Trucking's Death Spiral: Safety, Wages, and Foreign Labor | Episode 311

Veteran trucker Gord Magill joins the podcast to dismantle the “driver shortage” myth. He exposes how cheap labor schemes, like Nebraska recruiting Kenyan drivers, fuel exploitation while rates stay low and safety violations rise.

Gord on X: https://x.com/GordMagill/

Gord's Substack: https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/ 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back.
It's another episode of theFreight 360 podcast.
We're going further down therabbit hole today as we've got
another guest joining us.
We'll get to him in just asecond If you're brand new.
You got two other episodes inthis series where we're talking
about the fraud and justbasically the garbage side of
our industry and just reallygoing down the rabbit hole.

(00:22):
So check those out, as well ashundreds of other full-length
podcasts, everything fromfreight broker sales tactics,
how to build a carrier network,getting your brokerage started.
You can also check out thefreight broker basics course If
you're looking for a fullpackage educational deliverable
there, share it with yourfriends, leave a review.
All that good stuff.
I want to give a quick intro toour our guests today.

(00:45):
So we had justin martin on lastweek.
He rejoins us.
In addition, we've got gordonmcgill with us today.
Gordon, for those who don'tknow you, welcome and uh, give
us a quick little rundown on whoyou are uh, good day everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm gordon.
You may have heard my voice onmy own podcast, the Voice of
Gord, which is making fun ofmyself, because I mean, listen
to this right Lifelong historyin trucking Dad trucker, uncles
were truckers, grandpa was atrucker.
I've sort of made it my life'swork, drove truck in Canada, the

(01:24):
US, australia, new Zealand, andnow I write about it.
You might have seen me inNewsweek magazine or the
American Conservative or theBlaze or Unheard or American
Affairs Journal or AmericanCompass or all kinds of
different publications becausethe American trucking industry
is in the process of immolatingitself and I'm here to tell you

(01:44):
why.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
All right, Well, we're going to get into that in
quite some detail today on thisepisode.
First, a little quick sportsrecap Ben, steven, myself and
Justin.
Last week all four of our teamshad Ws.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
All winners across the board and good finishes for
the Bills and the Steelers.
Anyway, I was shocked.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
There was a meme that came out last season or the
season before.
About every single time theEagles win and it's just like
sweet, the game's on and it'sjust a bottomless pit of misery,
and then they just barelysqueak a victory.
It's like woohoo, Exactly howthey've been playing.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, so, steven, you guys had the.
The bengals had one of the moreboring games.
I would say um, but you guyssqueaked out the win.
Uh, you, were there anythoughts on it?

Speaker 5 (02:34):
yeah, I mean it was uh, it was brutal watch, but the
uh, the browns kicker reallysaved the day for us and uh, we
had two missed field goals.
It was yeah, uh missed, uhmissed extra point and a missed
field goal.
Okay, and uh, I I got thepleasure of sitting in jimmy's
box during the game and watchingjimmy stand up after the missed

(02:55):
field goal and walking out wasprobably one of the more
beautiful experiences as abangles fan.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
So how'd you get in there anyway?

Speaker 5 (03:04):
So we're a customer of Pilot Flying J.
Dad knows Jimmy and the salesteam really well, so we had
tickets into the game alreadyand one of the sales reps got a
hold of my dad and said, hey, wegot seven tickets.
Do you guys want to come up?
And so we spent the whole, mademy day a lot cheaper.
I'll put it that way.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Very good, so I got to take my customers up there.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
It was fun, it was good.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Ben Steelers looking good with Rodgers in the pocket
there.
What were your thoughts takingthat he looked?

Speaker 3 (03:35):
very good.
I mean running game needsworked on a little bit.
Defense needs to shore itselfup in a few different ways.
But, like Rodgers looked verygood, I think the offense looked
great, aside from some workthey got to put in the running
side.
But I mean also just the waythe game ended was awesome.
I mean like coming back thetime, I mean like and then

(03:56):
making a career record fieldgoal.
I think it was like 61 yards or62 yards.
He nailed that at.
It was just like a nice nail.
And then the last play thatdude just got leveled and again
like it kind of didn't matter.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
It was a clean hit, though, because I would hate to
have seen a flag thrown and theneveryone just pissed you know,
pissed off about that, so yeah,so yeah, fun time, nice first
game.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Can't win them all if you don't win the first one
that's right.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
bills 41 40 over the ravens.
Derrickrick Henry justembarrassed the Bills' defense,
but Josh Allen did what JoshAllen does in the fourth quarter
and, with a 1% chance ofwinning the game, with half a
quarter left, they won the game.
So I'll leave it at that.
There's a lot to work on.
Gord, are you a football guy atall, or sports in general?

Speaker 2 (04:41):
I was.
When I was younger.
I played football in highschool, although trucking took
over my life once I left school.
I do have a little anecdote Iwant to share about these two
missed conversion attempts withthe Cincinnati game.
Did I get that correctly?
I came home from living in NewZealand and driving logging

(05:02):
trucks in New Zealand and Iconvinced one of my logging
truck buddies to come with meand come trucking in Canada and
the United States and we're atthe pub one day watching I think
it might've even been a BuffaloBills game, because I lived
pretty close to the border withBuffalo and we're watching the
game and somebody missed aconversion attempt and my Kiwi

(05:25):
friend, nigel, said how do thesebastards keep missing?
They're right in front of theuprights Because in rugby, when
you play rugby, you kick fromthe point on the line where the
ball crossed.
So if you score right on thecorner, that's where the kicker
is kicking from and the personwho scored the touchdown or the
try kicks the ball.

(05:46):
You don't have some specializedplace, kicker, and you could be
kicking on an angle like thisto the uprights.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Like a corner kick in soccer.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, exactly so.
My Kiwi friend Nigel was simplyamazed at how anybody playing
North American football couldpossibly miss a conversion or a
three-pointer.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Pretty valid statement there.
So, yeah, the Bills had what'shis name I can't even think of
right now.
So our kicker is hurt right now.
So they brought in some guy outof retirement who, like,
literally showed up on likeTuesday on a red-eye flight and,

(06:28):
you know, within a week he'ssuiting up as a Buffalo Bill.
But he had the you know, thewalk-off field goal that almost
got blocked too to win that game.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
So yeah, Are you a Buffalo fan?
I am, I live in Buffalo.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Oh, you do Okay yeah, are you a Buffalo fan?
I am.
I live in Buffalo.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Oh, you do.
Okay, cool, I'm only threehours from you.
I'm in Ithaca.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Ithaca's gorgeous?
It sure is.
It's right down the road Ithacais also thought-terminating
cliches, but that's anotherconversation.
Fair enough, matt Prater,that's the kicker that came out
of out of retirement to getsigned by the bill.
So All right News.

(07:10):
So I guess Ben or Steven orGord, someone take it away with
this, this Kenya, whatever wegot going on.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, we literally like Nate and I just literally
heard this as we came on airthat apparently there was an
announcement from the Nebraskasecretary of state that they're
going to do like a.
What does it say?
It said officials from bothKenyan government and the state
of Nebraska are responsible forthe recent initiative to bring
Kenyan drivers to Nebraska,nebraska.
A memorandum of understandingwas signed by representatives
from both.
Nebraska Secretary of State BobEvnan was in Kenya in early
September to finalizing the deal, citing the demand for truck

(07:54):
drivers in his state andpraising the work ethic of
Kenyan workers.
Oh boy, so we have there's adriver shortage again and we're
going to be sourcing truckdrivers directly from Kenya.
And I lost the piece, but onepart of it, I swear said that
like they were going to be ableto come over like with their

(08:15):
like existing driver's license.
Yeah, which is insane.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
It's like labor mobility agreement is what it
says.
It's like the end of Watchmen.
I don't know if you ever sawthat movie, but spoiler alert uh
the bad guy is like monologuingat the end and he's like oh,
you think you're gonna stop myplan.
It already happened 15 minutesago.
Uh, this article came out in2024, but we only just uncovered
it yesterday right, so can Itake this justin, go for it, I'm

(08:41):
in the middle of writing afairly substantial article about
this, because the whole thingwas so shocking.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
So what happened yesterday was um, there's a
twitter account bone truckerstart I think his handle is tar
heel truckers, but he's atwishbone truckers uh, gets into
my mentions with a screenshot ofone of these articles talking
about this insourcing of Kenyandrivers to America.
So I start looking it up and Ifind these two articles and I

(09:09):
start posting them on Twitterand I start looking into it.
And then I see that thesecretary of state of Nebraska
is talking about this labormobility agreement.
So I start diving into that andthat is downstream of a sort of
a trade mission that the stateof Nebraska had been making with
Kenya since early in 2024.

