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September 23, 2025 81 mins

What happens when a trucking kid grows up to become the industry’s “Armchair Attorney”? Matthew Leffler is a third-generation trucking professional turned lawyer who has made it his mission to explain freight’s most complicated legal battles in plain English. 

From nuclear verdicts to AB5 fallout, broker transparency fights to chassis choice rulings—he translates court cases into actionable strategies carriers and brokers can actually use. If you’ve ever felt lost in the legal jargon but know your business depends on getting it right, this conversation is for you.

Key takeaways:

  • Broker transparency debates will reshape contracts, workflows, and margins.
  • Carriers can mitigate nuclear verdict risks by controlling safety and documentation.
  • AB5 compliance requires pragmatic playbooks for carriers and owner-operators.
  • Chassis choice rulings are a rare legal win, lowering costs for motor carriers.
  • Non-compete clauses often stifle careers more than they protect brokerages.


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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matthew Leffler (00:05):
So for the folks who are watching and
listening, ultimately, it's likea month to get a CDL, to get a
CDL and operate an 80,000 poundmachine, is about a month in
most states, and in thatcontext, you're not necessarily
trained how to drive in the snowor in the nighttime or in the
mountains, and it's because thebarriers to enter this industry

(00:27):
are very, very minor. It's justnot very substantial. The
minimum insurance to operate atruck Interstate is like 750,000

Unknown (00:34):
bucks. That's been the case for almost 40 years. And so
the English languageproficiency, at least for me,
tells a story of we are tryingto understand how to better
enforce existing regulations,and we want the regulations to
be enforced.

Blythe Milligan (00:53):
Welcome into another episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. I'm your
host, Blythe Milligan, and weare proudly presented by SPI
logistics, and we've got anincredible episode for you all
today. We've got MatthewLeffler, host of armchair
attorney, back on the podcast,and he's going to be talking
about all of the legal dramathat you've probably seen kind
of floating around on the web,but maybe you're kind of like

(01:14):
me, where you just read theheadline, you're like, oh, that
sounds serious, and you justkeep scrolling. Well, today is
the day that Matthew is going tobreak it all down for us. Plus
we're going to get into a littlebit of, you know, content
marketing side of things,because you see his face
everywhere. And then we're alsogoing to get into maybe, you
know, we'll dabble a littleinto, you know, some favorite TV

(01:35):
shows or favorite movies thatthat Matthew has seen over the
last year or so. So Matthew,welcome back to the show,
Blythe. It is always a pleasureto be here. Thank you for having
me. I'm excited to once againreturn into the gauntlet.

Unknown (01:49):
Into the gauntlet. That sounds, I don't know if you
know, we can't get into TV talkright now. I almost got started,
and then I'm gonna, I'm gonnareel it back in, because we
gotta. But yeah, the gauntletwas reminding me of an MTV show
called the challenge. So I won'tget into that. And I don't know
if you watch that show, but I donot literally talk all day about
it. Okay, we won't.

(02:11):
We could say you're going tojust describe it to me. No,
let's talk about the law.
There's so many thingshappening. It's wild, it's
crazy. Well, you as As ofrecording this. So we were
recording this at the end ofAugust, and so there's a lot of
it feels like a lot of thingsgoing on. And I think I just
watched a video of yours whereyou were talking about the
history of yellow trucking andhow that case is still ongoing.

(02:31):
I have an entire list of I have85 and worker classification. I
have chassis choice and fmcrulethe regulatory landscape, non
competes, safety, maintenance, Mand A. Where do you want to
begin? I would like to begin bysaying it's always a pleasure to
see you. So first of all, thankyou for having me. It's great to

(02:54):
be here. I think the biggestthing we see in the news right
now is English languageproficiency. That is what a lot
of people are talking about fora lot of reasons, maybe not
always. We can get into that,just to kind of give some some
clarity on this. The Englishlanguage proficiency has been
the law in the books since the1930s so this isn't new. This
has been the law for a longtime. It's been the enforcement

(03:17):
has changed, and that's kind ofthe new kind of ruling from
Donald Trump on executive ordersaying it's an out of service
issue. So we are seeing four or5000 out of service issues with
English language proficiency,not a ton at the moment. And
there's probably not going to bea big change in our overall
capacity, but it has animatedquite a few people

(03:41):
to for better or worse, I guessyou could say it's a, it's one
of those things where it's, Ididn't realize that this was as
big of a problem as it is, andit from the outside looking in
and just following, you know,along with with some of the
President as Secretary Duffy,you know, seeing what he has to
say about some of these issues.
And it, it just feels like we'remissing the force for the trees

(04:02):
with some of this. I, you know,is that an accurate assessment,
because it doesn't feel likeit's going to really impact
anything except for, you know,the outlier cases where, you
know, there's obviously, liketragedy involved, and I don't
want to downplay that at all,but it feels like we could be
focusing our efforts indifferent areas of trucking that

(04:23):
will have a much more safetyimpact than this, which is kind
of feels like a little, youknow, just for clicks, for
Internet attention. I think theway I look at this, I think it's
a fair take. I mean,realistically, if you're not
going to dramatically increaseresources for enforcement, you
can't expect to have a differentoutcome in terms of safety of

(04:47):
our vehicles and our drivers. Sofor the folks who are watching
and listening, ultimately, it'slike a month to get a CDL, to
get a CDL and operate an 80,000pound machine. It.
About a month in most states.
And in that context, you're notnecessarily trained how to drive
in the snow or in the nighttimeor in the mountains. And it's

(05:08):
because the barriers to enterthis industry are very, very
minor. It's just not verysubstantial. The minimum
insurance to operate a truckInterstate is like 750,000
bucks. That's been the case foralmost 40 years, and so the
English language proficiency, atleast for me, tells the story of
we are trying to understand howto better enforce existing

(05:31):
regulations, and we want theregulations to be enforced. I
would love to see focus on likevehicle maintenance. That's my
jam. But realistically, I thinkthis is just a a thing that's
more political than it isoverall an issue. But I do think
that our truck driving schoolsneed to be much, much more
closely audited about theiroutcomes, and I think we need to

(05:53):
have more resources for stateand local and federal law
enforcement to monitor vehiclemaintenance and driver
qualification, and is this in asituation where more, you know,
shippers are going to make thesekinds of demands, that's where I
maybe see more movementhappening, versus like
government enforcement, becausethat's where the the problem is,

(06:14):
is like this governmentenforcement of, how are you
going to find out? It just feelslike something you can't scale,
versus something you possiblycould scale, I would say that
any shipper that's interested infinding a way to do some level
of enforcement of FMCSAregulations should speak with
their lawyers, because I thinkthat's probably not a good

(06:34):
solution. Maybe they heard ofpeople using drivers that use
apps for translationinterpretation, saying, I can't
communicate with you, but here'sthis app. Can you talk to the
app? And maybe shippers refuseto load them that that seems
maybe reasonable, ish, but mostshippers are very, very busy,
and they are not qualified toadminister what would likely be

(06:55):
a test. And if you're going totest somebody for whether they
can speak English or not, you'reyou're opening yourself up for
some level of liability youprobably don't want to have.
Now, I do think it's Iunderstand why they would say we
want to do this, but I wouldalso say if you're a shipper and
you're doing something in thedriver qualification space, you

(07:16):
may open yourself up toliability if that driver has a
catastrophic accident. I mean,there's so many pieces that can
go wrong if you insert yourselfinto that transaction, it's the
broker's job to select the motorcarrier. It's the motor carriers
job to make sure they'refollowing FMCSA regulations.
Shippers probably ought not todo it, but I again, I understand
if they if they feel compelledto do it, just talk with your

(07:37):
lawyers if you think that's theoutcome you want to do now is is
this a temporary issue in intrucking, or from like, an
enforcement standpoint, is thisit feels like one of those
things where it's, you know,done for political points, and
then after, you know, a fewmonths or so, everybody's going
to get a little tired, or is ita situation where now there's A

(08:00):
group that's going to be hyperfocused on any kind of accident
that happens over the road, andthey're going to try to find
out, sort of, you know, the thebackground of the drivers
immediately, and almost, youknow, do, like internet research
on these drivers. I mean, I makethat declaration. I think anyone
who sees an accident is going todo research immediately. I mean,

(08:20):
we talked about before we wentlive, like the folks in folks at
Gen logs, like they have camerason every single truck running.
You'll be able to see the daythat do T number is involved in
that crash where that truck wasthe last couple weeks. So this,
this idea of, like, sleuthingout when something goes wrong.
There's, there's so much, somany more tools today than there
ever was before to dig intothose things. But to your

(08:42):
broader point, is this a blip,or is this going to be a long
term kind of outcome? My beliefis enforcement is generally
going to be a political thing,at least on the ELP side of
things. I do think it's an outof service criteria. I think if
you cannot speak English, itought to be you can't drive on
the road. But I would alsomention, and we talked in other
podcasts with you, is that, likethe out of service rate for

