FMCSA has removed more than 10,000 training providers since December — and kept nearly 600 ELDs off the market entirely

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has removed more than 10,000 providers from its Training Provider Registry since December 2025, according to FreightWaves on Oct. 28. Chief Safety Officer Steve Dowling disclosed the figure Wednesday during a keynote address at the second annual WEX OTR Summit in Jacksonville, Florida, outlining an enforcement strategy built around five stages of a trucking operation's life: training, licensing, registration, operations and enforcement. Dowling, a former California Highway Patrol official and Covenant Logistics safety executive who became the agency's chief safety officer in August, put the starting point first. 'If we want to protect the industry, we need to make sure that we start at the driver level and how they're trained,' he told attendees.

The 10,000-provider figure is a registry cleanup number, and Dowling was careful to separate it from the agency's loudest single action. It should not be confused with the emergency enforcement action announced in August, which targeted approximately 110 commercial driver training schools whose operations were linked to more than 5,000 drivers cited for English-language proficiency violations. 'Since December of '25, there have been more than 10,000 providers that have been removed from the training provider registry,' Dowling said, adding that reviews of driver training programs will continue to make sure schools meet federal requirements. The agency is also strengthening oversight of state commercial driver's license programs and third-party testing operations, so that carriers can have confidence a CDL means the same thing regardless of the state that issued it.

The same sweep has reached the devices in the cab. Dowling said FMCSA has removed more than 100 noncompliant electronic logging devices from its registered ELD list and prevented nearly 600 others from being approved at all. The agency's particular concern is logging systems that can be manipulated to conceal hours-of-service violations. 'We've removed over 100 noncompliant ELDs from the registered device list, and we've prevented nearly 600 from making it onto the list entirely,' Dowling said. 'You can't go in and edit logs by making a phone call. Anytime we hear of that, we're going and investigating.'

Registration is the third front, aimed at so-called chameleon carriers — companies that shut down and reopen under new identities to evade enforcement, penalties or other requirements. Dowling said the modernized registration system, Motus, is built to verify carrier ownership and principal places of business before authority is granted, and he described applications in which multiple trucking companies registered using the same address or post office box. 'One location that maybe has 20 different DOT numbers coming out of a PO box in a location, that's a problem,' he said. Dowling acknowledged the rollout problems: about 95% of carrier registration activity was functioning through Motus based on data he reviewed the previous week, and the failures affecting the remaining users were, in his word, unacceptable. The agency has temporarily suspended its biennial registration update requirement while it works on the system, and Dowling said the changes are keeping people out: 'There are thousands of people that we're keeping out of the industry because we've initiated [Motus].' He did not provide a precise count of blocked applicants, or a breakdown of how many were suspected of fraud rather than caught in registration problems.

The fraud work is no longer FMCSA's alone. During a question-and-answer session, Dowling said the agency is increasingly working with the Justice Department, the FBI and federal prosecutors on chameleon carrier and trucking fraud investigations, including networks operating across multiple jurisdictions. 'You're going to see cases that start coming out that are specifically combating against chameleon carriers,' he said, explaining that investigators are looking beyond individual violations to connections among companies, owners and equipment. The agency is also acting on information supplied by trucking companies and industry representatives about suspicious carriers and noncompliant ELD providers, and Dowling said those reports are being actively investigated.

On the CDL crackdown itself, Dowling offered indications rather than results. He said FMCSA is seeing signs that drivers who do not meet non-domiciled CDL requirements may also have English-language proficiency violations, but acknowledged the agency needs more time and data to determine whether its initiatives are producing measurable reductions in crashes. Asked for an accurate count of non-domiciled CDL holders currently operating in the United States, he said he could not recall a specific figure and said the agency is focusing on auditing state licensing processes rather than relying on a nationwide count. Looking ahead to 2027, he said FMCSA is evaluating added hours-of-service flexibility — including sleeper-berth provisions and the 14-hour duty window — and updates to its Safety Measurement System, with public comment from carriers expected in the coming months. 'We can get more predictive by data analysis on who is more likely to crash.'

The practical takeaway is a checklist that costs nothing. If you run an ELD, confirm this week that your device is still on FMCSA's registered list — a removed device is a compliance problem you may not know you have. If you hire, treat a diploma from a training provider that has vanished from the registry as a document to verify, not a credential to file. If you are a compliant carrier, the direction of travel is your friend: every chameleon carrier and phone-editable log the agency removes is capacity that was undercutting you by cheating.