(09:30):
And part of that mission itincluded agricultural stuff
technology exchange.
This is sort of like this isnot really news.
This is stuff that states andother countries do all the time.
But the thing that stuck out wasabout the mobility thing and I

(09:52):
started digging last night andthis morning and it actually
this is downstream of anothercompany in Nebraska that's been
doing this since like at least2022.
So there's a company inNebraska called IWS Trucking who
are a recruitment and trainingcompany that place drivers with
a number of companies inNebraska, including Sunrise and

(10:12):
Grand Island Express.
All right, not necessarilyWerner and these guys in Aurora,
nebraska, have been runningthis program since at least 2022
and maybe even longer, becauseit sounds like, if you look
through their personnel list,they've all been tied up in
trucking for a long time andthese guys have been bringing
dudes over from Kenya for atleast three years.

(10:34):
And I think what happened wasis that this mission that the
state of Nebraska took to Kenyawas trying to sort of solidify
it and give it some more, likeyou know, political oomph.
And I make this tweet that wentsuper viral right away.
And then my friend Danielletakes the same information and

(10:55):
tweets it and she gets an almostinstantaneous response from
Derek Letters, who's the CEO ofWerner Transport, and of course,
he denies any involvement withthis, even though one of these
articles from a news source inKenya claims that Werner was in
discussion with these same folksfrom Kenya who were already

(11:18):
affiliated with these guys IWSTrucking who source drivers for
Sunrise and Grand Island Expressand these other companies in
Nebraska.
So this hole goes pretty deep.
But I started going even deeperon this to figure out.
Why are they doing this right?
We've seen all these accidentsrecently.
2025 and 2024, have been justcrazy for increased truck

(11:42):
collisions and fatalitiesinvolving drivers who've been
insourced from other countries.
This is what got the whole ballrolling with the English
language proficiency thing, andnow everybody is like what's
going on here?
Well, it turns out that GrandIsland Express and Sunrise and
all these guys all haul meat forJBS Foods.
Jbs Foods is one of the biggestproducers of beef and chicken

(12:06):
in the world.
They've got plants all over theplace and they have a number of
plants across America.
And it seems like JBS has got along history of abusing migrant
labor, using third partyservice providers to bring
children from Guatemala andHonduras and Mexico and El
Salvador to work in their killplants, and they've been

(12:27):
Wouldn't that Gord, didn't thatarticle?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
I was telling Justin that after we were talking
yesterday that I read about thatlike it was like a year ago or
something.
Yes, I read this large article.
They were like it was literallylike titled like Child Labor in
Kill Plants.
It looked like when I read thisI was picturing literally
things I read about in like theearly 1900s in slaughterhouses
is what it sounded like.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
That's right, it's very recent.
The JBS was busted in 2022 bythe Department of Labor, or
maybe that's when theinvestigation started.
And it was everywhere WallStreet Journal, new York Times,
npr.
Jbs basically had to like youknow, had to have their, like
you know road to Damascus SaulPaul movement and turn
themselves around and they wereordered to spend all this money

(13:11):
on, you know, english trainingfor migrants and making sure
kids weren't working in theirplants and like it was a
humongous, massive story.
But so what I'm seeing here andthe connection I'm trying to
make is this because we see thisacross the rest of the industry
, where this model ofspecifically agricultural

(13:31):
companies in the United Statestrying to grind everybody down
to the point that nobody wantsto work there locally so that
they can only get migrants to doit.
We are now seeing that intrucking right, and because
Nebraska is a big ag state corn,beef, cattle ranching, all that
stuff you're seeing this ideaof employing migrants instead of

(13:55):
locals because you can pay themless and treat them like crap,
is migrating into the truckingcompanies who serve JBS.
Which is a disaster because ashorrific as child labor.

Speaker 4 (14:07):
And all this migrant exploitation occurs in the
plants.
It's in the plants.
When this gets applied totrucking, these guys are on the
highway Right.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
And like I say, I mean I don't have any ill will
against people from Kenya orwherever we're all humans right.
The problem I have is thisKenya or wherever like we're all
humans right.
The problem I have is this forbetter or for worse, america has
a particular driving culture,same in Canada, a lot of Western
countries.
We are careful, we put a lot oftime in training, we take kids
and we make them go to drivingschool when they're 16.

(14:38):
You sort of absorb it throughosmosis as you grow up and start
driving when you get older.
Of course it's not perfect.
There's still lots of accidents.
Everyone likes to complain aboutbad drivers but compared to the
rest of the world, this placeis paradise on the highway
compared to most of the rest ofthe world.
And you know I've been doing alittle bit of a look into things

(15:00):
and Kenya has got somethinglike four times the amount of
traffic fatalities as the UnitedStates does.
Eight times what they have inEurope.
Like I get it.
You know, people are people.
We should treat everybody withthe same amount of respect.
But like I looked into IWStrucking and their training
program and they have a whole.

(15:21):
It's listed right on theirwebsite.
You know, get here fromwherever.
We get you set up with a socialsecurity number, we go get your
medical, we buy your cell phone, we put you up in this hotel
and then three weeks later youhave a CDL and you're on the
road.
There is no universe where youcan take somebody from Kenya who
may or may not speak English,has got no idea what America's

(15:44):
driving rules or driving cultureis like, put them on the
highway and then send them outin a big truck and expect them
to succeed after only threeweeks of training Not possible.
We all know this is totallyfraudulent and what they're
doing is they're takingadvantage of the extremely lax
rules to get a CDL and thevirtual lack of existence of a

(16:04):
barrier to entry into thebusiness whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Can I?
I want to segue a little andbacktrack to the root cause,
right?
So the reason it seems that isstated by Nebraska, the
secretary of state and everyonein all these articles is driver
shortage.
Everyone in all these articlesis driver shortage.
Okay, what I really want tostart with is okay, so us in the

(16:28):
brokerage space and thetrucking company space and even
the shipper space, like we haveseen depressed trucking rates in
the open market, and we'lldefine that right Over the road
trucking and shipping right, notlocal, and we'll just leave LTL
aside.
So, like open market contractrates between shippers and
carriers and spot market withinbrokers, right, that entire

(16:51):
market, post the peak in COVID,has had the longest recession in
its 43 years.
I think it's roughly about 43years and it's modern existence
of how we function.
Right.
They have never lasted longerthan somewhere between 14 to 18
months where it will cycle thewhole way around from too many
and then rates go down, they goout of business rates, go back

(17:12):
up and it just cycles right.
It has not cycled since peakCOVID.
So we have seen pain across theentire industry for going on
four years now because there areso many drivers in the full
truckload space and drive-insand reefers and even in flatbeds
that rates have not moved.
No matter what has happenedWe've seen massive tariff swings

(17:34):
, imports coming in, stopping,even with massive disruptions,
we still haven't seen rates movebecause there is a excess of
drivers in this space right,okay, which is again and anybody
correct me, but like is, thelargest portion of the entire
trucking market areover-the-road drivers and I
don't know exactly the piece ofthat pie, but it is

(17:58):
overwhelmingly much larger thanlocal and LTL and we have known
this and nobody has disputedthis.
However, we're seeing both theATA, which we'll get into,
saying there's a driver shortageof 68,000 because they are
seeing thousands of job postingsfor companies that can't hire
for very niche jobs like localdriving.

(18:20):
They've cited concrete deliveryand things that move in very
local areas.
We have the secretary of statesaying that they want to bring
in, under a special program,folks from other countries to
fill jobs that they're sayingthey can't fill, but in the
bigger market it seems likethere are way more CDLs than
there are loads to move.
So help us understand this, guys, is that, like the larger

(18:43):
market has more CDLs and moredrivers than we've ever seen,
we're not seeing rates movebecause there's less freight
than there are drivers, and Iguess you can make the argument
maybe the economy is just notmoving as much as it usually
does because they're correlated.
But how do we have so many moredrivers in the bigger market
but yet they are saying we havea driver shortage, and have been
saying the same thing for overa decade.