(09:05):
commercial vehicles is 22% thatmeans one in five vehicles. If
you and I went outside right nowand looked at them, they would
not be safe at any speed. So wehave a very poorly maintained,
very underinsured grouping ofmotor carriers out there that
are not taking care of theirequipment, and that's the stuff

(09:26):
that really worries me. Butagain, I worry about everything.
That's why I'm a lawyer. That'smy job is to be terrified of all
the things.
So why? Why is this the firststory that you bring up as far
as like law? Why is this onelike the most, or I'm not even
interpreting maybe that it isthe most important. But what's

(09:46):
nice? It's not so. I think theway to look at is it has the
most clout right now, for a lotof reasons. It has a lot of
traction in terms of what peopletalk about. But for me, it is
not a big issue. The biggerissue, I would say. And
actually, we talked.
About this case before a morerecent development was the
Werner case in Texas, where atruck driver who was involved in

(10:07):
an accident but did not doanything wrong was found to be
liable to $100 million that gotreversed just a couple weeks
ago. So that there's otherthings happening that are far
more important in our industry,but the ELP thing has kind of
taken a lot of the air in termsof what media is covering
currently. And it feels likeit's for, you know, not the best

(10:29):
reasons that it's like, that'swhat I'm here for. I am here for
the engagement because I justwant to put it out there that
there are a lot of immigrantdrivers that are doing a very
good job, and they want to, youknow, they want to be as safe
and get home to their familiesas everyone else. Like,
obviously, there's going to bebad actors out there that are
going to, you know, sort oftaint the, I guess, the online

(10:51):
perception. But it just, itfeels, it feels very like
politically motivated and Ijust, I wasn't sure, from an
outsider's perspective of howprevalent are some of these
issues, and is it really aproblem, or is, you know,
relative to the overall amountof of truck trucker accidents,

(11:12):
you know, how much does thisplay a role? I think for me, I
don't, I don't think it plays amajor role. I think for me, I
look at this and say ithighlights a broader trend. And
the broader trend is that wehave very, let me talk this
limited bears to enter thisbusiness, to be able to get a
CDL in under a month, and thenoperate a vehicle, and maybe

(11:33):
you're leased on, maybe you finda way to go. Worth it per
company, the average truckdriver today makes about $50,000
a year, if you go back in timeto 1980 the average trucker
made, adjusted for inflation,$130,000
a year. Wow. It's a differentworld than it was 45 years ago.
And we look at and say, Well,what? What happens when things

(11:54):
get cheaper? It means thedrivers are less qualified. It
means that the equipment is lessmaintained, because in the old
days, a unionized motor carrierhad a driver says that truck is
unsafe. If you put that driverin that truck, you have a
grievance. You may lose your jobtoday. If you say that truck is
unsafe, it's get in the truck oryou're fired. So it's a
different calculus. So theEnglish language proficiency, at

(12:17):
least for me, highlights. Hey,maybe we should just enforce
what the rules are. Don't golooking for new rules, and it
would likely be a betteroutcome. It but it requires
money, and if we as Americanswant to spend more on stuff,
then, um, we're going to have tothat. That's what safety is
going to cost. It's going tocost us spending more money on

(12:38):
stuff. Now the the truckers whoare listening to this are going
to this are going to get mad atme for bringing this up. But
does, you know, autonomoustrucks kind of help here? Does
it help some of these, you know,onboarding issues and, you know,
level of training issues andELP, does that help here? I
think the autonomous piece isgoing to be the biggest change

(12:59):
in our industry sincederegulation, I look at our
industry like the from a lens ofthree major events. The first
one was containerization. Theidea that you could take the
entire world to agree on asingular method for moving
things across the globe isinsane. But when you look at the
cost savings and the safety ofthose containers versus what
they did before, you would nevergo back. You would never go

(13:20):
back. Deregulation. Did this newthing where now anyone can be a
truck driver. You could havebrokers. They didn't exist in
the way they do today. Back in1980 autonomous trucks are here.
They're here now. They'rerunning in trust states. So
Houston to Dallas. You know,Kodiak is running them. Aurora
is running them. But longerterm, they will absolutely be

(13:41):
part of our supply chain. And weare in this phase where it's the
normalization phase. You flyinto Phoenix, you see Waymo
everywhere. You don't see thosein Chicago yet. You don't see
them in New York yet. But oncethey become everywhere, what
happens? And I think autonomoustrucks do the thing that we've

(14:03):
always looked at doing, whichis, how do I reduce the cost of
moving freight? And in ourindustry, it's labor and fuel
and assets and maintenance andtires and insurance, and this
tackles labor, so I think it'sinevitable, but I also think
that they're going to be bettermaintained than most commercial
trucks on the road today. Whatabout the LIDAR cameras that

(14:24):
are, you know, have to, youknow, be on every autonomous
truck does that? I mean, it's, Ijust see these big cameras on
the side of, like, autonomoustrucks. And I'm like, that
doesn't look cheap. And imagineif you, you know, the truck hits
something, or something elsehits that camera. That's got to
be a $50,000 repair right there.
Does that maybe add on to thecost of shipping goods if we go
fully autonomous and then, youknow, all of these technological

(14:46):
improvements to the trucks, doesit really offset? Maybe, I would
say, I it's legitimate question.
I think they wouldn't do it ifit wasn't going to save money.
They wouldn't do it if it wasgoing to save it wasn't going.
To save money. And so you lookat the autonomous kits, maybe
it's $50,000 or whatever thenumber is to upfit and install
these things. The cameras willgo will be damaged from time to

(15:10):
time. They will have pairs thatare necessary from time to time.
But you are going to save 30 to40% annually on the cost of
labor. If you do these things,there'll be an increase in
maintenance, maybe moremechanics looking at trucks,
making sure they're workingproperly, making sure the
sensors are working properly.
But this is the next phase ofthe independent contractor. It

(15:30):
was, first it was a w2 unionizeddriver, then it was a non union
w2 driver, then it was anindependent contractor. And the
natural progression is, how do Ireduce the cost of labor
further? And that is autonomoustrucks. It will not be every
case. It'll be only in certainuses, from like, you know,
shuttling from one place toanother place, but the truck

(15:50):
will never get tired. It willnever have to worry about hours
of service. It will slip seatevery single day, and
essentially, it's going to work2223
hours a day except for fueling,and it'll never need a meal
period or never file a workerscompensation claim. There is so
much savings that willabsolutely be unlocked. And I
look at this stuff and say, It'sinevitable. It's not a question

(16:13):
of if, it's a question of when,and it's not a question of,
like, how soon, because it'shappening already. Yeah. I mean,
I I've had the opinion for gosh,like a decade now that one day,
we're going to look back on justmanually driving cars as what
were we thinking? Becausethere's it's so incredibly
dangerous. There's so manyaccidents. People are killed all

(16:34):
of the time, not just from semitrucks, but from just regular
cars. And so I do see a futurewhere manual driving is going to
be very much like iRobot, whereyou you're going to be the
you're going to be in the verylow percentile, if you have, you
know, a gas powered car, even Ihave a gas powered so I think,

(16:55):
like, what you bring up is areally important point. Is this,
this period of normalization. Soany innovation has like three
steps. The first step is thatwill never happen. That's
impossible, and we have seenthat with autonomous trucks for
a decade. It'll never happen. Orif it does happen, it'll be way
past my time in the industry. Idon't worry about it. Then it
starts to happen. It startsbecoming more conventional, more

(17:17):
normalized, and then the thirdstage is, it's always been this
way, like, why are youcomplaining about it now? It's
always been this way. We'renever going to go back in this
phase of normalization. This isthe most important phase,
because you and I can't go backand say, don't use containers.
We can't go back and say, Don'tderegulate. We don't want to see
the unions get destroyed. Thisis happening now, and the rules

(17:40):
about how autonomous trucks willfunction in our supply chain are
able to be shaped by us. We arethe most powerful generation has
ever existed. We can talk into acamera or type into a computer,
and 1000s of people can hear andread and understand what our
position is, and we should allwant to comment and participate

(18:00):
as the stuff becomes moreprevalent. So what does that, I
mean, this is, might be like atheoretical, you know, kind of
overarching question. But whathappens to a lot of like, the,
you know, the average driver tothe average maintenance worker?
Well, maybe maintenance workerswill, will never truly go away.
But what happens to, like, I'mautonomous, yet, what happens to

(18:23):
maybe some of those, you know,positions and CDL schools and
you know, is that just somethingthat's going to, you know, maybe
die a slow death? That's areally good question. So first,
I would say, in every in all 50states, for high school educated
men, driving a truck is the mostcommon job for about 30 to 40

(18:43):
states. Driving a truck justgenerally is the most common job
for everybody. So it's millionsof people that do this. There
are things that the robots arenot going to be good at doing.
They're not going to be good atLTL, like, they're not going to
be able to do lift gates androll up doors. Like, that's far
away. The freight that likelygets impacted is going to be the
full truckload, you know, 500miles here, 400 miles there,

