As someone who goes to LAX (and this very spot) almost weekly, you’re right. Plenty of room to avoid this.
Also, it’s impossible to accidentally end up here. You pass by a multitude of signage warning/alerting you to the fact that you are entering an airport, this isn’t somewhere you just end up, and I have a really hard time believing his GPS told him to do this as well.
Yeah I know, im saying a trucker gps would take you to the right part of the airport for deliveries, where a regular gps, would've taken him to passenger terminals if he'd simply asked to go to the airport.
The problem is some states are lax about testing, and don't notice schools selling licenses. Selling as in the person shows up with considerable cash and is given a license without any testing.
There's been some high profile incidents that involved people who crossed the border illegally and subsequently purchased a license only to wind up killing other motorists. In some cases the drivers did not speak English and required an interpreter to facilitate the police investigation. Not a crime in itself, but makes one wonder how do they read signs in English if they can't speak it.
Keep in mind some of these drivers didn't possess a legally acquired regular auto license.
My drivers are all 1099, but they have to have 4 years of over the road experience and we call their last 3 employers for verification and they still have to go through training. We dont just hire any random person that shows up with a CDL, although its apparent some companies, mainly the bigger carriers, do.
Yes. Most big companies do. Theres a local bridge by me that averages over 50 bridge strikes a year. We are up to 73 this year. The state spent 3m on installing flashing lights for overheight trucks 2 years ago. Didn't help. Theres 7 signs within 1/4 mile of the bridge and they even installed a turn around just before the bridge. Doesnt help. The next state over got busted for handing out over 5k cdls for nothing more than paving driveways and doing landscape and home repairs at their houses. This country is exponentially corrupt. Anyone who's over 30 years old has to see it. 10 years ago that bridge would get hit maybe once or twice a year by a local with a uhaul. Something changed but nobody wants to admit it
Why don't they just install a barrier, like a sacrificial pipe frame the same height as the bridge, so you hit it before the bridge? Pretty common strategy for bridges/underpasses with a history of impacts like that.
I used to live in Needles California (God help me) and there is a super weird, totally not to standards, heavily used underpass under a railway that connects needles to Arizona. People crashed into it like daily lol. The person who lives next door set up a camera and has a Facebook page where they post the incidents (called needles underpass I think). They were installing a barrier finally when I got rid of Facebook, I wonder if it fixed things. It was a one way traffic underpass where you had to stop, so it was all slow motion impacts at least. Mostly people towing RV's, service trucks, shit like that. It also flooded with any rain. No idea how that got built in the first place, such an absurd piece of infrastructure to be on a heavily used road.
Oh, they can. I've seen some absolute beasts, essentially a second sacrificial underpass. When one driver fucking up can have multi-hundred million dollar economic consequences from prolonged bridge closures, they figure it out.
At 35 mph (about 16 meters per second), a semi trucks kinetic energy is 1/2 × mass × velocity².
80,000 lb semi at 35 mph has about 4.6 million joules of kinetic energy same as roughly 2ish lb of TNT exploding or a car hitting a wall at about 70-80mph.
Those little “truck stopper” pipes or cables hanging before low bridges? They’re made to rip roofs off slow, too-tall trucks or RVs. But against a loaded rig doing 35 or faster they’re basically dental floss. The truck will snap them like nothing and keep rolling with almost all that energy, ready to demolish the overpass.
It's complicated. These mega carriers are self insured, while my broke ass is not. It's my insurance company that requires the experience. Most of these mega's have their own driving schools, so they will run people through a 6 week course like cattle and hand them the keys. Thats why 99% of this dumb shit you see has CFI or Warner or some other big name on the door. The solution is better training.
You talk about a six week course not being enough but, How does a driver get experience without sfurther driving, you state and i agree with you its too costly for smaller carriers to employ and help these noobs. But at the end of the day new drivers need seat time to get better, drivers will fail and others will succeed.
Take the insurance cost out of the equation, companies can only pay an instructor to be in the cab with the noob for so long. You aint getting enough experience to become that much better at driving. Fuck ups would still happen
You take a crap trucking job for three years or so, and keep a clean driving record. Some companies have their own driving schools and require a year or two of service after passing.
I know that the guy i was commenting to was talking negatively about people with less experience being hired by those places. And companies new drivers training would never amount to years of experience max is two months.
I believe it ends up taking a while to shut those operations that are just handing out licenses. Many of them are the trucking companies themselves, I think. Those ads for companies that will train you may well be authorized to issue your license.
I worked as a bus mechanic and held a class B commercial for road tests and recovery. Our operation had authorization to train, test, and issue licenses. They do get audited periodically. My license went up for audit where I had to go to DMV to retake commercial test. As I understand, if too many of the ones they pull for audit fail, they dig deeper into the operation. At the DMV, I was the tester's first subject who even made it out of the yard that day. Everyone else he tested failed precheck or skills test before even being able to hit the road.
Point being, it's slow to shut those places down that are just handing out licenses. You'd think they would set things up to heavily discourage this like massive fines or some lability from what their licensees do. But still seems to be profitable and thriving to operate this way.
Licensing has been privatised, and government is continually being lobbied to "stand back and let the market self-regulate". Because government red tape is the worst evil in the world!
The red tape is red from blood. But no, let's let industries regulate themselves where safety is inversely proportional to profit. What could go wrong.
From my youth a long long time ago. High school thinking about being a truck driver. Looked online at reviews, CDL school had an illegal 18 wheeler. So a cop stopped it. The student driving got 5k+ in tickets in his name and the instructor laughed at him. Immediately decided truck driving was not for me because I would have had a murder charge if that happened to me.
It's not because they were unqualified, it's because the expiration date on their CDL was *after* the date their work visa expired. Revoking the licenses is just moving up the CDL expiration to match their visa which had already expired.
Issuing licenses to people who are here illegally, then forcing you to get a 'Real ID' because the previous ID has been polluted by people who give whatever name and age they feel like at the time they {sometimes purchase} thier license.
