Variance between state regulations and limited federal regulation also contributed to the proliferation of ‘CDL mills,’ multiple training providers said.
When a semi-truck driver made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike in August 2025, causing the deaths of three occupants in a minivan, debate ignited over the industry that trains truck drivers and the skill level of those who possess commercial driver’s licenses.
The Florida crash, along with several other fatal accidents caused by semi-truck drivers in recent months, triggered new regulations from the Department of Transportation (DOT) on the trucking industry for the first time in three years and cast a spotlight on “CDL mills.”
So-called CDL mills are companies that offer training for the commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) required for truckers, but otherwise sidestep state regulations and “self-certify” with the federal government as trucker training companies.
As the DOT proceeds with its removal of nearly 3,000 such providers from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) registry and puts an additional 4,500 training providers “on notice due to potential noncompliance,” multiple trucker training providers said the changes are long overdue.
The DOT announced the changes in early December 2025, just days before a trucker rear-ended a car in Washington state, setting the vehicle ablaze and killing its 29-year-old driver.
Trucker training companies told The Epoch Times that limited federal oversight before and after the agency first overhauled the rules on commercial driver’s licenses in 2022 has led to major discrepancies in training quality from one company to the next.
Those changes, implemented three years ago, were intended to increase safety in the industry, but led to the proliferation of CDL mills, according to Anne Bauza, president of the Driver Resource Center, a commercial driver’s license training company.
These programs “rush students through the process within a couple of days or maybe weeks, with just a little or no real instruction,” Bauza told The Epoch Times.
“They’re focusing strictly on passing the test, giving them the basic knowledge that they need to take the driving test, but without the other requirements that are necessary for them to build a building block.”
In some states, there’s also a disconnect between the offices that issue licenses and those that track applicants’ immigration status, providers said.
Federal officials had pointed out that multiple truckers who caused fatal crashes this year—many of whom are listed in a Dec. 16, 2025, report from the Department of Homeland Security—had all received their commercial driver’s licenses in California and had entered the country illegally.
In the case of the Florida crash, California officials have said the federal government told them driver Harjinder Singh was in the United States legally with a work permit when they issued him a commercial driver’s license in 2024. Florida officials said Singh had entered the United States illegally via Mexico in 2018.
The DOT also accused thousands of trucker training schools of failing to comply with federal guidelines and forging or manipulating their training data.
Some trucker training companies are “just shameless in their advertising,” according to Jeff Burkhardt, the senior director of operations at the commercial driver’s license training provider Ancora Education.
“One day CDL, two-day, three-day CDL—that’s listed on their websites,” he told The Epoch Times.
By Jacob Burg
