On May 20, 2025, U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Secretary Sean Duffy signed an order mandating that commercial drivers operating in the U.S. be able to effectively communicate in English.
This marks a major step forward for highway safety.
By reinstating enforcement of the federal English language proficiency (ELP) requirement for commercial drivers, the USDOT and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) are returning to a common-sense approach — ensuring that drivers operating 80,000-pound vehicles on our roadways can read highway signs and respond to official instructions in English. This action fulfills a directive from President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14286, “Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers,” and restores a vital qualification standard that had been neglected for nearly a decade.
But the enforcement shouldn’t stop at ELP requirements.
The renewed focus on ELP is a reminder of the importance of enforcing ALL existing driver qualification rules. For too long, the federal Training Provider Registry (TRP) under the Entry-Level Driver Training (ELDT) rule has lacked proper enforcement.
This registry exists to ensure that only qualified, compliant schools are allowed to train entry-level commercial drivers. Without meaningful oversight, unqualified training providers remain in operation. This puts not only their students but also motor carriers and the traveling public at risk.
The FMCSA’s new policy guidance rightly recognizes that a failure to enforce driver qualification standards increases the likelihood of a crash. The same logic must apply to the TPR.
The Commercial Vehicle Training Association (CVTA) welcomes USDOT enforcement of existing laws.
To that point, if the federal government is now prepared to disqualify drivers who do not meet the English proficiency standard, it must also be prepared to meaningfully disqualify AND REMOVE schools that flout Entry-Level Driver Training requirements. Qualified drivers and qualified training providers are interdependent—when one is compromised, the entire safety system weakens.
CVTA applauds Secretary Duffy’s leadership and calls on the USDOT to build on this momentum.
As the agency moves toward uniform enforcement of English proficiency requirements starting June 25, 2025, it must also prioritize the removal of non-compliant training providers from the TPR. Doing so will honor the intent of the ELDT rule, safeguard professional standards and — most importantly — save lives on America’s roads.
Read more about this issue in a letter sent to Secretary Duffy by CVTA and the National Association of Publicly Funded Truck Driving Schools (NAPFTDS), seeking robust enforcement of the ELDT Training Provider Registry.
Andrew Poliakoff is the executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association (CVTA), the largest association of professional truck driver training programs.
He has played a central role in advancing the organization’s priorities, including greater enforcement of FMCSA’s Training Provider Registry, expansion of 529 savings for training and improvement of the WIOA program.
Poliakoff works closely with federal and state officials, industry partners, and CVTA member schools to ensure that training programs meet rigorous standards and reflect the evolving needs of the transportation sector. Under his leadership, CVTA has become a trusted voice on Capitol Hill and a driving force behind regulatory improvements that promote safety, accountability and access to opportunity in the trucking industry.
A graduate of Georgetown University, Poliakoff joined CVTA in 2019 as the director of government affairs, after attending Catholic University Law School.
It’s about time someone addresses the issues with the CDL schools. Not only are they not following the curriculum outlined by the government, they are essentially stealing from the students by not giving them the education they paid for. Just because Illinois does not require CDL candidates to perform coupling and uncoupling to obtain his/her CDL, doesn’t give the schools the right to circumvent the rules and short change the students! AND who in Illinois thought it would be a good idea not to require this skill? Maybe when one of their loved ones is behind a tractor trailer on the highway and the trailer slides off the fifth wheel and kills them, the person/s will revisit this incredibly idiotic decision and change it! We hire both experienced and new CDL drivers. I’ve been told by hundreds of the CDL school graduates we bring on, the same stories over and over about the limit training they are given. We see it and live it and work so hard to give them the tools to be “Professional” Truck drivers before we send them on the road by themselves. There have been many that we have removed from our program for numerous reasons, number one….SAFETY! I’m on the road with these drivers and I know we put more time and effort into the new drivers than the schools do. Think about all the truck drivers on the road that did not receive any quality training? Scary, huh? Not only do I wonder who is driver the truck and what they do or don’t know, but what maintenance has been done on the equipment? I don’t want someone’s brake chamber coming through my windshield because that driver did not know how to do a proper pre trip. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, 17 years as a tractor trailer driver starting in 1978 then many more years in operations. Truck driving used to be looked at as a career, now it’s just a job. Is this what “dummied down” has brought us to?