(19:04):
What are we missing here?
How are both of those thingstrue?

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Can they both be true ?
Yes, they can, because not justtrucking, but just in general.
A lot of industries have seenthis rise in what they're
calling ghost jobs or ghostpositions, and a lot of it is
just publicly.
Companies are trying to looklike they're healthier than they
really are behind the scenes.
So if you're constantly puttingup job postings, it's a signal

(19:29):
to people in your company oflike, hey, you're replaceable,
so don't go anywhere.
But you know whether it'sbullshit or not when people
apply for these jobs and nobodygets hired and also they never
post the pay rates these jobsand nobody gets hired and also
they never post the pay rates.
So my gut instinct is always ifI see a job posting for
anywhere and they're not tellingyou how much it pays and I

(19:51):
can't find any reviews frompeople that recently got hired,
chances are that's probably abullshit job posting.
Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Is there any evidence ?
I mean again, the ATA and wedug into this yesterday said
that like well, driver pay hasgone up 19% in the past five
years.
Well, that we looked into that.
Like that's not inflationadjusted so like on a rate per
mile, everything has gotten moreexpensive.
Like that doesn't mean theyhave made more money in respect

(20:18):
to the cost of living, going upwith inflation, with inflation.
But is there any evidence outthere that companies are having
a difficult time hiring for anyCDL positions in any niche area
of the United?

Speaker 2 (20:31):
States.
They're having a difficult timehiring because they don't
subscribe to the laws ofeconomics like the rest of us
try to right.
So in my research for thisarticle, I came across a local
newspaper online in Aurora,nebraska, and in the very first

(20:51):
paragraph let me get this uphere.
Hold on a minute, I just got toscroll down.
And what's interesting aboutthis is that you see this in
every single article about thedriver shortage phenomenon as it
exists in 2025, right?
So here we go.
I'm going to quote thisnewspaper.
The American trucking industryis currently facing a number of

(21:15):
prolonged and serious challenges, including a soft market
characterized by lower freightrates, higher fuel costs and
rising interest rates.
In addition to these challenges, vital goods.
Well, don't just correlate itWell, they're contradictory.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
They're contradictory .

Speaker 2 (21:31):
So two sentences.
They open up this news articlewith lower freight rates.
Okay, if we understand the lawsof economics, lower freight
rates means what?
When the price of something islow, that means there's an
oversupply on the market or aglut of that right, Because when
there's a lot of something, theprice goes down.

(21:52):
And then, in the secondsentence, there's a shortage of
truck drivers.
If there's a shortage, thatmeans the price of the freight
rates would go up.
Okay, every single time you readone of these stories,
especially in the last couple ofyears, at least when they're
being honest.
They mentioned that thetrucking's having this problem

(22:12):
with short freight rates or lowfreight rates, but we also still
have this shortage.
It contra they, they contradictthemselves.
Or do journalists not have likeundergrad degrees?
At least maybe some of themhave a master's degree?
Maybe some of them took fuckingmath in grade nine when they
were in high school.
How does this shit keep getting?

Speaker 1 (22:33):
printed, because if you just keep saying it over and
over and over, people thataren't educated on it believe it
to be true.
And the other thought I have isif, if we have seven million
unemployed, working, workingaged americans, why that are
unemployed right, why are wegoing to bring in folks from
another country?
And the reason I mean thereason is is clear and obvious.

(22:54):
Um, but I mean, it's just, it's, it's absolutely insane.
But back to your point, gourd.
I think you know in 2020, late2020 and 2021, when we saw rates
go way up because of supply anddemand, there was really a
tight market in capacity.
And we are three and a halfyears removed from that, or more
, and it's the opposite freightmarket that it was.

(23:16):
But people are still saying thesame thing there's a truck
driver shortage.
So I think the reason is thelonger and more you just keep
repeating yourself.
Those that don't really knowthe industry just believe it to
be true.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well, this is what happens, right, Like if you go
on YouTube and type in truckdriver shortage and I think
Justin's done this before Allthe time.
It's like every single localnews affiliate in America and
every single state, for as longas YouTube has been around, has
got some story.
It's like tens of thousandsTruck driver, shortage truck

(23:47):
driver.
The ATA has put this narrativeout for so long and they've
repeated it for so long and atsuch high volume that everybody
has just internalized it.
They don't question it anymore,unless you're us.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
You know why those stories get put out there.
So I've talked to some of thejournalists and they've invited
me back on to correct the record.
What they've explained to me isa lot of it is either the
companies or the CDL schools inthe area come to them and they
say, hey, our attendance is down.
Hey, we can't get any driversinto our trucking school,
whatever, we have a massivetruck driver shortage.
And the journalist goes is thattrue?
And then they open up theRolodex, call somebody from the

(24:22):
ATA, and the ATA and the ATAsays here, here's a bunch of
talking points.
So because we have too manytruck drivers, the pay is low.
Because the pay is low,nobody's going into these CDL
schools.
Because nobody's going into theCDL schools, they're not making
any money.
So in order to get any money,they got to go to the media and
say hey, we have a truck drivershortage, Can you please do a
story on this?

(24:43):
And then that gets the ballrolling so they can get more
money from the government forthese programs.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
And they're the training programs right, like
it's basically the funnel thatmakes money off training them,
not the folks that are actuallydoing this job, making less and
less money every year.
I'm trying to find the numberson active drivers, cause I know
I've seen this chart fromsomebody we all know and I'm
like I know that I saw us, likeMCs maybe have shrank a little

(25:08):
bit over the past couple ofyears, but the number of drivers
has gone up, meaning like theywere consolidating.
Like you were saying, more ofthe smaller trucking companies
leave the industry, but theirdrivers were just going and
working for other countries.
So, the number of actual drivershad continued to go up.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, and the problem with the driver statistics
stuff and I've it's verydifficult to get hard numbers
right.
So in 2019 the americantrucking association, through
their research arm atri, putsout another report on the
supposed truck driver shortageand in a footnote in that 2019
report they admit that there's10 million people with the cdl

(25:43):
that they know about.
2019?
Not that long ago there was asort of short-lived driver
advocacy organization called CDLDrivers Unlimited, of which I
was a member, but they're gonenow.
They paid an intern in 2021 or2022, maybe even 2023, to go
around and ask all of the stateDMVs all across the United

(26:06):
States give us all the info youhave on all of the active CDLs
that you know about.
34 states responded and thenthe other 16 refused to respond,
which is another problem.
So they took the data from the34 states they could, they
prorated it and then made aguesstimate for the other 16

(26:27):
states based on theirpopulations and they came up
with this number of 8.8 millionactive CDLs in.
I guess it was 2023.
You go on the MCMIS or theFederal Register, it says 6
million.
Are they tracking the peoplewith non-domiciled or limited
ones, or the ones that areissued dodgy, or the truck

(26:49):
drivers who just fly intoChicago from Serbia and get in
on board a Chicago Volvo mafiatruck and just drive without
even having one, because that'sa thing.
In 2024, the CVSA, theCommercial Vehicle Safety
Alliance, published theirstatistics for all of their

(27:09):
truck safety blitz.
They do every June for a wholeweek.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
We're just going to ask you that I remember those
numbers.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, they raid the whole country Canada, usa,
mexico they do a huge blitz andthey have vehicle out of service
violations and driver out ofservice violations.
The number one or number twodriver out of service violation
in 2024 was not having a CDLwhatsoever.
So these people are in heredriving in our industry.