(19:06):
back and forth, kind of stuff,like the shuttle runs. That is
where it might be the mostprevalent. I think that the
question of, like, what happensto those drivers? I think
there's still going to be aplace for them in this, of
course, there'll always be aplace for them. There'll be new
jobs. So an example is like aremote operator, so someone who
can take control of a truckwithout physically being in the

(19:27):
truck. What qualification shouldthey have? How many trucks can
they monitor? How many truckscan they physically take over?
These are questions that will beanswered as rules become
established in our industry. Sothose ones will stick around for
maintenance, I think you aregoing to see a lot more
opportunity. There will be if,just because we don't have human

(19:47):
beings as drivers, in somecases, the pre and post trip
inspection is still the law. Youstill have to have someone look
at that asset before you use itand after you use it. So there
will be.
An opportunity for mechanics todo more things. But I think the
way that they the way theautonomous trucks companies tend
to talk about this, is they'lltake away the jobs that drivers

(20:10):
tend to dislike and the onesthat drivers do like, they get
to keep those I don't know whereit plays out, whether it's 5% or
10% of all freight moves withautonomous truck, but there's no
doubt 8% will and when that dooropens, it will never close,
yeah, because, I mean, I justtook a trip to Austin, you know,

(20:31):
a couple months ago, and thewaymos were everywhere. And if
you would have asked me if Icould put my money on, you know,
the bets of autonomous, I wouldhave bet that autonomous, long
haul routes would haveabsolutely taken over way before
a company like a Waymo, wherethey you know, there's so many
more variables when I wheneveryou're in like an urban, densely

(20:51):
populated setting, and so Inever thought that that would
take over as quickly as it did.
I was still a little annoyedwhen I was in Austin. I
actively, multiple times perday. Tried to call one and tried
to get one, but I think it'sonly available for Austin
residents, which is I was alittle annoyed about so I
haven't actually got to ride inone yet. I think the piece you
brought up is reallyinteresting, because what we

(21:12):
what that kind of demonstrates,is the technology is here. The
technology is not like a what ifit is, it is existing now. What
is not here is a federalregulatory framework for how to
treat those things, so peoplecan run an autonomous truck or a
as a safety driver can be insideautonomous truck doing stuff

(21:34):
intrastate. But thetechnological barrier to haul it
to another destination is notit's not a technological
barrier. It is a legal barrier.
And what I caution people aboutwhen it comes to autonomous
vehicles is I look at the ELDmandate, and that's probably the
closest approximation to like atechnological transformation for
our industry. We operate in ourindustry with a self

(21:56):
certification, which means Ifill out of form, I submit the
form, and the federal governmentsays you are certified as an ELD
provider. There's about 1000 ELDproviders right now. There's
about 250 that have beenrevoked. So if you were to look
at the when the date of thecreation of the ELD mandate,
it's like, every month, two orthree devices are pulled off the

(22:18):
market. Wow. So why? Well,sometimes it's because the
manufacturer says we have a newmodel and this one's not gonna
be supported anymore. Sometimesthe company simply lied about
what they're capable of doing,and you only find out that it's
not actually doing it when adriver gets in trouble or
something bad happens and theygo, Oh, the device malfunctioned
in Canada, they do. They do notallow self certification. The

(22:40):
government looks at what you'retrying to sell, and they say, We
will let you sell this becausewe've tested it. So I am very
skeptical of what themanufacturers say that they can
do, and ultimately, we need somelevel of regulation around that
piece of it that has certainlynot been discussed or really
kind of promulgated anywhere atthis point, but it's something

(23:03):
we need to be aware of, becauseI don't trust the manufacturers
to do anything. They'll makegood products, for sure. But we
need something from thegovernment side that says that's
that's okay and that's not okay.
So it sounds like, if I'm kindof reading between the lines, is
that there is, you know, we arewitnessing an evolution of a job
that has existed in its presentform for, you know, a few

(23:26):
decades now, and that that jobis largely evolving into, you
know, more technology. I do, youhave to preface this with, I,
I'm a tech optimist, but I also,you know, I the roles that I
have, I can also see wherecertain technology is going to
impact the work I do and mypotential to earn income in the

(23:48):
future. And so if, if that'shappening in my area of work, I
know it's happening in otherareas of work. And so from, from
that lens, does this kind of isit almost like adjusting or not
adjusting, but leading us into anew era of what a what a truck
driver looks like, and, youknow, and from that, or how they

(24:11):
even work. Because then there'sanother issue of 85 and that one
is what out of California. Andso that is independent
contractors, right were forworker classification. And I
guess a law that had goodintentions has unintended
consequences. Can you kind ofbreak that down for us? Because
I think it's, it ties into, youknow, all of this I said, you

(24:32):
know, sort of evolution of thetruck driver job. We will look
back 10 years from now, andwe'll realize that this is a a
very interesting time, and it'sa blessing and a curse to live
in interesting times. You'reright. This is a new era, a new
era of autonomy. The work of ABfive followed through this idea
of, how can I make somebodybehave like an employee, but

(24:56):
make them a contractor? And theexample I give to so many
people.
Is the Amazon driver coming toyour house in the Amazon truck
with the Amazon uniformdelivering the Amazon package.
That driver does not work forAmazon. When the FedEx Ground
driver with the FedEx Groundtruck and the FedEx Ground
apparel walks up to your houseand delivers the package that

(25:17):
has FedEx Ground on it, theydon't work for FedEx Ground the
idea is you can find a differenttype of business relationship
where each party kind of sayswe're independent businesses. We
don't have to pay for your PTOor your workers comp or your
unemployment. So AB five was acodification of a California

(25:39):
Supreme Court case. Andcodification just means, hey,
there was a Supreme Court case.
We like what the Supreme Courtsaid. We're going to make a law
in Congress, our legislativebranch in California will pass
it, and then the governor willsign it, and now it's an actual
law. So the AB five test, as itwas, is this three pronged
approach, deciding whetheryou're an employee or whether
you're a contractor. And whenyou look at this, I think we've

(26:02):
talked about my example of this.
I think it's like, what's aplanet? What is a planet? What
are the what are the things thatmake a planet, a planet? And for
the planet discussion, it's,it's a sphere. It's hydrostatic
equilibrium makes into a ball.
It has, it clears its orbitalpath. Nothing else orbits the
thing, and it orbits a star, inour case, the sun. And if it

(26:24):
doesn't orbit the sun, it's anexoplanet. Well, Pluto is a
sphere. It's a hydrostaticequilibrium. It orbits our Sun.
It has that checks that box, butit doesn't clear its orbital
path. There's another thing thatit orbits, which is it's moon
Charon, so it's not a planet.
That's the same with AB five. ABfive comes and says, You are not

(26:47):
a contractor. The only wayyou're a contractor is if you
pass these three things. It'scontrol, it's outside your
business, and it's othercustomers you might have.
There's a whole list of thesethings. But AB five did not
change how Amazon or FedEx doesbusiness, because they've been
doing well, FedEx has been doingthis for 40 years. Amazon
relatively new, but they didn'tfight AB five. They built

(27:09):
contracts to make sure that youare a contractor for companies
that were sloppy. Yeah, you gotding, you got in trouble. You
could get in big trouble. But itwasn't the government coming
after you. It was your formercontractor suing you and saying,
I'm an employee, you got to payme back wages, and then winning
so AB five again for me, nothingcatastrophic. It was just the

(27:31):
same thing as it's been fordecades, but with a new flavor
of it being a statute that theCalifornia Legislature passed, I
think I think I also heard thatthere were some unintended
consequences that came fromthat, especially when it comes
to drayage drivers. Drainage issuch an interesting yeah, so to
talk about drayage like the waydrayage companies typically

(27:51):
work, and this is not always thecase, but it's probably mostly
the case. I say, Blythe, you arean independent contractor, and
you're going to do Dre work forme. I will pay you $100
for every box you bring into myyard. And you'd say, Great,
Matt, I'm gonna go get a box.
You get into traffic. You get abox, you bring it back. I give
you 100 bucks. Some days there'sno traffic. You give me five

(28:13):
boxes. I give you 500 bucks somedays there's really, really bad
traffic, and you only get onebox for me, and I'm paying you
100 bucks, but I'm your onlycustomer. You work exclusively
for me, and I'm only paying you100 bucks per move. What ends up
happening for the DRE providersis that you have to make a
decision if you're doing it thatway, as two independent

(28:34):
contractors, and I'm the onlycustomer that's probably an
employee, that's probablysomebody you gotta be paying
minimum wage to and California'sgot pretty high minimum wages,
and there's a lot of penalties.
So the DRE community, the oneswho were not paying attention,
could get in big, big trouble.
If you're a w2 driver, itdoesn't matter. You're just
doing your normal thing, gettingpaid hourly. But Dre is

(28:55):
particularly interesting formisclassification, because it is
such a sad situation where youwork for 12 hours and I pay you
100 bucks, that's that's notfair, and that's what California
said. We're not going to havethat. We're going to make you an
employee. And if you decide tosue your employer, you get back
wages and overtime and benefitsand all these other things. And

(29:17):
it's the DRE people that werethat got found liable for
misclassification. Lot of themgo bankrupt because it's very
difficult to survive thatlitigation. Yeah. And I think
with that law in particular,they were trying to target like
the Ubers and the lifts of theworld, where they have all these
demands with their drivers, butthe drivers got no benefits

(29:37):
whatsoever. Yeah. So the gigcompanies, the ATA could learn
from the gig companies. The gigcompanies spent over $200
million lobbying for a thingcalled Proposition 22 and what
proposition 22 essentiallyallowed is to exempt the gig
companies from AB five. It was aspecific go to.

