The U.S. Department of Transportation on May Day shared a news release with some big, new numbers on just how many CDL drivers have been disqualified or placed out-of-service during the Trump administration's ongoing immigration crackdown.
Here's some of what DOT said it accomplished on May 1:
- More than 20,000 truckers "kicked out of service for failing to meet basic requirements" since English Language Proficiency became an OOS violation in June.
- More than 28,000 non-domiciled CDLs "have been successfully revoked nationwide."
- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration "mobilized 300+ investigators across all 50 states in December 2025 to audit approximately 1,500 training providers."
- More than 6,800 unqualified training providers were removed from the FMCSA registry in the past year.
With nearly almost 50,000 CDL drivers now OOS or without a CDL, and all those CDL schools either under serious scrutiny or completely shut down, the "driver shortage" narrative may be officially dead. But is the spot market roaring back to life?
At a surprise appearance at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy himself predicted "spot rates are going to go up" as a result of stepped-up enforcement activity removing non-citizen, non-English speaking drivers.
Since then, spot rates certainly have gone up, reaching an all-time national-average high just this past week. And that rate increase does owe to action from the Trump administration, but according to one expert, the action most responsible for it is the war in Iran, not increased ELP or CDL enforcement.
[Related: Roadcheck rates are in, with spot market on record run]
War and enforcement impact: Flatbed shines, for now
"From our perspective, foreign driver enforcement to this point mostly has been a disruptor of the norm, and so has added somewhat to spot rate pressure," said Avery Vise, trucking vice president at FTR Transportation Intelligence.
But surely 28,000 revoked CDLs and 20,000 OOS drivers could move the market, right?
First bear in mind that doesn't mean 48,000 drivers totally off the road.
For instance, after a long legal battle that resulted in the loss of $200 million in federal funding, California eventually did revoke 17,000 CDLs and begin enforcing the ELP rule as OOS condition. Also, OOS drivers don't necessarily stop driving immediately.
Scofflaws abound, with one of the most common violations driving without a CDL.
[Related: Why state police are letting drivers placed OOS for English violations go free]
Yet the enforcement crackdown has moved the needle slightly, Vise said.
"In capacity terms, these figures are not market movers yet, and are not the reason why capacity is tight," said Vise. Using the 28,000 and 20,000 numbers "we are still talking about less than 1% of Class 8 drivers."
Capacity is getting tight, though, just not entirely because of CDL or ELP enforcement by themselves, he said.
"Our assessment is that the strength in the spot market this year has mostly been a combination of three factors -- very tight overall trucking capacity, disruptions that include weather and FMCSA enforcement, and surging fuel costs," Vise said. Unfortunately, "most of the gains for dry van and refrigerated spot rates since the surge have begun are to recover fuel costs."
The trucking market has shown some stronger fundamentals than the weakness seen throughout 2025 and 2024, but Vise expected most of the real strength, besides simply compensating for fuel, to peter out by July.
Right now, "growth in consumer spending is solid," he said, likely "due to higher-than-typical tax refunds -- but we expect that to fade back to stagnation within a couple of months."
Manufacturing, "somewhat" of a bright spot, isn't really robust just yet, he said.
But flatbed shines for now.
"Flatbed and similar specialized applications are where the freight strength is, primarily due to data centers and the materials and infrastructure needed to support them," said Vise.
View from a big fleet in the contract market
On the fleet side, Werner CEO Derek Leathers said he's seen rates improve as DOT pushes harder on enforcement.
“So far, the recovery in rates has been largely supply-driven as capacity continues to exit at an accelerated pace due to regulatory enforcement,” Leathers said in a recent earnings call. “As the supply and demand dynamic tightens, we are seeing rates lift and early positive momentum in the bid season.”
Leathers seemed to believe it when FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs promised an to keep the pressure on and increase collaboration with law enforcement.
“I see no slowdown in the enforcement actions. And if anything, there seems to be sort of a drumbeat of increased pace and increased understanding of how widespread some of the coloring outside the lines really was,” he added.
Overall, the enforcement crackdown promised by DOT did happen, and it did positively impact rates. FMCSA's recent triumph in court against a challenge to its ban on non-domiciled CDLs bodes well, overall, for the agency's prospects of clearing out almost 200,000 non-citizen drivers.
If those drivers are concentrated among spot market OTR truckers, expect rates to pickup more and more.
But beware: High rates are what lead to overcapacity in the first place, Vise points out.
"Trucking in April added the most jobs in a month since September 2023 and might continue to add jobs," he said. "I would be very surprised, though, if the increase in employment in the second quarter matched that in the same 2022 period."
