Fake CDLs, language laws and the battle for safer US roads

This is Part 1 of a series on CDL fraud looking at a recently enacted Arkansas law designed to get a handle on CDL fraud, and how that effort was informed by similar legislation in Texas.

Part 2 releasing Saturday examines how Texas uncovered a high number of phony documents held by people with Mexico’s equivalent of a CDL who in fact were from Central America. 

Part 3 releasing Sunday looks at the ease with which fraudsters have exploited a loophole to obtain a Mexican document that essentially grants them the privileges of a U.S. CDL holder.

The current discourse on the quality of drivers more closely resembles Don Quixote in a trucker hat chasing CDL-inspired windmills while his faithful squire, driver misinformation, accompanies him in his attempt to revive the good old days of trucking.

I decided to follow the mania and try to answer the question, “What is up with all this non-domicled driver talk, and why are some in trucking media obsessed with speaking English.”

What I found out from conversations and interviews with state safety officials and trucking lobby groups, as well as research, was a web of regulatory oversight, loopholes and bad actors, decades in the making. The situation is way more complex than it looks at first glance. The regulatory questions involve local, state and federal guidelines, international trade deals, and bureaucratic machinations worthy of an HBO special. But to begin this tale, let’s start in Arkansas by way of Texas.

Big trouble in little Arkansas

I began my odyssey by reaching out to Shannon Newton, president and CEO of the Arkansas Trucking Association, about a bill in the Arkansas House, HB1745. The bill would make presenting a fake CDL or operating a commercial motor vehicle without an employment authorization document a Class D felony in the state. This all came about from dueling Arkansas legislation, with another bill, HB1569, gaining headlines over its purported $5,000 fine for truckers who did not possess sufficient English proficiency. 

The Arkansas ATA-backed bill, HB1745, recently passed in the State Legislature and was subsequently signed into law by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders as Act 604. In addition to English proficiency, “certain commercial driver license holders must possess a U.S. work authorization to operate a commercial motor vehicle in the state.” Failure to meet the new requirements results in a $500 fine for the first offense and a $1,000 fine for any subsequent offense. 

What I found more interesting was how these bills came about. For Newton, this problem began in 2023 when her counterpart in the Texas Trucking Association reached out to her to raise awareness about fraudulent CDLs. 

Texas had “come up with this solution to try to root it out” and warned Newton to “be aware of it because it’s likely that it’ll be coming to Arkansas next. And the issue that they had discovered was a quantity of fraudulent Mexican CDLs or LFCs that were being presented at roadside by drivers in Texas that law enforcement could almost think were suspicious,” said Newton in an interview.

She told FreightWaves that the Texas roadside enforcement officers began to dig, and what they found was a black market for fake Mexican LFCs – short for Licencias Federal de

Conductor. (For purposes of this article, LFC is the equivalent of an American CDL.)

The Texas solution to combat the fake LFCs was to require a second form of ID, like a work permit, visa or green card. The Texas ATA told the Arkansas association that if Texas closed this loophole by requiring extra ID, fraudsters would likely move upstream, in this case to adjacent states like Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

In other words, because the states are a patchwork of regulations, if one state cracks down on documents, those that don’t become havens for bad actors who were chased out of the first state. The recent flurry of news on state bills targeting CDLs is a direct response to this.

After the Texas law passed, there were significant penalties associated with fake CDLs – but with a twist. Newton added, “As those who were doing wrong became aware of the new law, the numbers spiked in individuals who were actually presenting as having no CDL rather than presenting their fake one to avoid the charge of presenting the fake. It was actually a less strenuous penalty to be cited for just not having a license at all.”

So my question became, “Why do I keep hearing about fake LFCs, and how does this all tie into my bad-English, non-domiciled windmill?” For that, we go to the Lone Star State (and Part 2 of this story).

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