You're posting in a comment thread specifically talking about the state of California, replying to a comment that includes an article about cancelling 17,000 licenses because the expiration date was after the work visa expired.
Isn’t a CDL a federal license? I always thought it was but maybe I’m wrong.
Bonehead Truckers has a videos online talking about the problem with drivers from other countries driving 18 wheelers on American roads and they were saying the Federal Government is going after these drivers and companies but if the CDL is a Federal license, they are to be blamed for this problem
I can drive just fine in Hanoi, Bangkok, and Malaysia - and I don't speak Vietnamese, Thai, or Malay. Symbols are pretty universal, and they give you a pamphlet for the ones you're unfamiliar with when you rent a car.
So some jackass who doesn’t speak the language on the signs is hauling 80k lbs of dildos. Cannot read “runaway truck ramp 2 miles ahead” or “ 8% grade next 8 miles, remain geared down” or “do not exit if lost brakes - upgrade ahead” or similar. Tell me, what universal symbol indicates these?
You operating a scooter in Bangkok is hardly the same thing as haling 80k lbs and murdering a dozen innocent people because you cannot read and have a falsely acquired CDL.
I must not have understood your comment prior. It sounded as if you were saying speaking the language of the land isn’t necessary due to symbols and a pamphlet! Sorry if I misunderstood.
We have a huge problem with this in Colorado with dangerous mountainous roads. Innocents are killed by these criminals who do not legitimately pass the test requiring fluency in language.
Understanding the road and what you're doing on it while behind the wheel is independent of the vehicle you're in.
Symbols are still universal - and if you're driving commercially it's your responsibility to learn the different symbols in the country you're driving in.
Knowledge acquisition and application of said knowledge is independent of the vehicle you are operating.
Pretty significant difference driving a little rental car in a foreign country vs commercially driving a 30k pound rig that could easily kill a dozen people in a crash
No, they’re not. We have long decided that driving trucks commercially requires significantly more training, education, and experience than driving a regular car.
To say that it’s ‘just as easy’ to kill people with a Corolla as a tractor trailer proves you don’t understand the gravity of driving a truck.
Plus doesn’t GPS offer the option to provide directions in a number of languages just in case? Although that’s a terrible thing to depend on. GPS has served me well over the years as a regular vehicle driver, but there have been a handful of times that it has convinced me to go in a wildly inefficient if not just flat out wrong direction (usually when I’m pressed for time of course).
I kind of miss the days of printing out Mapquest directions and maps, and will always have love for the Thomas Guide.
Yeah I’ve been incredibly frustrated with bad directions the handful of times that it’s happened, but again I just drive “regular” vehicles… I can’t even fathom how much of a pain in the ass it would be to put my faith in the directions of an app while driving an 18 wheeler (or even just towing stuff with a regular truck).
Most states require a basic understanding of English for a CDL license. At least it was that way when I looked into it about 15 years ago. You're considered a professional driver with a CDL and are supposedly held to a higher standard than you or I.
Immigration isn't the issue, Amazon being a modern robber Baron and exploiting all these loopholes to get dirt cheap labor into the states is. It's fucking wild all of these problematic immigrant drivers have an Amazon trailer and no one looks that direction, or at the fact that CDLs are state by state still for some got awful reason.
Made a lot more sense when it was a lot more difficult to get when someone from Somalia to Wisconsin, that's the kind of shit that can only happen with fuck you money.
Its one of those things that is based on a shit ground level, in this case its racism, but its actually practical and im ok with it even if i completely disagree with how they got there
Truck drivers need to speak and read english....ALL our road sinage is in English, there is a LOT of incredibly important information, ESPECIALLY for large, heavy trucks that you NEED to be able to read and follow to keep yourself and everyone else on the road safe
Its actually fucking crazy that this wasn't already the rule for truck drivers tbh
Again-- shit premise to get there but lets be real, truck drivers should be able to read the signs on the roads theyre driving on
Its perfectly reasonable, imo, for basically everything else thats public facing from the governement regardless of whether its federal state or local to have accommodations for non english speaking people, the effort to eliminate that stuff is just purely racist imo, but not rules around driving and especially not around rules for truck drivers
I mean it is a law that has been in the green book since the cdl's first came out in 1992. They just have not been enforcing it like they're supposed to.
Way Less than you, im just responding to your anal retentivness. You seem to care about grammer on the informal internet to a stupid degree, i dont care at all.
This is just wasting time for me, you acrually give a shit-- thats entertaining and funny
These things happen with uneducated white drivers as well, but they are not getting punished.
Edit: Because I am going to get downvotes anyway...foreign drivers are not the problem. Its companies refusing to pay any drivers well thats the problem. There are plenty of american white drivers that are just as bad
It is a regular practice for companies to move oversize loads” in the late night hours because inspectors “typically only work day shift and sometimes evening shifts, but rarely in the morning hours,” a member of the Massachusetts State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Section wrote in a report regarding the inciden
But what does that have to do with him being white? Truckers are found not guilty for killing people all the time. I'm saying making it a race issue is baiting.
Refusing to acknowledge that race has a huge impact on every single criminal case in this country is the ultimate in ignorance. And specifically trying to remove non-english speaking drivers is a racially motivated bandaid that protects the rich white lobbyists and trucking company owners that are the root cause of the issue.
Sorry, I don't think it's racist to think people who are driving semi trucks need to be able to read road signs. That seems like common sense to me. I really dont think you should be able to work in any country without speaking the language, that's like the bare minimum of cultural assimilation
Specifically targeting those who can't speak english and not going after the companies that "certify" them and lobby to lower the requirements across the board is the issue.
When we specifically just target immigrants, its a distraction to get you to hate them instead of looking at the actual bad guys, the rich companies that are exploiting them.
You found one example of a crappy story. After reading it, I have more questions about what happened, as usual when reading news articles on the Internet. Like religion, if you go looking for anything hard enough you'll find whatever conclusion you were after. This is antithetical to science and proves nothing. Nobody wants to spend their hours trying to get some random strangers on the Internet to see reason and rationality, it's too much to handle.
