Emergency removal of 11 California trucking schools could soon impact consumers

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation made a major announcement Monday morning, impacting truck drivers and a potential economic fallout.

It's all aimed at reducing highway fatalities and targeting fraud by removing 110 commercial driver's license schools across the nation. This was in part responding to fatal truck accidents in Florida and Southern California involving drivers from California.

The emergency removal is associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English language proficiency tests, according to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

"Immigration status should not be the basis of qualification. Somebody's a good driver and somebody's a bad driver," Lathrop's North American Punjabi Trucking Association CEO Rama Dhillon said.

This news was not shocking for some truck drivers across the nation.

"We were learning that there are a lot of audits going on," Dhillon shared. "This was something that we felt in the industry was upcoming."

This emergency shutdown included 11 truck driving schools in California spanning from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

Dhillon says it was about time.

"The CDL rule says that if a driver is going to drive a 53-foot trailer, they should get training on a 53-foot trailer. That was required by law, but nobody was enforcing it," he explained.

Dhillon said in 2017, there were around 2,700 certified truck schools nationwide. Two years later, that number jumped to 32,000.

"Hopefully we're going to get trained drivers," he shared. "We're going to get properly trained drivers. We don't have a shortage of people who want to drive. We have a shortage of good drivers. That is a priority."

While he supports this move, the economy could see an impact.

Sanjay Varshney, a professor of finance at Sacramento State University, says it may take some time for the effects to hit the consumer. The two biggest impacts could be seen at the grocery store and at the pump.

"What I would call goods of daily use that will that basically the ordinary folks out there are buying," he explained. "The concern would be: Will this basically cause unnecessary inflationary pressures because of the cost being passed on to the consumer?"

This move by the Department of Transportation comes at a time when consumers are already paying more for groceries, gas and other essential items.

"It's a gradual process, but don't forget that every time the pendulum swings, it can swing back the other way too," Varshney said.

Dhillon also said there needs to be better avenues for good drivers to make their way into the industry, saying it would benefit most if pay was based on performance.