>Freight brokers now control ≈⅓ of all loads and often award them to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates below the cost of legal operation
...
routinely run 14–20-hour days using tampered ELDs.
Is the sort of "innovation" you often hear here about when people say "EU can't innovate because of regulations"?
We own a towing business focused on heavy recovery. It is true that a huge number of drivers are from eastern europe, and fraud is HEAVY! We take a picture of license, credit card, and the guy with the bill because they all try and scam out of it.
The OP claims that deregulation efforts from 2016 to 2022, originally meant to address the truck driver shortage, actually led to many minimally trained drivers joining small truck fleets that pay below-market salaries and routinely run 14- to 20-hour days using tampered hardware for logging mileage. These poorly trained drivers, according to the OP, would not pass the vetting of large, compliant carriers. Freight brokers, which now "control" a third of all loads, typically award them to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates "below the cost of legal operation." The consequences, according to the OP: legitimate carriers are barely breaking even, cargo theft is more prevalent, and roads are less safe.
Hmm... maybe? I'm not sure I agree. There's an alternate narrative that is also compelling. Could it be that the rise of freight brokers and the adoption of new technology by small fleets enables them to compete more effectively with large fleets, making this market much more competitive than it ever was? Could it be that shippers now have more viable truck-shipping options at a lower cost, thanks to less opaque freight pricing? Could it be that society as a whole benefits from less expensive truck delivery services? Won't this market, sooner or later, be dominated by self-driving trucks, bringing prices down much further, benefiting society as a whole even more?
This article appears to have some political bent to it based on comments about immigration.
I was made curious about the possibility of an "intentional backdoor" in ELD (Electronic Logging Devices) that allowed truckers to misreport their hours.
> These changes were driven by a long-standing belief—pushed hard by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)—that the U.S. faces a permanent truck-driver shortage. The ATA’s solution was to lobby Congress and FMCSA to lower every barrier to entry, convinced that new drivers would flow to large ATA-member fleets rather than small operators.
> That assumption was rooted in an old reality: twenty years ago, only the biggest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Small carriers and brokers were stuck with phone, fax, and leftover freight.
> That world no longer exists.
Coming from the software industry, I've seen similar things happen when decisions are made which turn out misplaced in the longer term.
And I've always wondered - why can't the management respond fast enough to the new scenario?
What I've noticed is that as long as the same management team is there which had made that decision, it becomes extremely difficult for them to admit and make that change. Change only happens when either things get really critical, or when the management changes.
I wonder whether something similar is involved here.
"The Biden-era immigration surge delivered millions of new arrivals seeking work; foreign-owned fleets recruited aggressively—higher pay than at home, no experience needed, free “housing” in the sleeper berth."
I was talking to a retired trucker recently. They described a situation where one driver would get the CDL, but shared the cab with 2-3 others (no CDL, maybe family or friends). They would all rotate driving, so at any given time there was a chance the driver actually had no CDL.
A relative ran a trucking operation for a few years and now says he’s significantly more wary of any trucks on the road.
At the same time, he says that it’s a miserable business because you’re constantly getting sued (at a level markedly higher than the admittedly poor driver performance)
This is becoming a real problem. I spend a good amount of hours driving across states visiting customers and hit few interstates busy with semis. I have seen so many close calls in the last few years and reckless maneuvers that I am now doing some of my work, which includes onsite product demos, remotely, with all the inconvenience and friction that adds in closing a deal. I am also warning family and friends who have long commutes to be extra careful with semis. Keep a good distance, stay out of their blind spots (when passing do it fast don’t drive next to them) and anticipate their actions. I don’t see how we fix this problem other than minimizing our exposure by not driving as much and avoiding busy highways even if that adds time to our commute.
My dad retired from truck driving right before the covid lockdowns (2020). The regulations were a massive painpoint. During the Obama's last term they passed in strict time tracking regulations and forced everyone to have GPS trackers on their trucks to enforce the time tracking.
Due to this my dad had to drive a higher average speed of ~65-70mph to cover the distances required and not use up his available hours.
Before he'd drive slower 55-65 ave mph for longer hours and take frequent breaks.
