Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had shut down "550 sham CDL training schools."
The move follows nearly 1,500 in-person audits carried out by FMCSA staff in the month of December, which Overdrive reported on at the time.
In total, FMCSA since 2025 has now removed more than 7,000 CDL schools from its Training Provider Registry, after another cleanup of about 3,800 mostly non-responsive schools in January.
"FMCSA mobilized more than 300 investigators across 50 states to conduct over 1,400 sting operations," a DOT press release said about the recent move. "Noncompliant schools lacked qualified instructors, used fake addresses, and failed to properly train drivers on the transportation of hazardous materials, among other violations. One school removed for violating safety standards had previously provided training for school bus drivers."
Unlike previous TPR cleanup efforts that simply purged inactive schools, this effort actually investigated and exposed schools actively engaged in credentialing drivers.
Over the course of just five days, FMCSA said it conducted 1,426 on-site investigations of driver training providers, which resulted in 448 notices of proposed removals issued to schools that failed to meet basic safety standards.
Another 109 training providers voluntarily removed themselves from the registry upon "hearing investigators were on the way," according to the press release.
The most common violations found:
- Unqualified Teachers: Instructors didn't hold the correct licenses or permits -- such as for school buses -- for the vehicles they were teaching their students to drive.
- Improper Vehicles: Schools used vehicles that didn’t match the training offered.
- Incomplete Assessments: Providers failed to properly test students on requirements.
- State Non-Compliance: Schools admitted to investigators that they did not meet their state’s specific requirements.
These problems match what professional trade groups representing CDL instructors said almost a year ago: There's a wave of "unscrupulous" schools, and FMCSA must act to clean up the training registry.
CDL school owner A.J. Frankie in January called for detailed audits of bad actors in CDL training. "Until they start checking on these CDL schools -- and yeah, I’m a CDL school saying, 'come check.' They need to be checked on," said Frankie. Until that changes, we’re really not going to improve safety.”
Jeff Burkhardt, Chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association and Senior Director of CDL Operations at Ancora, a large career training company with hundreds of CDL training locations, told Overdrive that the audits were "formal and comprehensive," and that schools under his watch faced audits.
An FMCSA official speaking on background noted the agency did not analyze driver-graduate performance to select schools to be audited.
Burkhardt said FMCSA rather cast a wide net, and couldn't just "cherry pick" schools it suspected had problems.
"I was impressed by the formal approach," he said. Ancora schools heard directly from FMCSA investigators who took a "very standard approach" to setting up the in-person audits.
The December audits were the "first time they’ve done it certainly en masse like this," he said.
However, Burkhardt said FMCSA "did not do a real deep dive" into school operations. "What they did was figure out if your address was an actual address, if the physical facilities meet the requirements, and if you who are who you say you are," he said.
FMCSA did not check that the schools had the equipment they said they did, for example, checking if there's a straight truck when the school advertises Class B CDL training.
However, Burkhardt said he "certainly applauds" the efforts by "FMCSA to regulate and escalate their oversight," and that the audits in themselves are a win.
[Related: The problem with truck driver training: School owner urges stronger regs, audits]
Burkhardt said FMCSA can work with CDL schools to produce records on drivers who have an accident.
After a recent "chameleon carrier" had a deadly crash involving a non-domiciled driver, FMCSA said it was going after the school that trained the driver as well as the fleet.
“For too long, the trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West, where anything goes and nobody asks any questions. The buck stops with me," said Secretary Duffy. "Under President Trump, my team is cracking down on every link in the trucking chain that has allowed this lawlessness to impact the safety of America’s roads. American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel."
FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs, who has pledged to end "self certification," or the way that CDL schools simply attest that they meet all regulations rather than undergo serious checks, lauded the audits as well.
“We mobilized hundreds of investigators to visit these schools in person to ensure strict compliance with federal safety standards,” said FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs. “If a school isn't using the right vehicles or if their instructors aren't qualified, they have no business training the next generation of truckers or school bus drivers.”
An additional 97 training providers remain under investigation for compliance issues, FMCSA said.
