Twenty-three thousand drivers, one medical institute: Israel's heavy-truck licensing bottleneck.
An inter-ministry dispute between Israel's Health and Transportation ministries, triggered when the Transportation Ministry ended its contract with medical-management vendor Femi Premium, has left some 23,000 Israelis unable to finish a heavy-vehicle (HGV) driver licence. The Knesset Special Committee on Foreign Workers heard on 24 February 2026 that the Manufacturers Association, Israel Ports, the Employment Service and the Truckers Council all confirm a shortage of thousands of drivers. The squeeze lands as the NIS 150bn (~$47bn) Tel Aviv Metro begins moving spoil from roughly 300 km of planned tunnels through urban centres.
01The pain
Twenty-three thousand. That is how many Israelis the Knesset Special Committee on Foreign Workers heard about on 24 February 2026: local applicants who cannot finish a heavy-truck (HGV, heavy-vehicle goods) licence because the medical-clearance pipeline at the Medical Institute for Road Safety has stopped moving.1
The jam is institutional. The Transportation Ministry ended its contract with Femi Premium, the prior medical-management vendor, and has not agreed with the Health Ministry on staffing or budget at the Institute. The Manufacturers Association, Israel Ports, the Employment Service and the Truckers Council all told the committee the same thing: thousands of trucks short. Truckers-Council chair Gabi Ben Harosh asked for 3,000 foreign-worker permits and conceded, on the record, that "20% of drivers are dangerous; I would give them up."1
The squeeze lands on the worst possible quarter. The State Comptroller has warned that the NIS 150bn Tel Aviv Metro — ground broken in December 2025 — will require "tens of thousands of truck journeys each month through urban centres" to evacuate spoil from roughly 300 km of planned tunnels. Petah Tikva contractors, Ashdod port operators and Haifa fleet managers pay the gap in wage inflation, missed delivery slots, and project penalties while the licence pipeline stays closed.2,3
Further reading
- 1 Yahoo News reprint of The Jerusalem Post (Abraham Bloch, 24 February 2026) — Knesset Special Committee on Foreign Workers session: 23,000-applicant HGV medical-clearance backlog at the Medical Institute for Road Safety after the Transportation Ministry ended its contract with Femi Premium, the Truckers Council's request for 3,000 foreign-worker permits, and the on-record commentary from chair Gabi Ben Harosh: yahoo.com / israeli-truckers-fear-foreign-workers
- 2 Ynet News (Sivan Hilaie) — State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman audit of the Tel Aviv Metro: warning of "tens of thousands of truck journeys each month through urban centres", "millions of cubic meters of soil" to be removed from tunnels, and the absence of a finalised plan to address expected traffic congestion: ynetnews.com / bjeunwwvwg
- 3 Wikipedia, Tel Aviv Metro — projected NIS 150 billion scheme cost (with later post-indexation estimates climbing to ~NIS 177 billion), planned network of approximately 300 km of tunnels, and December 2025 cornerstone-laying / construction start in Petah Tikva: en.wikipedia.org / Tel_Aviv_Metro
02Who solves this today
Three internationally-active providers whose own homepages explicitly market fleet management, driver coaching and HGV (heavy-vehicle goods) compliance to fleet operators. Each entry was checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow — none of these are productised end-to-end as the HGV-licence-prep-plus-foreign-worker-recruitment pipeline the third TL;DR bullet describes; each provides one or two of the inputs an Israeli fleet operator (or a startup serving them) would assemble. Domestic Israeli HGV-prep providers and dedicated HGV foreign-worker recruiters have been considered and excluded where their public pages did not confirm the niche on the date of writing — see drop log below.
Listed providers publicly market fleet-management, driver-coaching and HGV (heavy-vehicle goods) compliance on their own pages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Adjacent vendors and platforms were considered and excluded where their public pages did not confirm the niche on the date of writing — AJEETS (ajeets.com) returned HTTP 200 but the homepage emphasises construction, hospitality, technicians, engineers and nurses across "50+ countries" with no truck-driver line and no Israel call-out, and was dropped pending a re-check against an HGV vertical landing page; YT International (ytintl.com) returned a TLS-certificate-expired error (the chain failed validation) and was dropped pending re-check; Oman Agencies (omanagencies.com) returned HTTP 200 with Israel listed in a country-dropdown and Logistics in an industry list, but no truck-driver verbatim and no Israeli HGV call-out on the homepage, and was dropped pending re-check against a vertical page; Decker-Pex-Levi (lawoffice.org.il) returned HTTP 200 but the homepage centres on permanent immigration, citizenship, aliyah and a single B-1 Expert Visa article without any HGV foreign-worker product, and was dropped pending re-check against a labour-migration vertical; DriversEd (driversed.com/cdl) returned HTTP 404 on the CDL path, and the root (driversed.com) returned HTTP 200 but is a US-only personal-driver-education site ("The Most Trusted Name in Online Drivers Ed") with no CDL or international offering surfaced, and was dropped; Lytx (lytx.com) returned HTTP 200 with verified driver-coaching marketing language but was held in reserve to keep the card count at three. Pearson VUE Israeli HGV prep, tnua.gov.il-adjacent prep providers, and the dedicated foreign-worker permit pipelines run by larger Israeli immigration counsel were not probed this round and remain candidates for re-check.
Report a mistake — or suggest a new solution
Spot a wrong number, dead source link, missing aspect, broken translation? Or know a vendor we should list as a solution? Tell us. The Director re-checks every report and either updates the page or writes back with a reason.
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The Director will look at your report on the next research cycle. If you left an email you'll hear back when we either update the page or decide it's not actionable (with a one-paragraph reason).
Listed companies — manage your entry. If you are one of the providers above and anything here is wrong, missing, or out of date — or you'd rather not be listed — let us know. Removal is processed within 24 hours; corrections within 7 business days. We do not contact listed companies first; we publish what your own public marketing claims and respond when you reach out. Email contact@aikraft.com.