Trucking Fatalities Have Increased Since Feds Stopped Suspending Truckers Who Can’t Read English

Traffic crashes involving large commercial trucks have been on the rise since 2016, and some in the industry are pointing to a simultaneous rise in non-English-speaking truckers.

Wyoming is no stranger to deadly large-truck crashes, and had the most per capita — at 5.1 per 100,000 people — in 2022, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). That’s nearly three times the national average of 1.8 fatal truck crashes per 100,000 people.

Data from the National Safety Council shows fatal crashes involving large trucks rising consistently starting in 2016, from about 4,500 in the nation that year to 5,837 in 2022.

By contrast, those annual figures stayed below 4,000 from 2009 to 2014.

To Shannon Everett, co-founder of trucker advocacy group American Truckers United, said 2016 was a pivotal year for deadly truck crash statistics.

That was the year the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a memorandum telling safety inspectors not to suspend commercial drivers for failing to communicate well in English.

The guidance is despite a federal rule that still says a person shall not drive a commercial vehicle unless he can converse with the general public, understand highway traffic signs and signals in English, respond to official inquiries and enter his own reports. 

“Since they’ve told everyone to stand down, no longer enforcing that when they issue the license — these drivers are just being let go,” Everett told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday. “And because of that they’ve become emboldened. We have a flood of (non-English-speaking) drivers entering the United States.”

The “dramatic rise” in fatal truck crashes has risen since the memo was issued, Everett noted — even as the industry adopts more safety measures like dash cameras, collision mitigation systems and driver-facing cameras.

When 64-year-old Colorado resident Scott Miller was hit and killed last June by a truck operator who’d already been deported to Mexico 16 times, Everett, who has been in the trucking industry for 26 years, said he decided to start his group.

“No one knew what was going on. No one in the public knows all these guys are being allowed on our highways,” he said. 

His group draws attention to the prevalence of drivers who aren’t proficient in English, who aren’t familiar with winter driving hazards, and who may be working for cheapened wages through foreign or non-domicile commercial driver’s licenses.

“If this isn’t curbed, we’re going to wake up one day and this is all that’s going to be operating in the American trucking industry,” said Everett.

In Wyoming

At Wyoming’s Evanston-based port of entry, it is “not uncommon” for Wyoming Highway Patrol inspectors to encounter truckers with non-domicile (non-citizen licensed) commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs), WHP Officer Arron Healy told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.

They’re common out of other jurisdictions like Illinois and New York, he noted.

Encountering drivers who aren’t proficient in English tends to be a daily occurrence, he said. Between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, WHP inspectors listed non-English proficiency violation in 410 inspections, he said in a follow-up email.

But inspectors have to follow federal guidelines, including the 2016 memo ordering them not to suspend those drivers for that specific violation, he said.

Wyoming doesn’t issue many non-domicile CDLs of its own, Wyoming Department of Transportation public affairs officer Doug McGee told Cowboy State Daily.

As of Feb. 21, there were 28,297 CDLs licensed through Wyoming, and only 57 of those were non-domicile, he said. To get a non-domicile CDL in Wyoming, the person has to prove he’s legally present in the United States. The test is given in English.

“Generally speaking, those do come from the farm and ranch sector,” McGee added.

Wyoming isn’t one of the 10 states American Truckers United has identified as “recklessly offering a large number of non-domicile CDLs,” said Everett. 

But its status as having the most fatal truck crashes nationwide per capita is concerning and a sign that other states, or Canada, are flooding it with drivers that can’t handle its terrain and conditions, he said.  

“It’s a lot more complicated, challenging (driving in Wyoming) — traversing mountains, tunnels, and the windy conditions you have,” said Everett. “I get intimidated driving through Wyoming.”

The Wyoming Legislature passed House Bill 116 this session, which would void driver’s licenses other states issue to illegal immigrants. It is waiting for action on Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk.

Bring Back The CB Radio

Though based in South Dakota, Mark Telkamp hauls jet fuel out of Newcastle, Wyoming.

When he encounters truckers who don’t know enough English to tell a teller which fuel island they’re parked at, he wonders how they can read the road signs.

“So where does the safety come into play?” he asked. “If you can’t read the signs, you can’t speak English, why are you doing this?”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether any jurisdictions administer the CDL test in foreign languages.  

Truckers used to communicate with each other constantly, Telkamp noted, adding that he misses CB radios, which very few trucks have these days and which some trucking companies prohibit. And he sees a lot of fear in other truckers.

“I remember the days you could get behind another trucker (on the road) and you could trust him to know how to drive,” said Telkamp. “But these guys, they’re so scared.”

The roads teem with truck drivers who are scared of the snow, who drive 30 mph on the interstate when experienced truckers flow along at 50 mph, he said.

“That’s a safety issue. If you’re going down a hill too slow to make it up the other side, that’s a safety issue,” said Telkamp. “If you don’t know how to throw chains, that’s a safety issue.”

Language barriers and the vastly different drive cultures of some of the truckers’ countries of origin are only partly to blame, said Telkamp, but those are problems.

A lack of experience, including among truckers born in the United States, is also a huge problem, he said, adding that it’s making trucking insurance companies “harder to deal with.”

“I understand it’s hard to dispatch a truck to where you’re only running I-40 and I-10 and staying out of the snow,” said Telkamp. “But damn it, these people need to learn somewhere other than out on the road.”

He said the CDL tests should vet people’s skills better.

There is not a dedicated, winter component to the standard CDL driving test under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, but the test still expects people to demonstrate safe driving practices that are relevant to winter conditions, like vehicle checks, speed in slippery conditions and knowing how to handle snow  and ice on the road.

Translator App

Richard Nielsen of Gillette, Wyoming, is not a truck driver. But he works for an industrial service company that handles a lot of freight.

Nielsen first noticed language barriers between himself and truckers a couple years ago. He was working at a power plant in Craig, Colorado, and when drivers brought in coal pulverizer parts, other workers had to use the Google Translate application to do business with them, he said.

“Now, it seems to be more and more prevalent — where you’ve got truck drivers that don’t speak a word of English,” said Nielsen.

Last year, Nielsen was driving to Nebraska for a job and watched a semitruck drive off the interstate, jump a bridge and pile up on the side of the road.

“And when I tried to help him, he didn’t speak any damn English,” said Nielsen. “He was all right – I don’t know how.”

Cheap Labor

Everett’s group just backed the introduction of a bill in the Arkansas General Assembly, House Bill 1569, which would strip state recognition of Canadian CDLs and require English proficiency on a state-enforcement level. It would also require prosecutors to charge vehicular homicide against any trucker who causes a death, who is not a U.S. citizen and who doesn’t have a valid CDL from the U.S. or Puerto Rico.

He said in addition to non-domicile CDL holders, some drivers are operating in the U.S. on foreign CDLs as well.  

Tiny pop-up trucking operations are bringing them in as cheap labor, he said.

“These aren’t your well-known trucking companies. These are going to be one- and two-truck operations that are popping up, operating out of (lax) states and coming into our communities,” he said.

Everett said he doesn’t believe this practice is necessary to fill a trucker shortage.

“If they’re saying there’s a trucker shortage, they’re creating it, by forcing ordinary Americans to compete with slave wages,” he said.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration referred Cowboy State Daily to the respective U.S. states for a count on non-domicile versus regular CDLs, or to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The latter did not respond to a request for comment on non-domicile CDLs by publication time.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.