Transportation Department says more than 550 driving schools must close

WASHINGTON (AP) – More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department announced Wednesday. The move marks the Trump administration's latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike its actions last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest step is focused on active schools inspectors identified as having significant shortcomings in 1,426 site visits completed in December. The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver's licenses to immigrants who shouldn't have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August. A truck driver who Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says wasn't authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four earlier this month, have only heightened concerns. Duffy said 448 schools failed to meet basic safety standards. Inspectors found such deficiencies as employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students' skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned inspections were planned. "American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel," Duffy said. Established schoolsThe list of schools officials want to decertify now are generally smaller ones, including a number of programs run by school districts. Five of the bigger, more reputable schools represented by the national Commercial Vehicle Training Association were audited but those all passed. Jeffery Burkhardt, chair of the national trucking schools group, said established schools welcome the enforcement effort to eliminate bad schools that aren't meeting the standards. He said these audits mark the first time regulators have enforced the standards for driving schools that were passed in 2022. "You know, the good players have no problem with it. Absolutely none," said Burkhardt, who is also is senior director of operations at Ancora, which provides CDL training at colleges, community colleges and companies. Another 97 schools are currently under investigation for compliance issues. Limited oversightPart of the industry problem is that schools and trucking companies can essentially self certify themselves when they apply to begin operating, observers note, and questionable operations might not be caught until much later when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gets a chance to audit them. It wasn't immediately clear how many students were enrolled at these schools that are being decertified or how many graduated with questionable qualifications. A Transportation Department spokeswoman said officials may follow up on those graduates later. Burkhardt said that hopefully most of the unqualified drivers were weeded out before they got on the highway by the skills tests states administer before handing out commercial licenses. There is steady demand for truck drivers because there is high turnover in the industry, and it has been difficult to attract enough drivers willing to spend days away from home delivering heavy loads. But there is some cushion in the industry right now because there are currently more drivers than needed in the midst of a 10% drop in shipments since 2022 owing to economic uncertainty. Nonetheless, many trucking companies still struggle to find enough well-qualified drivers with clean records. New praiseBoth the American Trucking Association and the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association praised the decisive action to shut down "sham schools" that aren't meeting basic safety standards. Todd Spencer, President of the independent owners group, said the reliance of some companies on these questionable schools "fueled a destructive churn" in the industry. "Rather than fix retention problems and working conditions, some in the industry chose to cut corners and push undertrained drivers onto the road. That approach has undermined safety and devalued the entire trucking profession," Spencer said. Besides threatening to withhold federal funding from states that don't clean up their commercial driver's license programs, the administration has demanded truck drivers meet English proficiency standards. California is the only state to lose funding so far with the federal government planning to withhold $160 million. The Transportation Department is threatening to withhold $128 million from Illinois after the latest state audit announced earlier this week found problems with nearly 20% of the 150 licenses they reviewed. The most common problems uncovered in state audits across the country have been licenses that remained valid long after an immigrant's authorization to be in the U.S. expired and instances when the states couldn't show that they checked a driver's immigration status before giving them a license. Problems have been found in 10 states so far, including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, South Dakota and Texas.