Wednesday Morning Rant

On Monday, the federal Department of Transportation announced that it, along with DHS and DOJ, has launched a major investigative and response operation targeted at rubber-stamp CDL training organizations that put non-English-speaking, illegal alien or other unqualified drivers on American highways. The first salvo has already been fired at the first layer in the CDL stack: introductory skills training. Federal DOT has, effective immediately, decertified and forced to shut down 110 entry-level CDL training programs.

That sounds like a lot, and it is - but it is also somehow apparently just a nibble at the edges. The press release on the operation is shocking. It starts with what has already been done, and some of it is stuff the agencies have been talking about for a while. Over the past 18 months, federal DOT has forced states to revoke around 30,000 fraudulent CDLs and purged in excess of 8,000 phony, incompetent, corrupt, fraudulent or derelict training organizations from its registry. That is before the 110 it purged in Monday's emergency action, and those that will come next. That sounds like a lot, and it is.

That 8,000 number of training providers removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) registry is astounding. The registry is a Biden-era artifact that registers training providers (driving schools, training organizations, independent organizations that train their own people, etc.) who self-certify that the requirements are met. The registry is public and searchable, and the largest category (Class B behind-the-wheel instruction) has about 3,800 providers listed. In total, going category-by-category, there are just over 28,000 providers currently listed - but there is overlap across categories. A lot of it. At least 739 organizations are listed a total of nine times, since they offer programs in every category. The real number of unique organizations on the list is much, much smaller than the gross number.

This puts that 8,000 figure into perspective. Over the last 18 months, federal DOT has probably purged between a third and half of the list, and the 110 removals in this week's emergency action are just the latest wave. Late last year, FMCSA chief Derek Barrs announced that the agency will be winding down the self-certification model, since it is rife with fraud and general inaccuracies (including dormant and defunct organizations). Dumping a large portion of the registry in 18 months is a strong indicator that the registry doesn't work.

Along with the 110 revocations announced, there are more on the horizon. From the DOT press release:

In July, FMCSA sent 175 investigators in 40 states to conduct nearly 400 investigations of ELDT [Entry Level Driver Training] providers. The investigations uncovered several serious cases of non-compliance ... These targeted efforts resulted in more than 160 notices of proposed removals from FMCSA's TPR. Drivers certified by these 160+ ELDT providers are linked to 239 commercial motor vehicle-related fatalities.

While DOT is working on purging bad training organizations through the registry, Homeland Security Investigations is also a part of this new push, and they will be targeting a further 200 driving schools. Assuming they're as successful as DOT, expect another 80 to be shut down as a result. Outside of that, HSI is following up on more than a thousand other organizations:

HSI, in coordination with USDOT FMCSA and USDOT OIG, disseminated over 1,000 CDL-related business leads stemming from known or suspect business engaged in unsafe practices on the roadways and transportation-sector exploitation

The announcement makes a point to outline state-level response options to FMCSA actions - including withholding funding and the final step of the FMCSA decertifying a state so the state cannot issue new or modify existing CDLs if they don't get their problems under control. Time will tell if the FMCSA actually goes that far, but it is a promising sign that they're at least loudly talking about serious consequences for the states that have let the CDL disaster get to this point.

While it is absolutely a good thing that DOT and other organizations are hitting hard on the fraudulent training and certification problem, the scale of the problem exceeds even my cynical expectations. A 40% conversion rate on investigations is crazy. The fraud, criminality and general rot in the CDL complex seems to run very, very deep indeed.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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