The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | CDL’s for Sale

Usually I rant about foreign drivers, mostly as cheap labor, but this is just as bad.

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS.

The Somalis came to Colorado by the dozens over a three-year stretch, seeking something they were having trouble getting in their home state of Minnesota: driver’s licenses.

Colorado has a serious problem with their CDL schools just handing out licenses. I honestly don’t think Colorado is alone though. The school I went to in Kansas allowed the school to certify the driving test was completed. I thought my school was pretty good. Cindy’s school on the other hand, three weeks of driving and the school was allowed to perform the driving part of the exam. Which only the owner was supposed to administer, but the instructor gave the students the exam because the owner was busy. After they had her money, the owner washed his hands of her when she needed some help with her paperwork. It was clear he’s a scumbag, the instructor’s a functioning alcoholic and was late every day.

I know the article mentions foreign drivers and I could go on and on, but it’s more about being able to buy a CDL.

More than 3,000 licenses were suspended in Illinois and Florida after a two-year federal investigation uncovered a corruption scandal involving state motor vehicle employees and third-party testers, mostly truck-driving schools.

In Pennsylvania, 2,100 truckers were required to take road tests after it was discovered that a trucking school passed 25 people who never took a road test.

The aftermath of those scandals can ripple across the country, because many states allow drivers to swap commercial licenses from other states. A truck-driving school in Florida was accused of taking cash to pass more than 1,000 drivers who never took a test. Those licenses were then swapped for commercial licenses in states as far-flung as New York, Georgia and Illinois, a federal investigation found.

In Colorado, state officials are investigating problems in the third-party testing system.

You think??? The article mentions the third party system was made to eliminate backlogs in the government DMV buracrocy. What’s it worth to save a little time and effort? If there was a backlog and the state did the actual exam, you could be sure the schools would put more effort making sure the students knew what the heck they were doing. And maybe the CDL and the CDL holder would be worth something.

In addition, the state canceled the license of a tester at Careers World Wide in 2002 after he approved a truck driver’s license for a man who had previously failed four tests.

A state compliance officer who retested that driver gave this harrowing account: The driver did not know how to test the brakes, mistook the windshield- washer fluid for engine coolant and failed to inspect the tires.

On "the road portion of the test, he could not shift gears," the compliance officer wrote. He veered into the wrong lane on a left turn, made dangerously fast right turns, blocked a lane of traffic when he stopped, and waited through eight green lights at one intersection, she wrote.

"He drove as if he was a new student learning how to drive," the compliance officer wrote. "On some of his turns, if there were traffic eight to 10 blocks away, he would not go (probably because he could not shift gears)."

While everyone is concerned about truck drivers that don’t get enough rest, shouldn’t they be worrying about truck drivers that can’t DRIVE!!!