(30:00):
Us go to the people ofCalifornia, give us a
referendum, because what Uberand Lyft and DoorDash and
Grubhub, all those companieswent to California's leaders and
said, If you classify ourcontractors as employees, we are
shutting down operations in yourstate. We're not going to do
business here. And they wereprobably correct. They probably

(30:21):
wouldn't have done businessthere if they would have stuck
around, but they spent a wholebunch of money, and money can
certainly get you policy if youare investing it properly.
Don't you feel good now, Blythe,but you feel good about that.
There's so there's so much.
Everything is against us.

(30:41):
Everything's trying to kill us.
I'll be very clear. I I'm on theside micro plastics like, Oh,
those are feed oils,Ubers and waymos and autonomous
technology. It's, I believewe're in the trends and forces
of history. We cannot changethem. All we can do is observe
them and try to predict wherethey'll be, so that we can

(31:03):
hopefully benefit from thechanges. But I think the plastic
will make us live longer. Imean, if we're mostly
artificial, doesn't that mean wehave a longer shelf life? I
guess it depends on how youdefine consciousness, and if you
can just make a new body, anautonomous body, I would do
that. There's enough of us onthe internet that we could make
a version of ourselves. Oh, thatthat kind of technology already

(31:26):
exists. I had to tell my familylike we're gonna have a safe
word so that no one is likecalling you and wanting to, you
know, break me out of a prisonfrom a Nigerian prince that, you
know, requires a $10 milliondonation.
It's good to plan for the best,but prepare for the worst.

(31:47):
Absolutely. That's why I own abug out bag, sorry, underneath
my bed. This is why we're suchgood friends. We're always we're
always prepared to for the nextzombie ball. You have to stay
prepared. A friend of the show,Kevin Rutherford gave me a lot
of good tips on on, you know,canning different items and, you
know, being able to to havecertain supplies in my house. So

(32:07):
I got a whole list of thingsthat I got here. And I love
that. Kevin's a good dude. Ilike he's good, yes, love his
content. Love having him on, andhe's one of the more popular
guests that has ever come on.
And you and you as well. So I'mknown by 10s of people. 10s of
people know me,aren't we? All right, we do work
in a niche industry. There'sriches in those niches. That's
right. Gotta be careful who youmake friends with in the

(32:30):
business. That's Debbie. Yes,yes. You have to be careful with
who has very loud and vocalsocial media presence too. So in
a variety of ways. That's whyI'm only on Reddit. I mean,
other places too, but Reddit isthe best one. I like that one
that is kind of a hellscape attimes. But, you know, it does
have its moments. Okay, let'sget into a couple of these other

(32:51):
issues. So chassis choice andFMC ruling. What's going on
here? That's, I would say it's,it's, it's a, it's been a little
bit from that kind of comingthrough. But the general idea
was that there are threecompanies that own 80% of the
chassis in the United States.
That's Flexi van track and DCally. And these are all, like,

(33:15):
there's, like, I said, 80% ofall chassis are owned by these
three companies. So if you'regoing into a location to do
drayage work or pick up a box,you usually have to use one of
their chassis. And sometimes theaverage age of these chassis, I
think 40% of them were builtbefore 1997

(33:35):
and so if you're like, I kind ofwant to just bring my own
chassis, or I want to usesomeone else's chassis. That's
not this one. You were preventedfrom doing that. You could not
do that the chassis providershad deals with the big rail
yards, and that's just how itworked. The ATA and their
intermodal division helped lobbyand fight against the this idea
of like not having chassischoice. So what chassis choice

(33:58):
really means is it it allows themotor carrier or the DRE
provider, whoever, to bringtheir own equipment and not have
to pay for the presumably junkyequipment from one of the big
chassis providers. We are in avery different time. There's a
lot of equipment available, andso companies that invested a
bunch of new chassis, they'restill some of them are still

(34:20):
sitting waiting for someone tocome and borrow them or rent
them, but I think that's whatchassis choice is about. It's
about letting the operatordecide what chassis they want to
bring for when they're pickingup those boxes at those ports
and rail yards. And so what kindof barriers exist right now? Is
it just simply lobbying orcontracts in place by these big
three. I think the last I heard,this is not one I'm super

(34:43):
familiar with, so I have to comeback to you, but I think it was
like four, four big metro areaswere able to get Cassie choice.
Other places are still trying toget those things, and it was
done through litigation, is myunderstanding. So I think
there's, there's the path isultimately going to be you will
get to bring your own chassis.
And that's why the big leasingcompanies have moved into
providing chassis. So we talkedabout CLC, but milestone and

(35:07):
Premier and fleet equipment likethey're all starting to buy
chassis because they know thatthere's going to be value there.
The other piece of it is like JBHunt and Schneider, they buy
their own chassis, so they don'teven bother with the pools. They
just get their own they havetheir own separate deals. So
there's, there's different waysto approach it, but ultimately,
you want safe equipment on theroad, and if an operator wants
to use their own equipment, theyshould get to use their own

(35:29):
equipment. Absolutely, I feellike that's such a no brainer.
So I this is one of those. Thisis why I love having you on
because I'm like, this is a nobrainer. Like, why is this even
a thing when you couldn't buyyour own equipment and bring it?
But this industry makes sense.
If you really kind of, like,shake your head for a long time
and get a little bit dizzy, thenit's like, I guess that makes
sense. That sounds right. Howmany of these, like, I don't

(35:49):
want to say, like, not lobbyingefforts, but how many of these,
I guess, sort of just marketcontrols exist throughout the
industry, and I imagine thatthey're probably very largely
entrenched, and they have beenfor a long time, and this
industry is very guilty of it'salways been done this way. Like,
if it's always been done thisway, why would you do something
different? I think, like, if welook at, like, the future things

(36:12):
we saw on the on the on the railside, specifically Norfolk
Southern and Union Pacifictalking about a merger, this is
a 10s of billions of dollarmerger, which would take two of
the biggest rails in the countryand combine them into one. We
send forces, presumably BNSF, topartner. They've partnered with
CSX. That will likely besomething different. If the up

(36:34):
Norfolk Southern deal gets done,you're going to watch the rails
consolidate further, because therails competitors are not the
other rails. The railscompetitors are the over the
road motor carriers. And sothey're trying to take more
space there. So all of theseregulations in place to make
like the old business modelssustainable, those are going to
get chopped apart. They're goingto get chopped apart and taken

(36:56):
down, and new things will popup. We're just in a very
deregulated administration, sowe're likely not going to see a
bunch of like new regulations.
We'll just see old ones kind ofgo away. We'll see if broker
transparency goes away, that'llbe an interesting one. Well,
let's hit on let's hit on thatone too. Well, you know, we
stirred the pot enough already,so let's just keep it going.

