Nearly 44% of the 16,000 truck driving schools in the U.S. 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 government requirements. Separately, the Department of Homeland Security is auditing trucking …
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.
Separately, the Department of Homeland Security is auditing trucking firms in California owned by immigrants to verify the status of their drivers and whether they are qualified to hold a commercial driver’s license.
This crackdown on trucking schools and companies is the latest step in the government’s effort to ensure that truck drivers are qualified and eligible to hold a commercial license. This began after a truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people.
The action reins in “illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” Duffy said.
Duffy has threatened to pull federal funding from California and Pennsylvania over the issue, and he proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can get a commercial driver’s license but a court put those new rules on hold. On Monday, he threatened to withhold $30.4 million from Minnesota if that state doesn’t address shortcomings in its commercial driver’s license program and revoke any licenses that never should have been issued either because they were valid beyond a driver’s work permit or because the state never verified a driver’s immigration status.
In Maryland, law requires the applicant be able to read and speak English. It ain’t happening!!!!!!!!!!! The use interpreters .
Before I retired, part of my job was to interview and hire truck drivers for a well-known local company. You would be surprised by the number of applicants who wanted to take the application “to the car” or “home” to fill it out. The real reason, obviously, was that a substantial number could not read English. . . .or any other language!
Wor Wic should terminate there truck driving school nothing but a joke and everyone gets a trophy.
That makes it look good on the unqualified trainers. That course is now a waste of money. The only ones who benefit from it are the instructors who don’t know any more than the ones they’re training.
And you and I are paying for the vast majority of those wannabes with our tax dollars. Companies who hire the illegals should be shut down,