Dept. of Transportation Review: 44% Trucking Schools Get an “F” in Compliance
Sec. Sean Duffy: “The trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West for far too long”
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy certainly has been far busier than his predecessor (Pete “Racist Roads” Buttigieg), doing work essential to both the safety and prosperity of Americans.
Duffy has recently threatened several states (namely California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota) with a threat of fines if they fail to curb the fraudulent issuing of commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) to illegal immigrants (i.e., “non-domiciled drivers). Thousands of CDLs have already been revoked.
Now trucking schools are being taught a valuable lesson by the Trump DOT team.
Nearly 44% of the 16,000 truck driving programs listed nationwide by the government may be forced to close if they lose their students after a review by the federal Transportation Department found they may not be complying with minimum requirements.
The Transportation Department said Monday that it plans to revoke the certification of nearly 3,000 schools unless they can comply with training requirements in the next 30 days. The targeted schools must notify students that their certification is in jeopardy. Another 4,500 schools are being warned they may face similar action.
Schools that lose certification will no longer be able to issue the certificates showing a driver completed training that’s required to get a license, so students are likely to abandon those schools. It’s not clear how many of those schools have been actively teaching students.
The trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West for far too long which is why I purged NEARLY HALF of trucking schools from @USDOT’s list of approved schools because they failed to meet our high standards of safety.
We also placed over 7,000 drivers who failed to… pic.twitter.com/fnnzlaxp6t
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) December 2, 2025
Duffy also pushed more robust restrictions on the types of immigrants who could get CDLs. Unfortunately, a federal judge put that on hold and critics argue essentially that not enough Americans have died in horrific crashes to justify the new rules.
The DOT has also proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can get a CDL, but a federal appeals court put those rules on hold last month. That push for tougher regulations coincided with a series of deadly crashes involving foreign-born truckers — including a fatal crash in Florida in August that killed three people.
Secretary Duffy argues that the restrictions are urgently needed because there are too many foreign-born truckers who don’t know the rules of the road and don’t speak English proficiently.
But the administration’s critics argue that there’s no data to support this claim, despite a handful of high-profile crashes that have garnered significant attention from conservative media. They say the push for tougher regulations amounts to an immigration crackdown by another name.
But the DOT isn’t the only agency involved in this crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is auditing trucking firms in California owned by immigrants to verify the status of their drivers and whether they are qualified to hold a CDL.
Department of Homeland Security agents are conducting aggressive workplace audits across Northern and Central California trucking companies, with a heavy focus on Punjabi-owned carriers, according to a detailed account aired November 28 on Punjab Radio USA.
Harpreet Thera, owner of a mid-sized fleet operating since 1997, told the station that DHS served him with a Notice of Inspection while he was at a dentist appointment in Sacramento. Agents first went to his home, then called his cellphone and identified his exact location before meeting him in a parking lot to hand-deliver the summons.
The notice gave Thera three days to produce I-9 employment eligibility forms for every current and former employee going back two years – more than 100 records in total. Thera, who uses BBSI for payroll and runs 100% W-2 drivers to comply with California’s AB5 law, submitted the documents the same day.
DHS then escalated the audit: agents selected 15 employees – including U.S. citizens, green card holders and work-permit drivers – for individual interviews and requested their personal phone numbers. Agents told Thera they may conduct the interviews in person.
Inject this into my veins…. https://t.co/JtTjqijUXU
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) December 3, 2025
Something tells me the West is going to get even wilder…for illegal immigrants. And that’s a good thing.`
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Comments
It’s because Trump doesn’t like brown people./s.
I can’t wait for dems to fight Trump on this very commonsense move to make our roads safer.
Seems like this is how it should have been all along.
Another way to skin this cat is to create a presumptive civil liability for both the ‘school’ and the employer of graduates who were passed or hired despite key indicators they weren’t qualified. Maybe could bring in State Govt CDL issuance folks as well by making acceptance of liability a requirement to participate in issuing CDL to sidestep sovereign immunity issues. I suspect that aligning the financial incentives of folks to stop ‘turning a blind eye’ or worse active participation would mitigate much of the problem.
Alternatively we could simply take the easiest, most straightforward path and ban eligibility of everyone not a US Citizen or Green Card holder from a CDL or aviation licence (direct foreign flight to airports like ATL, JFK, SF, LAX, MIA would be fine but not a foreign flight crew outside a direct flight to/from true international hubs.
A 90/10 issue. Who doesn’t want safer roads?
Then do something about talking on cellphones and texting while driving. It’s already against Federal Law for truck drivers except in an emergency. My wife’s company has a 2 step plan. 1st step is a warning, second is termination. There is no 3rd, it’s that serious.