But I didn't blame the immigrants, you inferred I did because you're caught up in the politics of it all. Good job exposing the problem here.
How about the "undocumented" immigrant pulling an illegal U-turn in Florida and killing three people? The guy couldn't properly interpret the road sign and because of that the testing of the CDL is under scrutiny, maybe because when people die it might not be a good thing and maybe we don't want to see something like that which was so preventable from happening again.
Let's manipulate the story in your biased favor and conflate the issue by projecting your political opinions on me. Now why aren't we having a reasonable discussion after you label me unkind words? Because it's not about having a reasonable discussion, it's all about your politics.
When they throw out dog whistles about the ability to speak/read English and then dismiss the the role racism plays, its blaming immigrants.
I am not saying that our drivers shouldn't be better trained. I am not even saying that they shouldn't be able to read, they absolutely have to be able to.
I am saying that we need to blame the companies doing everything in their power to pay less instead of blaming the immigrant workers that are being exploited. The problem is rooted in rich companies lobbying our government to remove regulations and demanding to pay workers a non-livable wage.
Both immigrant and non immigrant truck drivers are incredibly underqualified in this county.
I can totally agree with you on holding companies responsible. It's mind boggling how they are able to dodge ownership of breaking the laws. If the hammer drops on the companies skating around operating at a professional capacity I can get on board with that. The challenge would be to find a way to protect all parties conducting in good faith while punishing the scum that doesn't.
If employers don't pay a livable wage for a job maybe the workers should find a different industry and leave their employers squabbling over the labor shortage and thus raising the wages a bit in the process. On the plus side with the wages being low this keeps other people with better options out so that less fortunate souls can at least have some kind of opportunity to get by, otherwise they may end up on welfare and at the mercy of a moody taxpayer base that may just open the door to elect a lawmaker who scraps welfare checks.
Drivers are paid well… And uneducated white drivers are also getting punished… Tell me you know absolutely nothing about what’s going on, without telling me.
They are. And no, you haven’t. You posted one random article where a guy got off because the company he worked for failed to get proper permits for a load… Nothing you posted states anything about the rate of which white Americans and immigrants are being targeted for not speaking and understanding English…
It's because they don't have a valid driver's license for driving a normal car. They simply come to America, pay the CDL fee to get their rig license and off they go to work
He got “Garminized” it’s extremely common in trucking. We call them blue liners. People that just follow the blue line on whatever GPS they are using.
Fact is not many people want to Drive truck anymore. If you look at the drivers anytime anywhere on the highways it’s foreigners. Why? Because it’s long hours, crap pay, destroys your body and you don’t see your family very much.
Stop complaining and stop buying cheap crap from China you don’t need off of Amazon. We call those people “ironie’ers or “the ironic’s”
I own a trucking company and have been in this business for 20 years. The only thing that drives up driver pay is fuel costs. Fuel costs drive up rates, and tons of drivers in America get paid 25% of the trucks gross.
Pays a lot more for the same distance but the basic problem is guys used to be able to drive for 16 hours now you can only drive for 11 hours because of Qualcomm. If you got a load that is 12 hours away it is a two day trip instead of one.
Reason you will never be able to make up the difference. Also the reason two people trucking is feasible. Since you can work 24 hours a day since you can drive for 11 hours plus 3 hours of loading so two people can drive for 22 hours with loading "28 hours".
Is it common to just use off the shelf GPS in this day and age? I tow a small travel trailer and have several RV related apps in my arsenal. One of them, though not really used (my trailer is just over 11’ tall), is TruckerPath. Designed to avoid shit like this.
Imagine if we started identifying every driver posted in this sub like this. Pretty sure it would be "White American destroys transmission," and White American man, decides this is good enough."
This is an Amazon problem why the fuck aren’t they training appropriately? Why are they getting off? This is not an immigrant problem. Someone gave this guy the keys.
The contractor hires an illegal, gets photos of them, pays 20k cash to dmv employee who then prints a CDL with that photo and whatever name they gave.
Illegal then drives for almost pennies to pay back contractor for the license. Contractor forces illegal to drive illegal amount of hours. The illegal never operated an auto in their life prior to their arrival at the border.
Even if it’s an Amazon contractor, it’s still Amazons problem.
It's not. That's a big reason Amazon (all logistics companies, really) use contractors instead of employees. It's to avoid liability for the actions of those contractors.
Look at it this way. If you hire a contractor to do some work on your yard and the contractor drives his truck across your neighbors yard, damaging it, who should pay for the damage? You? Or the contractor?
It's the same thing here. Amazon contracted with a company to deliver its goods. That company is responsible when its drivers screw up (like here).
Fair enough. Though I'd bet what'll happen is that orders in that truck just won't get delivered.
Amazon will refund the customers and those items that are undamaged will go "back on the shelf" to be sold later. Damaged goods will also be sold, but as damaged.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the trucking contract says the contractor picks up the bill for any losses, making Amazon whole. But I don't know. 🤷
100% of this should go on the guy that owns the truck that hires the driver. I own a trucking company and I'm responsible for who I hire. If I'm hiring illegals, that should fall on me, just like the construction industry, meat packing industry, and every other sector that is intentionally hiring illegals. Thats how you know they dont really care about the illegal problem, the go after the specific individual and not the company profiting from hiring them.
We have absolutely zero problem with immigrant truckers it's the illegal ones who can't speak, read, and write English like the law says you're supposed to.
I know people like to defend all races in every situation... but in Canada we have a big issue with foreigners who can't read or write English getting truck licenses when they can barely drive a car as well. Most of the time it's due to either under the table payments, or people having an in with someone to get their trucker license.
