The single most shocking revelation from Overdrive's survey of readers' attitudes toward the U.S. Department of Transportation's effort to push almost 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders out of trucking work is that more than one in five of the actual drivers on the chopping block support the measure.
In late September, DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published an emergency final rule to the Federal Register citing widespread problems with states issuing CDLs to non-citizens. That final rule sought to tighten requirements for CDL holders, and ultimately push nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders out of trucking. Under the rule's terms, only non-citizens with one of three categories of work visas would be eligible to obtain or renew a non-domiciled CDL.
A court promptly put the rule on pause after a lawsuit brought up civil rights and other arguments against the rule, but Overdrive reporting has revealed that many states (at least 16 as of this report, including big non-domiciled CDL-issuing states like Texas, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Florida) won't resume issuing these licenses any time soon.
Responding to the survey, a full 21% of non-citizens without CDL-eligible visas, the very people on the chopping block under the new rule, supported the measure anyway, according to Overdrive's survey.
Shown above, from the survey report, the "Visitors without visas" tab shows levels of support from those who self-identified as non-citizens without work visas. Download the full survey at the bottom of this story to access overall results and the remaining citizenship categories.
"Anyone who had a social security number and pays taxes should be able to have their CDL. If you can pay taxes you should have equal right to equal work opportunity."
--One visitor without a visa's comment against the new rule
Survey respondents could pick three choices in support of the rule and two against it.
Mostly, as one might expect, "Visitors without visas" respondents did not support the rule, fully 50% objecting on civil rights grounds. Another 24% didn't support the rule but would support investigations of "CDL mills" and state DMV corruption. (Lucky for the 24%, DOT has followed up the rule with a big cleanup of the Training Provider Registry, with 1,500 in-person audits of CDL schools and singling out individual states for bad licensing practices.)
"Partially support. Good to clean the illegal drivers but as a non-domiciled CDL holder with 13 years' experience and a clean record, can say that new law has to support EAD holders that live permanently in U.S."
--Non-domiciled CDL holder's comment in favor of the rule
But in the support column, 6% were fully behind DOT on economic fairness and civil rights grounds. Another 11% supported the move, but sympathized with the good non-domiciled drivers getting punished due to a few bad apples whose deadly crashes DOT cited as justification for the rule. Another 4% supported the rule but indicated the real problem likely lies with CDL mills.
A section of the survey that allowed respondents to rank their support for the rule from 1-10 underscored the diversity of opinions among non-citizens made ineligible for CDLs by the new rule. While the average rating came in at just 2.6, 10% of respondents in this citizenship category picked 10 -- full support, as shown above.
Finally, the survey allowed for each respondent to make predictions for market impacts as a result of the rule changes.
As shown above, those facing a loss of CDL eligibility had a much less positive rates outlook than U.S. citizens, but still 15% expected rates to rise at least somewhat.
An outright majority at 56%, though, said rates wouldn't move, as bigger supply and demand factors remain in play. On the flipside, 23% said rates would go down, as non-citizen workers withdraw from the industries that facilitate freight itself.
The survey drew on results from 5,165 Overdrive readers, with 270 responses from those who identified as non-citizens without CDL-eligible visas. The survey likely represents the biggest collection of CDL driver views, from both citizens and non-citizens, on the subject.
To get the full story in more detail, and with more quotes from citizen and non-domiciled CDL drivers, download the full report below.
