Members of Congress and DOT leadership have put “CDL mills” in the crosshairs after a string of safety incidents and licensing scandals. Trade press reports and association advocacy letters in late October and early November highlight calls for tougher federal action to identify and remove non-compliant training providers and to tighten English-proficiency enforcement.

This scrutiny follows real-world failures: in one case, Massachusetts state troopers were charged with taking bribes to pass CDL skills tests, underscoring how easily weak oversight can be exploited. In another example, a Louisiana man bribed training providers and state driver’s licensing agency employees to allow truck drivers to bypass both entry-level driver training (ELDT) and knowledge and skills testing.

The distraction: “Just require more seat time.”

In calling for tougher oversight, some are mischaracterizing ELDT rules as failing to require that drivers spend time behind the wheel during training. It’s true: ELDT rules do not require a minimum number of behind-the-wheel (BTW) hours. Proficiency is assessed by the instructor and is based on repetitive skills demonstration—not clocked time. Still, some on Capitol Hill have floated minimum BTW hours as the silver bullet. But, as can be the case in politics, that’s not an honest assessment of the problem. “CDL mills,” almost by definition, exist to skirt the rules. Schools can (and some will) write down whatever number is needed to pass a paperwork audit. The problem, at base, is the training provider self-certification registry and FMCSA’s current resource constraints, rendering it incapable of effectively policing it.

Evidence that self-certification fails: look at ELDs

We’ve seen this movie. ELD vendors self-certify that their devices meet FMCSA’s technical standards to be listed on the approved list. And yet FMCSA continues to revoke devices that never met the specs in the first place—dozens in just the last few years. That pattern is exactly what you’d expect when compliance relies primarily on vendor attestations.

Independent tallies show revocations climbing year after year as FMCSA checks claims against reality. Industry outlets have tracked more than two dozen removals in 2025 alone, hardly a picture of self-policing success.

And beyond device compliance, investigators have surfaced ELD fraud schemes (log falsification to mask hours-of-service violations), again revealing the limits of “trust us” systems absent sustained oversight.

The lesson? Self-certification without robust, ongoing verification produces paper compliance and real-world risk. The fix? Independent certification and surveillance audits.

If the goal is to shut down CDL mills (not just rearrange paperwork), FMCSA should turn to independent program certification, coupled with ongoing surveillance and swift visible consequences for cheaters. Training providers should be required to pass an initial, third-party, or government-administered certification that verifies regulatory compliance before they can upload a single ELDT record. This certification should include regular surveillance to confirm continued compliance. Bad actors should be swiftly removed (within days or weeks, not months) from the training provider registry and face stiff fines. Congressional interest and FMCSA’s latest enforcement posture toward bad-actor schools suggest a growing momentum to this end, and with the 2026 Transportation Bill Reauthorization on the horizon, the timing couldn’t be better.

You can’t eliminate CDL mills by adding hours to a form; you eliminate them by removing the incentive and ability to lie. The ELD experience shows what happens when systems lean on self-certification—eventually, reality catches up. For entry-level driver training, the safest and surest path is independent certification backed with data-driven audits and real consequences. That’s how we upgrade from paperwork safety to actual safety.