I have a lot of truck driver/crane operator friends, most of them second generation Canadians and brown dudes. Those poor guys coming over think they'll be making a fortune to send back home or at least enough to build a new life here. But they get fucked by the fleet owners. They are told to share licenses, (and carecards but that's a whole other issue) and there is widespread testing fraud anyways. If shit hits the fan the drivers disappear back and the tractor owners hide title in series of numbered companies with vague ownership, paying for insurance in cash.
Port hauls to us cost $650. A legit driver gets 50 to 100. Lord knows what the shady drivers get.
Yea, I was down voted at first. I assume people assumed I was a racist, but I have no problem with anyone of any race or creed being in our beautiful country. What I do have a problem with is anyone of any color or religion being put in harms way.
There's faults all over, but let's not pretend a language barrier when learning safety and regulations while having different rules/regulations in other counties couldn't be an issue either. And as I said often it's people with connections here who go through fraudulent safety schools to obtain their license.
There's a company here called "Drivers inc" that the entire trucking industry calls a dangerous scam that hires people as independent drivers while bypassing the normal regulations requires for truckers.
Y'all down voting me instead of doing a tiny bit of research lmao. Probably assuming I'm not a PoC myself.
For safety in aviation pilots world wide are required to use English for all communications with Air Traffic Control. Why should road safety in the USA be less than that? I can't imagine going to China or other foreign country and trying to drive myself around.
Almost 20 years ago I was an electrician at McCarran International Airport, now Harry Reid. The power company needed to move a feed in preparation of moving a road and putting in a new terminal. We had to bring in a semi mounted generator to feed the central plant. Trucks are normally 15' feet tall. The overpass to the plant was 15'. We got it there by letting the air out of the tires. The driver cleared it with the skin of his teeth with a bunch of pissed off people because it took a few minutes.
I’ve seen born and raised American drivers get stuck stuck as well, low over passes, road they are too large for, stuck on jersey barriers when attempting to turn around in a bad spot, crashes into houses at the bottom of a hill in a neighborhood they shouldn’t have been on, and so on and so on.
I’ve seen drivers of all races of many different nationalities fuck up.
I had this happen on my street. A generic GPS will tell you to cut through my street, but a truck GPS will say no, not possible. Also, the signs for no trucks at either end of the street will say no trucks. The problem is this guy didn't read the sign (fail) and didn't properly equip himself (basic GPS where a truck GPS is required). Whoever granted this guy his license is at fault.
Looks like theres lots of room. Pure driver error
As someone who goes to LAX (and this very spot) almost weekly, you’re right. Plenty of room to avoid this.
Also, it’s impossible to accidentally end up here. You pass by a multitude of signage warning/alerting you to the fact that you are entering an airport, this isn’t somewhere you just end up, and I have a really hard time believing his GPS told him to do this as well.
Easily happens if you can't read English
Maybe he got a regular gps and not a trucking gps? Not being able to read the signs would definitely do it tho lol
It’s not like this road goes anywhere other than airport arrivals/drop offs. Even a non-trucking GPS would know that.
Yeah I know, im saying a trucker gps would take you to the right part of the airport for deliveries, where a regular gps, would've taken him to passenger terminals if he'd simply asked to go to the airport.
Retired trucker here. This is what happened. I can't tell you how many truckers have gotten themselves into trouble using the wrong app.
that driver appears really clueless. do they even need a licence to operate?
Yes, a license is needed.
The problem is some states are lax about testing, and don't notice schools selling licenses. Selling as in the person shows up with considerable cash and is given a license without any testing.
There's been some high profile incidents that involved people who crossed the border illegally and subsequently purchased a license only to wind up killing other motorists. In some cases the drivers did not speak English and required an interpreter to facilitate the police investigation. Not a crime in itself, but makes one wonder how do they read signs in English if they can't speak it.
Keep in mind some of these drivers didn't possess a legally acquired regular auto license.
At some point the employer is also responsible. A CDL does not mean a person knows the job.
There arent employers anymore. Its all 1099.
My drivers are all 1099, but they have to have 4 years of over the road experience and we call their last 3 employers for verification and they still have to go through training. We dont just hire any random person that shows up with a CDL, although its apparent some companies, mainly the bigger carriers, do.
Yes. Most big companies do. Theres a local bridge by me that averages over 50 bridge strikes a year. We are up to 73 this year. The state spent 3m on installing flashing lights for overheight trucks 2 years ago. Didn't help. Theres 7 signs within 1/4 mile of the bridge and they even installed a turn around just before the bridge. Doesnt help. The next state over got busted for handing out over 5k cdls for nothing more than paving driveways and doing landscape and home repairs at their houses. This country is exponentially corrupt. Anyone who's over 30 years old has to see it. 10 years ago that bridge would get hit maybe once or twice a year by a local with a uhaul. Something changed but nobody wants to admit it
Why don't they just install a barrier, like a sacrificial pipe frame the same height as the bridge, so you hit it before the bridge? Pretty common strategy for bridges/underpasses with a history of impacts like that.
Because government. I bought that up at 2 town hall meetings. McDonald's can figure it out why cant you? They asked me to leave 🤣
I used to live in Needles California (God help me) and there is a super weird, totally not to standards, heavily used underpass under a railway that connects needles to Arizona. People crashed into it like daily lol. The person who lives next door set up a camera and has a Facebook page where they post the incidents (called needles underpass I think). They were installing a barrier finally when I got rid of Facebook, I wonder if it fixed things. It was a one way traffic underpass where you had to stop, so it was all slow motion impacts at least. Mostly people towing RV's, service trucks, shit like that. It also flooded with any rain. No idea how that got built in the first place, such an absurd piece of infrastructure to be on a heavily used road.
lol been there numerous times.
Because those don't stop 🚛 trucks.
Oh, they can. I've seen some absolute beasts, essentially a second sacrificial underpass. When one driver fucking up can have multi-hundred million dollar economic consequences from prolonged bridge closures, they figure it out.
At 35 mph (about 16 meters per second), a semi trucks kinetic energy is 1/2 × mass × velocity².
80,000 lb semi at 35 mph has about 4.6 million joules of kinetic energy same as roughly 2ish lb of TNT exploding or a car hitting a wall at about 70-80mph.
