Some serious road rage is brewing between the state of California and federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over the legality of non-citizen commercial truck drivers in the state.<\/p>\n
As a result, California is set to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses, pulling thousands of truck drivers from the roads due to a violation of state law (1).<\/p>\n
The debate stems from fatal accidents this year in Florida, Texas and Alabama that involved non-citizens driving commercial trucks, as well as one in California. With renewed attention on non-citizen drivers, California made the announcement to revoke thousands of commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) after discovering that the legal status of the holders to remain in the country would expire before their licenses.<\/p>\n
Duffy took this as an opportunity to declare \u201cGavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed\u201d after \u201cclaiming they did nothing wrong,\u201d adding that \u201c17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s office countered, noting that the 17,000 drivers are in the U.S. legally, that the CDLs were issued based on federal guidelines, and that Duffy is \u201cspreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader (2).\u201d<\/p>\n
In September, Duffy announced stricter requirements for future \u201cnon-domiciled drivers\u201d looking to get a CDL \u2014 including \u201can employment-based visa and undergoing a mandatory federal immigration status check,\u201d along with previously-announced English language proficiency requirements (3). However, one 2025 study found that only 10,000 of the current 200,000 non-citizen CDL drivers in the U.S. would meet all of those requirements (4).<\/p>\n
While there are no national statistics showing the discrepancy between fatal truck accidents caused by non-citizens versus American citizens, a comparable study of drivers in Ontario, \u201cCanada’s largest and most ethnically diverse province,\u201d found that \u201crecent immigrants are less likely to be drivers involved in a serious motor vehicle crash compared to long-term residents (5).\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that commercial trucking in general has one of the highest fatal work injury rates of any profession in the country, with roughly 27 fatalities for every 100,000 full-time drivers (6). And a report from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) showed that large trucks accounted for 503,000 police-reported crashes in 2022. Of those, 1%, or almost 5,300, involved a fatality (7).<\/p>\n
Story Continues <\/p>\n
In a separate report, the FMCSA calculated the cost of large truck crashes, taking into account \u201clost productivity; medical costs; legal and court costs; emergency service costs; insurance administration costs; congestion costs; property damage; and workplace losses.\u201d The FMCSA found that the average cost per non-injury crash is $46,765. That rose to $383,168 with an injury, and a staggering $14,578,771 per fatal crash (8).<\/p>\n
The dangers of the road are one of the reasons that the publication Smart Trucking believes the industry is struggling to recruit or retain new drivers. They argue that \u201clow pay and less than desirable working conditions\u201d \u2014 the latter of which it describes as anything from too much unpaid work to driving in bad weather or unsafe areas \u2014 are leading potential or current drivers to look for work elsewhere (9).<\/p>\n
A 2025 survey of more than 500 U.S. logistics professionals by the business news site Tech.co found that 63% said \u201ctheir ability to recruit and retain drivers has either stagnated or worsened over the past year,\u201d while 69% reported that driver shortages negatively affect their ability to \u201cmeet freight demand (10).\u201d Jack Turner, a Tech.co editor, called the driver shortage \u201ca ticking time bomb for the sector (11).\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a lot of people that have the citizenship or residency want to do this,\u201d Rosie Trujillo, the office manager at the Los Angeles Trucking College, told NBC Los Angeles. Instead, she added, it\u2019s often \u201cpeople that come from other countries \u2026 that really want that change in their lives. And they were the ones coming to get their CDL licence.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s why the National Immigration Forum says that \u201cforeign-born drivers have been instrumental in addressing these labor gaps\u201d and \u201cplay an outsized role in stabilizing supply chains (12).\u201d In fact, one study estimates that \u201cimmigrants constitute approximately 19% of all long-haul truck drivers in the U.S.,\u201d a statistic in line with various official government findings.<\/p>\n
The figure also illustrates why losing a large number of non-citizen truck drivers could have a devastating impact on supply chains and product costs across the United States.<\/p>\n
Trending: Are you richer than you think? Here are 5 clear signs you\u2019re punching way above the average American\u2019s wealth<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTruckers are the backbone of America\u2019s daily life,\u201d the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants declared following news of the new non-citizen truck driver regulations. The committee added that the \u201cdecision to sideline a major portion of America\u2019s trucking workforce threatens not only the livelihoods of immigrant drivers but the stability and well-being of the entire country\u201d due to supply chain collapses, empty grocery store shelves and families unable to buy the essentials they need (13).<\/p>\n A closer look at the truck driver shortage by Newsweek showed that such supply chain disruptions and inventory shortages would also cause businesses to \u201ccompete for this lean workforce.\u201d Newsweek also noted that the competition would mean that \u201cfreight costs rise \u2014 costs that will ultimately be passed to consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the American Trucking Associations (ATA), U.S. trucks \u201cmoved 11.27 billion tons of freight in 2024\u201d and \u201csaw revenues at $906 billion\u201d \u2014 both metrics that are down year-over-year from 2023 (14). By potentially removing tens of thousands of non-citizen drivers from the road, the deficit of drivers could look even worse than the ATA\u2019s previous projection of a shortage of 160,000 drivers by 2030 (15).<\/p>\n Smart Trucking believes that increased pay, as well as efforts to make the job more rewarding and recognizing it as an official skilled trade, would help attract more drivers to the profession.<\/p>\n The National Immigration Forum, meanwhile, says that a solution to the truck driver shortage isn\u2019t stricter regulations but, rather, taking steps like reestablishing \u201cthe issuance of visas for truck drivers who comply with all the legal requirements\u201d and using federal funds to expand English language learning and CDL training programs for foreign-born drivers.<\/p>\n \u201cResolving the truck driver shortage,\u201d the forum emphasizes, \u201crequires a multifaceted approach that acknowledges the essential role of foreign-born drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n Join 200,000+ readers and get Moneywise\u2019s best stories and exclusive interviews first \u2014 clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.<\/a><\/p>\n We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n NPR (1<\/a>); NBC Los Angeles (2<\/a>); U.S. Department of Transportation (3<\/a>); SSRN (4<\/a>); Science Direct (5<\/a>); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (6<\/a>); Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (7<\/a>, 8<\/a>); Smart Trucking (9<\/a>); Tech.co (10<\/a>); Newsweek (11<\/a>); National Immigration Forum (12<\/a>); U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (13<\/a>); American Trucking Association (14<\/a>, 15<\/a>)<\/p>\n This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some serious road rage is brewing between the state of California and federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,33077,9176,33076,457,33079,33078,14238,7121,8603,8154],"class_list":["post-51959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-commercial-drivers-licenses-2","tag-dave-ramsey","tag-fatal-accidents","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-national-immigration-forum","tag-non-citizen","tag-robert-kiyosaki","tag-sean-duffy","tag-state-of-california","tag-truck-drivers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}