A sweeping U.S. trucking school crackdown puts thousands of students at risk as federal regulators move to revoke accreditation nationwide.
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.
The Transportation Department said Monday that it plans to revoke the accreditation 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 accreditation is in jeopardy. Another 4,500 schools are being warned they may face similar action.
Schools that lose accreditation will no longer be able to issue the certificates showing a driver completed training that are required to obtain 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. Duffy has threatened to pull federal funding from California and Pennsylvania over the issue, and he proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can obtain a commercial driver’s license but a court put those new rules on hold.
“We are reigning in illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” Duffy said.
Trucking schools fail to meet standards
It’s not clear how this action against these trucking schools could affect the existing shortage of drivers. The American Trucking Association estimates there were 3.58 million truck drivers out on the roads last year. The Transportation Department said the 3,000 schools it is taking action against failed to meet training standards and did not maintain accurate and complete records. The schools are also accused of falsifying or manipulating training data.
