The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has hit the road after announcing a crackdown on CDL schools that fail “to equip trainees with the Trump Administration’s standards of readiness” with more than 1,500 in-person audits of schools starting this month, Overdrive has learned.
The Department of Transportation in early December announced the removal of nearly 3,000 CDL training providers from the FMCSA’s Training Provider Registry and warned an additional 4,500 providers about potential non-compliance.
The move, according to the heads of the two largest CDL training provider trade associations, marked a step in the right direction, but just a step.
Overdrive contacted dozens of the training providers moved from the list and found many hadn’t actually taught CDL courses in years, and some that never had. Of the 3,000 providers removed, hundreds were school districts, community colleges, small fleets, municipalities, and other businesses who might on occasion have trained a truck or bus driver.
At least five on the list of removed training providers said they hadn’t trained a driver in years. Others only faintly even recalled applying to be listed on the TPR.
One removed trainer, Jason Cowan, Overdrive's 2021 Small Fleet Champ and owner of Silver Creek Transportation, explained in detail how he signed up to train drivers year ago, it didn’t really pan out, and then this year's removal proceedings were carried out by FMCSA.
Cowan, and tons of others on the list, including some interesting entities like the Tennessee Department of Corrections (that briefly offered CDL training to inmates), likely aren’t exactly who DOT Secretary Sean Duffy was talking about when he said the “negligence” of the removed providers “endangered every family on America’s roadways.”
[Related: FMCSA's training provider purge: 'Crackdown' or cleanup?]
So what about the bad actor schools? Overdrive heard from the leaders of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association and the National Association of Publicly Funded Truck Driving Schools that, mostly, the bad schools are still out there.
A real live “CDL mill” actively enrolling students and pumping out CDLs would likely go to the trouble to open their mail and respond to FMCSA’s removal notices, unlike Cowan and so many others.
But now, FMCSA is following through on DOT Secretary Sean Duffy's promise of “cracking down on every link in the illegal trucking chain” by visiting CDL schools in person and giving the schools just 48 hours to hand over all requested documentation or face removal from the TPR.
Schools must hand over “documents, materials, and information readily available for review during the on-site audit within 48 hours of FMCSA’s issuance of this request,” said a message from FMCSA staff to a training school seen by Overdrive.
The audited schools must show the training materials they used as well as provide detailed records of the vehicles students drove, including VINs, registrations, and other documents.
Both CDL training trade organizations expressed hope that these audits would surface the bad actors and leave the good schools in place. Additionally, they found it heartening to see the wheels turning at FMCSA.
DOT in a statement to Overdrive described the importance of first purging the 3,000 inactive schools before pursuing more active bad actors:
The more than 3,000 CDL training providers were removed from USDOT’s Training Provider Registry because they failed to meet the Trump Administration’s standards for readiness. Basic federal requirements, including filing biennial updates and demonstrating active operations over the past 12 months failed to be met. Removing noncompliant or inactive providers is essential to protecting the integrity of the training pipeline and, most importantly, ensuring safer roads for American truckers and families.
In a year marked by the explosive revelations in the non-domiciled CDL saga, Overdrive readers and drivers of all kinds have consistently flagged "CDL mills" as a major problem putting unqualified drivers on the road, regardless of citizenship status. The issue was raised repeatedly by respondents to Overdrive's recent survey about DOT's emergency rulemaking seeking to purge nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders.
Full results from the survey are available for download below.
