabers in the announcement. Barrs noted if training entities were “unwilling to follow the rules, you have no place training America’s commercial drivers."
Duffy pledged the Trump administration would continue "cracking down on every link in the illegal trucking chain" and correcting prior administration mistakes that "let unqualified drivers flood our roadways."
Among the hundreds of trainers proposed for removal, I noticed a familiar company: Silver Creek Transportation of Henderson, Kentucky, the longtime tanker and flatbed carrier helmed by Jason Cowan. Cowan was Overdrive's 2021 Small Fleet Champ, his story one of steady growth and a surprising amount of freight and equipment diversification for a then-around-30-truck fleet.
How many drivers has Silver Creek been flooding the haul routes with as a company providing required Entry Level Driver Training? Zero, qualified or not, according to Jason Cowan, who suspected a sizable number of the 4,500-plus trainers proposed for removal are in the same boat.
Silver Creek has been on the training registry as a provider since its early days, when the company included itself there thinking it might capitalize in particular on routine calls to his headquarters from drivers asking about the hazmat endorsement. "People would call here all the time and ask about training for it," he said.
Or say one of his own drivers needed the endorsement -- the ELDT rule since implementation now requires formal training for it, and if he needed to be on the training provider registry to provide it, it seemed easy enough to stay there in case the opportunity presented itself.
Cowan's insurance company, too, had presented him with an option, a rare opportunity for his small fleet to actually employ trainees and newly minted CDL holders, he said. Providing that entry-level formal training might thus have helped the company mint that next generation of pro truckers, the right way. The insurer's since "moved away from that," Cowan added, and the general hustle and bustle of the last few years of freight-market doldrums, with difficulties maintaining business and improving profit margins with direct customers, has meant formal entry-level training just never became a part of the operation.
[Related: Training regs might miss the mark, but this small fleet's doing it right]
Early this year, "oh about six months ago," Cowan said, FMCSA "sent me a letter that said, 'Hey we haven’t seen any activity'" associated with the Silver Creek listing on the training registry. The agency asked whether the company wanted to remain on the registry or not. "I sent them an email that said, 'Yeah, just leave us on.'"
What happened next provides a window into the current cleanup effort FMCSA's engaged in.
The agency asked for documentation from Silver Creek, "all training curriculum paperwork, and the trainers -- all of their background," among other things, Cowan noted. It was going to take more time than he could devote to it. "We decided to pull the plug" and just not maintain the training registry listing.
Hence the current proposed removal notice. An FMCSA official, queried about training providers in situations similar to Silver Creek, didn't answer a question about how many of the 4,500-plus entities proposed for removal might fit Silver Creek's description: removal by attrition, you might say, flagged there for inactivity, queried, then removed.
Yet the official did outline part of the agency's ongoing registry-cleanup effort, noting providers identified for inactivity in the system have been contacted throughout the year. The official put those contacts into three buckets. Providers who:
- Requested to voluntarily remove themselves from the registry,
- Indicated they only provide seasonal or periodic training, or
- Did not respond at all.
The last group, those who didn't respond, are among the thousands now proposed to be removed, including Silver Creek.
[Related: FMCSA cracking down on CDL schools?]
The cleanup effort is probably long overdue, likewise removal of truly bad actors in the registry, as has long been recommended by CDL training associations among many others.
Yet a statement from Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer suggests further action that might go a long way toward making the training registry a better mousetrap for prospective drivers and hazmat haulers seeking bona fide required instruction.
"OOIDA has long warned that allowing CDL training providers to self-certify invites fraud into the trucking industry and puts road safety at risk for all motorists," Spencer said. "When training standards are weak, or in some instances totally non-existent, drivers are unprepared, and everyone on the road pays the price."
The statement goes on to laud the "crackdown on fraudulent CDL training providers," yet note the self-certify invocation in Spencer's statement. The FMCSA official I queried about Silver Creek's situation confirmed that, indeed, if a company is on the Training Provider Registry "it is because that entity went through the process and applied to be listed on the registry. Those applicants self-certified they were providing Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) training" [emphasis mine].
FMCSA also includes this disclaimer on the central page for its Training Provider Registry.
FMCSA does not approve or certify Providers. FMCSA approves applications for Providers to be listed on the Training Provider Registry.
Monday's press release about the registry followed shortly after announcement of new vetting steps electronic logging device providers self-certifying for the ELD registry would go through. While there's not indication -- yet -- the agency is taking the same approach to new applicants for the TPR, Silver Creek's example at least shows FMCSA applying verification standards to entities currently registered as part of the cleanup. Again, a cleanup probably long overdue.
As for Silver Creek, Cowan's got bigger fish to fry than worrying about maintaining the company's registry listing. Cowan recently finalized acquisition of Bluegrass Transport and Expeditors, likewise based in Henderson. That brings Silver Creek's power unit count to 73, with more than 200 trailers, with the addition of Bluegrass's mostly dry van capacity. A new location, too, for equipment and maintenance, and modifications to Silver Creek's longtime office to accommodate new staff.
"I could write you a book about what not to do" when it comes to acquiring a company, Cowan joked. "Everything costs twice what you think it's going to, and takes you twice as long."
Bluegrass owners, longtime family friends of Cowan and company, he added, were "looking to retire, and so we made a way for them to be able to retire, and it helped expand our fleet and give us a better footprint in the community."
Here's hope for success in the combination of forces, with the potential for even greater freight diversity with the addition of so much van business, and "more buying power with a larger company," Cowan said, delivering savings.
Considering the freight markets of the last few years, he's hopeful it could cut some cents-per-mile off the cost of operations, in the end. Every little bit helps, he knows, as he told his team after the Mid-America Trucking Show this year, when economists on a panel he participated in expressed, fundamentally, uncertainty about any real recovery in sight.
"This is the last time you’re going to hear me say next quarter’s going to be better," he told his team. "We have to learn how to thrive in the environment we’re in."
Best of luck on that score to the Small Fleet Champ.
[Related: Freight markets and fraud, predatory towing, pay-to-park: Small-biz issues dominate MATS panel]
