Executive order sparks renewed focus on English language proficiency for truck drivers

This story first appeared in The Long Haul 2025, an annual special section that celebrates National Truck Driver Appreciation Week by looking at Eastern Iowa’s trucking industry.

With good wages, a low bar to entry and an ongoing need for good drivers, long-haul trucking has become an important way for immigrants to the United States to make their way into the American economy.

But this spring, commercial truck drivers who learned English as a second language — and the companies that employ them — faced punitive federal regulations regarding English language proficiency. An executive order signed by President Donald Trump in April says that truck drivers who can’t speak or read English proficiently could be suspended from their jobs as drivers.

However, requiring truck drivers to be proficient in English is not new.

“That law [enforcing English language proficiency] has been on the books a long time,” said Brenda Neville, president and CEO of the Iowa Motor Truck Association. “What has happened is that enforcement has gotten really relaxed.”

In fact, federal regulations have required commercial truck drivers to be proficient in English since 1937. This requirement mandates that drivers can read and speak English well enough to understand traffic signs, converse with the public and respond to official inquiries. Inspectors regularly enforced this regulation, citing drivers who were unable to communicate in English. Inspectors could also place failing drivers “out-of-service,” immediately prohibiting them from operating their vehicle.

Those rules were relaxed in 2016 when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) changed the way the English language proficiency rule would be enforced.

After that point, inspectors no longer placed failing drivers out-of-service. Drivers who were deemed “not proficient in English” could be cited but were no longer immediately prohibited from driving. Commentators speculate that this loosening of the regulation was a response to a severe driver shortage at the time — a problem that frequently plagues the industry.

President Trump’s 2025 executive order brings back the out-of-service enforcement mechanism for drivers who cannot demonstrate English language proficiency during an inspection.

Inspecting drivers and trucks keeps roads safe. Drivers, whether they are native English speakers or not, can be randomly asked to pull over at weigh stations as part of those checks. Drivers who are using unsafe driving behaviors will also be pulled over by law enforcement and could be subject to further inspection.

“Inspectors also look for dirty trucks,” says Kris Gordon, director of recruiting at West Side Transport. “A dirty truck is a sign that a driver is not professional.”

According to the FMCSA website, during these inspections, the truck is thoroughly examined for safety, including the brakes, exhaust, lights and more. In addition, drivers will be inspected. Besides examining the driver’s license and duty records, the inspector will ask several questions: where was their point of origin, and where are they headed? How long have they been on duty? They might also be asked about information on the shipping papers.

While asking these general questions, the inspector will determine whether the driver’s English is proficient, “ to respond to official inquiries by speaking English sufficiently,” according to the website. If the driver is having a hard time communicating in English, inspectors can ask more questions, and they can also show the driver pictures of traffic signs and ask the driver to explain the meaning of them in English. No translation tools, like apps or notes, are allowed.

Drivers who are deemed unable to speak English sufficiently during the inspection will be immediately placed out-of-service. They must park their vehicle and not resume driving.

According to news reports, an undocumented immigrant involved in a fatal crash that killed three people in Florida in August could not answer ten of twelve of the questions he was asked in English after the accident occurred. He was also unable to identify three out of four road signs he was shown. As of Aug. 21, the White House has issued a temporary pause on granting new visas to international truckers seeking to work in the United States.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that immigrants make up about 18 percent of commercial drivers nationwide. Neville knows of a trucking company in Iowa which employs immigrant drivers from seven different countries. So, how do local officials and trucking companies view the tightening of this regulation — something that might affect their drivers?

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“From the trucking industry perspective, we’re thinking about safety,” Neville said. “We think English language proficiency should be non-negotiable.”

The Iowa Motor Truck Association is working to make sure that the English language proficiency tests are administered and enforced fairly.

“We want to see consistency. We want to see objectivity,” Neville said. “We don’t want to see people singled out because of their appearance. So, we sat down with inspectors to discuss how inspections will be done.”

According to Adrienne Gildea of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the FMCSA has also worked to make sure inspections are fair. There are specific guidelines to determine “when a driver’s English should be evaluated and how to conduct that evaluation,” she said in an email. In addition, this information has been incorporated into the training curriculum for inspectors.

Gordon of West Side Transport agrees that safety is of utmost importance, but he is skeptical about how much effect placing a driver out-of-service will have.

“They say that 1,500 people were placed out-of-service since the regulation was tightened,” he said. “Do you think those drivers stopped driving the next day? No.”

Enforcing the out-of-service consequence and determining when the driver is English proficient enough to get back on the road is the job of the trucking company that driver works for. If a trucking company desperately needs the driver, who is to stop them from putting that driver back out on the road?

Still, companies want drivers who can communicate clearly — and ones who won’t rack up citations. Gordon points out that there are already many safeguards in place to make sure drivers hired by trucking companies are proficient in English.

Getting a Commercial Drivers License, or CDL, requires passing a written test in English, as well as a driving and skills test. That written portion, which earns the driver a learner’s permit, consists of about 50 questions about a wide range of topics, from road safety to cargo management to emergency situations.

While a few states allow the written portion of the CDL test to be taken in languages other than English (including California, where the undocumented immigrant who caused the Florida accident obtained one of his CDLs) most states, including Iowa, only offer the test in English.

Trucking companies themselves screen drivers to make sure they can communicate clearly. West Side Transit makes sure that potential employees can speak English well when they conduct phone or in-person interviews.

“If we have a question, we have a standardized English test that they take,” Gordon said. “Only once or twice we had to send someone back.”

Drivers who aren’t yet proficient in English might seek out free English language classes, such as ones offered by Kirkwood Community College.

“What you really have to be concerned about is the owner-operator drivers — one guy with one truck,” Gordon said. In those situations, there’s a lack of oversight of the driver’s English proficiency level.

But for immigrants who are proficient in English, the field still offers plenty of opportunities. While the industry is currently experiencing some oversupply of drivers, that can change at any time, leaving more room for new employees and the opportunity to step into a long-haul trucking career.

“The average driver’s age in Iowa is 58 or 59,” Neville said. “There will be a lot of drivers exiting the industry in the next decade.”