(37:19):
Here's what I would say aboutbroker transparency, the FMCSA
has about a billion dollar ayear budget with about 1000
employees, and they are taskedwith monitoring and regulating
550,000motor carriers, 25,000 brokers,
4000 interstate bus companies,and millions of commercial
drivers. And you, if you're infavor of broker transparency,

(37:41):
you want to have the FMCSA stepin between the contracts between
brokers and motor cures andenforce them are out of service.
Rate for trucks and trailers is22% they don't have any ability
to do this. So for me, it isoutside of their mandate. We
shouldn't have it not to saythat a motor carrier can just

(38:04):
say, I'm not going to work witha broker unless they allow me to
know how much they paid for thatthey got paid for that load. So
what we have right now is thereare two comment periods. So the
FMCSA opened up a comment periodto make new rules on the broker
transparency. The main thrust ofthe new rule was one, you had to

(38:24):
produce the records within 48hours, and those records had to
be electronic. So the old days,Blythe is like, you want to get
you're like, Hey, Matt, you'rethe broker. I would like to see
how much you were paid. I'd sayBlythe, of course, if you want
to come look at the records.
They're going to be available inSt Charles, Illinois, a couple
1000 miles from where you live,and they'll be available from

(38:46):
1pm to 4pm tomorrow, and you'dsay, I can't get there. I'm
like, must really suck for you.
That's what the brokers weredoing. But the reality is,
brokers were making the motorcarrier sign waivers, and the
waiver would say, I completelywaive my right to see the
records of the brokertransaction. Those are not
likely to be impacted by a newrule on broker transparency. So

(39:07):
the rule would not make anymajor differences, but it's
still in the main topic ofpeople talking about there is
litigation in DC with a companycalled Pink cheetah, suing TQL
and me and my dear friend KenAdamo from d a t dial a truck.
We have been waiting for themotion to dismiss to come down,

(39:29):
and we have not seen a rulingyet. It could be any day now, in
that case. So that's like thelatest in broker transparency.
It'sjust one of those things where
it's, you know, as a businessowner, it's your responsibility
to know how much it takes to runyour business, and then how much
you are willing to to charge,and then is somebody else going

(39:50):
to pay you that amount? And thencan you do that over a long
period of time and have asustainable revenue, sustainable
income, sustainable you know.
Costs.
It should be no business ofyours to worry about how much
someone else is is getting paidthat that's my personalized you

(40:10):
know, as a business owner, yeah.
I mean, I agree with you. Thething I would look at is, like,
when I had my clients, mycustomers, when I was fixing
equipment, and they would say,How much did you pay for that
starter, or how much you pay forthat that widget, I would
happily show them. This is thecost that I bought it for, and I
marked it up 10% I if they askedme, I would happily do that. If
they asked me for every singlepart, every single time I like,

(40:31):
I'm just not going to work withyou. That's too much of a labor
intensive process. And so formotor carriers, I think the
challenge you're going to findis one. You have to know your
own cost. You have to know whatit takes to do what you do. But
if you think that you're gettingmoney off the table because you
don't know how much the brokerwas paid, I don't think that
this is the right way to dothat. There's better tools

(40:53):
available for truck drivers toknow what they can charge for
their services, and brokers willlikely blacklist anybody who
does repeated requests, even ifthere's a waiver in place or
make this is just too much of ahassle to work with, right? And
if you become too difficult,nobody is going to hire you. And
so that's another, you know,part of being a business owner
is being, you know, somebodypleasant to work with.

(41:15):
Otherwise, as a contractor, theydon't have to hire you.
Absolutely. I mean, you don't goto Amazon and say, Well, how
much did Amazon pay for thisthing? You say, How much am I
willing to pay and how fast Iwant it? That's like the thing
that we ask. So I think thebroker transparency, my hope is
that it goes away. I don't thinkit's very valuable. Yeah, I'm
far more interested in, like,understanding people's

(41:36):
perspective on broker liability.
When can brokers be liable whentruck drivers have accidents.
That's super important. Brokertransparency. It's, it's not
interesting, and it should notbe a law that the FMCSA forces
or continues to work with. Andit's one of those. There's that
famous graphic, I think it's, Ican't remember, I'm blanking on
his name, but he says, you know,the he sends over a copy of an

(41:59):
invoice, and it says, screw onone line is like 10 cents, and
then on the next line, it'sknowing which where to put the
screw. It's $10,000 and so, youknow, industry expertise, your
your your your career focus,like that is your expertise is
what you should be charging apremium for. And you know, based
on what the market wants to payyou and how you convey that

(42:21):
value is solely up to you, andthat is sort of the blessing and
the curse of being a businessowner. Absolutely. And you can
look at publicly tradedcompanies like ch Robinson
posting their profits. They arenot making 40% margin like that.
Is not the world that they livein. So there might be brokers
who make good money on certainloads and lose money in other
loads, but it's about theaggregate. So again, I'm with
you. I think you run your ownrace. The more you look at other

(42:43):
people's plates and wonder, whyis my plate not as full as
theirs? Is the wrong mentalityin this business? Yeah, 100%
okay, let's go into a little bitof non competes, non solicits.
That's an ongoing issue. I lovetalking about post employment,
restrictive covenants. I callthem perks. They're perks of the
job, but they're the opposite ofperks, because they're things

(43:05):
that control you. For the folkswho are new to my diatribes on
non competes and non solicits,let me quickly explain them.
They are, I said, postemployment restrictive
covenants. After you leave, youhave a restriction of what
you're allowed to do for aperiod of time based on a
promise that you make. So theFTC tried to ban non competes.

(43:26):
That was immediately sued by theUS Chamber of Commerce, but the
ATA and others made commentssaying, if you do this rule,
we're going to try and stop it.
It was overturned. The ban wasstopped, and the Trump
administration, as you mightimagine was like, We love non
competes. We're not we don'tcare about this. So the non
compete ban was knocked down. Itis not coming back. It is very

(43:47):
unlikely the FTC will ever tryand do something like this.
Again. There are other ways theycould try and tackle it, like
forcing disclosure of the noncompete before you apply for the
job that is probably legal, butthey do not have the ability to
go in there and ban non competesentirely. And it's 30 million

(44:07):
American workers have noncompetes. It's one in five
workers have a non compete. Soit's, it's everywhere. It's it's
not just transportation ormedia. It's everything from
doctors and anesthesiologistsand anyone else you can imagine,
except Blythe, except forlawyers, we are ethically
prohibited from signing noncompetes. Though, if you work in

(44:30):
house and you do sign a noncompete, you're probably bound
by that non compete. Theother one is the non solicit,
and that is that just means youare not allowed to generally
solicit a former customer, aformer vendor or a former
coworker for a period of time,usually a year, maybe two years.
There are no new regulations onnon solicits. And the important

(44:54):
thing about a non solicit is itmeans you can't reach out. But.
If you're a former customer oryour former vendor or your
former coworkers, like, Hey, Isaw you went somewhere new, can
I go there too? That's probablyokay. But I will preface this by
saying, don't take legal advicefrom a podcast. If you think you

(45:15):
need a lawyer, you probably do,and it's not me, unless you're
paying me, then I will be yourlawyer. Don't. There's nothing I
say meant to be an attorneyclient privilege and don't take
legal advice froma podcast. I'm sure you've seen
Jurassic Park where you knowJohn Hammond is talking about
the blood sucking lawyers.
That's the only quote that Icould think of. We're very

(45:35):
special. I mean, thankfully, theautonomous things have not
necessarily come for the thepodcasting lawyers, but they're
certainly coming from thelawyers, and I think they're
probably coming from thepodcasters too. Yeah. Have you
tried notebook? Lm, we are, weare. We have an expiration date,
much like the dinosaurs. I can'twait. I can't wait. It's amazing
modern technology. All right, soI'm looking through the rest of

(45:59):
my list of all of the law casesthat have gone on. What? What
about the one? I think it was sotragic that it was a somebody
else, another car crossed theman and hit a truck driver, and
then that company and that truckdriver were being held liable
for that accident. Yeah, we wentabout. We alluded to that

(46:21):
earlier. That's the Werner casein Texas. So let me, let me set
the stage for the folks who havenot heard about this case, and
give you a refresher of howhorrifying the set of facts was.
There's a driver for Werner. Hehad been driving for about a
week. So brand new, brand new,CDL holder, his boss, the
trainer, was asleep in the back,sleep in the birth of the truck,

(46:41):
and he was driving in inclementweather. Was snowing as a snow
advisory, but he's driving itunder the posted speed limit,
probably 10 miles or so underthe posted speed limit. In the
opposite lane, the opposite sideof the highway, another vehicle
is traveling too fast forconditions. They lose control,
spin out cross 42 feet of grassymedian and collide head on with

(47:05):
the truck owned by Wernerenterprises. And in this
catastrophic accident, one childdies, another child is
paralyzed, and another one hastraumatic brain injury. And the
question is, who's at fault?
Who's responsible for this? Andit goes to trial, and at the
trial court level, the jury cameback and said the driver for
Werner was liable to the amountof 14% they take percentages and

(47:29):
assign the liability. So 14% forthe driver for Werner, 16% was
assessed to the driver of thepickup truck. But I'm not a math
guy. I'm not I'm not JasonMiller or Ken Adamo. I'm a
simple country lawyer. We'remissing something, and that
missing 70% was Werner. Wernerwas found to be liable to the

(47:50):
amount of $100 million why? Andthe argument that was made is
that Werner was supposed to dotraining for this driver in bad
weather and this driver, had hegotten that training, or had the
dispatchers told him you shouldbe going slower, not that he was
driving too fast, because henever lost control. The argument

(48:12):
was, essentially, if this truckwas going any slower, this
accident wouldn't have happened.
And that's true, like it istrue, if that truck was going
slower, that vehicle crossingthe center line would not have
hit it. But that is not howcausation works. And causation
is this really special legaltopic. That's really the
simplest way to describe it is.
But for this thing, would thisother thing have happened? And

(48:37):
so who caused the accident? Wasit the driver for Werner who was
essentially the wrong place atthe wrong time, but going maybe
a little fast, but still underthe speed limit? Yeah. Or was it
the driver in that pickup truckwho was driving way too fast who
lost control and did anincursion it crossed the meeting
hit that driver? Is it theirfault? Well, it went on appeal,

