Arkansas Truck Sweep Puts 393 Out of Service, 183 English Violations

• A 48-hour federal inspection sweep in Arkansas put 393 drivers and vehicles out of service, and 183 of the violations logged were for English Language Proficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced Nov. 4.
• A trucker who fails the roadside English check under 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2) is taken off the road today, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has proposed writing that practice into federal regulations, with no final rule issued yet.
• The department says 33,000 drivers have been put out of service for English or road sign failures from April 2025 to now, a total the release gives with no state or yearly breakdown.

What a Roadside English Check Can Cost a Trucker in 48 Hours

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy reported the outcome of Operation Highway Shield’s third wave on Wednesday, Nov. 4, from Little Rock. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors worked 48 hours along Arkansas highways and major freight corridors and completed 1,724 inspections. The tally: 393 drivers and vehicles placed out of service, 183 English Language Proficiency violations, 74 immigration violations referred for federal immigration enforcement, 44 criminal arrests and one stolen trailer recovered.

Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Arkansas Highway Police joined the FMCSA inspectors. The department describes the operation as aimed at unqualified big rig drivers and criminal activity.

“Gone are the days of dangerous–and many times illegal and foreign–drivers putting American lives at risk on our roads. Under the Trump Administration, we are restoring law and order,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “This latest wave of Operation Highway Shield has pulled over 300 dangerous drivers off the road including 183 foreign drivers that couldn’t read road signs. We are not slowing down when it comes to keeping Americans safe on our roads.”

The release lists the 183 as English Language Proficiency violations and gives no breakdown of those drivers by nationality. The release does not say how many of the 183 ended in an out-of-service order. Nationally, a violation does not always mean one, as the federal figures below show.

Three Waves, Three Sets of Numbers

Arkansas is the third operation of its kind. The first wave put 176 drivers out of service, 54 of them for language deficiencies, alongside 35 criminal arrests and 42 people held on federal immigration grounds. The second wave, run across Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, put 766 drivers and vehicles out of service and logged 36 English Language Proficiency test violations, with 51 people detained and $1 million of stolen cargo recovered.

Add the three together and the department has taken 1,335 drivers and vehicles out of service. The English figures are not directly comparable across waves: the release counts 54 drivers taken out of service for language deficiencies in the first wave, but 36 and 183 English Language Proficiency violations in the second and third. Arkansas logged the largest English count of the three, 183 against 36 in the four-state wave, and the release gives no reason for the gap.

FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs pitched the operation as a safety measure for ordinary traffic. “Every person on the road deserves to get home safely,” said Barrs. “When criminal activity and unsafe vehicles creep onto our highways, it puts everyone at risk. Operation Highway Shield is about teaming up with our partners to protect everyday drivers, clear out the bad actors, and make our roads safer for everyone.”

The sweeps sit on top of a wider push, and an earlier count of 26,000 truckers pulled off the road ran in August. That month four federal bodies began an interagency fraud crackdown on trucking, and FMCSA removed 110 commercial driver’s license schools on an emergency basis; the schools were linked to over 5,000 drivers who had failed English tests. A further 160 schools were put on notice. From the April 2025 executive order to now, the department says it has put 33,000 drivers out of service for not speaking basic English or reading road signs, revoked 31,000 licenses it calls illegally issued, and shut down nearly 10,000 driving schools. Those totals are the department’s claims; the release does not publish the underlying records.

The Rule Behind the Numbers

The requirement is old, and the rules for truckers who fail an English test trace back to the 1930s. The Interstate Commerce Commission wrote an English language requirement for interstate drivers into its Motor Carrier Safety Regulations on Dec. 23, 1936. Today it sits in 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2): a driver must be able to read and speak English well enough to converse with the general public, understand highway traffic signs and signals in English, respond to official inquiries and make entries on reports and records. The notice says drivers based in Canada and Mexico fall under the same rules dating to the 1930s, and that the rule treats every nationality alike.

