By Cliff Abbott – October 30, 2025
The three-year Safe Driver Apprenticeship Pilot (SDAP) program, designed to pave the way for allowing 18- to 20-year-old CDL holders to operate in interstate commerce, is set to conclude on November 7, 2025.
Although the results are barely a blip compared to expectations, a groundswell of activity has been set in motion.
“They said they needed 3,000 drivers and 1,000 carriers for the program, and they haven’t gotten anywhere close to those numbers,” said David Heller, senior vice president of safety and government affairs for the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA). “(They had) 42 drivers total throughout the three years of the program.”
Those drivers, however, will provide usable data for the trucking industry and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
“They have had some very successful individual training students that go through this. So they’re currently working on issuing waivers that they can continue to operate in interstate commerce,” Heller explained. “Which then leads us to that grand old question: Where are we now?”