MADISON, Wisconsin — Wisconsin is trying to move more freight with fewer licensed drivers than it had a generation ago. A research brief titled “Fewer Drivers, Growing Needs”, released this month by the Wisconsin Policy Forum and built on Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) data, found that the number of people holding a valid commercial driver's licence (CDL) in the state fell by more than 20,000 over 15 years — from 224,860 in 2010 to 204,766 in 2025, a decline of 8.9% — even as the state's overall number of licensed drivers rose 8.3% over the same period.

Source: Wisconsin Policy Forum — Fewer Drivers, Growing Needs

The demand side moved the opposite way. Seventy percent of the goods, by weight, that move through Wisconsin travel on highways, and those shipments grew by 33% between 2019 and 2023, routed through fulfilment centres such as Amazon's, ports and warehouses. Federal officials project a further 50% nationwide increase in freight shipped by truck by 2050. A CDL is the licence required to operate any vehicle weighing more than 26,000 pounds — semi-trailer trucks, flatbeds and dump trucks, but also large snow ploughs — so the decline reaches construction, local government and school operations, not just long-haul freight.

The decline, in full

The fall was not steady. The single largest drop came between 2010 and 2015, when holders fell by 18,731, or 8.3%. Numbers partially rebounded by 4,982 (2.4%) between 2015 and 2020, then fell again by 6,345 (3.0%) from 2020 to 2025. Measured against population, the slide is steeper: CDL holders per 100,000 residents fell 13.3%, from 3,954 to 3,428. Each year, Wisconsin has about 6,000 job openings that require heavy-truck licences, according to the state Department of Workforce Development figures cited in the brief.

Source: CDLLife

Most of the state's 72 counties lost drivers. Declines of about 15% in Winnebago and Dane counties were the largest in percentage terms; Dane County's drop of 1,403 licence holders was the biggest total loss in the state, and Milwaukee County lost a similar 1,385 CDLs, a 6.9% decrease there. Seventeen counties — mostly less-populated rural counties — bucked the trend: Iron County posted the largest percentage increase, 13.2%, and St. Croix County the largest total increase, 296 valid CDLs.

An ageing workforce

The drivers who remain are older than the general driving population. In 2025 the average age of all Wisconsin CDL holders was 51.4 years, compared with 50.4 for regular drivers aged 18 and over. Some 58.7% of licensed commercial truck drivers were at least 50 years old, and nearly a quarter were between 60 and 69. New drivers are not replacing them: only 8.4% of commercial drivers are under 30, and fewer than a quarter are under 40. Men hold 96.8% of Wisconsin CDLs, with an average age of 51.5; the small group of women holders averaged 48.8 years. The brief notes the available data do not show how many licence holders still drive professionally — but if current conditions hold, it warns, numbers will keep dropping as drivers age out into retirement.

The same pattern is hitting buses. Licensed school-bus drivers fell a further 13.5% between 2022 and 2025, down to 12,330, and drivers licensed for passenger buses fell 13.8% over the same period, a loss of 6,327. The Forum links those shortages to districts struggling to cover school and extracurricular transport, and to more expensive transit service.

Why drivers are leaving

A 2022 Wisconsin Department of Transportation white paper cited in the brief identified the likely drivers of the decline: retirements; licences lost to poor driving records, drug tests or other rule-based disqualifications; a relative drop in pay over time; difficult working conditions; and long hours. Research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests driver numbers nationwide rise when pay rises — evidence, the brief says, of a functioning labour market, and a hint that pay and conditions are levers employers and officials can actually pull. The Center Square's reporting on the brief summed up its warning: self-driving vehicles and more freight trains will not be enough to meet all of Wisconsin's freight needs.

Source: The Center Square via The Best Times

The training bottleneck

Replacing a driver is slow by design. CDL applicants must pass written and skills tests; licences are typically valid for up to eight years, with shorter periods for endorsements such as hazardous materials; federal rules require medical testing updated at least every two years, plus drug-testing requirements. First-time applicants must complete Entry Level Driver Training — classroom and behind-the-wheel instruction — through driving schools, community colleges or other programmes. The brief gives one concrete price tag: the knowledge portion at Madison Area Technical College lasts up to three months and costs $730. Efforts to shorten courses, it cautions, may affect how well new drivers are prepared for heavy trucks.

Efforts to add drivers — and a federal complication

State leaders have put money toward the pipeline. In 2024 the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor Tony Evers created grants for residents seeking a first CDL, paid to training schools or employer-sponsored programmes and covering up to $3,000 or half the training cost; in 2026, $250,000 in grants was awarded statewide, enough to aid about 170 new licence holders. Federal help includes a $3.4 million nationwide grant programme announced in 2025 for veterans seeking CDL training, and Workforce Pell grants newly available since July 2026 for students entering in-demand occupations including commercial driving — the Congressional Budget Office estimates an average award of $2,200 per student. Against that, federal officials recently shut down a number of driver-training schools nationwide, including three in Wisconsin, questioning whether the schools were providing appropriate training and testing for learners' permits in languages other than English (final tests are conducted in English). The Forum notes the three Wisconsin schools sat in an area with multiple alternatives, so the local impact was likely limited — but closures in areas with fewer options would raise barriers further.

Impact on residents — and on diaspora and trucker readers

For Wisconsin residents, the Forum's conclusion is practical: shortages — overall, or in specific niches — can affect the reliability and cost of shipping and put upward pressure on prices, from groceries routed through fulfilment centres to construction materials and snow-plough crews. For Punjabi and other South Asian truckers, Wisconsin is not a side route: its interstates carry Midwest freight between Chicago, Minneapolis, Green Bay and the Dakotas, and diaspora owner-operators and fleet drivers run those lanes daily. A state short of licensed drivers is a state where experienced drivers — including immigrant drivers with clean records — hold more bargaining power on pay, and where carriers compete harder for the same shrinking pool.

What happens next

The Forum is blunt that concern over driver shortages is likely to persist: training funding may help in the long term but has not yet made a substantive impact on driver numbers, and it invites officials and businesses to look beyond training access to pay and working conditions as barriers worth addressing. Continued investment in freight rail could shift some goods off trucks, it adds, quoting the state's latest intermodal freight report: “Trucking plays a vital role… However, an overreliance on any one mode can create challenges within the transportation system.” The next test of the trend will be the DMV's updated licence counts — and whether the roughly 6,000 heavy-truck openings Wisconsin posts each year start finding younger drivers to fill them.