(27:37):
They don't even have a CDL,like some of these gangsters
that are up in America'strucking, do not care about the
law whatsoever.
Get in the truck, go follow myinstructions from your mobile
phone and whatever language itis, and just follow GPS and do
as you're told.
Compliance and following therules is off the table for a lot

(27:58):
of these guys.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Here's that number.
By the way, it was in 2024.
25's numbers haven't beenreleased yet.
2425 numbers haven't beenreleased yet, but it said there
were six hundred and eightyeight violations.
Twenty five point four percentwere for no commercial driver's
license.
One in four of the violations.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
I remember putting this out in our newsletter
earlier this year.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Yeah, One in four.
Just no driver's license Now.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
I mean Justin, I talked about this too Like if
they didn't have a CDLA and theyhad like a lower, a lower level
commercial.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
It says no commercial driver's license was the
citation or violation.
I'm like I'm like I don't evenknow what the penalty is, but
like I'm pretty sure they arrestyou for driving without a
regular driver's license, like Idon't think they let you get
back in your car.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
It is insane that the handcuffs don't get immediately
slapped on if you're driving an80,000-pound vehicle and you
don't have a license to drive it.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
I can understand if it was expired or your medical
card was invalid or whatever,but no license at all From you
two who are drivers, right LikeI went from your both of you
guys.
If you get pulled over duringBlitz Week and you don't have a
CDL not like even an expired,just like don't have one what
happens, like what happens atthat stop and what happens after

(29:13):
the stop?

Speaker 4 (29:14):
I honestly have no idea, because I never got pulled
over during Blitz Week.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Good question and I think what happens is, basically
, I don't think the cops areallowed to take the keys out of
the truck, unless it's like atruck violation.
If it's the driver, they justgive you a citation and they say
, hey, you're not allowed todrive and better call your
company.
They have to send somebody tocome and get the truck.
If it's on the side of the roadit'll get towed somewhere.

(29:40):
But like that's it, likethere's nothing stopping the guy
from like going and hiding at arestaurant or somewhere and
coming back an hour later whennobody's looking, getting in his
truck and driving away.
Like there's literally nothing,there's no mechanism in
enforcement, unless you liketake the keys off the guy and
like boot his truck to keep themfrom just driving it away.

(30:03):
So Danielle put up a tweetabout this a couple days ago,
where a guy in Tennessee wasbusted for the English language
proficiency twice, both inTennessee, one one day, one the
next.
Same truck, same driver, samecompany, same everything, and
they just let him go.
This just proves that unlessyou arrest these people or you

(30:24):
brick the truck somehow, takethe keys, put a boot on it so it
can't drive away, they'll justget back in the truck and keep
going.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
Yeah, there was like a little bit of there was a fear
going around when the ELPmandate was first announced.
Everyone was like, oh, they'regoing to get all off the roads.
Then it was like, well, ifthey're not being enforced it's
not really going to take anycapacity out of the market.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Now we're seeing that , even if it is enforced these
guys just don't care and nothinghappens to them and they're
just going to keep drivinganyway.
That's the part that is justlike absolutely shocking right,
Like anybody that has everfished here.
Like it just kind of reminds meof like when you catch a fish
and your buddy catches the samefish, like later in the
afternoon because you threw himback, and it's just like it's
just the same thing happeningover and over and over again.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
It's going to keep happening, right, Like the ELP
thing, is like they're nibblingaround the edges and they're not
addressing the real problemhere, right?
So a very good point that wasmade in a book I want everybody
in logistics to go and read.
I read it and I had the authorof the book on my podcast last
year or the year before.
Her name is Karen Levy.

(31:26):
She's a sociologist at cornelluniversity, eight miles from
where I'm sitting here in ithaca.
She was trained at princeton.
She's a lawyer, it professor.
She's got like a a zillioncredentials and she got really
interested in trucking as thesort of like what would, what
did she?
It Like a sort of zone of youknow labor.

(31:50):
I can't remember what the wordshe used, but anyway she was
really interested in, like howtruckers dealt with surveillance
, with being, you know, chasedby cops, harassed, you know all
the problems we deal with out onthe road.
And she spent 10 years workingon this book studying how the
imposition of surveillancetechnology on trucks affected

(32:13):
our working lives, the money wemade, the whole thing Big, huge,
long book.
And she, much like OverdriveMagazine, did her own research
into the effects of the ELDmandate, Come to find out,
didn't do anything actually madeit worse.
Didn't do anything actuallymade it worse.
Crashes go up, people engage inmore aggressive driving
behaviors.
It literally did nothing.
And because, as Levy says in herbook, you're not addressing the

(32:38):
fundamental incentive structureof how truck drivers are paid
right.
All you're doing is justputting a clock on their
available hours.
You're not doing anything aboutdelays.
You're not doing anything aboutdelays.
You're not doing anything aboutthe fact they get paid by the
mile.
You're not doing anything aboutwhat makes people tick Right.
And as long as there's anincentive and a way for foreign

(32:58):
companies to get in here, fordomestic companies to abuse
foreign drivers and people thatdon't speak English or don't
have a CDL, they're just goingto keep doing it.
So, like the government has toget a whole lot more serious
than just trying to administerEnglish language tests.
You have to take these peopleand you have to, like cancel

(33:18):
their license.
You have to chase the employersand say you employed this guy,
knowing that he breaking the lawby not being able to speak
English and your MC number istemporarily canceled.
They have to go to the stateDMV and find the official that
issued the CDL and say you guysare doing something wrong here
and we have to correct it.

(33:39):
We have to like, fine you, wehave to.
You know there are other holesin the system by which these
guys get here in the first placeand if we're only going to
address the guys withoutaddressing the wider system,
they're just going to keep doingit.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
And circling out from that.
While all this is happening, Ijust see post after post after
post on social media of youngmen complaining about how, oh,
it's so over for me.
I'm looking at this one herethat was posted, uh, four days
ago.
He says I'm 26 years old, nojob, no car, no girlfriend, five
foot six, live with my parents,multiple health issues,

(34:16):
terminally online, loves Pokemon, no social life.
Is it over for me?
Yes or no, other than thehealth issues and the Pokemon?
That was me at 25, and truckingsaved my life.
Like I had a high schooldiploma and, you know, a couple
of years of work experience, butI didn't have a degree or
anything like that.
And once I had my CDL, it's thegolden ticket.
You can get a job anywhere.

(34:36):
It might not be a great job ora glamorous job, but you know
it's going to be better than orat least it was better at the
time than being, you know, aretail wage slave.
And I talk to young men now allthe time and I ask them you know
, once you try trucking and theytell they give me just excuse
after excuse and I I get it,they're decent enough excuses.
It's like it only pays 45 50000 a year.

(34:58):
Now it was paying that in 2007when I started.
So the the price that thesecompanies are willing to pay to
get people to leave theirfriends and family and loved
ones for weeks, months at a timejust hasn't even like not gone
up, it's gone down, like thesecompanies are.
Just they're just not paying atall.
So you have an entiregeneration of young men that are

(35:20):
suffering because they havenothing to go into that
otherwise would have been astepping stone into something
else down the line.
Nothing to go into thatotherwise would have been a
stepping stone into somethingelse down the line.
You don't have to be a truckdriver the rest of your life,
but at least getting some stepinto like a profession and
realizing like oh, I canactually do stuff is such a game
changer for people.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, and I want to go.
I want to circle back to tolike the root cause is like okay
, who benefits right?
Well, when you have more truckdrivers and there are loads to
move, prices go down.
As Gord pointed out, likesimple economics, our industry
may seem very complex and thereare arguments and how.
Some of it is more complex thanother things.
But like, at the end of the day, like you have a number of

(36:01):
shipments that need moved everyday and a number of trucks that
can move them, when there aremore shipments than there are
trucks to move, it, rates go up.
When there are more trucks thanthere are shipments, the rates
go down.
Rates have been down for thelongest period ever, mostly
because the things moving havestayed the same, maybe gone down
a little bit, but the number oftrucking companies have not

(36:22):
shrunk, or the number of drivers, because the companies don't
matter.
It's how many actual powerunits can move, the number of
loads that mean moved every day.
That determine rates, right.
So when you see that thosenumbers are that low and
depressed for that long, part ofme and the cynical part of me
goes well, you have a governmentthat is trying to fight
inflation post-COVID.
So who benefits from cheaprates?

