The Trump administration has shut down 110 commercial driver training schools over an English-proficiency rule, and moved to remove more than 160 more — the places where people go to get a license to drive a truck for a living.

NOTUS reported that the 110 were removed as what the administration called the "greatest offenders" and ordered to stop operating immediately. The other group is a step behind: the Transportation Department sent 175 investigators into 40 states in July and came back with "more than 160 notices of proposed removals" for problems that have nothing to do with language — ranges too small to perform the required maneuvers, instructors without the right license, facilities keeping no assessment records at all. The trigger for the first 110 is a decades-old federal rule requiring commercial vehicle operators to be proficient in English, which this administration has decided to enforce not just against drivers but against the schools that certified them.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it simply: "You have to speak English to operate a commercial vehicle."

What the enforcement action actually did

The 110 schools in the first group were, in the department's own words, "associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English language proficiency tests". The remedy chosen was not to retest those drivers or fix the schools' curriculum. It was to remove the schools from the federal training provider registry, which means they can no longer certify anyone.

The order tells those providers to "immediately cease all operations as a training provider, including administering curricula, utilizing facilities for instruction, and conducting behind-the-wheel training." Everyone who was in the middle of a course, or who was planning to start one, loses the school.

Duffy said the crackdown would not affect the country's need for qualified drivers:

"We're not gonna have a problem. We're gonna have truck drivers."

That is the entire published plan.

Who this actually falls on

Getting a commercial driver's license runs through exactly these schools. Federal rules require anyone applying for a Class A or Class B CDL for the first time to complete training from a provider listed on the government's own Training Provider Registry. Take 110 providers off that registry and you have not retested a single unsafe driver — you have closed 110 doors into the trade, with 160 more proposed.

The action was not run out of the Transportation Department alone. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was part of it, alongside Duffy and Derek Barrs, who runs the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. An English-language rule is being enforced against a workforce with the immigration department in the room.

The costs land on everyone else

A shortage of licensed drivers is not an abstraction. It is the reason a grocery shipment is late and the reason a delivery costs more. Freight capacity is a cost-of-living input, and the administration has just removed a chunk of the pipeline that replaces retiring drivers.

Duffy's assurance that "we're not gonna have a problem" is a prediction, not a plan. No replacement training capacity was announced. No timeline was given for the shuttered schools to requalify. No estimate was published of how many drivers the industry will be short.

What the record shows

The Trump administration removed 110 commercial driver training schools from the federal registry over an English-proficiency rule, ordering them to stop operating immediately, and issued notices of proposed removal to more than 160 others for unrelated training violations. The stated justification for the 110 is that they were associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English proficiency tests. The Transportation Secretary's answer to what happens to the trucking workforce was "We're not gonna have a problem." No replacement capacity, timeline or shortage estimate accompanied the decision.

Sources

Trump Administration Shuts Down Hundreds of Trucking Schools — NOTUS, August 31, 2026. Photo: Paul Sancya / AP.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Duffy, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Mullin, White House Fraud Task Force, & Top U.S. Attorneys Launch Historic Interagency Effort to Crack Down on Fraud in Trucking Industry — U.S. Department of Transportation, August 31, 2026.