English-language crackdown exposes how cheap labor and CDL fraud are remaking trucking

When Cliff Bates stepped in to help turnaround an Arkansas trucking company in late 2022, he expected the familiar industry story of a down cycle that would eventually rebalance.

Instead, he uncovered what he describes as a “new ecosystem” of trucking — powered by fraudulent CDLs, English-language-proficiency (ELP) loopholes, and a massive wave of non-domiciled foreign drivers — that he believes could permanently alter freight economics in the U.S.

“We’re living in a new ecosystem,” Bates told FreightWaves in an interview. “You’ve got foreign companies bringing in drivers who live in their trucks, don’t go home, make a fraction of what American drivers make, and undercut every rate.”

As ELP enforcement makes national headlines, Bates and OTR Solutions Chief Operating Officer Grace Maher told FreightWaves the real story is far more complicated — and far more destabilizing — than roadside officers asking truck drivers to read signs in English.

Maher said her concern is that national debate is fixated on Spanish-speaking or border-state drivers, when the more impactful trend is the rise of transient drivers from Eastern Europe, South Asia and Central Asia.

“This isn’t just about language, it’s not just guys coming across the Mexican border,” she said. “It’s drivers flying into Kentucky from Uzbekistan or Serbia, or into Chicago. That’s the part nobody is talking about.”

Bates said his background is in real estate development, but in 2017 he invested in a refrigerated carrier. Over the last several years, he saw the fleet grow from two trucks to 140 during the pandemic. But by late 2022, the carrier was losing money.

“All of a sudden, we were losing crazy amounts of money,” Bates said. “We were in all this debt.”

Bates became de facto CEO of the refrigerated carrier around the end of 2022 — and says the deeper he dug, the clearer it became that his company wasn’t just struggling with low rates. It was competing against an entirely different labor model.

“When I got into this thing, I didn’t have any preconceived notions. I’ve never been through the roller coaster that is trucking, the ups and the downs. Once I got involved, I had people that continued to tell me that it’s just a down cycle, that we’ll come out of it when enough carriers that came in during COVID burn out,” Bates said.

By around 2023-2024, trucking rates were worse than they have ever been, he said.

“We used to run this trip from Georgia and back to Mississippi, and it paid $1,300, and two years later it pays $750,” Bates said. “I am wondering what is going on? At what point do we hit equilibrium? Fast forward to today, and rates are still where they are, and I know volumes are down, but rates are still depressed.”

After doing research, Bates said he traces the problem back to a “perfect storm” of federal policies, including the 2016 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration memorandum that told states not to place non-English-proficient drivers out of service, as well as the White House’s claim in 2021–2022 of creating more than 870,000 new CDL holders — without explaining who those drivers were.

He spent months combing FMCSA state-level data and said he found “huge, inexplicable waves” of CDL issuances in a dozen states from 2021–2024.

“The federal government’s own website showed almost half a million new drivers added during what’s supposed to be a recession,” Bates said. “It didn’t make sense — until you look at non-domiciled CDLs.”

A recent Department of Transportation audit revealed at least 200,000 such licenses have been issued nationwide. The proliferation of non-domiciled CDLs has coincided with an increase in trucking capacity across the U.S. Since the FMCSA permitted foreigners to obtain non-domiciled CDLs in March 2019, the industry has added more than 310,000 trucks to roads across the country.

Bates said the Trump administration has since banned states from issuing new non-domiciled CDLs — but continues to allow existing ones to remain valid.

“Why are you willing to jeopardize American lives by leaving them on the road?” Bates said. “If you know they’re unsafe, ban them.”

Maher said the national debate over English-language-proficiency (ELP) enforcement in trucking has veered away from a major issue: short-term immigrant drivers using non-domiciled CDLs who enter the market temporarily, accept bottom-barrel rates, and leave after accumulating cash.

Since joining OTR Solutions when it was founded in 2011, Maher served as the company’s chief operations manager and director of operations. She became OTR’s COO in 2018.

OTR Solutions is a full-service freight factoring and trucking technology company that leverages technologies to provide reliable cashflow, back-office, and operating solutions to U.S. based carriers of all sizes.