(36:43):
All of the companies.
Every single company that movesanything any day from anywhere
to anywhere benefits from havingrates.
All of the companies.
Every single company that movesanything any day from anywhere
to anywhere benefits from havingmore drivers.
Who else benefits, right, youhave organizations that get paid
by their members and then thelarger trucking companies
benefit, and we talked aboutthis.
Why do the trucking companiesbenefit?
Well, it's a lot cheaper for meto hire a driver their first

(37:04):
year than their fifth year.
So if I can hire a lot ofdrivers and pay them for a year
and a half, they're getting theentry-level driver rate.
Then they leave, then I got tobring in another one.
Why do most companies not justpay entry-level people?
Because they've got to pay toget them and train them.
The trucking companies aren'tpaying that bill because the

(37:25):
government is subsidizing itinto driver training programs,
spending money into CDL programsto just keep that funnel going.
So the trucking companiesbenefit by paying drivers less,
shippers benefit by paying lessfreight rates, but at the end of
the day, the entire workingclass in the trucking side
suffers from this, while theadvocacy groups that are

(37:46):
supposed to be having their backand helping advocate for better
working conditions and betterpay, are literally saying the
opposite thing.
They're literally standing onthe podium and the one of the
guys was literally in Congressat a subcommittee meeting.
What was it last month, in July, saying there's a giant driver
shortage.
And I think your quoteyesterday, justin and I looked

(38:08):
it up was that, like anybodythat says anything different
than this, he was attacking thenuance of even the argument and
saying if you disagree with me,hold on, I'm going to find the
exact quote.
But it's wild, like the factthat nobody is talking about,
like this giant pink elephant inthe room that everybody in the

(38:30):
industry can see.
And they're not only nottalking about it, they're saying
the opposite thing is happening.
And then you see, states doingthings that are making it worse
and driving rates even furtherdown on the justification of
what was never true in the firstplace.
And to me, like yeah, there'salways bullshit, for sure in
government and in business, butlike this is like the biggest

(38:52):
load of it that I think I'veever seen for the longest period
I've ever seen.

Speaker 4 (38:56):
Right, gord's a big fan of the term
thought-terminating cliche andthat's exactly what this is.
It's just, it's an easy talkingpoint and it's steady as she
goes.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
sorry, gordon, yeah no problem, no problem, um.
So, uh, yeah, we have a majorcapacity glut.
Everybody knows that there's notruck driver shortage.
Meanwhile, chris spear keepsgoing off about it and the media
keeps repeating it.
But we all know and it getscomplicated too right about like
where are all these trucks anddrivers coming from?
So 2021, uh, biden-harrisTrucking Action Plan and I've

(39:31):
talked about this at length.
Our friends Shannon and Harveyand Cliff at American Truckers
United have done all theresearch on it and 2021, we have
the COVID demand spike.
Everyone's making out likebandits, tons of money because
everyone's at home, got theirfree Biden bucks.
They're spending money likecrazy at Amazon, but we're all
at home because COVID, right.

(39:53):
Massive demand for trucks.
Lots of people get back intothe market.
Lots of guys start their owncompanies.
It gets crazy.
People are getting $4 or $5 amile and then it all crashes,
right.
So you would expect this marketto shake out.
Eventually.
Guys stop making truck payments.
People aren't making enoughmoney.
They quit.

(40:13):
They find something else to do.
Natural cycle.
Problem is this 2021 TruckingAction Plan, which was very
explicit about why they wereengaging it.
It says right there the ATAwent to Biden and said we have
to pay a premium of an extra 7%to 12% to our drivers in order
to keep them lest they quit andgo work for somebody else, right

(40:36):
?
So they say, well, we're goingto try and figure out how to
stabilize their supply chainsand make sure everything works
correctly.
So they bring in all thesestakeholders right and all these
industry experts.
They get testimony fromeverybody and a bunch of people
that are not the ATA or theirmembers.
Tell Biden there's enough truckdrivers, you're just not using
them correctly.
Mit data scientist, davidCarell I've had on my show.

(41:00):
40% of United States truckingcapacity is sitting at any given
time waiting to be loaded orunloaded Massive drain on the
system.
Steve Shelly, author of Big RedTrucking the Decline of the
American Dream, told the Bidenpeople you got to pay guys more,
you got to solve your retentionproblem.
All kinds of people told Bidenwhat the truth was.

(41:20):
What does the Bidenadministration do?
Or I should say McKinseyConsulting, who are working with
their buddy Pete Buttigieg.
They ignored all that.
Let's flood the market withmore drivers to get the price
down.
So, according to Shannon'sresearch, it looks like 10 to 14
states cooperated and now weget this non-domicile CDL holder

(41:42):
thing or limited term CDLholder and all of those the
numbers for all of those typesof licenses start spiking like
crazy in 2021 and 2022.
So where did they get thesepeople?
If they're non-domicile orlimited term, that means they're
migrants and refugees?
Where did they come fromBiden's really terrible border

(42:02):
policies and just letting peoplewalk in the country tens of
millions?
They just took like a fewhundred thousand of those people
and turned them into truckdrivers overnight.
Now they've been in the systemfor a couple of years and to
them.
They're not used to the cycle.
They're also not used to beingpaid what Americans get paid, or
what one third of whatAmericans get paid, and they're

(42:24):
happy to keep doing it.
They're not going to leavewillingly.
If you look at all thesenumbers at minimum at minimum
since the late 2021, there havebeen half a million, if not more
that's the conservativeestimate 500,000 of these CDLs
issued, these non-domiciled andlimited-term CDLs issued almost

(42:48):
exclusively to migrants andrefugees, and there's probably
more.
Those people aren't just goingto leave.
There's only two pointsomething million truck driving
jobs.
You just dumped an extra 25percent of that number on top of
it, and they're happy to workfor way less than what the
American drivers actually areused to making.
No wonder the capacity glutwon't go away.

(43:11):
We've got all these people whoshowed up here yesterday that
are just not going to leaveunless we force them to.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
I was listening to this interview that CEO Warner
did last week or the week beforewith Bloomberg and he had the
same exact thought.
He was asked directly like doyou think that there's a truck
driver shortage?
And he said he's like we canclearly see that there is plenty
of quote unquote CDL holdersout there, but what we really
have is a shortage of qualifieddrivers.
And I'm like the system doesn'tcare.

(43:38):
If you have a CDL, you can geta job.
The system itself does not care.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
I cannot stand Especially his part of the
system, because the specialized,high-quality, really competent
drivers of which there is ashortage are the guys hauling
fuel, oversized cattle,specialized stuff.
The guys like me with a quartercentury of experience are kind
of hard to come by and theentire industry is set up to
fuck people like me off, withyour driver facing cameras and
you're paying these slave wages.
Why am I going to go drivingtruck?
90% of the trucking companiesin this fucking country couldn't
afford me and would treat melike I just got here yesterday

(44:18):
or I was like a criminal withall their surveillance stuff.
This industry and this systemis doing everything possible to
make life difficult for guyslike me, while doing everything
possible to continue to insourcelabor from other parts of the
world here to undercut us.
That's a death spiral that's notgoing to work out for anybody
and we're seeing it in theaccidents and collision

(44:39):
statistics.
Well, I want to point that out.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
I got into the industry right at the start of
that death spiral, because I'llgive you guys my like brief
start in the industry when Ijoined Schneider in 07, and
there were 98 of us in our classand it was a two week class and
Schneider at the time was atraining school, so our training
company, so they would do a newclass every two weeks, so every
two weeks you had anywhere from100 to 200 people come in

(45:03):
Within the first day.
Half of us were gone.
200 people come in Within thefirst day, half of us were gone.
They did like a healthscreening.
Half the people weredisqualified right there on the
spot.
Two weeks later, 16 of usgraduated and got our CDLs.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
So you take 98 people , 16 of them got their CDLs 16%
success rate every day.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
Within a year, I was the only one left still driving
a truck, not driving for Snyderjust driving period, because at
the time that was when thehousing market and everything
had collapsed and everyone wastrying to get other jobs
elsewhere.
So that's only gotten worseover time.
So, as Werner CEOs grumblingabout there not being enough

(45:38):
qualified drivers out there,it's like you guys are a
training company.
You're the ones that are makingthe drivers that are supposed
to stick around and go on toother jobs elsewhere to get more
money.
They give them no reason tostick around what's happening is
these people come in, they gothrough the training and then
they quit.
They just quit trucking period.

