Up until last year, my son was prevented from crossing state lines as a professional trucker due to his age. It’s a stupid law.
A 19 year old trucker in Texas is no different than a 19 year old trucker in Rhode Island, but the Texas kid has an opportunity to get a job and the Rhode island kid doesn’t.
We live in a small state. My son moved to Michigan so he could get a driving job in a big state. When he was taking his CDL class, he couldn’t even drive out of state in the Driver Ed truck with an instructor.
At the least, the DOT directive should be changed to allow young drivers to go to any state contiguous to theirs.
Driving instruction has one purpose, to obtain your CDL. I did mine in 7 days. 3 days later I was OTR with a finishing instructor from my employer.