English proficiency is moving from guidance to a rule: the dispatcher's reading

Guidance can be replaced. A rule needs a date.

A receiver in Joliet wants a driver who can follow a door assignment, and the officer at the scale wants a plain answer about the load. That is already the job under 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2), which requires a driver to read and speak English well enough to work and to understand traffic signs. The news from August 7 concerns how hard that standard will be to undo, not its invention.

According to the August 7 announcement, FMCSA is moving its ELP enforcement guidelines into a new rule so they cannot be watered down the way the department says a 2016 policy did, when it told inspectors not to place drivers out of service for ELP. A related proposed rule in the Federal Register already treats ELP as an out-of-service item in line with CVSA criteria.

A working driver can keep the difference straight easily enough. A guidance memo can be replaced within a year, while a final rule needs notice, comment and an effective date. Until that date is on the books, treat roadside practice and the current FMCSR as the standard in force, and assume inspectors do not regard ELP as optional.

Before you write a policy for your own fleet, check the section and the proposed-rule docket on FMCSA.gov and in the Federal Register. We will not paste campaign wording from a headline into a qualification file. We will keep hiring for the job as it is really done at the dock and at the scale.

What shippers can ask, and what to keep off the confirmation

It is fair to ask whether the driver on your freight can communicate at the dock and at the scale. That is a safety and service question. A political essay does not belong in the rate confirmation, and we will not put one there.

Ask whether the driver can follow a door assignment. Skip the speech on the rate confirmation.

If a load is stuck because a driver was put out of service over a qualification, we will tell you the truck is late and say whether we can cover it. We will not guess at a stranger's paperwork from a video clip, and we will not diagnose another carrier's driver from a headline.

A pickup delayed by an OOS is a problem with the trip, not with the lane rate. If you need a replacement truck, call dispatch with the appointment as it stands. When you bring on an owner-operator, the same qualification file applies as for company drivers; see the owner-operator terms. For the 53′ freight itself, Dry Van is the product page.

How we hire with this in mind, and what stays out of the ad

A CDL-A, driving experience and the ability to do the job in English with dispatch and customers. That is our bar, and it came before August 7. Campaign language stays on fmcsa.dot.gov, while our requirements live on Open seats and the equipment pages.

We will not make a slogan out of a codification announcement, and we will not tell a shipper that we invented English as a standard this month. We will keep hiring conversations in the language the dock and the scale already use, and we will stop a driver who cannot hold that conversation before he gets the keys.

Drivers apply at Open seats. Dispatch is +1 (224) 877-0350 if a live load has a communication problem at the door. If you are writing your own qualification policy, check 49 CFR 391.11 on eCFR; this page is a dispatcher's translation, not legal advice.