Regulations are fine, but when you make them too strict it makes it difficult for new drivers to join and usually it's easier to be part of a corperation than an owner-operator (my dad).
get calls from "shippers" and "logistics", every few days, and notice that the faces and trucks and logo's(or total lack thereof), change just as fast.
The only thing happening is a massive increase in costs.
So more and more I say fuck it, local only, and I do 90% of my own picks and drops, charge the same flat rate for everything I do, which works out just fine and breaks up the routine.nicely.
But the poor basterds doing "piecework" trucking got that maddness in there eye's, got sold on it, and dying trying pull it off.local boys, but people from infinetly bussier and competitive places, just roll with it, and always see the upward oportunity, and move when it's good, and grind harder, when it's not.
So obviously, demand is going up while supply is running short. Why is supply failing? Because it is similar as hardhat jobs, marine job, army, tradesman, construction, mining or farming work.
People are no longer desperate to get into just any job. They get out of college expecting to get into an "office" work job, be it in marketing, front office, backoffice or middle-office (it does officially exist).
They made the job suck far more than it already sucked and, big surprise, less people wanted to be truck drivers. So did they increase pay or benefits or worker protections to incentivize more drivers? No, they just lowered standards and scraped the bottom of the barrel for desperate people. And then big surprise again, the bottom of the barrel drivers don't do as well and cause extra problems that didn't exist before.
The truck driver "shortage" didn't help when the FMCSA kicked tens of thousands of drivers out of the industry for smoking a single joint.
The "drug clearinghouse" system is a load of shit when it comes to pot. I can pull into a Loves truck stop, grab a 24 pack of beer inside, down it at my truck, wake up in the morning with a killer hangover, and it's fully legal for me to run that thing down the highway to its next fatality, but if I touch one single edible, it's Game Over, No More License.
wow, did you guys read what user "1634bwatt" wrote at that link? He is super brilliant, I would really like to write like him
Let me report his full post, since I'm scared it could get lost:
1634bwatt:
How to Fix the Trucking Mess — or Can You Point the Way to 30 N Gould St., Sheridan, WY? (Hint: Find a Map.)
America’s trucking system is broken. Not “my-kid-left-his-iPad-on-the-parking-meter-again” broken. More like “your GPS just routed 80,000 pounds of frozen chicken through a horse trail in Idaho” broken. And naturally, everyone wants to fix it. OOIDA wants to fix it. The US DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) wants to fix it. DHS wants to fix it as soon as they remember their password. And motor carriers and freight brokers, especially the ones living inside mail drops in Sheridan, Wyoming, REALLY want to fix it.
Or at least they want you to send money there.
Let’s begin with the obvious question: How did trucking get this messed up?
Well, gather ’round, children, and let Uncle BrianGPT explain deregulation. In 1980, Congress decided trucking needed the same free-market treatment as disco. The result? Forty-five years later, we have 1,164,093 motor carriers, 97% of which are three guys, a dream, and a 2007 Freightliner held together entirely by bungee cords and prayer.
FMCSA is supposed to regulate and field audit all this. Unfortunately, FMCSA has conducted approximately one safety audit since the fall of Constantinople. The agency explains this by noting it “lacks resources,” which is bureaucratic for, “We misplaced the staff directory in 1997 and never found it.”
Meanwhile, DHS is in charge of verifying immigration status for CDL applicants. This sounds simple, but DHS databases were apparently designed in the Truman administration using punch cards and the honor system. This is why a “wanted ■■■■■■■■■” received work authorization, a CDL, and possibly a welcome basket from Pennsylvania.
Then there are the CDL schools — 44% of which, according to federal review, have the structural integrity of that drawer in your kitchen where dead batteries go to die. Some are legitimate. Others are “CDL mills,” which promise to make you a professional driver in 72 hours or less, including lunch breaks.
The government is now cracking down on these schools, which is excellent news for safety and terrible news for anyone hoping to graduate from the “We Teach You CDL Good Academy” behind the strip mall.
Now, let’s talk immigrant drivers. Twenty percent of the workforce. Forty percent on the West Coast. Many have perfect safety records. Some have better English than your cousin ■■■■■, whose vocabulary consists entirely of the words “dude,” “bro,” and “hold my beer.”
