Mayor Mamdani's office expanded the city's commercial trucking CDL training program on July 16 to cover more than 11,000 New Yorkers under Department of Probation supervision — citing an average first-year salary of $73,573 for the 111 participants already placed in full-time jobs.

The city's Next Mile NYC program — which trains participants for commercial driver's licenses through a partnership with Emerge Career and places them in trucking industry jobs — opened its doors to more than 11,000 New Yorkers under Department of Probation supervision on July 16, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office announced.

Since the program launched in 2025, 306 participants have earned their Commercial Learner's Permits, 187 have cleared the New York State CDL road test to obtain a full CDL, and 111 have landed full-time employment at an average salary of $73,573. Zero graduates have been rearrested after completing the program, according to the mayor's office.

Participants complete a 40-hour online CDL training course through Emerge Career — a workforce development organization that lists CDL driving and diesel technician certifications among its free programs — before moving to behind-the-wheel training and the state road test. Emerge Career's own placement data, which covers all its markets, puts the average CDL driver salary at $80,000 and a 92 percent employment rate within six months.

The probation expansion follows a March 2026 expansion that made Next Mile NYC available to people in custody at Rikers Island. The Department of Probation, led by Commissioner Sharun Goodwin, supervises the 11,000-plus New Yorkers now eligible. Deanna Logan, director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, framed the expansion as a public-safety measure — noting that stable employment cuts the conditions that drive reoffending.

The industry side of the equation is documented: the American Trucking Associations projected a shortfall of 82,000 commercial drivers in 2026, a gap that widened through the pandemic and has not closed. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported in 2024 that roughly six in 10 formerly incarcerated individuals face unemployment from the end of their sentence through four years post-release.

Next Mile NYC aligns a population largely locked out of the labor market with an industry that can't fill its rolls. The program doesn't change the underlying structural barriers — a CDL still requires passing a federal drug test, which some convictions complicate — but it puts 11,000 probation clients in front of a training pipeline that has produced a documented wage for the 111 who have cleared it so far.