No news has reached the eyes of more people around trucking this year than the Department of Transportation’s announcement Friday, Sept. 26, of changes to the rules around non-domiciled CDL issuance, effective now.
New restrictions on such CDLs hold potential to limit foreign-domiciled CDL drivers' ability to work OTR in the U.S. The influx of asylum seekers across U.S. borders in recent years has resulted in many of those asylum seekers getting those non-domiciled CDLs. Going forward, they won’t, unless they have an employer-sponsored visa for temporary work in the United States.
The same day DOT announced the changes, likewise initial results from its ongoing audit of state CDL programs around non-domiciled CDL issuance, our own Matt Cole was out at the Guilty by Association Truck Show in Joplin, Missouri, where he reported from a sort of listening session hosted at the event by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and featuring questions and commentary from owner-operators in attendance. Responses came from FMCSA’s own Senior Policy Advisor Michael Hampton.
This week's Overdrive Radio episode (embedded above and below) features a good hour’s worth of audio from the session, where applause lines weren't hard to come by -- rare for a regulatory session, that's certain. One came fairly early on in response to a commenting owner-operator's contention that, as was echoed by many Overdrive readers earlier this year, maybe a non-domiciled CDL shouldn’t even exist, particularly as an option for a non-immigrant in the country with temporary status.
To that commenter in the session, recent moves felt in some ways like "we're trying to fix broken glass by just putting another piece of glass up there," he said. "That's going to break, too." In his view, "instead of spending all of this time to fix something that shouldn't be there, maybe it just shouldn't be there."
[Related: Ban non-domiciled CDLs for foreign drivers? Owner-ops weigh in]
Perhaps the biggest applause line, though, came when FMCSA's own Michael Hampton contended that more hours of service flexibility would result in better safety, as the agency readies two studies of flexibility enhancements we highlighted two weeks back here on the podcast.
"What I believe is that if you give truckers flexibility in their schedule, that is going to make for a safer, more well-rested trucker," Hampton said, to much applause. He urged attendees and anyone within earshot to participate in those studies when they get rolling (which will be a while yet). The agency will need data to help it get further changes to the split-sleeper rules, and/or a 14-hour clock pause button, across the finish line in future. Participation’s going to be paramount to analyzing safety impacts and, with any luck, truly showing that Hampton in his contention is in fact correct. Take a listen:
As mentioned in the podcast:
**Big congrats to Overdrive's four 2025 Small Fleet Champ finalists!
**DOT OIG's audit of oversight of CDL skills testing and training (second brief down the page at that link)
[Related: Guilty by Association Truck Show rolls into Joplin]