(45:58):
They don't stick around to getthe experience.
If you come into trucking andyou make it a year, it used to
be two years but nowadays it'sgotten so bad it's just a year.
If you can make it a year atany company and not reckon
anything, you will be hiredanywhere.
As long as you have the rightcredentials.
You don't have an automaticrestriction.
You have hazmat, doubles,tanker, all that Anybody will

(46:20):
hire you.
That's just how bad it's gotten.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Well, the thing I want to point out is what Gord
said a moment ago, because I wastalking with Klein Vars, who
owns a trucking company, aboutthis literally yesterday.
And we're doing a lot of likein our brokerage heavy haul,
over dimensional and I did a lotof tankers last year.
Exactly what you were saying,gord, is like when you get into
high risk cargo where if thereis something that happens
meaning like a spill, anaccident and you are hauling

(46:46):
styrene or extremely flammable,hazardous material, right, like
those rates seven $8 a mile.
When I'm looking I look at thebid sheet for a project I was
working on the past two weeks.
This stuff's likeoverdimensional, over height,
but not that heavy, but you needlots of permits, bucket trucks
and like routing surveys.
We're seeing anywhere from 11or 12 bucks a mile to $18 a mile

(47:11):
and I've gone through like Ihave a list of literally every
trucking company in the countrythat has the equipment, has it
registered, and have talked toor emailed and reached out to
every one of them to pulltogether the biggest list I
could for these projects and itends up you go from like I think
my list started with like 5,000or 6,000 companies my list of

(47:31):
ones that are willing to runthat and can run it, even though
they have the equipment, endsup being about a dozen, 15 or 20
.
So you take this list ofthousands and thousands of
companies that own thisequipment could theoretically
run this, and I've talked tothem.
I've been talking to them forthe past month.
They'll get on the phone withme like we won't run that, like
our drivers just aren'tqualified to run anything that

(47:52):
tall, that wide and they're notsuper tall, they're like one's
13 and a half foot, one's like12 and a half foot.
So they're like a bit abovelegal, but nothing crazy.
And like one after another willemail me and call me and just
say, like my guys won't run this, like they'll run something
that's a little heavy, my guyscan't run it because they can't
fucking read English andunderstand their routing permits

(48:13):
.
Well, this is the thing I wasgetting at.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Okay, so I hate to interrupt you, but this stuff
just makes me furious.
I used to haul oversize.
I've done all the things youtalked about.
I hauled fuel for 10 years.
I hauled anhydrous ammonia,which is the super toxic liquid
nitrogen shit.
I hauled super loads with jeepsand stingers and fucking
escorts and all that stuff.
It's not that hard.

(48:35):
Read the fucking permit, followthe route, read a map, hang
your flags on it, drive slow.
Just follow fuckinginstructions.
This is not hard.
It's not that difficult.
What this?
The whole thing we're beingtold here again.
Our industry is being immolatedfrom within by the death drive

(48:59):
to get the dumbest possiblepeople, the cheapest possible
people.
If they only last year, whocares?
We'll find somebody else.
They're digging through thebottom of the human resources
barrel to get the worst fuckingstupidest people possible to put
them behind the wheel.
And this is the result of it.
It's resulted in a massivecompetency crisis.
Nobody can do anything.
Nobody trusts anybody to doanything.

(49:20):
And then what happens?
The fucking insurance companiesmake it so hard for people that
can do something that nobodycan afford the insurance.
Nobody wants to take the risk,nobody wants to get sued.
I was, you know I was talking toa trucking company owner about
this the other day.
Everybody in the industry knowsthat the driver facing cameras
don't do anything.
All they do is record theincident.

(49:42):
They don't prevent people fromgetting in accidents.
Why?
Because you're still puttingretards behind the wheel.
What does the driver-facingcamera do for you?
All it does is show triallawyers when you eventually go
to court over an accident thatyou did your due diligence, so
you're going to take— oh my God,I can't.

(50:02):
I'm going to throw my fuckinglaptop through the window.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
I had a post on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago,
right when the Florida accidenthappened, and all I did was I
posted a screenshot of thein-camera footage and I said,
huh interesting that the camerainside the cab did nothing to
prevent this accident.
And so many people lost theirminds on LinkedInin because I
knew what I was doing when Iposted.
I've been seeing post afterpost after post, before this
florida accident happened, ofall these chat, gpt, written

(50:28):
slop articles on linkedin oflike this is why these cameras
are so important.
We need this for this and thisand that, and I'm like it
doesn't prevent anything.
So much of this shit happeningis reactive, not proactive.
You wouldn't need the camerasin the first place.
You wouldn't need the camerasin the first place.
You wouldn't need the tens ofthousands of dollars in carrier
vetting.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
you wouldn't need the quadrupling of your insurance
premiums if you would stopputting these people behind the
wheel in the first place yeah,the same concept applies to with
, like, if you ever ride in anuber, the reason that they have
those cameras forward and rearfacing is not to protect anybody
inside the vehicle, it's forinsurance, like accidents and
insurance.

(51:06):
I remember when I worked atConway Conway Freight back in
the day and they were um, theywere looking to put in the uh
in-cab cameras and drivers gotpissed off and the reality came
down.
It was like the company wasforced to if they wanted to keep
their insurance costs at areasonable rate without having
it skyrocket.
So absolutely does nothing Ifanything.

(51:29):
Like you, you piss off driverslike like Gord mentioned right,
like there's a, there's a levelof like privacy that, as humans,
you feel like you're.
If you're constantly beingwatched, you're going to act
different.
You're almost not as focused onwhat you should be, which is
looking down the road.
It can almost have a negativeimpact.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
The other thing you watch.
Like Rob Carpenter is a greatfollow on LinkedIn with this
stuff.
He just posts video after videoafter video of these idiots
fucking up all the job.
All the time the camera didnothing to stop them.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Well, video after video of these idiots fucking up
all the job, all the time thecamera did nothing to stop them.
Well, the better stat too, thatI saw as, like an analogy,
showed the crime and stabbingincidents in countries like
Great Britain that have put CCTVeverywhere they went oh they
put cameras all over the streets, on all the buildings, to
reduce crime.
The numbers went up and thenthey didn't use any of the
footage to address the coreissues of why they happened in

(52:22):
the first place.
It's just after the fact oflike oh well, now we have
footage of the crime happeningand now there's more of them,
and nobody goes and uses that tofigure out to the bigger point
of like well, why did thishappen in the first place?
It's clearly not making them godown.
It's not a deterrent.
No one's driving safer becauseof it.
And to Nate's point, like humanbeings need some sense of
privacy to some degree and trust, right.

(52:45):
Like nobody wants to work inany job where you feel that
nobody trusts you to the pointwhere they're recording every
one of the things you're doingall day.
Like it does not give you asense of fulfillment, it does
not give you a sense of prideand it does not give you a sense
that anyone appreciatesanything you're doing in any
scenario there's some.

Speaker 4 (53:03):
All you're doing is chasing away your best talent.
Unfortunately, they're alsoyour most expensive talent, so
the only people that you'regoing to be able to afford to
put in the truck next are theones that need those cameras and
those surveillance systems inthe first place there's some, uh
, there's some funny clips thatI've seen from those cameras.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Not to go off topic, I I remember we had one at our,
I think it was at our thetrucking leg of our company
caught a dude like pissing in aGatorade bottle and we're like
what the hell is this guy doing?
So anyway, all that to say,gore, we went down a bunch of
rabbit holes.
If you had a magic wand and youcould make changes, and you
could, you know, have theimmediate influence to have

(53:40):
things go the way that you thinkthey should, what does that
look like?

Speaker 2 (53:43):
That looks like addressing the problem that
begets so many others, which isdetention.
I am thoroughly convinced thata lot of this stuff starts with
the fact that trucks are sittingall the time and we have a
major capacity utilizationproblem, which leads people like
the ATA to believe they needmore trucks and more drivers,
because what we have is notbeing utilized correctly.

