What fleets should know about recent regulatory changes

Matt Cole:

Trucking regulations are changing at a rapid pace. What do fleets need to know? 

Jason Cannon: 

Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm Jason Cannon and my co-host is Matt Cole. Trucking seen a number of regulatory changes over the last couple of months that could impact truck drivers' ability to operate, but the U-S-D-O-T is promising some improvement to truck drivers working conditions.

Matt Cole:

With changes in enforcement protocol for truck drivers, English language proficiency, the implementation of an electronic medical certification system and more. There's been a lot going on lately with trucking res.

Brandon Wiseman:

There's the things that have changed recently from a regulatory standpoint that are on top of everybody's mind right now. Things like the recent changes to the way that CDL drivers medical certifications get transmitted to their state licensing agencies and how that process is playing out. Now that that's supposed to be a solely electronic process. We're already seeing some hiccups in that, which were kind of expected, but that's causing some trouble for a lot of fleets. So that's top of mind. Also, the English language proficiency rule that has been the talk of the town for the last couple of months. Enhanced enforcement of that rule went into effect in June. So starting to see that data start to trickle in and starting to see drivers placed out of service roadside for not being able to proficiently speak English with law enforcement during those inspections or to read road signs.

So there are still some lingering questions about that. Now, if you've got a driver that gets placed out of service for English language proficiency, what do you have to do to get 'em back in service? What evidence do you need to have at your disposal that they are now proficient such that you can put them back in service? So that's a big issue that I'm hearing a lot of from our fleet clients. And then in terms of longer term, looking out and forecasting what we may see from a regulatory standpoint. Obviously U-S-D-O-T secretary, Sean Duffy just made some big announcements not too long ago from when we're recording this, what he calls trucker driver initiatives, and he announced several of them and we don't have a lot of detail on them, but there was a lot to it, including truck funding for truck parking elimination of the speed limit or mandate some pilot programs for hours of service flexibility. So I think just broadly speaking, kind of waiting to see how those things play out. And yeah, I mean all of those things are kind of bubbling up at the moment.

Jason Cannon: 

It's too early to know how much of an impact English language proficiency returning to the out of service criteria will have. But Brandon has heard that enforcement has already taken place all around the country.

Brandon Wiseman:

Mostly anecdotal at this point because the FMCSA enforcement data that they publish in their databases lags behind by a few weeks. So when we're recording this, it hasn't been a few weeks since that went into effect that enhanced enforcement. So we don't have the raw data yet to know how this is playing out across the country. But anecdotally speaking, I have seen some roadside inspection reports issued to various drivers in various states where they had drivers were in fact placed out of service for failing the English language proficiency assessment during those inspection. And I mean, that's how it should be under the FMCSA new enforcement policy, of course coming on the heels of President Trump's executive order mandating this type of action. So that is something that we're going to track pretty closely at Truck Safe. We started publishing a monthly ELP enforcement survey that's going to look at these ELP violations, how they're playing out over time and across the country, including a heat map of what states are being particularly aggressive with that type of enforcement. So we will be tracking that. It's just a little too early to tell at this point how it's going to play out

Matt Cole:

When a truck driver is placed out of service for an ELP violation. Questions remain unanswered about how to get that driver back in good standing. That could end up being a big problem for the motor carrier.

Brandon Wiseman:

Well, twofold concern, if you have a driver that's placed out of service for ELP and you're thinking about putting them back in the truck to start operating again, my first concern would be that they start driving. You don't have any evidence that they've done anything to improve their proficiency and now they get stopped again. And the concern there is that then they would get written up for potentially jumping out of service order, which would weigh heavily on that motor carrier's CSA scores and could also carry some other serious implications. Fines also potentially disqualifying that driver for a period of time if he gets convicted of that violation. So severe regulatory consequences with putting a driver. And this isn't just unique to ELP, any out of service violation. If you don't get it fixed and then you keep operating, you run the risk of a jumping and out of service order violation.

But it is a bit unique in the ELP context in the sense that that's such a subjective violation. As many in the industry have pointed out that what the original officer may have thought was not proficient, the next officer that stops that driver down the road may think is proficient. And so I think that's what separates this particular violation from others. But still the risk is there. So that's one risk. And then obviously the highway accident exposure that comes with putting drivers back in service who have been tagged with an ELP violation. We've seen these types of cases pop up over the course of the last several years throughout the country, end up with multimillion dollar jury verdicts in cases where the driver admitted to not being able to read road signs or traffic control devices or stuff like that. And so that's a real risk, and particularly now more so than ever ELP being in the spotlight.

