New English exam sidelines 6,000 truckers, testing U.S. supply chain

Eli Soler recently added an element to his classes for would-be commercial truck drivers: a mock roadside English-proficiency test.

“How many hours have you driven? Where is this load going to?” Soler asks Spanish-speaking students while pretending to be a police officer.

Soler, who runs a Miami-based commercial driving school, wants his students to avoid the fate of thousands of commercial truckers who failed roadside English-proficiency tests.

Between June 1 and Monday, about 6,000 truckers were pulled off the road for English-language proficiency violations, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration data.

On Wednesday, the Transportation Department announced it would withhold more than $40 million in funding to California, accusing the state of failing to comply with the new English-proficiency requirement. “California is the only state in the nation that refuses to ensure big rig drivers can read our road signs and communicate with law enforcement,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.

The new rules were put in place in May by Duffy. The agency has said the test is needed to keep the roads safe, pointing to an August collision in Florida in which a commercial driver, Harjinder Singh, allegedly made an illegal U-turn, resulting in the death of three people. After the crash, Singh, 28, who was born in India, failed an English-language proficiency assessment, answering only 2 of 12 questions correctly, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which has launched an investigation of the crash. Singh, who was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide, has pleaded not guilty.

“Americans are a lot safer on roads alongside truckers who can understand and interpret our traffic signs,” Duffy said in a statement after signing the May order.

But analysts say there is no data showing a correlation between English proficiency and accidents involving commercial truck drivers. And industry leaders are concerned about a potential worker shortage if too many drivers are pulled from the roads. Some advocates worry that Latino drivers, who make up 15.3 % of the industry, will be unfairly targeted by officers administering the tests and say they want more details about how and when they will be tested.

“English proficiency is such a subjective standard,” said Brandon Wiseman, president of Trucksafe Consulting, which advises carriers on how to improve safety programs. “What one officer might think is proficient, another officer down the road might think is not proficient. That makes it tough.”

The Transportation Department hasn’t released the questions included in the roadside test, which are administered by state police. But industry experts say the test typically includes questions such as: Where are you going? What was your starting point?

Trucking schools like Soler’s are rushing to prepare their students. “This is an industry that requires both skills, the English to communicate and the proficiency to drive equipment,” said Soler, who emigrated from Cuba in 2009 and learned English to advance his career.

Tampa-based Trucking Services and Logistic has started offering an online class and selling textbooks that drivers can use to improve their English. The aim is to prepare drivers with basic greetings or key words they may need in emergency situations, said CEO Viviana Granados Diaz.

“We can’t argue with regulations,” Granados Diaz said. “We, as a company, think we are here to offer a solution for them.”

Most drivers who don’t speak fluent English are able to rely on GPS to safely navigate the roads, said David Sanchez, a 28-year-old driver based in Fort Worth. Sanchez, who was born in California but grew up in Mexico, said he learned English in high school after his family returned to the United States, and frequently practices with his wife, a native English speaker, but said he worries about older drivers who may have a harder time adapting.

“A big chunk of the industry is made up of Latino drivers who work really hard and safely, even if their English isn’t perfect,” Sanchez said.

“The young people are going to learn English pretty quick, but there are a lot of older drivers that have been trucking a long time who are probably going to lose their job,” he said.

The English proficiency exams have been given for years, but in 2016 the Obama administration loosened the rules, saying drivers who failed the tests would get a ticket rather than being pulled off the road. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency within the Transportation Department, said at the time there was a lack of evidence tying a lack of English proficiency to trucker accidents.

Under the Trump administration’s policy, drivers who fail the roadside English proficiency exams are no longer allowed to operate a commercial truck until their issues are addressed. But industry officials say there isn’t a clear process for drivers who want to return.

According to the FMCSA, most commercial crashes are caused by the driver falling asleep or otherwise becoming impaired. In a 2023 report, the FMCSA said an estimated 3.8 % of commercial driver’s license holders have limited English proficiency.

Still, the department is promising consequences for states that don’t strictly enforce the English proficiency rules, an effort that appears to align with the Trump administration’s push to designate English as the official language of the U.S. In August, Duffy announced that California, Washington and New Mexico would lose federal funding if they didn’t enforce the new proficiency requirements within 30 days.

Officials in Washington and New Mexico said they were complying with the rule. Washington “is still working diligently to implement this abrupt policy change,” Washington State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste wrote in a letter to the Transportation Department. New Mexico said it had placed 97 drivers out of service since the rule was enacted.

This week, DOT announced California would lose funding related to its Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, which helps states pay for roadside inspections among other things. “Let me be clear – this is valuable money that should be going to the great men and women in California law enforcement, who we support,” Duffy said in a statement.

The California Highway Patrol didn’t immediately return a call requesting comment.

As of Monday, California had pulled seven drivers off the road for failing roadside English proficiency tests, according to the Post analysis of government data. In comparison, more than 500 drivers in Texas lost their ability to operate commercial trucks after failing the exams during that period.

In Laredo, Texas, one of the busiest ports for drivers coming from or going to Mexico, more than 90 % of people speak Spanish at home, according to the Census Bureau. The new rules are “going to hurt a lot,” said Adalberto Campero, CEO of trucking company Unimex, which has offices in Laredo and Pharr in Texas.

The English proficiency test can be administered differently state by state, making it hard to prepare drivers if they are pulled over, Campero said.

“It’s going to cause a lot of singling out of Mexican individuals or individuals of Hispanic heritage, and maybe stereotyping,” Campero said. Drivers are “scared now. They’re threatened, they’re intimidated … because they feel like their livelihood could be taken away.”

Pablo Rangel, 29, who lives in Reynosa, Mexico, and crosses the U.S. border frequently to make deliveries, said that while he speaks English pretty well, he questions whether the new measures are necessary.

“Most of our time is not spent having conversations,” Rangel said. “So it’s a little bit unfair to suddenly change those requirements and place proficiency in something that isn’t part of our job.”

Thousands of miles from the border, at a truck stop in Jessup, Maryland, this month, drivers showered and bought food. Tired-looking men wandered around the sleepy service center, and several could be heard speaking Spanish and other languages.

Abu Rakhmat, 28, sat in a massage chair, trying to relax before heading back on the road. Rakhmat, who immigrated to the U.S. in 2019 from Belgium, speaks Uzbek, Russian, Arabic, French and English.

Rakhmat started driving professionally two months ago and said he can see both sides of the English proficiency issue. There is a benefit to being able to speak English, especially in emergency situations, he said, but “not all non-English speakers are bad drivers.”

“Some people who’ve been driving their whole lives don’t speak English,” Rakhmat said. “But they’re way better than me at driving trucks.”