I was on I-10 between Tucson and Casa Grande earlier today. Two observations.
1) there seems to be a far higher number of aggressive or just plain bad truckers than there were two years ago.
2) cross-country freight belongs on rails, not on roads.
The rail system can not handle the volume of freight moving across our country. As someone with over 3o yrs in the industry including coast to coast I have a couple of observations.
Freight volume has increased as not only the population of the US has increased but as we have offshored much of the manufacturing. That stuff needs to get from our ports to the distribution houses somehow and rail can’t do it all in a timely manner.
The problem of foreign drivers who can’t speak the language is decades old. I saw it when I started as there was a sudden influx of Eastern European’s who couldn’t speak English.
The biggest threat on our roadways is not the numbers of Class A Trucks. It’s the increased use of cellphones and texting by the public. Combine that with the incivility that Covid seems to have brought out in people and you have disaster. The trucking industry increasingly has camera’s installed in their trucks to not only view the road but also ones that are triggered if a crash is indicated or a severe event like hard cornering or braking pointed at the driver. The incidences of jackpot justice where the trucking companies are determined to automatically at fault have dropped.
Every Sunday morning I sit down with my wife and review incidences where their system flagged a driver and watch the video’s on her laptop so she can get my opinion as a driver who has over 4,000,000 accident and ticket free driving on the road. Some I instantly go “oh, hell no, your driver should never have done that, he is following way too close, that corner looks fine to me”. The majority I’d say not so much, looks ok to me.
The lack of language proficiency in a truck driver, or someone distracted by cellphones does not excuse cutting people off; tying up a passing lane for several minutes to go 1/4 mph faster than another truck, or, tailgating when the vehicle in front is already going 5 to 10 over the limit.
I only wish that truck drivers not play games on the highway, like pulling into the fast lane on an incline, knowing full well that 40 tons cargo cannot accelerate from 55 to 65 to pass a truck.
My favorite is two trucks side-by-side blocking anyone from passing for long stretches of highway. I love to squeeze past them with only feet to spare when they do that. That air horn is music to my ears when I get around road hogs.
I generally respect truck drivers and won’t hesitate to slow down to let them come into a lane I am in because they want to pass. I despise poor truck drivers and refuse to show them any respect.
“My favorite is two trucks side-by-side blocking anyone from passing for long stretches of highway.”
^^^ This. ^^^
“I generally respect truck drivers and won’t hesitate to slow down to let them come into a lane I am in because they want to pass.”
I, too, will help out when I can, and fully understand the stopping and handling limitations of their trucks. Courtesy is a two way street and I help out where I can.
So true Every state has laws such as “slow traphic keepe right”,etc. Tucks are seemingly immune– in their own selphish world.
his will end when highway coppers begin harsh enphorcement o these laws. The bulls ib my state seem to think three rigs abreast tracking at 10 mph below the car limit is OK. NOT so.
One thing that would help HUGELY would be states relaxing the slow truck lane limits. Today’s rigs are much sapher than even 20 years ago.
the three wes coast states ALL have slower limits on trucks. Caliphornia started this decades back at the request o Teamster’s Unions. Travelling at 55 means they get more hours. All three wst coast states un tucks at 10 to15 mph slower than cars. Eastward most states seem to run trucks at the same speed as cars. MUCH sapher. Everyone is now at the same speed.
The cops on the West Coast don’t seem to care about lane usage or driving too close. They let rigs slow up cars to the point o anger abd stupid moves to escape the traps the rigs seem to build. I got so mad at one point a while back, three rigs side by side, ten under car limit, several miles running. I knew that stretch o road well, wide shoulder straight nearly a mile. I slid back a ways, eased right to check it was clear, then booted it, passing on the right on the shoulder. I got sass by way o air horns, one sped up to tailgate me once past them, very close. I brought my speed up to ten overlimit, 20 over their limit. He still dogged me over a couple miles. No question they were deliberately blocking me. I cleared a quarter mile ahead o them reduced my speed to normal and carried on. .
Where were the coppers to bust them… rigs in passing lane, blocking others, slower keeps right, over their speed limits……
Take a hard look at Fed Ex drivers in Utah.
The number of those trucks barrelling down in the snow… and then you see them rolled over off in the median later on.
Those tractor/trailers are freaking missiles and death on wheels.
Try them in Tennessee where FedEx as a company wields a lot of influence due to the base at Memphis.
But, they could be worse. They could be UPS.
“The trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West for far too long”
Oh oh. There’s a new Rubber Duck in town!