Is Us Cdl To Europe Possible?
Topic 26887 | Page 1
Probably not.
#1, that one year wait before you can get your CDL (then your company can make money from you).
#2, to be honest, truck driving is not a rare skill worthy of importing talent.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
I have doubts about the feasibility for the companies involved. They would likely have to exhaust all possibilities of a hiring an EU driver first. You would be on a work visa where you would be expelled from the Schengen zone if you lost your job for any reason. Best I could recommend is to contact a few companies and see what they say.
As to transferring your CDL , regular 4-wheeler US driver's licenses are not considered valid in the EU after the initial international translation expires (assuming you get one). It has to do with the formatting of the info on the licenses. I am not sure which US states format their licenses according to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, but I've heard that there are a few. Those may be possible to transfer over to an EU license, but not the others. The US as a country is not a signatory to the 1968 convention.
You would most likely have to complete driving school for vehicles classified B, C, & E. Class B is your regular 4-wheeler, C is the tractor over 3500 kg and E being trailers over 750 kg. You can just get the license, but if you want to work for a company then you would have to do a longer professional program similar to the 160 hour programs in the US. A quick search yielded a schooling price of around $2,200 where I am located in the Czech Republic. It looks like it's salaried work here and the first few results I found pay in the range of $18,000 - $25,000 per year. A quick check of UK lorry salaries resulted in cca $40,000 per year.
This is just info that I quickly looked up in the Czech language. I don't have much more knowledge than that and I could be way off base. Hopefully Mathieu C. can elaborate more, as he appears to be an EU truck driver.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.EPU:
Electric Auxiliary Power Units
Electric APUs have started gaining acceptance. These electric APUs use battery packs instead of the diesel engine on traditional APUs as a source of power. The APU's battery pack is charged when the truck is in motion. When the truck is idle, the stored energy in the battery pack is then used to power an air conditioner, heater, and other devices
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I have the reverse question posted about transferring cdls. Will a company sponsor me for a work visa?
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles: