by Kevin Killough
As the U.S. Department of Transportation cracks down on schools that crank out commercial driver's licenses and requires tests be conducted in English, states like Wyoming with long stretches of highways, are also enforcing laws to ensure big rig drivers can read and understand English.
High-profile fatal accidents on America’s highways involving semi-truck drivers with limited proficiency in English have led to a nationwide effort to crack down on the issuing of commercial driver's licenses (CDL) to such drivers.
Statistics that the Wyoming Highway Patrol released last week show how widespread the problem is. Out of 16,676 inspections on commercial vehicles in 2025, 676 resulted in violations where drivers failed the interview because they weren’t proficient in the English language.
This was the eighth most frequent violation Wyoming officials cited drivers for, and these are the numbers for just one state. Recently, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office in southern Wyoming, Cowboy State Daily reported, had a three-day operation in which 82 commercial trucks were stopped, and 32 illegal immigrants were arrested.
One American driver’s experience
Darryl Orr, a long-haul truck driver based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, told Just the News he sees this problem on the road all the time, and it creates dangerous conditions for all drivers.
He said he was recently at a truck stop in Nebraska. A driver who didn’t speak English was trying to pay for gas using the company credit card. The card wasn’t working, and the cashier was telling the man that he needed to contact his company to work out the problem. Yet, he couldn’t understand what she was telling him.
It was 11 o’clock at night, and the cashier wasn’t getting anywhere. In an effort to help her, Orr said he made gestures with his hand to say “broken” and “call.” He then pointed to the company phone number on the driver's paperwork.
“He finally got the idea,” Orr said.
While the interaction with the cashier wasn’t putting anyone in danger, if the driver couldn’t understand what the cashier was telling him, it’s unlikely he could read and understand road signs. Yet, he’s driving a truck on America’s highways.
Driver shortage creates opportunities
Orr said that many immigrant drivers get their licenses in states like California that are very lax on English requirements. Industry estimates place the shortage of drivers at about 60,000 to 80,000 drivers. To fill that labor gap, companies have been relying on foreign-born drivers, with nearly one in six truck drivers in the U.S. being an immigrant.
While there are a lot of good companies out there that make sure the drivers they hire are safe, capable of reading and understanding road signs, and have good records, many others rush to fill positions, Orr said. “Some of the lesser companies just hire a warm body,” Orr said.
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced this week it had begun targeting “CDL mills.” More than 550 training schools for CDLs were closed following 1,400 sting operations by 300 investigations in all states, according to The Center Square.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found that many of the shuttered schools had no qualified instructors, used fake addresses, and provided inadequate training for things like transporting hazardous materials.
Last month, the USDOT announced that all commercial driver's license tests will be administered in English.
Trucking industry akin to the "Wild, Wild West," Duffy says
“What we’re doing is implementing a rule that will say there’s one language in which you can take your test. It’s English only. You take the test in English. You can’t speak English, you can’t read English – you’re not going to do well on the test,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference, The Center Square reported. “For too long, the trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West, where anything goes and nobody asks any questions,” Duffy said.
Orr said the more reputable companies have their own schools and conduct a lot more scrutiny of prospective drivers. He attended one for a company he worked for. He was sitting next to a man from Lebanon. Orr said the man could speak English fairly well, but then he wasn’t able to fill out his application.
Cultural and language barriers
“If you can't read that, how can you do this course? Because it's a lot of reading and learning. And they went to give him the English test and the reading test, and he failed. And they had to let him go,” Orr said.
He said there are also cultural differences that create problems, where the culture of law and order on our nation’s highway isn’t something into which all foreign drivers easily assimilate. A zero-tolerance standard for alcohol use is standard in the American trucking industry, for example, but some foreign drivers from other countries might not think much of taking a drink during a stop.
“I've seen where they ignore the signs coming out of the Eisenhower Tunnel, and they're doing 80 miles an hour down the mountain, where the speed limit is 45 on the other side,” Orr said.
More about safety than immigration
The tunnel Orr was referring to is on a dangerous stretch of I-70 that twists through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. In 2019, truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos hit speeds of 85 miles per hour while heading east toward Denver along the route after leaving the tunnel.
Aguilera-Mederos, who was born in Cuba, lost control of his brakes, which resulted in a 28-vehicle pileup involving 24 passenger cars and four semi-trucks. Four people died in the accident. Video captured before the crash showed that Aguilera-Mederos passed a truck ramp for runaway vehicles before the crash. Throughout his trial and when he spoke to police, Aguilera-Mederos had to use a translator due to his limited ability to speak English.
Orr said that he understands why some people might be sympathetic to immigrants who come here and try to earn an honest living.
At high speeds, fatalities become the expected outcome, not the exception
“I get that they're doing a job. But would you trust a pilot flying your commercial plane with 200-plus passengers on board that didn't understand English or read the instruments?” he said.
One well-regarded CDL school explains the dangers of big rig crashes on the highway. At 50 mph, the energy is almost three times greater than at 30 mph, and at that speed, in collisions with cars, the smaller vehicle is often crushed or pushed aside violently, leaving little chance for its occupants' safety.
But at 70 mph, the forces are overwhelming. Fatalities become the expected outcome, not the exception. At this speed, a truck crash is often indistinguishable from a demolition event, with energy levels beyond what crumple zones or airbags can counteract.
An 80,000-pound truck cruising down the interstate at 80 miles per hour may not be carrying 200 passengers as would an aircraft. But it can do a lot of damage, and accidents — especially at higher speeds — are more often than not deadly.
Kevin Killough
Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/inspection-truck-drivers-one-state-netted-over-600-drivers-who-couldnt-speak-english
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