Finally, actual action against CDL mills!

This tells you everything you need to know:

"109 training providers voluntarily removed themselves from the Training Provider Registry upon hearing investigators were on the way."

 

Hope they still investigate them.

 

Sadly as much as id like to think otherwise. Nothing will happen to them long term. Short term you may see a small handful of token arrests. Maybe 1 or 2 high profile ones to stick onto a stake and parade around. Meanwhile the rest are going to go to ground and wait till trump is out of office and go back to business as usual the second he is gone. Likely even worse then before as companys have gotten used to these "drivers" running at barely enough of a profit to even keep fuel in the tanks and will be pissed they had to pay anything near a profitable rate.and happy to hire anyone who is willing to drive at $0.01 a mile.

 

Catching the first flight back to Hakscamastan.

 

The press release reads like a massive enforcement effort is underway and is already showing results. When you understand the industry, it becomes both less impressive and harder to believe.

I say harder to believe because the press release says "300 investigators across 50 states to conduct over 1,400 sting operations". FMCSA only has about 1,500 total employees, so who are these investigators, what are they normally doing, and how long is this enforcement pace planned for/can be maintained? Secondly - how thorough are these 'investigations'? In less than a day, the investigators were able to vet the instructors, evaluate how the curriculum is being enacted, and discover fraudulent records. It can be done, particularly when one is looking for any kind of reason, but it's a pretty loose sieve that will let a lot of chafe through with the wheat. But I notice no names were named, no bright line drawn between a major accident or any of the ELP violations from last fall, no mention of arrests for fraud - it gives me pause. Let me know when Titan Trucking School - Best CDL School In Minnesota and HABHAB TRUCKING SCHOOL 615-578-0636 get shut down. The only difference between https://www.eldt.com/ and the TTR practice tests is one is free and the other costs money and you have to watch a 'training video' between every test attempt.

Now let's look at the bigger picture. There are over 150,000 'qualified' ELDT providers in the country. There are currently over 6,000 ELDT providers listed as 'removed' between September 2025 and 1/14/2026, most are 'involuntary'. That makes the 500 "notices of proposed removal" seem less impressive. Most of the involuntary removals are for entities that haven't processed any student paperwork in some time or have missed required fillings - ie providers that are no longer providing. That makes me think a large portion of the 100 who 'voluntarily removed themselves' did so because they weren't in business any more. Technically, the City of Green Bay, Green Bay Area Schools, and Brown County are all ELDT providers in good standing - none of them actually provide training, they send people to NWTC and FVTC

But what if it's an active CDL mill that gets shut down? No biggie - a new name, a couple of forms, and a check will have them back in business in a few months. The underlying problems with ELDT remain.

I'd love to believe that this is the beginning of a new era of enforced standards, but then I remember the rhetoric around ELDT back in 2019.

 

CDL School Here. So I just wanted to clarify some of the information that I saw in this thread. My wife and I own Midwest CDL training in Lincoln, NE. I am a trainer and State Examiner and my wife is the same but runs our school. It is correct that FMCSA is conducting investigations/audits on companies on the TPR starting in 2025. Someone said there are 150k companies on the TPR. This is incorrect, there are 16-18k on TPR. FMCSA has removed over 6k by voluntary remove or disqualification between June 2025 to Dec 2025. So, on to this year. I don't know how many investigations have been performed. They have expanded to include any school that has had a student that has had a major incident as well as compliance. And yes as one person noted schools that are removed may just start again with a new name but they do track the staff/principal owners. Our school was recently audited, due to a trainee having a pedestrian hit fatality. He was not in a 26001 vehicle and had graduated approximately 1.25 years prior. This caused a flag in the system for our school. So please believe they are finding more ways to track how the schools are training people. We had to produce all required documents for all instructors, all documents of our program, all our licensing, Dept of Ed approval, all training records for a group of students that they picked, and all information on our training vehicles. All had to be produced within 48hrs, which we did. We got a rating of No Further Action Required. So in government speak that's a 5 Star. We weren't upset to produce them, we had sworn that we would comply and do so. but we are also working hard to turn out good qualified drivers everyday. We also train individually and not groups. So I know that government moves slowly, but I would say that the more they crack down and investigate/audit the better the school have to be. I hope that more schools stick to the English proficiency and have standards like we do here. I hope they investigate all of us honestly.

 

So a big part of the number problem is the BS the FMSCA puts out themselves: Training Provider Registry




While Roger's number was way off, you can clearly see part of the problem here: Here they are listing 18,0002 "providers" and 30,902 "locations." Yet when press reports go out they list how many "fraudulent provider's" that have been removed. Right here they are listing "locations." So what is iti? "Providers" or "Locations" being removed. It is these weasel words that has everyone skeptical of what is actually happening.

This FMSCA web sight lists 6,861 but the database is corrupt in that you have a hard time searching it. You would think on the government payroll you could at least have a web sight that can do as much as grade school programing class. Training Provider Registry

Here Duffy brags he has removed 10,550 'sham' CDL schools. https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/newsroom/...nd-security-team-crack-down-fraud-cdl-schools

"In December 2025, USDOT announced the removal of CDL training providers from the FMCSA’s Training Provider Registry for failing to equip trainees with the Trump Administration’s standards of readiness. As of today, nearly 10,000 schools have been removed.

In February 2026, USDOT announced that more than 550 sham CDL training schools found in violation of the FMCSA’s standards of safety received notices of proposed removal from FMCSA’s national training provider registry."


So, what are the real numbers? What is actually being done vs what is being claimed is done? Is Duffy just putting out fake numbers in press reports? Are most all the schools supposedly removed out of business already? Were the majority removed from the list just pruned out because of incomplete applications?

And, congratulations on being just one of 430 'locations' that have been under review.