Those little “truck stopper” pipes or cables hanging before low bridges? They’re made to rip roofs off slow, too-tall trucks or RVs. But against a loaded rig doing 35 or faster they’re basically dental floss. The truck will snap them like nothing and keep rolling with almost all that energy, ready to demolish the overpass.
Honest question. What happens if every company requires years of experience, how would we get people into the jobs
It's complicated. These mega carriers are self insured, while my broke ass is not. It's my insurance company that requires the experience. Most of these mega's have their own driving schools, so they will run people through a 6 week course like cattle and hand them the keys. Thats why 99% of this dumb shit you see has CFI or Warner or some other big name on the door. The solution is better training.
You talk about a six week course not being enough but, How does a driver get experience without sfurther driving, you state and i agree with you its too costly for smaller carriers to employ and help these noobs. But at the end of the day new drivers need seat time to get better, drivers will fail and others will succeed.
Take the insurance cost out of the equation, companies can only pay an instructor to be in the cab with the noob for so long. You aint getting enough experience to become that much better at driving. Fuck ups would still happen
You take a crap trucking job for three years or so, and keep a clean driving record. Some companies have their own driving schools and require a year or two of service after passing.
I know that the guy i was commenting to was talking negatively about people with less experience being hired by those places. And companies new drivers training would never amount to years of experience max is two months.
I believe it ends up taking a while to shut those operations that are just handing out licenses. Many of them are the trucking companies themselves, I think. Those ads for companies that will train you may well be authorized to issue your license.
I worked as a bus mechanic and held a class B commercial for road tests and recovery. Our operation had authorization to train, test, and issue licenses. They do get audited periodically. My license went up for audit where I had to go to DMV to retake commercial test. As I understand, if too many of the ones they pull for audit fail, they dig deeper into the operation. At the DMV, I was the tester's first subject who even made it out of the yard that day. Everyone else he tested failed precheck or skills test before even being able to hit the road.
Point being, it's slow to shut those places down that are just handing out licenses. You'd think they would set things up to heavily discourage this like massive fines or some lability from what their licensees do. But still seems to be profitable and thriving to operate this way.
Licensing has been privatised, and government is continually being lobbied to "stand back and let the market self-regulate". Because government red tape is the worst evil in the world!
The red tape is red from blood. But no, let's let industries regulate themselves where safety is inversely proportional to profit. What could go wrong.
Exactly. Because at the end of the day, corporations are people too...
From my youth a long long time ago. High school thinking about being a truck driver. Looked online at reviews, CDL school had an illegal 18 wheeler. So a cop stopped it. The student driving got 5k+ in tickets in his name and the instructor laughed at him. Immediately decided truck driving was not for me because I would have had a murder charge if that happened to me.
California alone had issued 17,000 licenses to unqualified drivers
It's not because they were unqualified, it's because the expiration date on their CDL was *after* the date their work visa expired. Revoking the licenses is just moving up the CDL expiration to match their visa which had already expired.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/14/us/immigration-california-revokes-commercial-drivers-licenses-hnk
Issuing licenses to people who are here illegally, then forcing you to get a 'Real ID' because the previous ID has been polluted by people who give whatever name and age they feel like at the time they {sometimes purchase} thier license.
Unqualified and illegal.
If they had a work visa, they weren't here illegally when the license was issued.
Wrong, NY specifically does not require a person to have any type of visa to obtain a driver's license
You're posting in a comment thread specifically talking about the state of California, replying to a comment that includes an article about cancelling 17,000 licenses because the expiration date was after the work visa expired.
A former IL governor went to prison for some kind of CDL scandal back in the early 00’s I think.
I’d love to see the source for that gem.
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/newsom-caught-redhanded-trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-exposes
I see your mistake, you are relying on data provided by lord orange fuck boy.
Isn’t a CDL a federal license? I always thought it was but maybe I’m wrong.
Bonehead Truckers has a videos online talking about the problem with drivers from other countries driving 18 wheelers on American roads and they were saying the Federal Government is going after these drivers and companies but if the CDL is a Federal license, they are to be blamed for this problem
I can drive just fine in Hanoi, Bangkok, and Malaysia - and I don't speak Vietnamese, Thai, or Malay. Symbols are pretty universal, and they give you a pamphlet for the ones you're unfamiliar with when you rent a car.
So some jackass who doesn’t speak the language on the signs is hauling 80k lbs of dildos. Cannot read “runaway truck ramp 2 miles ahead” or “ 8% grade next 8 miles, remain geared down” or “do not exit if lost brakes - upgrade ahead” or similar. Tell me, what universal symbol indicates these?
You operating a scooter in Bangkok is hardly the same thing as haling 80k lbs and murdering a dozen innocent people because you cannot read and have a falsely acquired CDL.
You're just stating my case using different words.
If you can't read the road then you have no business being on the fucking road.
Doesn't matter if you're in a scooter, or a road-train.
I'm sure that shipment your mom ordered will get through.
I must not have understood your comment prior. It sounded as if you were saying speaking the language of the land isn’t necessary due to symbols and a pamphlet! Sorry if I misunderstood.
We have a huge problem with this in Colorado with dangerous mountainous roads. Innocents are killed by these criminals who do not legitimately pass the test requiring fluency in language.
Renting a car is vastly different than driving an 18 wheeler.
No comparison.
Understanding the road and what you're doing on it while behind the wheel is independent of the vehicle you're in.
Symbols are still universal - and if you're driving commercially it's your responsibility to learn the different symbols in the country you're driving in.
Knowledge acquisition and application of said knowledge is independent of the vehicle you are operating.
There are no symbols on the commercial driver's road signs we're talking about, only English text.
Pretty significant difference driving a little rental car in a foreign country vs commercially driving a 30k pound rig that could easily kill a dozen people in a crash
Basic understanding of the roads, the symbols and their meanings is required to be on the road in the first place.
