A smattering of media reports has advanced a dubious claim that millions of foreign truck drivers have flooded into the U.S. in recent years, displacing American workers and jeopardizing highway safety.
The basis for the claim is an analysis of federal data that purports to show 1.68 million commercial driver's license (CDL) holders added to the U.S. driver pool between 2016 and 2024. While the originators of the claim do not explicitly source their data, all indications are it comes from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS).
This analysis is deeply flawed on two levels. First, the CDL data in the MCMIS database includes more than just Class A CDL holders operating heavy-duty tractor-trailers. It also includes Class B CDL holders for vehicles like buses, limos, and various utility vans used by cable, plumbing, and construction companies (many of which require employees to obtain CDLs for safety and insurance purposes, even though not required by law). To claim or insinuate the additional CDLs added over the last decade are all for the tractor-trailer driver market is incorrect.
But even more to the point, a glaring problem with the MCMIS database is that it is self-reported and subject to massive data entry errors. For example, there are numerous companies in the data that claim to have four total drivers but 99,999 CDL holders. In other instances, there are motor carriers that report having only two trucks but 99,999 CDL holders and 199,998 drivers. After scrubbing the database of these obvious errors, the total number of CDLs in the U.S in 2025 is reduced by roughly 850,000 compared to what has been inaccurately reported. In fact, when accounting for these errors, the total number of CDL holders in the lower 48 and D.C. declined by 20,000 between 2023 and 2025.
Anyone who repeats this inaccurate claim needs a better understanding of how MCMIS data is collected and how this data can be manipulated to advance a political agenda. Either way, the narrative of foreign labor dumping in the U.S. trucking industry is false and does not hold up to minimum scrutiny.