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Truck Drivers, Trade Deals, and Denials: Sorting Fact from Fiction in Nebraska
Kelly Barner : September 25, 2025
“Werner Enterprises wishes to clarify that we are not involved in any agreements of discussions regarding the recruitment of Kenyan truck drivers to the United States. Any claims suggesting otherwise are just false.”
- Werner Enterprises on X, September 9, 2025
A very strange supply chain ‘controversy’ recently took place in the state of Nebraska.
Rumors started to circulate that Werner Enterprises, a $3B transportation and logistics company based in Omaha, Nebraska, was working with Kenya to bring partially trained truck drivers to the United States to earn commercial driver’s licenses.
The Nebraska Secretary of State, Robert Evnen, has led two trade trips to Kenya. One was an exploratory visit in February of 2024 and the other was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the country in September 2025.
Secretary of State Evnen has been quoted on the subject of a driver shortage and saying that Kenyan drivers have been finishing their CDL training in Nebraska. A Kenyan delegation met at Warner’s headquarters, but Evnen was not present at that meeting. Werner has denied the rumors, but still they persist. Why? Maybe because a picture is worth a thousand words.
2024: Trading Delegations
In February of 2024, Nebraska Secretary of State Evnen led a trade mission to Kenya. In a prepared statement, he said the primary focus of the trip was agriculture.
Three months later, a delegation from Kenya visited the United States. It was hosted at Werner Enterprises’ headquarters in Omaha.
A spokeswoman for Werner released the following statement to FreightWaves about that visit: “In May 2024, at the request of the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office, Werner hosted a group of dignitaries from Kenya as part of a standard trade mission visit. The conversation at Werner covered a variety of topics; however, there were no commitments made or discussions regarding a program or Werner sponsoring visas. The group visited multiple companies across various industries in Nebraska and held discussions, but there were no takeaways, follow-up discussions or meetings involving Werner since that time.”
According to an article that ran in The Kenyan Diaspora, Principal Secretary, State Department for Diaspora Affairs, Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, Roseline K. Njogu, “further extended an invitation to the Werner Enterprises team to visit Nairobi with the aim of further solidifying the engagements and allowing the team to witness the hardworking spirit of Kenyans firsthand. Additionally, it would provide an opportunity for the company to train prospective Kenyan recruits on the requirements needed to qualify for positions at Werner Enterprises.”
None of the articles I read suggests that anyone from Werner took the Principal Secretary up on her offer.
The story was about to fade from the headlines, but it would be back - with a vengeance.
2025: Sealing a Deal?
In early September, Nebraska Secretary of State Evnen made a trip to Kenya to sign what The State Department for Diaspora Affairs called a “landmark” deal between Nebraska and Kenya.
According to a September 2nd article in the publication Kenyans, Evnen said Nebraska-based carriers have begun to hire Kenyan drivers: “We have commercial truck drivers already who are being trained, partially in Kenya, and then they complete their training in Nebraska.”
Without quoting anyone directly, the article then says, “this initiative is in direct response to the pressing shortage of commercial drivers in the United States, particularly those operating tractor-trailer combinations.”
While I don’t believe the full Memorandum of Understanding between the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office and Kenya has been made public, an official statement from the Secretary’s office explains that the primary focus was the promotion of Nebraska corn growers, Nebraska producers of ethanol and dried distillers' grains, and Nebraska irrigation technology companies. It does not mention truck drivers or any private institutions that might hire them.
But when Kenyan reporting on the agreement made it stateside, with the quotes about truck drivers, and when the old pictures surfaced of Werner executives hosting the Kenyan delegation at their company headquarters, it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Moot Memorandum
By September 9th, Werner felt compelled to make their own public statement.
As shared on X: “Werner Enterprises wishes to clarify that we are not involved in any agreements of discussions regarding the recruitment of Kenyan truck drivers to the United States. Any claims suggesting otherwise are just false.”
Werner CEO Derek Leathers also posted on X: “While I like the work you’re doing to shine a light on many issues that need to be addressed in our industry I must disappoint you on this one. We did not, do not and will not work to bring drivers in from foreign countries on Visas or otherwise. Please re-read the article.”
On Thursday, September 11th, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen made an official statement about the Nebraska Secretary of State’s memorandum with Kenya.
It read, “The Secretary of State is an independent state constitutional office and is neither directly accountable to the Governor, nor in control of any code agency of state government, including the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). That agency is directly accountable to the Governor, who is likewise principally responsible for conducting the State of Nebraska’s foreign trade activities.”
For all of the upset, this may be a moot issue. On August 21st, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he was pausing worker visas for commercial truck drivers.
This decision came in the aftermath of truck driver Harjinder Singh causing multiple fatalities in a crash in Florida on August 12th. Although he held a commercial driver’s license from the state of California, there are questions about his ability to read road signs and safely operate the vehicle.
A spokeswoman for Evnen said in an email to FreightWaves that the memorandum is “stated in general terms and says nothing about truck drivers. The MOU requires full compliance with all Nebraska and federal laws, and that includes the President’s Executive Order on CDL driver requirements and U.S. immigration law.”
Maybe the trade visits and the memorandum were just about agriculture after all.