(48:59):
and at the appellate court theysaid, Werner is at fault. Now
that number of $100 millionchanged. Now it's $130 million
with post judgment interest.
It's a lot more money. Itfinally on December 3 or
December 4 of 2024it gets argued before the Texas
Supreme Court, and I watched theentire argument. I take notes of

(49:23):
who's asking what questions andwhen the questioning was done,
my belief was that the TexasSupreme Court would reverse, I
thought, based on their line ofquestioning, it sounded like
they were not going to agreewith the lower courts. And just,
I think it was June of thisyear, 2025 they come out and
they say, Werner is not atfault. It's a terrifying set of

(49:45):
facts. It's sad, sad, sad. Butjust because Werner was there
doesn't mean that they causedthe accident. The accident was
caused by that pickup truck.
That's what happened now in.
If I'm a jury, and you see thiscase, you see a dead kid and a
bunch of injured kids, and yousee a big business, it's easy to

(50:07):
go like it's clearly their faultand they got all the money. But
that's not how the law works.
It's not how it works. So thatcase is probably the most
important liability case in ourindustry right now. And Werner
was vindicated. They werevindicated at the Supreme Court
level for state of Texas, and sothat that case is now done,
that, you know, that's becauseif it were to have not been in

(50:30):
werners favor, then that wouldhave had a, from what I
understand, a cascading effectversus, I mean, the question is
like, if the Werner case hadbeen upheld, what that would
mean for you and me and anyoneelse on the road, is that you
would have to anticipate anothervehicle colliding with you in
the opposite lane of traffic.

(50:54):
It's impossible. I go down thehighway, I'm driving 60 miles an
hour, 70 miles an hour, and Isee another car, you have a
second or two seconds to reactwhen that car starts losing
control. It is an impossiblestandard for Werner or any
driver to have. So if it hadstood, many motor carriers would
probably park their trucks inbad weather. There just wouldn't

(51:16):
be a reason to risk it. Now, thesmall truckers, they wouldn't
care, because if they get anaccident, they're going to go
bankrupt and move on, but Wernerin there, they self insure for
10 million bucks, and then theyhave an umbrella policy for the
stuff above that. So they were,they were very fortunate to win
on appeal, but that that was thelast place this thing was going
to go, the Texas Supreme Court,was the last place that case

(51:38):
could end up. And I think it's,you know, we talked earlier
about, you know, autonomousvehicles and autonomous trucks.
And you know that that'sprobably a reality of the world
that we live in. Of these, someof these accidents can be
avoided by using autonomousvehicles. And, you know, like it
or not, that's, it's one ofthose things that I think is a
net benefit to society, to nothave just anyone and everyone

(52:04):
being able to operate a vehiclethat is hundreds, sometimes
1000s of pounds and, you know,and under the influence or in
bad conditions and road rage,you know, as you know, different
variables never leave home.
That's my advice. Like, justdon't go why? Why Why would you
go outside? Everything can cometo you, like, just don't go
anywhere. Like, that's wherethings are safe, and don't be

(52:24):
outside at night time. Why wouldyou be outside at nighttime?
That one was also, uh, part of,like, the the nuclear verdict.
Yeah, I understand. And so thenuclear verdict is it would, if
that would have gone againstWarner's favor, that means that
they're out of business. And soit wouldn't have been enough to
kill Werner. Werner could absorb$100 million verdict. There's a
handful of companies that can,like Wabash currently has $100

(52:47):
million verdict against them inMissouri. So that's a
manufacturer. They can usuallysurvive one or two of these
things. If you get four or fivein a given year, you probably
don't survive. Even the bigbrokers, if they get held liable
in some big case, they canprobably take a punch or two

(53:07):
because their umbrella policiesare substantial, but small or
mid sized motor cures, there'sno hope. If you carry a $10
million policy and your verdictis 30 million bucks, you're
toast. And nuclear verdict iskind of a it's not a legal term
like we didn't the lawyersdidn't invent that term. We
didn't go like that. Verdict islike Hiroshima, like we it's
nothing like that, but it reallyjust means a verdict that's over

(53:29):
$10 million is a nuclearverdict. And if it's over $100
million they call themthermonuclear verdicts. Again, I
don't use those termsnecessarily, but that's the kind
of the parlance of what peoplesay. How do you know sort of the
Billboard lawyers play a role?
I haven't gotten a billboardyet. I've thought about it. So

(53:52):
the billboard lawyers,that's how they market. I mean,
how many companies would yourecommend Blythe to market with
billboards? It's just it feelslike they're the only, you know,
going against truck drivers. Itfeels like that that's the only
you know, I guess, sort of,well, maybe not the only one,
but, like, injured in anaccident, call, you know, so and
so, you know, involved in atruck driving accident. Call, so

(54:14):
and so. And it feels like that'sthe only, like, lawyer focused
billboards that I see. So you'reexactly right, because lawyers
are terrible advertisers.
They're terrible marketers. Theydon't know how to communicate
what they do. Some of them areokay. Some of them are fine, but
the billboard lawyers are theones that are. They basically
want people to know if there's atruck associate their name with

(54:37):
it. That's that's the wholepoint. What is more, I would
say, problematic in our businessright now is this idea of
litigation funding. So this isgoing to go out in a little
rabbit hole. So please bear withme. But non lawyers cannot own
what law firms do. You can't bean owner of a law firm if you're
not an attorney. Some stateshave, they kind of winnowed away

(54:59):
at that. They've changed.
A little bit, but generallyspeaking, you can't have any
corporate ownership of a lawfirm. There's a new technique,
though, and the new technique isokay, you were involved in a
catastrophic accident. You wantto sue Matt Leffler, but you
don't have the money to last fortwo or three or 10 years. Like
the Werner case, that was over10 years of litigation, no one

(55:20):
made any money for 10 years. Sothere are these companies that
come in and say, I will loan youmoney. I will take an interest,
I'll take equitable ownership ofa part of your potential
recovery. It's like betting onwhether or not the case is
successful or not. And there arecompanies that specialize in
litigation funding, and theythey get you the ability to hire

(55:42):
better lawyers, have betterexperts, get better evidence.
And that has been problematic,because now there's a new kind
of entity involved in thesecases. So private lawyers,
having private equity, givingthem money to litigate against a
big trucking company or bigbrokerage that is new, that's

(56:04):
new ish, and that's somethingthat you don't see on
billboards, but in the circlesof lawyers like we all know
what's happening, and thatsounds like something that maybe
could bubble up in the nextdecade or so as something a lot
more maybe, maybe it's underthat because one of my questions
I was going to ask you is, Youknow, what's the legal case
that's going to be coming downthe pipeline that we all should

(56:25):
kind of maybe be focusing onright now, is that one of them,
I would say, No, I would saylitigation funding is
interesting, but it reallydoesn't change the real dynamic.
So, like, if I'm a plaintifflawyer, and someone's going to
give my client money, andthey're going to take part of
the interest, I don't give Idon't care, like I have a
client, like I'm a fiduciary tothat client, whoever else you
want to get involved, like, Icouldn't care less. Like, that

(56:45):
is, that's my client. It's like,when I'm a insurance attorney,
the insurance company is payingme, but you the truck driver,
you're my client. Like, I lovethe insurance company is fine
that that's who pays the bills,but that's not my client. That
is not my client. What I thinkthe biggest case that is
happening in our in the countryright now, and it is something

(57:06):
that I've talked about a littlebit, but we we talked kind of
adjacent to it earlier, beforewe started recording, is this
case called vos selectionsversus Donald Trump. This case
has to do with a statute calledIEEPA, the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act of1977

(57:27):
this case is so important, solet me set the stage. And I I
know we're getting close ontime, but it's going to take me
a minute. And you need to knowthis. They need to know this.
The emergency powers of thepresident are incredible. And no
one truly knows how much powerthe president, any president,

(57:49):
has in an emergency. And we dowant our presidents to have
power in an emergency. Ifthere's a hurricane, we want to
go send relief. We don't wantCongress to vote on sending
relief. We want to go do it ifwe are attacked by a foreign
entity. We don't need to go toCongress and say, Hey, can you
give us the money to go sendtroops like we just do it. So

(58:11):
there's a there's an importantpiece of what emergency powers
are, but IEEPA is the newestversion of the economic powers
you have in an emergency so on.
I think it's April 2 of 2025President Trump comes into
office, or he's been office fora bit, and says, I am declaring
a national emergency that has todo with trade deficits and other

(58:32):
things. And because of thisemergency, I am going to give
every trading partner in theentire world, a tariff
immediately. Now that is not thepower of the president in a non
emergency like that. IsCongress's power to do this. And
so using IEEPA to say there's anemergency then triggers all

(58:55):
these other kind of things. Sowhat ends up happening in the
IEEPA case is it Trump says it'san emergency, and Congress can
actually pass a bill,essentially, and say yes,
there's an emergency, or no,there's no emergency. If they
were to have said no emergency,he would have gone to the

(59:17):
president and he would havelikely vetoed it and said, No,
no, I think it's an emergency.
But if you get two thirds of theCongress to say it's not an
emergency, then it overrides thedeclaration. But Blythe, who's
going to get two thirds ofCongress to do anything, it's

(59:39):
impossible. So this case of vosselections is this little
company in New York who's like,we're getting hammered by
tariffs, and we do not believethat Donald Trump has the legal
power to assess assess tariffsthis way under this particular
statute. And you.

