How America’s trucking industry became a hellscape

Freight Waves ^ | December 5, 2025 | Craig Fuller

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Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with hundreds of senior executives at America’s largest trucking companies. Nearly all say they only recently discovered the massive influx of foreign drivers and motor carriers. Most assumed the trend was gradual; none realized it was exponential.

Few had ever heard the term “non-domiciled CDL” until this summer or understood how many drivers with little or no real training have flooded the industry. They failed to understand that despite their own investments in upgraded training and compliance efforts in recent years, that the smallest operators had been handed a massive gift: the ability to “train” their own truck drivers, with little to no oversight from Federal regulators.

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.

Fueled by billions in venture capital and private equity, freight brokers have not only caught up on technology—they’ve leapfrogged the large fleets. They offer single-source routing guides, superior automation, and, crucially, no obligation to enforce hours-of-service, speed limiters, or driver-qualification standards. Brokers simply buy the cheapest capacity available.

When the ATA successfully lobbied to dismantle entry barriers, it inadvertently handed the industry to those brokers and to the least-compliant segment of the market.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: democratincompetence; democrtcorruption; illegals; immigration; trucking

[bankwalker]

It started with NAFTA and slowly picked up steam from there ...

[tinamina]

Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch ran the DOT under 1st Trump term. Hmmm

[dfwgator]

Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch ran the DOT under 1st Trump term. Hmmm

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“You want any of your agenda to pass the Senate, you’d better hire her.”

[CFW]

John Adams wrote that the Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious People” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.

We are bringing immoral evil people into our country. They will use every freedom, law, and policy against us in order to steal our citizens jobs, our nation’s riches, and our people’s freedoms.

Every single illegal alien needs to be deported.

[Bob Wills is still the king]

The real hellscape in trucking began when Jimmy Carter signed the Surface Freight Deregulation Act of 1980. That’s when the old days of a driver being able to make a living on a semi-normal schedule ended.

The American Trucking Association pushed for the deregulation, and in doing so effectively screwed its members.

[Sequoyah101]

Confirms my impression that the broker based trucking arrangement is wild west.