DOT Shuts Down 110 CDL Schools — and 160 More Are Next

What the DOT Announced

Duffy made the announcement in Detroit, joined by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs, federal prosecutors, and members of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. It was framed as one coordinated action with three moving parts:

The DOT says drivers certified by the providers now facing removal are linked to 239 commercial-motor-vehicle-related fatalities. Over the past 18 months, FMCSA has removed more than 8,000 training providers from the registry in total — the 110 emergency removals are the sharpest single action in that campaign.

How FMCSA Found the Schools

The 110 emergency removals came out of a data match, not field visits. Since June 25, 2025, failing to demonstrate English-language proficiency during a roadside inspection has been an out-of-service violation — a driver who can't read highway signs or respond to an officer in English is pulled off the road on the spot. More than 28,000 drivers have been placed out of service on that basis since the rule took effect, after the category recorded almost no violations in 2023 and 2024 combined.

FMCSA took the roadside records for those cited drivers and cross-referenced them against the Training Provider Registry to see which schools had certified them. Schools that showed up repeatedly — Barrs said every one of the 110 had passed at least 10 drivers subsequently cited for English violations — were flagged for emergency removal. The 160-plus proposed removals came from the separate physical-inspection sweep, where the problem was the training itself: no range, no qualified instructors, no records.

Where the Schools Are

The DOT released a partial state-by-state breakdown of the emergency removals. It covers 84 schools with a physical location across 20 states, plus 23 online-only providers — 107 in total. DOT has not published a complete list naming all 110 schools, so the last three aren't accounted for publicly. Four states make up more than 40% of the disclosed list:

The concentration in Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and Florida tracks freight volume and population — but Utah's nine closures and the 23 location-less online providers are the outliers FMCSA points to as evidence of schools built to move volume rather than train drivers.

The Schools Named — and the Crashes Behind Them

The DOT singled out three providers to illustrate the pattern:

“Every single one of these schools passed at least 10 drivers subsequently cited for English violations,” Barrs said. Duffy put it more bluntly: “You have to speak English to operate a commercial motor vehicle.”

Next: The Third-Party Skills Tester Audit

The 110 schools are the visible part of the action. The nationwide audit of third-party CDL skills testers is the part with a longer tail.

Most states don't administer every CDL skills test themselves. They authorize third parties — training schools, employers, community colleges — to run the behind-the-wheel exam and report a pass or fail back to the state licensing agency. That's the point in the process where a driver who can't perform the maneuvers, or can't communicate in English, is supposed to be stopped. When a tester rubber-stamps results, the state issues a real, valid CDL on top of a test that never happened.

FMCSA now plans to review those testers and the state programs that oversee them. States with deficient oversight will be required to implement corrective action; the enforcement lever is federal highway funding — a state that doesn't comply can lose a percentage of its apportioned funds, escalating annually, and ultimately face decertification of its CDL program. States reported as early focus areas include California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

What ELDT and the Training Provider Registry Actually Are

The Entry-Level Driver Training rule has been in effect since February 7, 2022. Anyone getting a first CDL, upgrading from Class B to Class A, or adding a first passenger, school bus, or hazmat endorsement must complete training from a provider listed on FMCSA's Training Provider Registry before they're allowed to take the state CDL skills or knowledge test.

Providers self-certify that they meet the federal curriculum and facility standards to get listed. That self-certification model is what critics — including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — have long argued invites fraud: there's no pre-approval inspection, so a provider is on the registry until FMCSA has a reason to take it off.

Removal from the registry means the provider must immediately stop operating as a registered ELDT provider. Emergency removals take effect on notice, with an opportunity to respond afterward; proposed removals come with a window to contest before they're finalized. Certifications a provider issues after removal don't count toward the ELDT requirement.

Why This Matters for Freight Brokers

This is a driver-credential story, and brokers vet carriers, not individual drivers. But the exposure runs through the carrier.

A carrier that leans on CDL-mill schools tends to leave a data trail before any single driver's license becomes a problem. English-proficiency out-of-service events, failed inspections, and violations for basic vehicle operation show up in roadside inspection data and feed the carrier's Unsafe Driving and Driver Fitness BASIC scores. A carrier whose out-of-service rate is climbing, or whose inspection history is thin relative to its fleet size, is the one to ask questions about.

The liability logic is the same one from Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II: after a crash, the question is what the broker knew or should have known. A crackdown this heavily publicized — 110 named schools, a state-by-state list, 239 fatalities cited in a federal press conference — is squarely in the “should have known” column.

How This Fits the Broader Crackdown

The CDL-school action is one piece of an enforcement push that has been building since early 2025. It runs alongside the national non-domiciled CDL purge, in which FMCSA has ordered 26 states to void licenses issued outside the tightened rules; the English-language out-of-service order in effect since June 2025; and a Homeland Security Investigations sweep of more than 200 driving schools across 23 states. The Justice Department has stood up a Joint Task Force Crossroads of America — DOT, FMCSA, FBI, DEA, HSI, ICE, and ATF — targeting fraud along Midwest freight corridors.

Congress is moving too. “Dalilah's Law,” named for a child severely injured in a crash involving an unqualified driver, cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee 35–26 and would write English-only CDL testing and tighter non-domiciled rules into statute rather than leaving them to executive guidance.

For brokers, the throughline is that driver-qualification failures are now a documented, public, actively enforced category of risk — not a background assumption. The carriers that pass a modern vetting process are the ones with a clean, consistent inspection record behind them.