Lax licensing rules are allowing potentially unsafe foreign truckers to legally work America’s highways, industry insiders say.
The U.S. government is taking steps to close a legal loophole that has allowed logistics companies to employ truck drivers who may not have the necessary credentials to do the job.
In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Transportation Department to take action to prevent drivers who are not proficient in English from operating commercial trucks in the United States.
The same mandate orders the department to investigate practices surrounding the validation of foreign drivers’ licenses and the issuance of so-called non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses.
The move was cheered by trucking industry associations as necessary to help establish consistent enforcement of trucking standards in the United States and ensure public safety.
Advocacy group American Truckers United said the executive order is tackling a much larger problem: an unknown number of foreign-born drivers who are legally employed under questionable credentials.
Shannon Everett, co-founder of American Truckers United, said an influx of drivers holding either non-domiciled or foreign-issued licenses is suppressing driver wages and pressuring transportation companies to keep their prices artificially low.
He said these drivers can be dangerously unqualified to drive 18-wheeler trucks at high speeds on America’s roads.
“When you’re driving an 80,000-pound truck and you cannot read the road sign, ‘lane closed ahead,’ or ‘lane merging ahead,’ and you plow into stalled traffic at 80 miles per hour, entire families can be killed,” Everett told The Epoch Times.
English Proficiency
On April 28, Trump signed an executive order that directed Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to rescind a 2016 policy that relaxed English proficiency requirements for truck drivers.
By the end of June, the department is required to issue new enforcement guidance that will ensure drivers who cannot meet English proficiency standards are placed out-of-service.
Standards for proficiency, and how exactly they will be assessed by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, have yet to be determined.
Representatives of the department and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration did not respond to questions from The Epoch Times about the enforcement process.
White House said professional drivers should “be able to read and understand traffic signs; communicate with traffic safety officers, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station personnel; and provide and receive feedback and directions in English.”
