Data you can trust For schools

How the numbers are built

CDL School Cost uses two public files. The FMCSA Training Provider Registry location list, “ELDT Training Locations Registered,” is dated October 31, 2026 and contains 32,966 rows. The U.S. Department of Labor eligible training provider file for CIP 49.0205 (Truck and Bus Driver/Commercial Vehicle Operator) was retrieved November 1, 2026 and contains 2,535 programs.

What is listed

School pages are public-enrollment registry locations, plus programs from the labor file that did not match a public location by name and city. 6,133 registry rows are marked public enrollment. 26,833 are private enrollment. Private locations are counted on state pages and are not given their own pages, because they generally train a company’s own drivers. Identical registry rows at the same address are combined. One Quebec row and a handful of minor-outlying-island rows are outside the state pages; the national registry totals still include every row in the file.

747 provider-and-city groups from the labor file matched a public registry location. 592 did not, and those programs are their own listings. A match requires the same state and city and a close name. We would rather miss a match than attach one school’s price to another. When a price is attached, the page says which provider name the program was listed under.

Tuition and outcomes

A tuition is “published” when the labor file lists a non-WIOA tuition from $100 up to, but not including, $50,000. 2,218 programs fall in that range. The national median is $4,700. Values under $100, $0, blank, and $50,000 or more are not used in medians. If a row shows one of those figures, the school page says so instead of dropping it silently. Supplies use the same outer bounds and must be above $0.

The median is the statistical median. The 25th and 75th percentiles use the nearest-rank method. Employment and earnings use only values the file did not mark as suppressed. In this extract, suppressed results arrive as −1. Employment is a share from 0 to 1 of WIOA participants the program reported as employed in a later quarter. It is not a pass rate and not a placement rate for self-paid students. Quarterly earnings are not annual pay. Program length uses weeks greater than zero. A −1 length is treated as not reported.

What we do not have

  • No star ratings, graduate reviews, or “verified” quality score. Registry listed means the row is in the FMCSA file.
  • No GI Bill approval flag, no weekend or evening flag, and no language of instruction.
  • No pass rates. The registry does not publish them.
  • No separate community-college field in the program file we used. A name that includes “college” is not labeled as a type.
  • Map pins are city centers from a public city coordinate file, not the school’s street address. Cities we cannot place are left off the map and stay in the list.

Dates on the page

“Registry file October 31, 2026” is the FMCSA file date. “Prices retrieved November 1, 2026” is when the labor file was pulled. A location can also show the timestamp on its own registry row. Schools change prices. Treat every dollar figure as a published snapshot and confirm it.

Files: tpr.fmcsa.dot.gov and trainingproviderresults.gov.