News / Warnings that English mandate will cull US trucker numbers

The US transportation secretary’s proposed extension of the mandate for truckers to demonstrate adequate proficiency in English (ELP) to shippers seems unlikely to seriously affect the operations of Walmart and other private fleet owners, but it would contribute to the cull of the driver pool.

Clauses are creeping into trucking contracts that threaten fines if truck drivers lack the required proficiency.

Washington’s crusade to eliminate drivers with inadequate comprehension of English as well as non-domiciled holders of commercial driver’s licences (CDL) from the US trucking scene is viewed by many observers as a catalyst for change in a sector that has been unable to extricate itself from a long running downturn that was showing few signs of improvement.

While demand remains sluggish amid predictions of worsening economic conditions ahead, overcapacity has continued to stymie rate increases.

On 30 October the transportation secretary crowed in a post on X that 7,248 truck drivers had been put out of service for failing to meet ELP standards. This appears to be a small foretaste of the impending reduction of US trucker numbers. According to a study commissioned by JB Hunt, ELP and CDL mandates could eliminate between 5% and 12% of CDL licences – 214,000 to 437,000 – in the coming two to three years.

The impact could be even heavier.

If the administration “is successful in all its immigration-related programmes, it would reduce the driver population by almost 16%, or 614,000 drivers,” the study concluded.

The ban on CDL issuance to non-domiciled drivers alone is expected to remove 194,000 drivers from the market over two years.

Along with individual licences a lot of trucking operations are expected to drop out of the market. The heaviest casualties are expected among the small and mid-sized players, who tend to rely more heavily on immigrants who can be hired for lower wages.

This is precisely where the persistent overhang in capacity is most pronounced, according to Avery Vise, VP trucking at FTR Transportation Intelligence. In the segment of operators with one or two trucks the number of drivers is 39% higher than before the pandemic, while carriers with  six to 100 trucks employ 17.8% more drivers than pre-Covid, he pointed out.

By his calculation, nearly 500,000 trucks have to be removed from the market to return to pre-pandemic capacity levels.

Heavy casualties in the SMB segment of the trucking industry would reduce the pool for brokers to call on, noted Satish Jindel, founder and president of ShipMatrix. This would further aggravate their current predicament caused by low traffic volume.

On top of this, the extension of the ELP mandate to shippers adds to the pressure on brokers to monitor the credentials of truckers in their portfolio, as both sides are under the gun from the Department of Transportation (DoT). According to some sources, both shippers and brokers are increasingly inserting clauses in their agreements with shippers that threaten fines if drivers do not have the requisite command of English.

“A company can’t hire someone and then do so knowing that they can’t speak English. Huge problem,” the transportation secretary declared in his post, adding that shippers would be held to account.

“We have to take a look at shippers, people who load up these rigs and send them across the country. There’s a lot of interaction between the shipper and the trucker. If you can’t speak English, those should be held to account,” he stated.

Shippers who run their own trucking fleets – a trend that has risen since the pandemic – are affected in two ways. They have to ensure that commercial carriers they use employ compliant drivers, and they have to enforce compliance in their own fleet.

This adds a large number of drivers to the equation. According to Mr Jindel, private fleets account for half of the market or more. “Walmart would be in the top five of truckload carriers,” he added.

Observers reckon that the number of non-compliant drivers in private fleets is likely smaller than on the commercial side, as those are mostly run by large firms, and they would face supply chain disruptions on top of possible fines if they employed drivers in violation of regulations.

Some view the cull of drivers as the best chance for the trucking industry to escape from the doldrums, arguing that a large reduction in drivers would finally eliminate the chronic overcapacity.

“This should result in better margins, and that should enable investment,” Mr Jindel commented. “It will increase rates, but they are so low now that shippers shouldn’t be upset.”

He added that US shippers spend less on transport – 3%-5% of their operating expenses – than their counterparts in Germany or Japan.

He applauded the push to ensure truck drivers can understand traffic signs and instructions in English – both in commercial and private fleets – for the benefit of safer roads.

If the DoT can extend the mandates to private fleets, it could, arguably, stretch it to the parcel delivery sector. Such a move would have a bigger impact on the likes of DoorDash and Uber Eats than on the integrated carriers, suggested Mr Jindel.

He added, however, that accidents with a car did not result in “nuclear verdicts” in court cases – unlike accidents involving heavy trucks.