A new rule proposal would set a federal standard for behind-the-wheel training for commercial truck drivers.
Scott Steward is a commercial truck driver. Six years ago, he says he went to a Lee’s Summit company and within two days and a mere four hours behind the wheel was able to get a commercial license to drive a semi.
He now says that route to get his commercial driver’s license or CDL was a mistake.
"It’s not safe, it’s not safe at all,” said Steward. "You’ve got a lot of inexperienced drivers out there that don’t know how to handle something that large.”
Early Friday morning, a tractor-trailer overturned and burst into flames in Franklin County, Kansas. The driver, 44-year-old Christopher Cole, was killed.
On Thursday, 46-year-old Alan Tate of Kansas City, Kansas, died in a wreck in Lee’s Summit.
While it’s unclear what caused the drivers to lose control, commercial driving instructor Butch Hudson, whose CDL class takes four weeks to complete, says proper training is one key to preventing crashes.
“You definitely need the time and experience behind the wheel with a good instructor or teacher,” Hudson said.
A new rule proposed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would require a minimum of 30 hours behind the wheel training to get a Class A commercial driver’s license to drive the big rigs. That time includes a minimum of 10 hours operating the truck on a practice driving range.
The rule would also require a minimum of 15 hours behind the wheel training for a Class B license for smaller trucks like the cement mixer that overturned in Johnson County on Friday morning.
Scott Grenerth of the Owner-Operator Independent Driver’s Association was part of a 26-member committee which unanimously approved the new standards.
“Thirty years it finally took to get this to happen to move forward on entry level driver training,” he said.
Grenerth says some states currently have high standards to get a commercial driver’s license. But he says other states have what he calls “CDL mills” which churn out drivers who are able to pass the CDL test but have had very little behind-the-wheel training.
“Wherever those CDL mills are, they’re definitely not the standard we want to see,” said Grenerth.
"You don’t know what type of driver is in that truck,” said Steward. “It could be someone fresh on the street has been trained for two days,” he said.
The comment period for the new federal training rule proposal ends April 6. It could take up to three years to implement the rule.
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Andy Alcock can be reached at anderson.alcock@kshb.com.
