President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that U.S. service members with experience operating heavy trucks will soon be "automatically eligible" for a CDL.
Trump framed the action as a way to replace the non-domiciled CDL drivers his administration has sought to push out of truck driving work.
“My administration will soon take historic action to get illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people -- they can’t read signs, many of them are on drugs or alcohol and they shouldn’t be driving these things, many of them came in totally illegally and we don’t want them but they’re driving all over American roadways -- and we’re going to replace them with proud American veterans," said Trump in remarks at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit.
The White House's recent regulatory agenda update does include a rulemaking aimed at easing CDL requirements for veterans, and that seems to be what the President spoke about on Wednesday.
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"We’re going to teach them a lot about driving and in many cases they already know," said President Trump. "We’re going to say any American who has driven a heavy truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver’s license."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on social media quickly echoed Trump, saying "this is common sense" and promising "more to come."
Under the Military Skills Test Waiver Program, veterans are already fast-tracked for CDLs.
The program "allows drivers with two years' experience safely operating heavy military vehicles to obtain" a CDL "without taking the driving test (skills test)," according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's website.
FMCSA said that as of June 30 "more than 40,000 service members and veterans have taken advantage of this waiver program."
A DOT/FMCSA rulemaking effort slated to reach Final Rule stage as early as this month in the most recent regs agenda update is called "Commercial Driver's License Standards; Requirements and Penalties: Applicability to the Exception for Certain Military Personnel."
The regs agenda offered more detail: "FMCSA proposes to amend the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations to allow dual-status military technicians to qualify for the exception for certain military personnel from the commercial driver license standards in part 383."
Dual-status military technicians are federal civilian employees in the reserves. Members of the National Guard and six armed forces services already had an exception.
FMCSA's rulemaking responds to a petition for rulemaking submitted by James D. Welch, who was granted an exemption from the CDL requirement on behalf of Air Reserve Technicians working under the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command.
In previous rulemaking efforts, FMCSA determined that military training to operate heavy-duty vehicles is “thorough and comprehensive” and compatible with the requirements of FMCSA's Entry-Level Driver Training Rule.
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