Overdrive readers have spoken: More than 5,000 of you completed a survey released in late October gauging approval and expectations following the Department of Transportation's move to push nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders out of truck driving work.
Thousands of owner-operators, company drivers, and truckers of all kinds weighed in alongside people from all across the industry.
That includes U.S. citizens, naturalized citizens, non-citizens with CDL-eligible visas under the new rule, and, importantly, hundreds of non-citizens facing the loss of their CDLs.
The results showed overwhelming support.
- 88% overall favored DOT's move to oust non-domiciled drivers.
- On a scale of 1-10, the 5,165 respondents ranked their support for the move at a strong 8.6.
- Fully 70% said the move would boost rates.
- Shockingly, even 21% of non-citizens who could lose their CDLs under the rule supported the measure, and 15% thought it would boost rates.
But drill deeper and citizenship status divided respondents, sometimes bitterly, with civil rights, economic fairness and highway safety hot-button considerations.
Ultimately, though drivers facing the loss of their CDLs are a minority of survey respondents and truckers generally, they've found some traction. Since Overdrive opened the survey in October, a court blocked DOT's rule, allowing non-domiciled CDL issuance to return to the status quo.
However, with DOT raising significant alarm over the integrity of these licenses, it's unclear if many states will ever go back to issuing them.
DOT's further actions to strengthen electronic logging device vetting and clean out registered CDL schools further twist the screws on trucking's bad actors -- regardless of citizenship status.
In the special report below, see what non-domiciled CDL drivers have to say for themselves, as well as how the bulk of your trucking peers are absorbing DOT's most aggressive regulatory action in years.
A special thanks to those who completed the survey. Your voice matters. Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter to stay in the conversation as we research and report on the issues that matter most.
