Books Open for Federal Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program – Drivers

The books are actually open for the Protected Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program (SDAP). The Federal Motor Service Security Administration bought the ball rolling on July 26 by launching a participation portal in order that people and customary carriers can apply to hitch this system.

The SDAP program goals to assist people between 18 and 20 years achieve employment in interstate trucking whereas aiding trucking corporations within the hiring and coaching of such new drivers. Based on FMCSA, the method requires carriers to stick to rigorous coaching requirements that pair every younger driver with an skilled mentor-driver.

A product of the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed into legislation final 12 months, this system has been years within the making as a partial treatment for the yawning scarcity of long-haul CDL truck drivers.

The trouble to achieve a authorized means to permit under-21 CDL holders to drive wherever started again in 2015 with a bipartisan Senate that might have required FMCSA to conduct a pilot examine on authorizing contiguous states to signal compacts to standardize CDL necessities, together with for under-21 drivers.

That proposal didn’t catch a gear, however ultimately morphed right into a push for a graduated licensing program. And that concept in the end led to a provision inside IIJA calling for FMCSA to arrange this apprenticeship pilot program for CDL holders underneath the age of 21 to qualify to run interstate.

The pondering behind SDAP consists of in massive measure the commonsense recognition that drivers underneath 21 holding intrastate business driver’s licenses carry out the identical work as different drivers who function throughout state traces. Due to this fact, these 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old drivers, correctly skilled, also needs to be allowed to function business autos in interstate commerce.

The Protected Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program will contain solely pre-approved motor carriers and people particular person 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old drivers holding CDLs in addition to certified driver-mentors to work with them.

To make certain, SDAP is an enormous step in the suitable path for rising trucking’s ranks by opening them to certified drivers of their late teen years. For that motive — and since this system is slated to run for 3 years — there’s no time like proper now for carriers to get in on the bottom flooring and begin the appliance course of.

Step one, after all, is to use by going to the company’s SDAP web page. The appliance asks in case you are looking for to hitch as a motor provider or as an apprentice driver or as an skilled driver (who would function a driver-mentor.) A phrase to the clever: If you’re not registered with the U.S. Division of Labor Registered Apprenticeship Program, you will need to be a part of that as nicely. 

A discover positioned within the Federal Register for Jan. 14, 2022 by FMCSA factors out that the pilot program proposed in a September 2020 Federal Register discover and the apprenticeship pilot program beginning now (approved by the IIJA invoice) are “considerably the identical.”

Each name for 2 probationary intervals, one for 120 hours and the opposite for 280 hours, and using particular car security applied sciences. Moreover, the exemptions required for each packages are the identical. On account of all this similarity, the decided that the feedback obtained underneath the September 2020 discover fulfill the discover and remark necessities.

FMCSA identified that of 191 distinctly submitted feedback, 127 favored the proposal, whereas 50 opposed it. Twenty members of Congress submitted a letter to the docket supporting this system. “Different commenters remained impartial, supplied conditional assist, supplied responses to the questions posed within the discover, or supplied different options,” the company famous.

For detailed data on coaching {qualifications}, participation necessities, and directions for the appliance course of, go to this devoted SDAP web site.

This Washington Watch commentary first appeared within the August 2022 difficulty of Heavy Responsibility Trucking.