And so coming up with a solution is important for fleets. In other words, you can't just put the drivers back in the truck without having any kind of evidence at your disposal that you did something to make sure that they were more proficient than they were originally. Namely some kind of training English language training. What that training looks like is probably going to vary from fleet to fleet, but it needs to have some substance to it be my advice to any fleets that are looking at that. And then once they complete that training and they get a certificate of completion, well then I think you've got some good evidence at your disposal to use as justification for putting them back in service at that point.

Jason Cannon: 

There's also been a lot of talk about non domiciled CDLs issued to foreign truck drivers and DOT secretary Sean Duffy has already directed F-M-C-S-A to audit states about the issuance of those types of licenses.

Brandon Wiseman:

One of the aspects that the federal regulations govern is this non domiciled CDL issue. They allow for the states to issue what are called non domiciled CDLs in two instances. The first would be a foreign national who is not a resident of Canada or Mexico. So Canadian and Mexican CDL holders can operate generally speaking in the US with a Canadian CDL or a Mexican CDL. We're not talking about those drivers when we're talking about non-resident CDLs. We're talking about individuals from other countries that are looking to operate a vehicle that requires A CDL within the United States. So those would be the ones that would be potentially issued a non domiciled CDL in a particular state. So it's essentially a CDL granted to somebody who's not a resident of that particular state who is a resident of a foreign country. So that's one instance where you can get a non domiciled CDL.

The other instance is less common and it would be a situation where if there happens to be a state in the United States that is not compliant, the FMCs a's regulations governing CDL program, the FMCs A can pull the plug on them issuing CDLs and say, we're not going to let you whatever state issue CDLs. And if that were to occur, as I understand right now, there are no states that are in that status right now, but if that were to ever occur and F-M-C-S-A were to say you can't issue CDLs, then the regulations allow for drivers who are residents of that state to go get a CDL in a different state. And that would be a non-resident CDL as well because that driver's not a resident of the state in which they get the CDL. So those are the two instances where the regulations allow for a non-resident CDL.

Again, far and away the more product one is the first one, which is a foreign national that's getting a CDL in a state within the us. Now, what I think is important to note is that the regulations also put some parameters around who can get a non-resident CDL and what they have to accomplish to get one, they have to go through the same process as a resident to get a CDL, meaning they have to go through the skills testing and the knowledge testing to get the CDL, the non-resident CDL. And there are also some other parameters. For example, non-resident CDL holders are not eligible to have a hazmat endorsement on their CDL. And so with all of that said, there are regulations governing it, and you're right that F-M-C-S-A has launched an audit of state issuance of these types of non-resident CDLs coming again on the heels of President Trump's executive order that kind of mandated this and they're doing it in response to some fraud.

That has been, I think, pretty widely reported with the issuance of some of these. I don't know how widespread of an issue that fraud is. I guess that's what the audit's going to find out. But there were some well-publicized news out of Florida. I think that there were a couple of government employees in Florida that were essentially selling these non-resident CDLs to folks who didn't pass the skills or knowledge test and they were issuing them to them anyway. And then we also heard some news I think coming out of California of some non-resident CDLs not even listing the individual's name. It said like No name given was the name listed on the non-resident CDL. So it's those types of stories that I think are prompting this type of audit. So we'll have to see what the results of the audit are and see if that leads to any changes in how we issue those.

Matt Cole:

F-M-C-S-A in June implemented a rule long in the works that is intended to streamline truck drivers medical certification process. Early on though there have been some hiccups.

Brandon Wiseman:

So that change went live on June 23rd. And on that day, I literally received four calls from medical examiners who had no idea about the change, which was incredible to me because as you said, this change has been planned for 10 years, it's been a decade in the making, and I don't know who to blame for that. I don't know if it was the F-M-C-S-A to blame for not getting the word out to the medical examiners as widely as they should have or if it was the medical examiner's fault for not tracking that type of news. It's probably a combination of the both, if I had to guess. But yeah, that seems to be the case that the word didn't get out very widely, and so a lot of medical examiners weren't prepared for it. So drivers CDL drivers are showing up to their facilities to get their physical examinations and they are just continuing to issue them physical med cards as they've been doing for the past 10 years.