(54:05):
That's not across the entireindustry, but enough of it that
MIT came up with this 40% number.
Also, you have to put a valueon driver's time which will help
solve that right.
You are going to be less likelyto drive like a maniac if you
know that when you're sittingsomewhere and they're taking

(54:26):
their good sweet time to loadyou and unload you and that's
cutting into your driving time,you are still being compensated
and you are being compensatedwell.
So we have to deal withdetention.
We have to pay drivers better.
Then we need less drivers, Thenwe have less of a problem with
feeling this stupid need toinsource drivers when we are in

(54:46):
a capacity glut.
Now, separate from thedetention, separate from the pay
, we're going to have to getreal hard on the companies that
are insourcing labor from othercountries in the middle of an
overcapacity glut.
They are taking the piss whenthe Secretary of State of
Nebraska is saying we need moretruck drivers, when FreightWaves
has an entire section of theirwebsite dedicated to nothing but

(55:10):
bankruptcies and truckenclosures and drivers being
laid off, and it's active, andthey have a couple of
journalists that write aboutnothing.
But that means we don't needin-source labor.
That means the people that aretrying to bring those folks here
are not only screwing Americantruckers.
They're setting up these poormigrants from other countries,
from failure, who are going toshow up here.

(55:32):
They're going to feel animusfrom people like me and
everybody giving them the stinkeye and they're being paid less
and sooner or later, like everyother truck driver in this
country, they're going to quittheir job within a year because
they're going to get sick andfucking tired of being ripped
off and having their time wasted.
Sorry, I'm, I'm, just I'm, I'm.
I'm incensed about what's goingon in this industry.

(55:55):
It drives me insane do you?

Speaker 1 (55:57):
do you think that with the new administration in
Washington, that they're headinganywhere closer in the right
direction?
Or do they not even have anyidea of what the real issues are
.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
They have taken a step in the right direction, but
they need to drive a few miles.
So, yeah, they're nibblingaround the edges.
This remains to be seen.
Duffy and the USDOT areinvestigating this issue of
non-domicile stuff.
What that investigation comesup with, what it leads to, will
there be any action?
Who knows?
I'm not keeping my hopes up,but at least they're looking at

(56:34):
it and acknowledging there'ssomething going on here which is
more than can be said about theprevious administration, who
were told directly about whatthe actual problems are and did
everything to make them worse.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
All right, justin.
Do you have anything to add ingiven the conversation?

Speaker 4 (56:51):
It's really hard to follow up a rant like that from
Gord Preaching to the choirthere, my friend, we have some
good clips from this episode.
You hear the complaints fromeverybody.
I hear rumblings that a lot ofthe state affiliates are getting
sick and tired of the nationalfrom the ATA.
So everything is going to reacha boiling point where, as we

(57:14):
see not to get too political onhere but when things start
getting real bad somebody isgoing to step up and take that
reign of power and there's goingto be nothing there to stop
them.
And I really think, you know,part of the reason why trucking
was deregulated in the 80s wasbecause it became impossible to
really move anything in thecountry.
And I feel like that's kind ofwhere we're headed right now too

(57:34):
.
It's you know, the industry hasgotten so bad that somebody is
going to step in and come upwith a bunch of solutions and
just make everything even worse.
So I would rather we fix thingsnow, before it's too late.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I'm curious, ben what your take is.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
The part of me thinks that, like, there's like three
thoughts in my head that I wantto tie into this on.
Like the other side right Islike what you were saying, gord,
about what they did in 21.
Part of me really believes thatthey were like you know what
Inflation's really bad right now.
Nobody can get their stuff.
Let's solve it now and we'llfigure it out later.

(58:09):
So bring a bunch of driversdrive rates down.
That's our biggest problem.
Figure it out later and nobodythought about later is part of
where I think the motivation was.
The other part of me is like,well, if all the companies
benefit and they're the oneswith the most money lobbying all
the folks making the decisions,they have nothing to complain
about.
The only real people suffering,right truck drivers, right

(58:30):
people in our industry and thesafety of people on the roads.
And I think if this thingactually gets changed, it's
going to be initiated from thegeneral public being scared and
terrified of who they're sharingthe roads with, of people that
aren't qualified to drive orputting their families and
friends and everyone in societyat risk because companies can
benefit and we can bring incheap labor.

(58:52):
And to me, like that's probablywhere the solutions will start
is you're going to start seeingmore and more.
Unfortunately, you're going tosee more accidents before you
see less, until eventually,politicians go like we have to
do something about this, becausewe've only seen like two or
three this year that really hitthe news and like that number is
not going to go down, it'sgoing to go up until somebody

(59:15):
actually addresses this.
That's the part that terrifiesme, but like I think that's
probably how this starts to beaddressed.
And who knows, to your point,gord, like there's a step in the
right direction, but there aremiles to walk before you get to
any solution.
And you are just seeing millionsof people that spent their life
learning how to work in thisindustry, love this industry,

(59:38):
want to do these things, careabout their work ethic, and
they're getting the short end ofthe stick and nobody is looking
to address it because, hey, thecompany's the one paying for my
reelection.
Why do I care about, you know,a couple hundred thousand people
that will just go find anotherjob anyway?
Right, at literally the sametime, unemployment is rising.
Right, like you're literallyseeing unemployment going up at

(59:59):
the same time.
And I think, like human beingsare terrible at making long term
decisions.
They will always make decisionsthat make them feel better
today to deal with it later.
And I think, unfortunately, weneed more of that short term
pain and people going, callingCongress, reaching out and
saying like what are you doingabout this?
Where are you voting on this?
Where do you stand?

(01:00:19):
What are you doing about this?
Where are you voting on this?
Where do you stand?
Because if we, as like thegeneral public, don't reach out
to government officials and letthem know like this is
terrifying and this needsaddressed, at the end of the day
, the companies are talking tothem every day.
They're on the phone, they'reon speed dial, they're going
listen, man, our shipping ratesare great.
We don't want you guys todecrease the amount of drivers.
We don't want you guys todecrease the amount of drivers.
We don't want to pay more forour cost of goods.

(01:00:40):
We're already spending too muchmoney.
You need more of us than are ofthem, because they have more
leverage, because they're theones cut the checks.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah.
So I want to wrap this up, Iwant to ask you and Justin as
well.
I'll be on Capitol Hill nextweek.
I'll be lobbying with TIA.
We typically go and talk about,you know, concerns and issues,
but there's oftentimesadditional a little bit of time
at the end of our meetings withdifferent congressional offices

(01:01:08):
about any other industry-relatedtopics that we can discuss.
So I'm curious what are somethings that we from the
brokerage community can sharewith our leadership at the
federal level in DC,specifically when I'm down there
next week, at any you know,quick bullet point items to
bring to their attention?

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Uh, past the guaranteeing overtime for
truckers act.
Um, you know this capacity glut.
Uh, downstream of the detentionproblem, I think you guys
should hammer on the detentionproblem because you as brokers
are always trying to like.
You get carriers asking fordetention and you can't get it
if the shippers don't pay.
The shippers don't pay if thereisn't a value put on the driver

(01:01:51):
and that capacity's time.
And one of the reasons they'reable to get away with it is
truck drivers are by lawexcluded from the overtime pay
provisions that everybody elsegets in the 1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act.
There has been a bill beforeCongress sitting there for three
years.
It's one line Remove theexemption for transport workers

(01:02:12):
from the 1938 Fair LaborStandards Act, that's it.
No pork, no taxes, noregulation, no, nothing.
Remove that exemption.
Then it's up to the industry tofigure out how to solve that
problem and pay guys correctly.
And then maybe it incentivizesshippers and receivers to get
moving and get our capacitymoving, because all the other
problems are downstream of that.

(01:02:32):
Pass the GOT Act.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
That's huge because there are shippers for sure that
turn detention into profitcenters, like I have had
customers that literally willbill their customers that
they're like, hey, I need yourdetention, check in and check
out.
Like, ok, can you approve thatI got to pay the care?
It's like, oh, we don't paydetention.
Well then, why did you need tocheck in and check out times?
Because you're going to billthem, keep that money and then I
hours waiting for your load tocome in off the field.

(01:02:55):
It is so abusive in produce.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
I can't tell you they basically just see every single
truck, any reefer trailersitting on their dock with a
truck in front of it.
That's free storage as far asthey're concerned.
My advice to you guyseverything, everything.
Copy and paste everything Gordsaid.
But if you're talking tocongressmen especially, really

(01:03:19):
emphasize the national securityissues we're seeing with a lot
of this stuff, most of thesecriminal enterprises.
Part of the reason why thetrucking market is such a shit
show right now is because wehave so many carriers that are
basically just fronts fororganized crime, and the reason
that they can operate at themargins that they do is because
they don't make money haulingfreight.