(01:00:00):
It moved fast at the DistrictCourt. The district court said
that Donald Trump did not havethis power, and the entire
tariffs that were put in placeon Liberation Day were stopped
for a single day. They were alldone. And then the federal
appellate court jumped in andsaid, No, no, keep the tariffs

(01:00:23):
in place. Appeal it to us, andwe'll tell you what we're going
to do. So it's the Court ofInternational Trade. Is a US
District Court. It goes to thisfederal appellate court, and the
federal appellate court, acouple of weeks ago, heard oral
arguments, the lawyers forTrump, the lawyers for vos,
selections, other lawyers, theyall kind of came and gave their

(01:00:43):
stories. Even 33 senators filedan amicus brief, which is like a
friend of the court brief,saying we don't think this is
appropriate. We don't want thisto be the case. We don't think
IEEPA gives this kind of powerto the President. We don't think
it's meant to do this, and whatwe have are fundamental

(01:01:04):
questions of American democracy.
We have what I would call athree legged stool, judicial,
legislative and executive, andeach one checks and balances the
other. They can't give the otherbranch power. They're not
supposed to say, this is foryou. You can have our power. And
IEEPA is this case that isprobably the most important case
in our lifetime. And when I talkto my more conservative friends,

(01:01:29):
I say, imagine that like yourworst political nightmare. Let's
say it's AOC. She gets intooffice, and she says there's a
national emergency on greenhousegasses, we need to tariff every
internal combustion engine5,000% could she do that under
this thing? Absolutely. So myconcern of this case is not pro

(01:01:49):
or against Donald Trump. My caseis the executive branch is too
fricking powerful, and it'salmost outside of our hands to
stop it is so close to beingcompletely unable to be impeded
by anything. The last time ourCongress declared war, which is
their power, was in World WarTwo. So in World War Two, Japan

(01:02:12):
attacks us. We declare war onJapan, and then, for whatever
reason, Germany declares war onAmerica, we then declare war on
Germany. That is the last timewe used our war powers in the
Congress. Afterwards, it's allpolice actions. We have watched
the executive grow in unique andprofound ways. It is not a
Democratic problem or aRepublican problem. It is an

(01:02:34):
everybody problem. So that isthe case that I would urge
everyone to follow andunderstand. What about from
another just playing devil'sadvocate here? Should a random
company in New York or a smallcircuit judge be able to impede
on the President of the UnitedStates and his decision or their

(01:02:56):
decisions? I think that thedemocracy doesn't work if you
can't do that. Otherwise,I don't think it
works. I mean, we are governedthrough the advice and consent
of our representatives, like wegive them, we elect them, we
tell them to do this thing. AndI look at the problem being the
sickness within the legislativebranch, the Congress, the House

(01:03:19):
and the Senate. If you go to theHouse and the Senate more often
than not, and you ask them aboutwho they are, what they do, they
say, I'm a Republican and I'mfrom Louisiana, I'm a Democrat
and I'm from Illinois, they areparty first, institution second,
and they have no problemwatching their institution get
destroyed and dismantled.
There's no way. There's no waythat you should be able to

(01:03:42):
declare an emergency withessentially no oversight and do
anything that you want when youknow for a fact that's not what
the founders ever intended. Thisis we live under 10 active
emergency declarations rightnow, and on average, an
emergency declaration last forfive to 10 years. Like these
things are. Everyone does them.

(01:04:04):
Every Administration uses thesethings. So your question like,
should a small company in NewYork stop a use of the emergency
powers? Absolutely, absolutelynow it'll go to the Supreme
Court, and it will likely fallsix to three, maybe five to four
in favor of Trump. Like, thisis, this is a foregone
conclusion, like the IEEPA stuffwill stand like it's not going

(01:04:27):
to be knocked down. But it is acase that we all have to watch,
because now it's going to bemassive. It's the biggest case
in separation of powers in mylifetime.
So what do we do?
I hope for the best. I willdrive cars. I would vote out
every single incumbent, like anyincumbent in office right now.

(01:04:48):
They shouldn't be in office. Youhave more millionaires in our
Congress than we have ever hadsince the Gilded Age. It is
crazy that the power thatthey've accumulated and the
power they've given up.
Up. They've given up so much oftheir power to the executive
branch, and all have becomewealthy, wealthy people,
Democrats, Republicans, they allshould go, hopefully no one's
listening at this point. Thatwould be the best case scenario,

(01:05:11):
because I like I like everybody.
I want people to be happy, butthat's what I would do. I think
they all need to go, Yeah, same,largely, same, yeah. Are we
running for office that Blythe?
Are we? Are we doing this? God,no, I would never want that
position, but it's probablypeople like us who don't want
any of that that should be.
Those are the right leaders.
Those are the ones who don'twant are the ones that you gotta

(01:05:33):
have. I still don't wantit. Okay? I think I am at my
legal limit, as far as justbrain power of, you know, all of
these things that are going on,people that are trying to help,
people that are trying to stop,people that are trying to, you
know, come up with new ideas andadvance this industry, which a
lot of these things, it justfeels, you know, like a normal,

(01:05:57):
maybe process of doing businessand advancing as a society where
there's, you know, it's almostlike a whack a mole, where you
solve one problem and 17 otherones unintentionally show up.
Where do we kind of go? Like, asif you work in logistics, where
should we kind of go from here,as far as, like, paying
attention to these stories. Imean, obviously follow you,

(01:06:18):
follow your podcast and all ofyour different updates. But how
many of these are, I guess,realistically going to impact
the our day to day? I think thebig thing to think about, least
immediately, is watching how thetariffs kind of play out, right?
So we have, I think tomorrow,that's when this thing can get
released. But on August 29Friday, August, 29 the de

(01:06:40):
minimis exception goes away. Soin people who are bringing in
things into the country, if it'sunder 800 bucks, there's no
tariff that goes away on the29th so we're going to see cost
increase. This is all part ofthis understanding of what power
does the President have. Now,this is not the IEEPA stuff, but
it's just kind of understandinghow the president can change

(01:07:00):
things on IEEPA, it's a case youhave to follow and understand. I
mean, just as an Americancitizen, you just need to know,
like, what does the Constitutionsay, and what does it mean? And
like, you need to, you need tolook at these things for
autonomous vehicles. There willbe a time, probably by the end
of 2026where there will be proposed
rules on autonomous vehicles.

(01:07:22):
When that happens, you shouldmake comments. You'll have 30
days, maybe 60 days, to makecomments. You should do that
other than that, and that's justkind of just enjoy your life and
be kind to people. Don't watchthings of power. It's so bad.
It's so I tried to tell youyears ago how much of an
abomination that But infairness, like the other stuff

(01:07:44):
that, what is it? Game ofThrones is also terrible.
I mean, season well, it washouse of Dragon. And Season Two
really did jump the shark alittle bit. And I don't know who
to blame yet, but I tend toblame the merger of the new HBO
executive, or the new TimeWarner. I think it's uh, Time
Warner executive that told h youknow, Game of Thrones to or

(01:08:08):
house of Dragon to go from 10episodes to eight episodes. And
don't like it, yeah, obviously,because I think of anybody who
watched that, season two, Ithought was fantastic. Season or
season one. Let me correctmyself. Season One, I thought
was fantastic. Fantastic. Iwould like to because your
husband's a big comic book fan,right? The biggest, okay, I was

(01:08:30):
like, every night before bed, Ihave a question I'd like you to
ask him, okay, so, and you willlike this question too, all
right, so Sauron made the OneRing. And the One Ring, it's a
lot of his essence and His poweris inside this ring. And the
idea is, like, who could claimthe ring? Like, could, could,

(01:08:52):
could sauruman, could Gandalf,like, it's questionable they
could claim it. Or if justSauron would, would conquer them
mentally, I would like to haveyour husband answer the
question, could Victor von Doomtake the ring and claim the ring
and actually beat Sauron in acontest of wills? Because Dr

(01:09:12):
Doom, he is a human, but he'sthe second greatest sorcerer in
all of Earth. I mean, underneaththe Doctor Strange, he's the
second greatest intellect behindReed Richards, second greatest
engineer behind Iron Man, andhe's known for having this
incredible sense of will. Andthere's a lot of comic book
feats that I think he could tieinto, like, could Sauron

