WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation is threatening to shut down thousands of truck driving schools as part of the Trump administration's widening crackdown on the U.S. trucking industry.
The DOT announced Monday it plans to revoke the accreditation of nearly 3,000 trucking schools unless they can comply with federal requirements within 30 days, and warned another 4,000 schools could face similar action.
"We are reigning in illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses," said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement.
The names of the targeted schools were not immediately released. Together they represent more than 40% of the nation's 16,000 authorized training providers, according to the DOT. The department accuses them of falsifying or manipulating training data, neglecting to meet required curriculum standards and instructor qualifications, and failing to maintain or share accurate records.
The crackdown on trucking schools is part of the Trump administration's broader effort to make sure that drivers are qualified and eligible to hold a commercial driver's license or CDL.
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 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 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.
All of that leaves immigrant truckers in a difficult spot — particularly those who've been in the business for a while.
"The safety crackdown has been long overdue," said Pawan Singh, who owns a small trucking company in Northern Virginia.
In an NPR interview last month, Singh conceded that many schools are churning out drivers without giving them the skills to operate an 18-wheeler safely — though he says the problem isn't limited to newly-trained immigrant drivers. "An untrained driver is dangerous whether they were born here or they were born overseas."
Copyright 2025 NPR