The problem of course, is that those physical med cards for CDL drivers are no longer valid proof of that driver's physical qualifications. Those medical examiners are now supposed to be uploading the results of the CDL drivers medical exams to the National Registry Medical Examiners, and then the National Registry then transmits those electronically to the driver's state licensing agency, taking out that middleman process that we've lived with for 10 years where the CDL drivers had to physically take a copy of their med card to their licensing agency and get it associated with their driving record. And so if their medical examiners aren't doing that, then that driver, if their old med card expired, they are not physically qualified even though they hold a physical med card from that medical examiner that didn't know what they were doing. And so that's a huge problem. So any fleets or drivers CDL drivers out there that are listening to this, my recommendation to you is that you call ahead to your whatever clinic or doctor you're using for these medical exams, you got one coming up and make sure that they know about this change and that they're prepared to accommodate it because you don't want to waste your time going there if they're not going to be able to accommodate it.

Now with that said here in July of 2025, there are still, when we're recording this, 14 states that are not ready for this change as well. State licensing agencies, they were, again, that's another group of folks that were supposed to be ready for this for the last 10 years, but now there are 14 states that aren't ready. So the F-M-C-S-A has had to issue interim guidance that says if you are a CDL driver domiciled in one of those 14 states and they've got 'em listed on their national registry website, then you continue to use the old process where you get a physical med card and you have to take that to your state licensing agency and get it associated with your record. But those states are going to become fewer here over the coming weeks and months until we eventually get to a point where all 50 states are on board with this.

Jason Cannon: 

Secretary Duffy also recently announced that F-M-C-S-A will at some point initiate pilot programs to test more hours of service flexibility for truck drivers.

Brandon Wiseman:

We don't have any details, but they did at least announce two pilot programs that they would plan to roll out here in the indefinite future. And the first thing to notice here is that these would be pilot programs. And so if anybody knows anything about how the F-M-C-S-A does pilot programs, they're essentially just a temporary allowance for a small group of drivers to take advantage of these programs. I don't know how they will open this up for participation, but usually the drivers who want to participate have to apply to participate, and they will cut it off at a certain number. The point of the pilot program is for the agency to study the impacts of fatigue on these particular drivers who take advantage of these potentially more flexible rules. So that's how it will be structured. And there are two of them that they announced.

One is called a flexible sleeper birth pilot, and this would be an expansion of the existing split sleeper birth rule that exists. Definitely don't have enough time here for me to explain how the split sleeper birth rule works, but any drivers who are familiar with it and use it routinely. Essentially what this pilot program would allow for, if you are a participant in that program, it would allow you to split your duty periods and off-duty periods in six four and five five splits. Right now, they are limited to eight two and seven three splits, and that alone was an expansion that happened back in 2019 to get to that split. And so this would allow a little more flexibility in terms of how they split their duty periods to accomplish essentially the equivalent of a 10 hour off-duty break. And so a lot of folks have been asking for something like that for years to allow them more flexibility in the ways that they get their rest throughout the day if their truck is equipped with a sleeper birth and they could take advantage of this.

So that would be one pilot program that they would potentially start. The second one is called split duty Periods pilot, and this one is probably the more useful one. Frankly, it would apply potentially to a bigger group of drivers if this ultimately gets expanded beyond the pilot program. But according to the announcement, this program would permit drivers to potentially pause their 14 hour on duty period for between three minutes up to three hours on a given day. And the most useful way to use that would be, for example, if a driver is detained for a long period of time at a shipper's or receiver's facility, very common problem we have in our industry driver shows up at the shipper or the receiver and then they're told to wait there and they have to wait for hours on end while this pilot program would allow them to potentially pause their 14 hour clock because that was the real big problem with those delays, is that under the current rules, the drivers aren't able to pause their 14 hour clock, so they end up running out of hours because of that delay, and they lose a lot of efficiency that way.

And so this pause has something that the F-M-C-S-A has talked about in the past. They've even proposed it in the past and it's just never taken off. But here under the pilot program, it looks like they're going to allow a limited number of participants to potentially pause that 14 hour clock to accommodate those delays throughout the workday and to be able to pause their 14 hour clock.

Jason Cannon: 

That's it for this week's 10-44. You can read more on ccjdigital.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter and stay up to date on the latest in trucking industry news and trends. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you can catch us again next week.