(01:03:40):
They make money hauling theirillicit shit, so that stuff
never reaches the spreadsheets.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
The ELT-.
It reminds me of the strip mallbusinesses, you see, where
there's never a car.
Then you're like, how's thatplace in business?
And it's like, yeah, it's justmoney laundering, right?
Same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
Walk through South Philly and find a random Italian
restaurant or a pizza place.
They stick out like a sorethumb.
They're open two days a week,three hours a day, cash only but
best damn pizza you've ever hadin your life.
But the ELD, especially, islike a huge thing right now.
It was pushed that this thingis mandated to be put in the
trucks, but then they have zerovetting whatsoever in who's

(01:04:20):
actually making the ELDs andwe're seeing a rise in cargo
theft as a result.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
And all that data is getting sucked up and sent
overseas and being done Godknows what with so, on that ELD
note, because I remember this,we talked about this with
Danielle a couple of weeks ago.
She wanted to, when there's aviolation and a roadside
inspection, to list the ifthere's a sorry, if there's an
hours of service violation list,the ELD provider that was used

(01:04:48):
and you're saying is yours thecertification process.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
You're saying You're going to sell certification.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think that should just be on the
report.
You know, when they're writinga truck up, they got to write
down the make model, make modelof the trailer, make model of
the truck, put in the ELD aswell, because I think it used to
be.
The initial thought was oh,it's just these, these white,
white white label services, it'sall the crooked ones.
No, we're seeing, you know,drivers come to us saying like

(01:05:17):
no, no, we use Samsara and wecan, we can edit logs in Samsara
.
Come to us saying like no, no,we use Samsara and we can edit
logs in Samsara.
And the fact that you can evendo that in Samsara should just
be like sounding alarms.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Yeah, and I think to Justin's point.
Nate like is that you don'twant to just write it down if
there's an hour of serviceviolation, because if you write
it down every time there's aninspection, you're probably
going to correlate a lot moreinspections to certain ELDs,
because those are the guysdriving more hours, more tired,
faster.
You're going to see lots ofcorrelations with every single

(01:05:46):
incident with the ELDs.
To be able to start creatinglists and go okay, like this is
ridiculous.
90% of the violations come from25% of the ELDs, or maybe it's
a lot of them Cause, to yourpoint, even the well-known,
reputable ones.
We're now starting to hear fromdrivers that other companies
are absolutely manipulatingalmost all of them.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
And something with the ELD thing.
One last thing you can take toCongress, as you're talking
about the ELD stuff, is that thecompanies who use this in their
marketing to attract driversare flagrantly advertising
flexible ELDs so that they canhave drivers work way over hours
of service rules.

(01:06:24):
And those same companies areoften owned by recent arrivals
to America who know that mostAmerican truck drivers are not
interested in being worked thathard.
And those companies areactively discriminating against
American-born indigenous truckdrivers.
The correlation with this isoff the charts.
Are actively discriminatingagainst American-born indigenous

(01:06:44):
truck drivers.
The correlation with this isoff the charts.
Shut them down and then youclose the channel by which
American workers arediscriminated against in
employment.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Extremely huge issue.
Yeah, you guys have given me aton of talking points.
I appreciate it.
So it's good, ben, it's goodfor you and I to get the
perspective from the trucker inthe last couple of weeks here,
because we're normally on heretalking all about brokerage.
From a brokerage perspective Inever drove truck outside the
military.
It's definitely a greatperspective to have.

(01:07:17):
The one thing that you guys wekind of went around and gave our
take towards the end there, theone thing and this is really
for the audience listening froma broker's perspective
everything you've heard todayand last week and the week
before in our discussion aboutwhat's going on here is all the
more reason to do a really goodjob at vetting your carriers and

(01:07:39):
aiming to build a very strongcarrier network.
Have good, trusted people thatyou know the kind of safety
operations and preventativemaintenance that they do with
their trucks and their fleet.
You know they're taking care oftheir drivers and you get to
know these folks.
So I can't stress enough howdangerous.
Not only this is safety-wise onthe highways, not only this is

(01:07:59):
safety-wise on the highways, butone crash, one bad incident
could destroy your business, canget you pulled into a mega
lawsuit and you lose a customerthat could bankrupt your company
or put it under.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Can I put an anecdote to that point real quick?
Yeah, so the other day thisvideo went viral on Twitter, an
account that has absolutelynothing to do with trucking, but
it's a large political account.
They had this video sent tothem of a guy, a strong, solo
Sergei, swapping the DOT signson the side of his truck, and
the post was about what arethese guys doing?
Are they smuggling people?
Are they smuggling drugs?
There were a couple of repliesand they were like oh no, I know

(01:08:39):
that carrier, they're totallylegit.
I looked them up on searchcarriers had in 15 trucks and
their fleet and about 290drivers.
And he's like I use them allthe time because, um, they have
day of teams anytime in out ofLos Angeles.
I was like dude, there is noway those guys are teams, none
whatsoever.
I sent him a screenshot of aDOD contractor I used to drive

(01:09:01):
for they haul nothing but teamfreight and they have 33 trucks,
68 drivers.
So you can tell if a carriercomes to you and they say, yeah,
I got real teams, look them up.
You can spot the lieimmediately If they have.
If they say they have nothingbut teams and they have the same
number of trucks as they dodrivers, or more trucks than

(01:09:21):
drivers.
They're lying to you and you'regoing to be putting yourself in
your freight and yourcustomer's freight at risk.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Liability too, because it is our job to hire
what was instructed ordocumented in our load tender
from the customer.
Customer pays you and hires youto hire a team driver and you
don't vet that.
Care and make sure there's twodrivers and something happens.
You can be certain whoever isinjured or killed is looping in
the brokerage and suing them aswell.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
Yep, and they may have hauled many loads for you
in the past, no problem, but itonly needs to happen once.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Yeah Well, good, great discussion today, guys.
I appreciate it.
Gord, thanks again for joiningus.
Anything you want to wrap upwith or final thoughts to the
audience.
Anyone who wants to?

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
follow my writing.
Thank you very much.
By the way, if you want more ofmy writings and rantings
autonomoustruckerssubstackcom.
I am very close to finishing abook on everything we just
talked about and more.
It's called End of the RoadInside the War on Truckers.
It'll be published by a companycalled Creed and Culture Press

(01:10:23):
and will be available forpre-sale in November.
Follow me on Twitter at GordonMcGill.
And thank you very much.
We got to keep talking aboutthis stuff because the people in
charge aren't talking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Absolutely, Justin.
Any final thoughts from yourend?

Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
I'm just thrilled that we're starting to see a lot
of these cross-channelcommunications happening.
I mean, these aren't newproblems.
These are complaints peoplehave had since before my time,
even in the industry, andnothing gets solved unless we're
all talking about this.
So I'm really glad to see eventhe public catching glimpses of
this.
I had this saying that thegreatest trick the supply chain

(01:11:01):
ever pulled was convincingeverybody it doesn't exist and
as long as the store shelves arefulled and your amazon package
is arriving within two days,nobody cares.
But people are starting tonotice, you know, the the cracks
in the road, so to speak, anduh, hopefully we can get this
stuff fixed yeah, absolutelyyeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
I always call that a pfm, or pure fucking magic is
what it is right yeah yeah,steven, you didn't say a whole
lot, but you were behind thescenes in the chat today.
Any final thoughts on your endabout all this?

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
no, I kind of just echoing justin's point.
It is nice to see that ourindustry is starting to be
discussed more and people arestarting to kind of understand
what goes on on the roads and inthese trucks.
And it's also nice to see, youknow brokers and truckers and
all these people like talkingamongst each other and not

(01:11:54):
yelling at each other.
You know so because at the endof the day, this affects all of
us, not just the drivers, notjust the brokers.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Yeah, absolutely Ben, what do you got?

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
Whether you believe you can or believe you can't
you're right, and until nexttime, go Bills.