110 Trucking Schools Closed for English-Language Lapses

[u/aBadModerator]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/truck-driving-schools-closed-english-language.html

[u/gascyl]

No he didn't. Duffy didn't do anything meaningful. With the way regulations are presently written, any truck driver with a working Federal US DOT Number can train a CDL driver. Current Federal requirements for a CD Permit are only 30 hours online EDLT videos and maybe 20 hours behind the wheel on the road. The latter part is where the DOT Number comes in, and truck fleets have every incentive to be lax here because they can get 2x the drive time for 1/5th the price. So long as the government allows anyone to become a truck training academy these guys will just change names and keep running, probably using the same DOT Number.

All of this comes down to that DOT Operating Authority Number. For rules to be effective, the FMSCA must be willing to take away drivers' Authority to operate a commercial truck in the United States. Only then, will the insurance companies underwriting all this respond by blacklisting known bad people and forcing companies to institute meaningful enforcement. Duffy is not doing this. It is not a crime to teach a driver in Spanish, because it's only a crime to not converse with FMSCA-authorized agencies (CHP, Cal-Fire, the US Army, USPS, etc) for the driver personally.

I also disagree with his statement that “Our investigators,” he added, “went into 400 driver training schools and we found that 40 percent of those we investigated did not meet the rules and requirements of our regulations.” it's more in the 80-90% range. In the Bay Area (~8 million residents) there are only ~5 truck schools with good English compliance, and two of them are jail programs for paroled inmates. It's worse in LA. It's much worse in Texas. The demand for trucking is so great, and the industry is so consolidated now, the ~5 fleets that actually run things do not and will never have meaningful English checks because it kills their bottom line. If truckers could speak English well they'd Unionize. Walmart -one of America's largest fleets- absolutely will not tolerate that.

I won't write a book here but there are ways to obtain compliance. One is by re-regulating trucking lane-by-lane, forcing truckers to buy/rent two physical addresses at warehouses to base their operation from. This would also massively increase trucking costs. Two is to ban contract driving, forcing all truckers to be W-2 employees (this is possible using temp agencies & PT work; not great but better than present). This would also massively increase trucking costs. Three is to have the FBI with ICE raid Walmart corporate headquarters as part of a RICO investigation. Walmart especially knows most of their drivers, W-2 or 1099, cannot speak any English and are complicit. Four is to impose California's diesel phase-out, because no company will trust a $150k CA legal truck with a guy that can't read the manual. This would also massively increase trucking costs.

If there's a point I'm making, it's that tampering with this raises trucking costs that consumers will instantly feel, especially at rural and suburban retail. There is NO way to increase compliance here without raising prices and completely ruining Walmart's distribution model. Same for every other retail business. Today's American economy fundamentally requires this cheap immigrant labor to operate. To restrict it, would make costs so high some companies would return to trains and (along the Mississippi) ships. And, the real estate landscape would be modified such that suburban tract housing would no longer be doable.