What changed is the penalty. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, whose out-of-service criteria states in the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program use at roadside inspections, dropped the English rule from those criteria in April 2015, and a 2016 FMCSA policy told inspectors to cite the violation without sidelining the driver. Executive Order 14286, signed April 28, 2025, reversed that. The alliance voted on May 1, 2025 to restore the violation to its criteria, effective June 25, 2025.

The federal count shows the effect. From January 2025 to June 24, 2025, inspectors issued 7,812 English proficiency violations nationwide, and 33 of them, or 0.4 percent, ended in an out-of-service order. From June 25, 2025 to March 19, 2026 the count was 60,399 violations and 19,045 out-of-service orders, just under a third. All 19,045 orders came outside the U.S.-Mexico border commercial zones; violations recorded inside those zones did not lead to an out-of-service order.

The roadside check follows steps laid out in FMCSA’s May 2025 policy memo, which the notice describes as written for federal inspectors. Inspectors start in English. If the first contact raises doubt that the driver follows instructions, the inspector runs an interview to test whether the driver can answer official inquiries. A driver who passes the interview moves to a recognition test on U.S. highway traffic signs, including electronic changeable message signs. Drivers granted a hearing exemption who can read and write English are not treated as unqualified under the rule, and FMCSA guidance from 2014 to that effect remains in force.

Why FMCSA Wants the Rule in Writing

On Aug. 10, 2026, FMCSA published a proposed rule (91 FR 51422, Docket FMCSA-2026-0826) that would write the out-of-service consequence into 49 CFR parts 390 and 391. The agency is amending sections 390.5, 390.5T and 391.11 and is granting a petition the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance filed on Oct. 25, 2025. The legal basis is the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 and the Motor Carrier Safety Act of 1984. Comments closed Oct. 9, 2026, and 2,203 had arrived. The proposal remains a proposal; no final rule has been published.

Codifying the rule changes the footing for states, which depend on federal grant money. Each state that takes federal Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program money must adopt compatible rules, so a final rule would bind state law regardless of later changes to the alliance’s criteria. After a final rule, FMCSA says it will hold training for its own and state enforcement staff.

The notice also tightens the border-zone exception. A driver whose current trip stays inside a U.S.-Mexico border commercial zone is cited but not sidelined. The exception would end for any driver whom the evidence shows is working, or plans to work, past the zone boundary. Inspectors read the trip from bills of lading, dispatch records, equipment interchange receipts and driver statements. FMCSA estimates that about 9,000 drivers a year stopped in the border zones would be placed out of service under that change, at a cost to motor carriers of $14.4 million annually, working from 9,000 drivers at $800 a day for two days of delay. The agency says the proposal creates no new requirement, as the English rule dates to 1936.

What CDL Holders, Carriers and Shippers Should Do

Truck drivers should expect an inspection that starts in English. If the inspector doubts the driver understands instructions, the interview tests whether the driver can respond to official inquiries, and a driver who passes it moves to the sign test, which covers U.S. highway traffic signs, including electronic changeable message signs. A driver who fails a step is cited under 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2) and, unless the trip stays inside a border commercial zone, placed out of service.

Carriers carry the cost. FMCSA states that carriers are responsible for confirming a driver is qualified before the next dispatch, and it does not require them to train drivers in English. An out-of-service order leaves the carrier to find a replacement driver; the notice cites industry downtime estimates of $448 to $760 a day, and gives examples of companies charging carriers a detention fee of $50 to $100 an hour, or three percent of the shipment value, when a delivery misses its window.

Shippers feel the same delay when a truck is pulled mid-route; the freight waits for a replacement driver. Anyone who spots an unsafe truck, or a customer who meets a moving scam, can file a report through FMCSA’s revamped complaint center.

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Sources

• U.S. Department of Transportation: Operation Highway Shield press release
• Federal Register: English Language Proficiency; Out of Service Criteria
• FMCSA: Operation Highway Shield newsroom release

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar