‘It’s the whole industry’: Veteran driver says CDL crackdown won’t fix training alone

As federal regulators crack down on hundreds of commercial driver training providers, a veteran truck driver in Georgia is launching a school he says will take a different approach — smaller classes, more time behind the wheel and a greater emphasis on preparing students for the realities of life on the road. Shawn Gresham, founder of Trucking Life Academy in Dalton, Georgia, told FreightWaves that the problems facing commercial driver training go beyond fraudulent or noncompliant schools. Gresham, who has driven commercially for 17 years and says he has logged more than 1 million miles, said some legitimate schools do what they are designed to do — help students obtain a commercial driver’s license — without necessarily preparing them for what comes afterward. “Schools just help you get the license, and that’s just kind of what we got accustomed to,” Gresham said. “It was a status quo.