Almost Half of US Trucking Schools Could Be Decertified

Nearly 44% of the 16,000 truck driving schools in the US may be forced to close after a review by the federal Transportation Department found they may not be complying with government requirements, per the AP. The 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 are 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 US 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 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.

It's not clear how action against these trucking schools could affect the existing shortage of drivers, but the executive director of the largest association of trucking schools, Andrew Poliakoff, said many of the schools being decertified were questionable "CDL mills" that would advertise being able to train drivers in just a few days instead of established training that normally lasts at least a month. While some believe qualified drivers and companies are being targeted simply because of their citizenship status, the Transportation Department said the 3,000 schools it is taking action against failed to meet training standards and didn't maintain accurate and complete records. The schools are also accused of falsifying or manipulating training data.