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**As soon as I saw the word “obtained”, I immediately thought of how so many people in Illinois bought a commercial truck driver license instead of passing a test. Must be my suspicious nature.**

About 17 years ago, I had a dedicated run two nights a week to a warehouse at a west suburb of Chicago. One very snowy night I showed up to see a semi trying to back into my assigned dock. I could tell by the numerous tire tracks that he had been trying for quite a while. I questioned him about who gave him my dock. In heavy a heavy eastern European accent he said, “No one. I just want to park truck.”

I told him that was my assigned dock, and that there was space at the end of the docks, where he could park out of everyone’s way. Then he could check in at the shipping and receiving office.

I told him that in snowy conditions he needs to check the dock area for tire chocks, so that he doesn’t ruin a trailer tire while backing over it. He said, “Oh, thank you sir! I not think about that!”.

He said,”will you park my truck for me, I take long time to park truck”. So I quickly parked it for him. He happily thanked me. I got out, and as he got in I asked him where he got his CDL at. He said, “New York City”. I asked him what he did before that. He said, “I was officer in Romanian Army”.

I encountered a LOT of eastern European truck drivers during a 2 year OTR stretch in 07-08.

I was actually thinking about the story behind why George Ryan ended up in jail for several years. Before he was Governor of Illinois, he was the Secretary of State, an office that includes supervising the DMV.

The Illinois DMV, and the Secretary office, were a public joke for a long time, and while Ryan was governor, after he left the SOS position, an illegal bought a commercial DL from somebody with the DMV, and was driving a truck along one of the interstates from Chicago toward Milwaukee when something fell off the back of the truck, hit a minivan and caused the minivan to crash and catch fire. The mom and dad were able to get out, but their 6 kids all died in the fire.

One connected dot led to another and eventually George Ryan was convicted on corruption charges and went to jail. Apparently if that illegal had passed the driver test instead of bribing somebody, that thing would not have fallen off the back of the truck and caused the crash/fire that killed those kids.