When risk is brought up, the conversation usually centers on rates, capacity and fraud. But recent commentary makes a strong case for another factor brokers can’t afford to ignore: where today’s drivers are learning to drive in the first place.
The FMCSA’s Entry Level Driver Training (ELDT) rule was designed to raise the floor on driver education. Instead, weak enforcement allowed thousands of truck driving schools to self-certify with little oversight, some with no real classrooms, no road training and no accountability. While the agency recently removed roughly 3,000 fraudulent schools from its registry, many questionable providers remain.
Why should brokers care? Because undertrained drivers don’t just create safety risks, they create insurance problems, service failures and reputational exposure for the carriers brokers rely on. Poor training shows up downstream in CSA scores, accident histories and claims, all of which can quickly turn a “cheap” carrier into a costly mistake.
One proposed solution: use crash and fatality data to identify high-risk training programs and target enforcement where it matters most. So far, that idea hasn’t gained traction.