Maher stressed that the issue with non-domiciled CDLs is not just about border carriers or Hispanic-owned fleets — many of which she said operate fully compliant businesses — but also a transient subset of Eastern European, Indian Punjabi, and other immigrant drivers moving through the U.S. on short cycles.

“Drivers come in from out of the country for four months at a time… They run hard, they undercut rates, they don’t speak English very well, and then they go back home before coming back and doing it all over again,” Maher said.

“I don’t think anybody would disagree that we don’t want someone on the roads that doesn’t understand our signs, that isn’’t able to communicate. However, those drivers do exist.”

Maher added “American truckers cannot make a living if those carriers continue to take the freight because they just want to get loaded. When I say American truckers, I mean Hispanic-American, Asian-American, African-American. The diversity of American carriers is very broad.”

In October, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced  that 7,248 drivers have been sidelined as of October 2025.

Maher said those numbers likely reflect citations, not actual out-of-service orders.

“These citations can be warnings. That difference is still very black and white,” she said. “If it was as rampant as everyone acts like, where are the pictures of the trucks on the road?”

Maher said legitimate carriers — including OTR’s many Hispanic-owned fleets — have suffered as brokers chase the lowest possible rate.

“The broker will pick up the phone and find the lowest-paying carrier every time until he’s held accountable to make sure they have the right safety scores and speak the right language.”

The result: suppressed freight rates, rising insurance costs, and a “race to the bottom” that Maher says has crushed small trucking businesses since the post-COVID downturn.

Bates said some of the strongest evidence for how cheap labor is affecting the trucking market arrived in recent months, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state police in Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas and Wyoming began using the 287(g) program — which allows state and local law enforcement agencies to help ICE with immigration regulation — to run multi-day roadside operations targeting CDL irregularities.

According to Bates, the results were consistent: between 20% and 30% of trucks pulled over were operated by drivers with fraudulent or non-domiciled CDLs, expired visas, or no license at all.

“It was the same thing every time, 20% to 30% shouldn’t have been on the road,” he said

The numbers match patterns Bates said federal officials acknowledged privately. He recounted a Department of Transportation demonstration where undercover agents posted fake loads and received 80 carrier responses in 10 minutes — 78 of them using non-domiciled CDLs. “Their words were: ‘This was our aha moment.’”

Even the U.S. Postal Service reportedly attempted to ban non-domiciled drivers — only to reverse the policy within a week when it couldn’t find enough legal drivers to run its network.

“There was nobody to run the mail,” Bates said.

Both Maher and Bates also highlighted fraudulent back-office operations, with foreign-run companies dispatching drivers offshore and manipulating safety and compliance systems.

Maher tied the issue directly to the double-brokering crisis.

“Fraudsters will take a low rate because they’re just going to double-broker it,” she said. “That’s why cargo fraud is at an all-time high.”

Bates described Department of Transportation undercover videos showing e-logs being reset remotely. In one example, he said a dispatcher told a fatigued driver:

“If you pull the truck over, we’ll call the police and report it stolen,” Bates said.

Bates connects these practices to several fatal crashes where drivers plowed into stopped traffic at full speed, tested clean for drugs and alcohol, and were believed to have been awake for 40–60 hours.

Bates said his refrigerated carrier — once a 140-truck fleet — eventually merged into another carrier after losing millions.

He said the root cause wasn’t poor management or cheap freight alone, but the new labor economics:

• Long-haul freight has evaporated (“400-mile routes instead of 1,500-mile lanes”).
  

• U.S. drivers can’t get enough miles to survive.
  

• Rates remain below pre-2017 levels despite inflation.
  

• Many carriers are surviving only through equipment-loan forbearance.
  

“This industry is on the verge of collapse,” Bates said. “Every carrier I know is asking lenders for forbearance. We’re going to lose American capacity — and be left with foreign operators.”

“This isn’t a red-or-blue issue,” Bates said. “The administration already stopped states from issuing new non-domiciled CDLs, but no one asks about the ones still on the road. They’re the common denominator in so many crashes. I think the government fears that removing them would seriously disrupt the economy.”

Maher agrees the moment demands attention beyond politics. “We’re asking for safe roads and a fair market,” she said. “And right now, we have neither.”

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