FMCSA Estimates Cost of English Language Proficiency Requirements
The English language. An important aspect of a truck driver’s toolkit, used to communicate with others and understand signs.
When the second Trump Administration began, the Department of Transportation took steps to reinstate English proficiency requirements to drive a truck. If you can read and understand this article, there is a fairly good chance you are proficient enough to pass.
The FMCSA posted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would make driving a truck without English language proficiency an immediate out-of-service placement, meaning the caught driver would be unable to move the freight forward. In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FMCSA gave an interesting statistic: how much money would this change cost? Not in terms of taxpayer dollars, but the money lost by trucking companies who hire drivers without English proficiency.
Details
The estimated cost per hour of driving a truck, as well as the lost revenue for not completing a delivery, varies from contract-to-contract and company-to-company. The FMCSA, however, takes a broad estimate of $800 per full day of the truck sitting still in a parking lot somewhere, compared to being out on the road making money. At a basic calculation of 400 miles per day and $2 per mile, the math checks out, though costs and lost revenue may be higher depending on if mileage rates are elevated.
The FMCSA then estimates it would take a company two business days to get a replacement driver out, and that it would happen about 9,000 times every year, coming to a total of $14.4 million every year.
Conclusion
The good news is that if you understood everything in this article, it is extremely likely that you will not be affected by this change in rulemaking, and that a reduction in drivers by about 9,000 per year will have minimal upward effect on driver wages, allowing truck drivers to benefit while trucking companies reduce the risk of catastrophe.
Interested in reading the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking? You can do so at the federal register’s webpage.
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