(01:09:33):
overcome? Like, could heovercome Saurons will? And I
have my own beliefs, but I'm notgoing to share them with you,
but I think you two should talkin depth about this? And I
expect, like, a pretty good,like, two or three paragraph, I
mean, a couple dissertation,yeah, that'd be good just a
little bit, just to kind of makesure we're all got a ducks in a
row. That's my question. Hewould happily have to sit on

(01:09:56):
that question and then come backto me after he.
Done a little research. That'sprobably what would happen.
That's That's all I ask. I thinkthat. I think that's where we
can kind of bridge the gapbetween Lord of the Rings and
Marvel with some of the greatestcharacters or villains
out there. What about the restof the the Marvel Universe? Have

(01:10:17):
you? Have you enjoyed any moviesthat came out this year?
Fantastic. Four was great. Ireally enjoy. It was very
enjoyable. And I like that. Theyfinally kind of demonstrated how
powerful Sue Storm is. Like, Sueis really, really powerful. And
they did a good job in Galactus,as opposed like a giant, like
Cloud monster. It was a, it wasa good Galactus. I am. I'm
excited. I've not seen, is itThunderbolt or what is the other

(01:10:40):
one? Thunderbolts? Yeah, I'venot seen that yet. It's supposed
to come out on streaming likethis week, so I'm gonna watch it
this week. I love the century.
That character is crazy, so I'mlooking forward to seeing that.
I do. I did really like thatmovie too, so that I out of the
all of the movies, because I theonly ones I can really remember,
the ones that I've seen over thesummer. So Jurassic Park, you
know, I would, well, Jurassic,whatever, the dinosaur movie,

(01:11:01):
yeah, that was, it was good.
The writing could have used alittle work. You didn't seem
like you're really excited aboutthat. Well, they're definitely
you. I've gone back and watchedthe other one. So the, you know,
the first original three with,like, the, I guess, the current
storyline. And then there wasthe next, like, three or four

(01:11:24):
movies, and that's like, sort ofthe Chris Pratt era. And then I
was really, really, because I'ma big ScarJo fan, I was a little
disappointed with how, you know,the the writing of some of a
little bit of that movie, and,you know, but I'm just, I'm
hoping for the best. I I'm not,seen, I watch a lot of, like,
Kid movies, so, like, I watch alot of bluey and things like

(01:11:44):
that. So I've not seen a ton ofmovies. But I was, like, I said,
I was pleasantly surprised andfantastic for I'm looking
forward to the next iteration ofthe Marvel stuff. Like, I love
Doctor Doom is my favoritefictional character ever. Like,
I love Doctor Doom. There's,there's no one cooler than
Doctor Doom. Awesome. Well,that, I mean, I'm sure you're
pretty pumped that, you know,Robert Downey Jr is back, and
he's going to be playing man,I'm just, I'm trying to figure

(01:12:06):
out, like, he, is he the realdoom? Is he just pretending to
be doom? Is he an alternateversion of Iron Man who became
doom? Like, there's, there's somany questions that I have.
There's so many questions.
That's one that I sort of trustto the the Russo brothers to
sort of reel it in and bring usback. Because there's a lot been
a lot been a lot of, you know,between Star Wars and
Rings of Power, and you know,some of these other fan bases

(01:12:27):
there's, there's been a lot ofturmoil, you know, over the last
handful of years or so. And I'mjust ready to get back to good
quality content, and I trust theRusso brothers to be able to do
that for Marvel. I have a planI'd like to run by you, and
this, will you cut this out ornot? Doesn't matter. But I want
to do a,like a freight of the Living
Dead. And so I want to do, likea series of podcasts, as if

(01:12:49):
we're pretending like there'sbeen a zombie apocalypse, and
we're talking about how we'rehow the freight industry is
behaving after this has takenplace. So I got already talked
about bug out bags, actually. SoI got Charlie staff row lined up
for helping with this. She'lltalk about how you when you
interview candidates, how youcan search for bite marks and
things I got Chad Oleson fromavrl is talking about how he's

(01:13:10):
automated so many processes sofreight brokers have less people
that can get infected. So I havethis plan. I'm building it now.
I'm thinking like, middle ofSeptember, I'll start doing
something. Do we want to be partof this? This, this experiment?
Yes, I have to figure out whereI play a role, because right now
I'm just thinking of like, who Iwould absolutely hate,

(01:13:30):
as far as like characters areconcerned. Well, it is all
improv. This is gonna be thepart that I'm excited about.
We're gonna see what we can comeup with. I think it'll be fine.
Be a nice little change of pacefrom the other stuff we see on
the internet lately. Yes, yeah,let's, let's have a little fun.
Let's bring some fun back. Let'sbring some positivity back.
Let's, that's a perfect place toend the show. Yes, where are the

(01:13:51):
positive moments happening inthis industry? Just give us, you
know, rapid fire. We don't haveto go too in depth. I think that
the things that I find the mostpositive in the industry right
now is that there are a lot ofpeople that just are succeeding
in bad markets, like bad marketsbuild great companies. And I
think people that are bullish ontheir businesses are doing very
well right now, even whenthey're not doing great. This is

(01:14:13):
the nature of our industry. Youdon't get into supply chain
because it's easy and becauseit's always growing like this is
a feast or famine. So thepositive pieces of the folks
have embraced this chaos,knowing full well that it will
never, ever, ever be somethingyou can escape. So I love that.
I would say that I also kind oflove the changing of the

(01:14:33):
seasons. I just like to seetransitions. Yeah, that's
definitely a good place to leaveus off. Because, you know, in
the words of Tom Hanks, from aleague of their own, you know,
it's the hard that makes itgreat. So hopefully these hard
times are going to make a lot ofgreat companies. I know I can
speak from that. I'm like, oh,it's the next light at the end
of the tunnel, but we're goingto figure it out on the way

(01:14:55):
there. It's actually a freighttrain, from my understanding,
that that light.
The end of the tunnel, and it'scoming our way. Yeah, just, is
it autonomous? I don't.
We need some more thing. I don'tknow. It's all it's all a
mystery to me. It's a mystery.
Well, thank you for that. Iappreciate you absolutely. I
thank you so much for comingback on the show and breaking

(01:15:16):
all of these, like complexthings down for us. Because
it's, it's very, think it's veryeasy for a lot of us to kind of
just read a headline and keepscrolling, but, you know, a lot
of these things have a directimpact. I mean, obviously
tariffs, and, you know,everything that you you've
spoken about, and thenunintended consequences of, you
know, some of regulation orderegulation, there's a lot of
things going on. So it's good tokeep our eye on the ball with

(01:15:37):
some of these things. So folkswant to continue keeping their
eye on the ball with theseissues. Where should folks
follow you? Follow the show allthat good stuff, because we
barely even talked about that.
Yeah. You can follow me onLinkedIn. Just Matthew Leffler.
You can follow the podcast onApple and Spotify. Armchair
attorney podcast, I'm on Reddit.
Armchair attorney. I talk aboutcrested geckos, freight brokers

(01:15:59):
and lawn care, those are reallyimportant topics to make lawn
care, huh? Oh, man, I've gonedown a rabbit hole. My dad is a
lawn care business owner.
Really, I should. I'll send youpictures of my lawn. I'm very
happy with it right now, veryhappy it's not getting those
good edges. But no, I love thosethings. I love I have all sorts
of hobbies. So that's where youcould find me. Probably,

(01:16:22):
awesome, yeah, well, at onetime, I did hire somebody else
to cut my grass, and my dad cameover and inspected it and said
they didn't edge worth a shit,his exact words. So I have a
lawn care company, and I got ridof them, and I've been doing all
myself, and it's been one of themost enjoyable things. I love
doing it. I love doing it. Well,these are the kind of takes that
you can expect to hear if youfollow Matthew on all of these

(01:16:44):
different platforms, which Iwill co sign because I'm
constantly upvoting him insideof all of the different
subreddits, logistics relatedsubreddit. So great to have you
back on the show. My pleasure.
Thank you so much, Blythe. Havea great rest of your day. Thank
you, you as well, and obviouslythe beautiful children that you
have a beautiful wife as well,like give them all my best. And
we'll have to have you back onagain in like six months or so,

(01:17:07):
and just break all this downagain, the next level of
tragedies. I'll see you inJacksonville soon. I gotta get
down to Pontevedra. Oh heck yes,yeah. Let me know when you're in
town and we will check out thelawns together.
Thank you so much. Have a veryrest your day. Thank you. You
too.

(01:17:27):
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain for the
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
searching. Everything islogistics. And if you're working

(01:17:48):
in freight logistics or supplychain marketing, check out my
company, digital dispatch. Wehelp you build smarter websites
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in
buzzwords, head on over tocargorex.io where we're building
the largest database oflogistics services and

(01:18:11):
solutions. All the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the next Episodeand go jags. You.

(01:18:42):
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The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.

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