Young adults deserve fair access to employment opportunities just as older adults do. This includes commercial driving. However, there are several age restrictions on young adults’ ability to drive commercial vehicles, which unfairly discriminates against them based on their age. The minimum age to drive a commercial motor vehicle is regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). For most purposes, a person must be 21 to drive a CMV, with some exceptions that allow 18-year-olds to drive.
Table of Contents
- Age Regulations For Commercial Driving
- Efforts to Lower the Commercial Driving Age
- Competence, Safety, and Fair Employment Standards
- The Future for Young Drivers
Age Regulations For Commercial Driving
A person may obtain a commercial driver’s license (CDL) at 18 years old, but there are many restrictions on what type of driving they can do until they are 21. Commercial drivers under 21 are prohibited from hauling passengers or hazardous materials. Additionally, they may only drive within the borders of the state that issued their license.
Some employers, usually smaller ones, may have a minimum employment age that is higher than 21 due to the greater cost of insuring young drivers. For example, In 2023, Uber Technologies raised the minimum age for many new California drivers from 21 to 25, specifically citing rising commercial auto insurance costs. However, this is just evidence that shows that insurance companies unfairly target young adults with higher rates. Drivers’ insurance rates should be based on their driving experience, not their age.
Efforts to Lower the Commercial Driving Age
There have been several attempts to lower the commercial driving age over the past few decades. These efforts have led to tensions between trucking companies trying to expand their workforce and individuals who view young drivers as a potential threat to their safety and job security. Young people themselves have had little input in these debates.
In 2001, the FMCSA solicited public comments on lowering the commercial driving age to 18. They found that “more than 90 percent of the commenters were opposed, most on the basis that individuals under the age of 21 lacked the maturity and judgment to operate a CMV. [However,] none explained how interstate drivers under 21 would diminish safety when most States have concluded that intrastate drivers under 21 do not do so.”
Nonetheless, the FMCSA decided not to reconsider the minimum age laws until 2016, when they began to discuss an exception for young people with military driving experience. The Under 21 Military CDL Pilot Program began in 2019.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law required the FMCSA to create an apprenticeship program for 18- to 20-year-old drivers to operate in interstate commerce. Young drivers in this program had to complete a probationary period in which they were supervised by an experienced driver who is over 26, among other safety and training requirements. The FMCSA hoped to collect data on the performance of at least 3000 young drivers. However, only 42 apprentices had completed the probationary period when the program ended in November 2025. Many employers were not interested in sponsoring young drivers due to the additional training expenses.
Competence, Safety, and Fair Employment Standards
The fact that young drivers are more likely to be involved in crashes is often cited misleadingly to suggest that age itself causes unsafe driving behavior. This conclusion is based more on prejudice against youth than data and evidence.
A 2020 study by the FMCSA collected data on over 21,000 truck drivers to identify risk factors for crashes. Using this data, the National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence studied crash risk based on age and driving experience. They concluded that “driving experience, rather than age, had a greater impact on driving risk. As such, this study found no safety-based reason NOT to use younger drivers when structured training, mentoring, and coaching systems are in place.”
This conclusion should be unsurprising because the risk of mistakes is highest when someone is inexperienced. Everyone must start somewhere, so a higher minimum age unnecessarily delays the process of learning safe driving skills.
The FMCSA already acknowledges that drivers as young as 18 can safely operate commercial vehicles under some circumstances. There is no safety-related reason for the requirement to remain within one’s home state, which means that young drivers can travel 800 miles across Texas, but not one mile across the state line. This standard unfairly limits employment opportunities for young people based on where they live.
The Future for Young Drivers
Trucking industry groups are continuing to lobby FMCSA to lower the interstate CDL age to 18. It seems likely they will soon implement a new program for drivers under 21.
However, FMCSA has recently taken a firm stance against allowing people under 18 to operate commercial vehicles. In 2025, FMCSA denied permission for a high school in Connell, Washington to train 17-year-old students in truck driving, with the goal of preparing them for immediate employment after graduation. The current government applies much more scrutiny to young drivers than in the past, when there were more exceptions to driving age laws, such as for seasonal agricultural work. There were even some high schools that hired students to drive buses as recently as the 1980s.
You can contact FMCSA to express support for lowering the commercial driving age, which would provide stable jobs for young people without compromising safety.
The National Youth Rights Association
If you’re interested in Youth Rights, consider volunteering with us. We are always looking for new members and would love to have you on board. If you have a personal story to share, of how commercial driving age restrictions have negatively impacted you, or about a general youth rights violation, consider sending us an email at nyra@youthrights.org. We’d love to help get your story out to the world.