But after two badly handled tragedies, we instituted a nationwide crackdown that revoked tens of thousands of licenses, terrified the Sikh community, and left carriers asking the obvious question: “Who exactly is supposed to drive the trucks now? Senators?”
At the same time, brokers — the superheroes of “arranging transportation while never touching the freight” — are fighting in the Supreme Court for the right to be immune from negligence, because otherwise they’d have to vet carriers. Which, as we all know, would require effort.
This is where 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY comes in.
This is America’s most beloved address for “motor carriers” and “brokers” who operate entirely from a UPS Store mailbox. These companies specialize in things like:
moving (stealing) freight
taking your money
disappearing into the void like a raccoon that stole your sandwich
FMCSA occasionally shuts these operations down, but since anyone can acquire a new MC number for $300 and a dream, the criminals simply reincarnate more often than a Tibetan monk.
Let’s talk the US DOT Census Report. This is the master database produced by the U.S. Department of Transportation, overseen...
25 comments
[ 338 ms ] story [ 2411 ms ] threadIs the sort of "innovation" you often hear here about when people say "EU can't innovate because of regulations"?
In many countries it's common to see freight being driven by foreign drivers simply because that's how cross-border deliveries are done.
If a truck of widgets is made in Poland and shipped to a store in Spain, a Polish driver will drive it the whole way.
The OP claims that deregulation efforts from 2016 to 2022, originally meant to address the truck driver shortage, actually led to many minimally trained drivers joining small truck fleets that pay below-market salaries and routinely run 14- to 20-hour days using tampered hardware for logging mileage. These poorly trained drivers, according to the OP, would not pass the vetting of large, compliant carriers. Freight brokers, which now "control" a third of all loads, typically award them to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates "below the cost of legal operation." The consequences, according to the OP: legitimate carriers are barely breaking even, cargo theft is more prevalent, and roads are less safe.
Hmm... maybe? I'm not sure I agree. There's an alternate narrative that is also compelling. Could it be that the rise of freight brokers and the adoption of new technology by small fleets enables them to compete more effectively with large fleets, making this market much more competitive than it ever was? Could it be that shippers now have more viable truck-shipping options at a lower cost, thanks to less opaque freight pricing? Could it be that society as a whole benefits from less expensive truck delivery services? Won't this market, sooner or later, be dominated by self-driving trucks, bringing prices down much further, benefiting society as a whole even more?
I was made curious about the possibility of an "intentional backdoor" in ELD (Electronic Logging Devices) that allowed truckers to misreport their hours.
I was not able to find results to directly confirm or deny that this was true, but it certainly seems like these recently-mandated ELDs come with security concerns: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/vehiclesec...
Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?
* long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends,
* possibility to stretch and move your body is very limited,
* bad hyper-processed food, hence so many drivers are obese,
* the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
* plus, as mentioned here, both the drivers and their managers are incentivized to break and bend the law, resulting in unsafe driving.
All of the above would be mitigated by robots taking the wheel.
> These changes were driven by a long-standing belief—pushed hard by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)—that the U.S. faces a permanent truck-driver shortage. The ATA’s solution was to lobby Congress and FMCSA to lower every barrier to entry, convinced that new drivers would flow to large ATA-member fleets rather than small operators.
> That assumption was rooted in an old reality: twenty years ago, only the biggest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Small carriers and brokers were stuck with phone, fax, and leftover freight.
> That world no longer exists.
Coming from the software industry, I've seen similar things happen when decisions are made which turn out misplaced in the longer term.
And I've always wondered - why can't the management respond fast enough to the new scenario?
What I've noticed is that as long as the same management team is there which had made that decision, it becomes extremely difficult for them to admit and make that change. Change only happens when either things get really critical, or when the management changes.
I wonder whether something similar is involved here.
I was talking to a retired trucker recently. They described a situation where one driver would get the CDL, but shared the cab with 2-3 others (no CDL, maybe family or friends). They would all rotate driving, so at any given time there was a chance the driver actually had no CDL.
