Q&A

The DOT's CDL crackdown is a gift for small carriers

What the cleanup of bad CDL schools means for your next hire

As the DOT cracks down on CDL schools and non-domiciled licenses, trucking students and carriers are flocking to training they can trust. One of those is the Truck Driver Institute, a 50-year-old truck driving school with 10 campuses across the U.S.

The institute's chief marketing officer, Lauren Gast Stevens, shares what fleet owners should know about recruiting from trucking schools—plus, what small carriers can offer drivers that gives them an advantage over larger trucking companies.

—Interview by Shefali Kapadia, edited by Bianca Prieto

What should motor carriers, especially small fleets, pay attention to as they hire and recruit drivers?

When it comes to hiring, especially for smaller fleets where every trucker matters and maintaining low turnover is even more important, I recommend taking the time to do more than just look at an applicant’s MVR.

Make sure they received quality training that’s going to put them in a position to get up to speed and succeed with your fleet. Training online or on simulators is no substitute for behind-the-wheel experience. Those drivers are not safe to get on the road without additional training on the job, which costs you time and resources. Plus, they might decide they don’t want to pursue trucking after all once they actually get the chance to try it!

As for recruiting, smaller carriers often struggle to compete on signing bonuses, but can gain a competitive advantage on flexibility, particularly around home time. If you can take each driver’s priorities into account and give them stable home time, freight and routes that match, then you’ll have a much happier and more productive workforce that is more likely to stay with you over the long term.

What do you wish trucking executives better understood about how licensing schools/driver institutes worked?

What trucking executives need to understand is that not all CDL training is the same—and the differences are going to impact them directly.

The schools that invest in their students train drivers who achieve better outcomes. High-quality training means fewer costly accidents, less time and money spent retraining and less career dissatisfaction and turnover. Developing partnerships with those schools means getting better candidates and spending fewer resources on recruitment.

At TDI, we pre-screen students before training even begins to see if they’re a good fit for our carrier partners. We offer job placement assistance during training, so many of our students graduate with jobs already lined up. Our partners trust us because they know that we’re invested in maintaining a high job placement rate for our students, which means ensuring that they’re well-trained and ready for the realities of the road.

With the DOT cracking down on CDL schools and non-domiciled licenses, has that had any ripple effects on your institute?

While it’s unfortunate that there were so many low-quality CDL schools in operation, it’s good that the DOT is finally taking action—and it’s been good for the Truck Driver Institute as well.

Students and carriers don’t want to get involved with a truck driving school that could be unsafe or get shut down. It puts careers and lives on the line. Students who are looking for CDL schools and carriers who are looking to hire truckers are both paying more attention to the quality of training, and TDI is known for not taking shortcuts.

For over 50 years, we’ve been training students on real trucks, in dedicated driving ranges and on actual roads, under the supervision of experienced instructors. That reputation is more important now than ever.

Do you see younger generations expressing interest in truck driving careers? If not, what are the key reasons or barriers?

Entry-level corporate work has shrunk over the past few years as AI is being used to cover a lot of the tasks these employees used to do. It’s generated a lot of interest among younger people in truck driving as a potential career, along with other skilled trades.

The biggest barriers seem to be outdated assumptions or misinformation about their options for making a living without a four-year degree or a 9-to-5 office job.

But once they see that it only takes three weeks to get their CDL and start earning a good paycheck, they actually get excited. It’s also important to understand how getting more experience and endorsements can bring much higher earnings. It’s not right for everyone, but getting to set your own schedule and travel is hugely appealing to people of all ages.

Inside Lane's Take

The DOT crackdown is doing small carriers a quiet favor—it's weeding out the schools that were producing undertrained drivers and forcing everyone to pay closer attention to where their hires learned to drive. Recruiting from a school that pre-screens students and places them in jobs means you're not starting from zero every time. For small fleets where one bad hire ripples across the whole operation, that head start is worth more than any signing bonus.