The White House launched a campaign Friday to put military veterans behind the wheel of big rigs, filling the gap left by more than 56,000 immigrant truckers yanked off the road in a federal licensing crackdown — and putting Americans who served ahead of foreign nationals who shouldn't have had licenses in the first place.
The stakes are straightforward: supply chains run on trucks. The administration just removed tens of thousands of drivers from the road, and the question is whether veterans can step in fast enough to keep freight moving — and whether the states fighting to keep those revoked licenses active care more about cheap labor than highway safety.
The new "Freedom Haulers" campaign lets veterans who recently drove large military vehicles skip the skills test for a commercial driver's license. Active-duty soldiers can attend commercial driving school during their final six months of service. The GI Bill covers 100% of CDL training and, for some, a housing allowance while they're in school. The campaign is part of a broader interagency veterans jobs push the White House will announce Monday.
The driver shortage didn't happen by accident. The Transportation Department started enforcing existing English-language requirements for truckers last summer. Then came an August crash in Florida: a truck driver from India performed an illegal U-turn that killed three people. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that driver should never have been licensed.
Audits in every state uncovered thousands of non-domiciled commercial licenses still valid long after immigrants' work permits had expired — or issued without proper citizenship verification. The result: roughly 26,000 drivers pulled off the road for failing to demonstrate English proficiency, and another 30,000 licenses canceled because they were issued illegally, according to the Transportation Department.
The feds tried to withhold millions in highway funds from California and New York for refusing to revoke thousands more licenses. That's now tied up in court. Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Carolina have been warned they're next.
"We are removing more and more dangerous foreign drivers off our roads every day and restoring the integrity of America's trucking industry," Duffy said. "Our new Freedom Haulers campaign will help build on these successes and get the word out that there's never been a better time for America's former service members to get behind the wheel of a big rig."
The trucking industry — which has been pushing for years to shut down sham CDL mills and get unqualified drivers off the road — is backing the plan. Derek Leathers, chairman and CEO of Werner Enterprises, said veterans already make up 15% of the company's workforce and bring "the highest levels of leadership, discipline and technical skills." Cole Stevens, chief strategy officer at his family's namesake trucking company, said veterans' "integrity, accountability, and mission-first mindset make them an incredible asset."
Neither outlet covering the story noted any organized opposition to putting veterans to work — though the states lawyering up to keep illegally issued licenses active are effectively siding with cheap foreign labor over American workers and road safety.
The open question: how fast can veterans cycle into those cabs, and how much friction hits supply chains in the interim? The industry says it wants them. The administration says it's clearing the path. Now it's on the vets to decide if the offer is worth taking — and on the holdout states to explain why they'd rather fight for drivers who never should have been licensed.