At the same time, he says that it’s a miserable business because you’re constantly getting sued (at a level markedly higher than the admittedly poor driver performance)
Due to this my dad had to drive a higher average speed of ~65-70mph to cover the distances required and not use up his available hours.
Before he'd drive slower 55-65 ave mph for longer hours and take frequent breaks.
Regulations are fine, but when you make them too strict it makes it difficult for new drivers to join and usually it's easier to be part of a corperation than an owner-operator (my dad).
People are no longer desperate to get into just any job. They get out of college expecting to get into an "office" work job, be it in marketing, front office, backoffice or middle-office (it does officially exist).
Surprising as always!
The "drug clearinghouse" system is a load of shit when it comes to pot. I can pull into a Loves truck stop, grab a 24 pack of beer inside, down it at my truck, wake up in the morning with a killer hangover, and it's fully legal for me to run that thing down the highway to its next fatality, but if I touch one single edible, it's Game Over, No More License.
Let me report his full post, since I'm scared it could get lost:
1634bwatt:
How to Fix the Trucking Mess — or Can You Point the Way to 30 N Gould St., Sheridan, WY? (Hint: Find a Map.)
America’s trucking system is broken. Not “my-kid-left-his-iPad-on-the-parking-meter-again” broken. More like “your GPS just routed 80,000 pounds of frozen chicken through a horse trail in Idaho” broken. And naturally, everyone wants to fix it. OOIDA wants to fix it. The US DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) wants to fix it. DHS wants to fix it as soon as they remember their password. And motor carriers and freight brokers, especially the ones living inside mail drops in Sheridan, Wyoming, REALLY want to fix it.
Or at least they want you to send money there.
Let’s begin with the obvious question: How did trucking get this messed up?
Well, gather ’round, children, and let Uncle BrianGPT explain deregulation. In 1980, Congress decided trucking needed the same free-market treatment as disco. The result? Forty-five years later, we have 1,164,093 motor carriers, 97% of which are three guys, a dream, and a 2007 Freightliner held together entirely by bungee cords and prayer.
FMCSA is supposed to regulate and field audit all this. Unfortunately, FMCSA has conducted approximately one safety audit since the fall of Constantinople. The agency explains this by noting it “lacks resources,” which is bureaucratic for, “We misplaced the staff directory in 1997 and never found it.”
Meanwhile, DHS is in charge of verifying immigration status for CDL applicants. This sounds simple, but DHS databases were apparently designed in the Truman administration using punch cards and the honor system. This is why a “wanted ■■■■■■■■■” received work authorization, a CDL, and possibly a welcome basket from Pennsylvania.
Then there are the CDL schools — 44% of which, according to federal review, have the structural integrity of that drawer in your kitchen where dead batteries go to die. Some are legitimate. Others are “CDL mills,” which promise to make you a professional driver in 72 hours or less, including lunch breaks.
The government is now cracking down on these schools, which is excellent news for safety and terrible news for anyone hoping to graduate from the “We Teach You CDL Good Academy” behind the strip mall.
Now, let’s talk immigrant drivers. Twenty percent of the workforce. Forty percent on the West Coast. Many have perfect safety records. Some have better English than your cousin ■■■■■, whose vocabulary consists entirely of the words “dude,” “bro,” and “hold my beer.”
But after two badly handled tragedies, we instituted a nationwide crackdown that revoked tens of thousands of licenses, terrified the Sikh community, and left carriers asking the obvious question: “Who exactly is supposed to drive the trucks now? Senators?”
At the same time, brokers — the superheroes of “arranging transportation while never touching the freight” — are fighting in the Supreme Court for the right to be immune from negligence, because otherwise they’d have to vet carriers. Which, as we all know, would require effort.
This is where 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY comes in.
This is America’s most beloved address for “motor carriers” and “brokers” who operate entirely from a UPS Store mailbox. These companies specialize in things like:
FMCSA occasionally shuts these operations down, but since anyone can acquire a new MC number for $300 and a dream, the criminals simply reincarnate more often than a Tibetan monk.Let’s talk the US DOT Census Report. This is the master database produced by the U.S. Department of Transportation, overseen...