You can just as easily kill a dozen people in a car as you can in a truck. Just have to speed up a bit and aim for a busy cross walk.
The lethality and the weight are meaningless to this argument.
No, they’re not. We have long decided that driving trucks commercially requires significantly more training, education, and experience than driving a regular car.
To say that it’s ‘just as easy’ to kill people with a Corolla as a tractor trailer proves you don’t understand the gravity of driving a truck.
Plus doesn’t GPS offer the option to provide directions in a number of languages just in case? Although that’s a terrible thing to depend on. GPS has served me well over the years as a regular vehicle driver, but there have been a handful of times that it has convinced me to go in a wildly inefficient if not just flat out wrong direction (usually when I’m pressed for time of course).
I kind of miss the days of printing out Mapquest directions and maps, and will always have love for the Thomas Guide.
Problem is every real trucker knows GPS is only about 75% reliable for us... it is for cars.
Yeah I’ve been incredibly frustrated with bad directions the handful of times that it’s happened, but again I just drive “regular” vehicles… I can’t even fathom how much of a pain in the ass it would be to put my faith in the directions of an app while driving an 18 wheeler (or even just towing stuff with a regular truck).
It's neither a crime or a requirement to speak English in the US and road signs aren't exactly Shakespeare.
It absolutely IS a requirement in the US to get a Class A CDL, which is required to operate a rig like the one in the OP.
Most states require a basic understanding of English for a CDL license. At least it was that way when I looked into it about 15 years ago. You're considered a professional driver with a CDL and are supposedly held to a higher standard than you or I.
When your grades in a curve with the only qualification is you can breath and climb into a truck
Not anymore it seems like.
:
Probably not, because it's California, Gavin Newsome has probably signed some law saying it's ok to do what you feel like.
Edit: thank you for my first award! I appreciate it.
Probably multiple laws. Regardless of the dangers it poses to Americans or how unfair it is to others trying to get a license.
Sir... you cant park here...
And people wonder why they are pulling truckers off the road who cant read...
They don’t wonder why, they are 1000% sure it’s because of racism
The people who assume it is racism don't actually drive for a living.
And when everyone's racist...
no one will be.
If you ignore all the widespread, unashamed, government backed racism going on, there's really not that much racism going on.
Immigration isn't the issue, Amazon being a modern robber Baron and exploiting all these loopholes to get dirt cheap labor into the states is. It's fucking wild all of these problematic immigrant drivers have an Amazon trailer and no one looks that direction, or at the fact that CDLs are state by state still for some got awful reason.
Made a lot more sense when it was a lot more difficult to get when someone from Somalia to Wisconsin, that's the kind of shit that can only happen with fuck you money.
If you ignore all the widespread, unashamed, government backed racism going on, there's really not that much racism going on.
Its one of those things that is based on a shit ground level, in this case its racism, but its actually practical and im ok with it even if i completely disagree with how they got there
Truck drivers need to speak and read english....ALL our road sinage is in English, there is a LOT of incredibly important information, ESPECIALLY for large, heavy trucks that you NEED to be able to read and follow to keep yourself and everyone else on the road safe
Its actually fucking crazy that this wasn't already the rule for truck drivers tbh
Again-- shit premise to get there but lets be real, truck drivers should be able to read the signs on the roads theyre driving on
Its perfectly reasonable, imo, for basically everything else thats public facing from the governement regardless of whether its federal state or local to have accommodations for non english speaking people, the effort to eliminate that stuff is just purely racist imo, but not rules around driving and especially not around rules for truck drivers
I mean it is a law that has been in the green book since the cdl's first came out in 1992. They just have not been enforcing it like they're supposed to.
It’s not crazy that it wasn’t already a law for truck drivers because it’s been a law longer than I’ve been alive…
Signage, not sinage. Just basic English. Government, not governement. Again, basic English.
Oh fuck off lol
Who cares bro, its the internet, its informal and it doesn't matter at all unless youre a pedantic fuck
This isnt an MLA format doctoral thesis, its reddit, find more productive things to be bothered over
*you’re
Lol
Youre wasting your time bud, i really dont give a fuck
Oh you seem to be giving a couple fucks. 🤡
Way Less than you, im just responding to your anal retentivness. You seem to care about grammer on the informal internet to a stupid degree, i dont care at all.
This is just wasting time for me, you acrually give a shit-- thats entertaining and funny
Actually.
*actually
These things happen with uneducated white drivers as well, but they are not getting punished.
Edit: Because I am going to get downvotes anyway...foreign drivers are not the problem. Its companies refusing to pay any drivers well thats the problem. There are plenty of american white drivers that are just as bad
Bullshit. Why would they not be punished? Give me examples of white truck drivers not getting consequences for accidents
Took literally 30 seconds of googling
And in this case someone died.
Oh, and its a regular thing..
But what does that have to do with him being white? Truckers are found not guilty for killing people all the time. I'm saying making it a race issue is baiting.
Refusing to acknowledge that race has a huge impact on every single criminal case in this country is the ultimate in ignorance. And specifically trying to remove non-english speaking drivers is a racially motivated bandaid that protects the rich white lobbyists and trucking company owners that are the root cause of the issue.
Sorry, I don't think it's racist to think people who are driving semi trucks need to be able to read road signs. That seems like common sense to me. I really dont think you should be able to work in any country without speaking the language, that's like the bare minimum of cultural assimilation
Did you even read what I said?
Specifically targeting those who can't speak english and not going after the companies that "certify" them and lobby to lower the requirements across the board is the issue.
When we specifically just target immigrants, its a distraction to get you to hate them instead of looking at the actual bad guys, the rich companies that are exploiting them.
TBF I want law enforcement to go after the company and the driver. And if they are illegal here bye bye
I love how I can provide you evidence immediately and instead of just saying "oh, I guess thats true" you downvote me and go comment in other threads.
