Originally published at: FMCSA registry rife with fake CDL schools, industry exec says - FreightWaves
CDL schools are exploiting federal loopholes and flooding the trucking industry with untrained drivers, industry exec says.
First off… we can all stop saying “CDL Schools”. Most of these bad operators are small operations or even indivuduals, or companies who employ drivers (and they want to train thier own employees in order skirt real training because quality trianing cost money) who have entered themsleves into the TPR as “schools”. Lets call them what they are and always have been; Groups or individuals who have always existed and have always been “training” drivers, they go down with any old truck and trailer and take a test at the DMV/MVD. Real Schools have to be registered, overseen and audited by state egencies which most are. The schools that do thier own 3rd party testing are also highly audited by the CDL programs in each state(yes, I know there have also been some bad actors in the Third Party Testing world but there has also been several state DMV/MVD employees who have done the same, so the point is, bad poeple will conitnue to do bad things). The loop holes of allowing anyone registered with the TPR as schools has only hihglighted the weeknesses that have always been out there. This guy Steve says he operated the largest truck school in the US is also fluffing the truth. Just becuase his web site listes every location they have ever came into to contract trian or spent any amount of time in doent mean they operate at that scale. If they removed the locaitions where they have physically departed form thier website and updated to only the locations they are actually currently training in they would be 1/3 the size this Steve guy claims. Plus this guy is one to talk. His school flys into a city or town, sets up shop temporarily/short term in a strip mall or some other “suspect” office locaition, then usually they find an abandoned mall parking lot or some dirt lot in a field somehwere to train. The he drives down the cost of quality training in the area, and when he has destroyed a market bad enough, runs out to do it again somehwere else. He is not so different from these “bad actor schools”. He thinks that because he’s a member of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association that he’s somehow different from the bad guys but all he’s doing is hiding there inside the CVTA. Because he never gets 3rd party certifed in most states to do any testing, his company doesn’t get the in depth oversight, approval and auditing that a solid, brick and morter school does. What he’s saying isn’t totally BS but he’s not the face or proffesional that should be speaking on the matter… Once he straightens up his own operation then maybe he can talk but until then… Just because someones the loudest or has been doing something for a long time doesnt mean they know what they’re talking about or are doing what 's right. Integrity means doing the right thing, even when no one is looking. Simply just doing whats “legal”, does not equate to doing the right thing…