Absolutely cowardly dedication to racism
You found one example of a crappy story. After reading it, I have more questions about what happened, as usual when reading news articles on the Internet. Like religion, if you go looking for anything hard enough you'll find whatever conclusion you were after. This is antithetical to science and proves nothing. Nobody wants to spend their hours trying to get some random strangers on the Internet to see reason and rationality, it's too much to handle.
Random anecdotal evidence of a foreigner messing up
Top comment: Blames Immigrants
You: Silent
Random anecdotal evidence of a white truck driver killing someone and a direct quote from the cops about how these companies do this all the time
You: Maybe we shouldnt be so quick to judge! It could be just one example!
But I didn't blame the immigrants, you inferred I did because you're caught up in the politics of it all. Good job exposing the problem here.
How about the "undocumented" immigrant pulling an illegal U-turn in Florida and killing three people? The guy couldn't properly interpret the road sign and because of that the testing of the CDL is under scrutiny, maybe because when people die it might not be a good thing and maybe we don't want to see something like that which was so preventable from happening again.
Let's manipulate the story in your biased favor and conflate the issue by projecting your political opinions on me. Now why aren't we having a reasonable discussion after you label me unkind words? Because it's not about having a reasonable discussion, it's all about your politics.
When they throw out dog whistles about the ability to speak/read English and then dismiss the the role racism plays, its blaming immigrants.
I am not saying that our drivers shouldn't be better trained. I am not even saying that they shouldn't be able to read, they absolutely have to be able to.
I am saying that we need to blame the companies doing everything in their power to pay less instead of blaming the immigrant workers that are being exploited. The problem is rooted in rich companies lobbying our government to remove regulations and demanding to pay workers a non-livable wage.
Both immigrant and non immigrant truck drivers are incredibly underqualified in this county.
I can totally agree with you on holding companies responsible. It's mind boggling how they are able to dodge ownership of breaking the laws. If the hammer drops on the companies skating around operating at a professional capacity I can get on board with that. The challenge would be to find a way to protect all parties conducting in good faith while punishing the scum that doesn't.
If employers don't pay a livable wage for a job maybe the workers should find a different industry and leave their employers squabbling over the labor shortage and thus raising the wages a bit in the process. On the plus side with the wages being low this keeps other people with better options out so that less fortunate souls can at least have some kind of opportunity to get by, otherwise they may end up on welfare and at the mercy of a moody taxpayer base that may just open the door to elect a lawmaker who scraps welfare checks.
Your comment is both ignorant and stupid.
In this context, those mean the same thing. The irony is almost too much.
Truly a repetitive and redundant comment.
Drivers are paid well… And uneducated white drivers are also getting punished… Tell me you know absolutely nothing about what’s going on, without telling me.
Drivers are not paid well, they are paid peanuts compared to what they used to be paid.
And immigrant drivers are being targeted at much higher rates than non-immigrant drivers. I already posted an example of this.
They are. And no, you haven’t. You posted one random article where a guy got off because the company he worked for failed to get proper permits for a load… Nothing you posted states anything about the rate of which white Americans and immigrants are being targeted for not speaking and understanding English…
It's because they don't have a valid driver's license for driving a normal car. They simply come to America, pay the CDL fee to get their rig license and off they go to work
It’s more associated with the relaxation of training and qualification standards and increasing the hours that drivers can drive before a rest period.
So there is some validity to requiring people to speak English in order to do this job 🤔
He got “Garminized” it’s extremely common in trucking. We call them blue liners. People that just follow the blue line on whatever GPS they are using.
Fact is not many people want to Drive truck anymore. If you look at the drivers anytime anywhere on the highways it’s foreigners. Why? Because it’s long hours, crap pay, destroys your body and you don’t see your family very much.
Stop complaining and stop buying cheap crap from China you don’t need off of Amazon. We call those people “ironie’ers or “the ironic’s”
Driving was a good paying gig 40 years ago. Probably pays exactly the same now.
I own a trucking company and have been in this business for 20 years. The only thing that drives up driver pay is fuel costs. Fuel costs drive up rates, and tons of drivers in America get paid 25% of the trucks gross.
Pays a lot more for the same distance but the basic problem is guys used to be able to drive for 16 hours now you can only drive for 11 hours because of Qualcomm. If you got a load that is 12 hours away it is a two day trip instead of one.
Reason you will never be able to make up the difference. Also the reason two people trucking is feasible. Since you can work 24 hours a day since you can drive for 11 hours plus 3 hours of loading so two people can drive for 22 hours with loading "28 hours".
Qualcomm?
Is it common to just use off the shelf GPS in this day and age? I tow a small travel trailer and have several RV related apps in my arsenal. One of them, though not really used (my trailer is just over 11’ tall), is TruckerPath. Designed to avoid shit like this.
Imagine if we started identifying every driver posted in this sub like this. Pretty sure it would be "White American destroys transmission," and White American man, decides this is good enough."
Gay Filipino Trans Bartender destroys boat ramp
Again??
you leave me out of this buddy!
Pepes towing on youtube(where this clip is from) is a great channel.
This is an Amazon problem why the fuck aren’t they training appropriately? Why are they getting off? This is not an immigrant problem. Someone gave this guy the keys.
More than likely this is a contractor for Amazon.
The contractor hires an illegal, gets photos of them, pays 20k cash to dmv employee who then prints a CDL with that photo and whatever name they gave.
Illegal then drives for almost pennies to pay back contractor for the license. Contractor forces illegal to drive illegal amount of hours. The illegal never operated an auto in their life prior to their arrival at the border.
Even if it’s an Amazon contractor, it’s still Amazons problem. Those goods were purchased thru Amazon.
It's not. That's a big reason Amazon (all logistics companies, really) use contractors instead of employees. It's to avoid liability for the actions of those contractors.
Look at it this way. If you hire a contractor to do some work on your yard and the contractor drives his truck across your neighbors yard, damaging it, who should pay for the damage? You? Or the contractor?
It's the same thing here. Amazon contracted with a company to deliver its goods. That company is responsible when its drivers screw up (like here).
Yes, but. ;-) Amazon still has to account to its purchasers.
Fair enough. Though I'd bet what'll happen is that orders in that truck just won't get delivered.
Amazon will refund the customers and those items that are undamaged will go "back on the shelf" to be sold later. Damaged goods will also be sold, but as damaged.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the trucking contract says the contractor picks up the bill for any losses, making Amazon whole. But I don't know. 🤷
Right, Amazon shouldn’t be protected
I agree, the people hiring illegals and arranging thier licenses to be purchased should be brought in to face the 'People' in court.
Instead they focus on the guy (while not innocent) who is the 'end user', a nobody.
100% of this should go on the guy that owns the truck that hires the driver. I own a trucking company and I'm responsible for who I hire. If I'm hiring illegals, that should fall on me, just like the construction industry, meat packing industry, and every other sector that is intentionally hiring illegals. Thats how you know they dont really care about the illegal problem, the go after the specific individual and not the company profiting from hiring them.
I feel bad for this dude tbh. He looks nervous.
Wouldn’t you be? The job market sucks right now.
Look at me. I am your Amazon driver now!
Why is it important to mention their country of origin...
Probably to get more involvement on the post due to the current situation of truckers against immigrant truckers.
We have absolutely zero problem with immigrant truckers it's the illegal ones who can't speak, read, and write English like the law says you're supposed to.
Is Amazon hiring illegal immigrants? If so, this is entirely on them.
No their contractors are and they're just turning a blind eye to it because they're not liable and it comes at a cheaper contract for them.
Yup
I know people like to defend all races in every situation... but in Canada we have a big issue with foreigners who can't read or write English getting truck licenses when they can barely drive a car as well. Most of the time it's due to either under the table payments, or people having an in with someone to get their trucker license.
It's rampant immigration fraud up here.
I have a lot of truck driver/crane operator friends, most of them second generation Canadians and brown dudes. Those poor guys coming over think they'll be making a fortune to send back home or at least enough to build a new life here. But they get fucked by the fleet owners. They are told to share licenses, (and carecards but that's a whole other issue) and there is widespread testing fraud anyways. If shit hits the fan the drivers disappear back and the tractor owners hide title in series of numbered companies with vague ownership, paying for insurance in cash.
Port hauls to us cost $650. A legit driver gets 50 to 100. Lord knows what the shady drivers get.
Yea, I was down voted at first. I assume people assumed I was a racist, but I have no problem with anyone of any race or creed being in our beautiful country. What I do have a problem with is anyone of any color or religion being put in harms way.
[deleted]
There's faults all over, but let's not pretend a language barrier when learning safety and regulations while having different rules/regulations in other counties couldn't be an issue either. And as I said often it's people with connections here who go through fraudulent safety schools to obtain their license.
There's a company here called "Drivers inc" that the entire trucking industry calls a dangerous scam that hires people as independent drivers while bypassing the normal regulations requires for truckers.
Y'all down voting me instead of doing a tiny bit of research lmao. Probably assuming I'm not a PoC myself.
So people can be racist. See plenty of white people that are idiotic with their semi trucks as well.
You have every three letter agency under the sun at LAX I’m surprised that none are present.
Same. They also have their own dedicated LAX police. Go over to r/airragers and notice the lack of police even when things become violent.
Thanks bud I didn’t watch the vid with audio but I knew it was pepes towing they have a great YouTube channel.
For safety in aviation pilots world wide are required to use English for all communications with Air Traffic Control. Why should road safety in the USA be less than that? I can't imagine going to China or other foreign country and trying to drive myself around.
Ahh yes… finally understand the “come to USA, CDL for you” memes.
What does the fact he's Somalian have to do with anything? There's plenty of idiots of all races.
Probably to get more involvement on the post due to the current situation of truckers against immigrant truckers.
How do you know he's Somalian? What gave you that idea?
Going by what a perceived racist says, make you a RaYCiSt.
Look at the title of the post.
Because its a jab at the Orange man
That's my boy from Pepe's Towing!
Well at least this one did not take anyone out he just made a mistake
$5 says he got his CDL in WA state.
He is not helping the cause.
No name, given
I am experiencing irrational anger
Almost 20 years ago I was an electrician at McCarran International Airport, now Harry Reid. The power company needed to move a feed in preparation of moving a road and putting in a new terminal. We had to bring in a semi mounted generator to feed the central plant. Trucks are normally 15' feet tall. The overpass to the plant was 15'. We got it there by letting the air out of the tires. The driver cleared it with the skin of his teeth with a bunch of pissed off people because it took a few minutes.
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/459-indian-origin-truck-drivers-lose-licences-in-new-zealand-10393803/
I’ve seen born and raised American drivers get stuck stuck as well, low over passes, road they are too large for, stuck on jersey barriers when attempting to turn around in a bad spot, crashes into houses at the bottom of a hill in a neighborhood they shouldn’t have been on, and so on and so on.
I’ve seen drivers of all races of many different nationalities fuck up.
What a garbage thing to do
I had this happen on my street. A generic GPS will tell you to cut through my street, but a truck GPS will say no, not possible. Also, the signs for no trucks at either end of the street will say no trucks. The problem is this guy didn't read the sign (fail) and didn't properly equip himself (basic GPS where a truck GPS is required). Whoever granted this guy his license is at fault.
Is this Pepe’s towing? Ima have to check his YouTube channel later for the full version lol
I remember my first airport delivery. Luckily I was in a sprinter van lmfao
Debby Dootson entered the chat...
The only time I've ever seen someone's race, never mind specific nationality, mentioned in one of these posts. Weirdo OP
Is what happens when a truckers uses the wrong guidance app. LOL
Look at me. Amazon is the captain now
Another interesting job for Alex. I didn’t see this one on Pepe’s YouTube channel, is there a full video?
glad we know he's Somali, that was critical to the story and definitely not just thrown in for cattlerustling
Unhappy about ICE now?
Hey, at least he’s working! /s
Whats the need to specify the nationality?