How America's "truck-driver shortage"

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...

> 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.

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).

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)

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.

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.

Is the sort of "innovation" you often hear here about when people say "EU can't innovate because of regulations"?

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.

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).

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.

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

Let’s talk the US DOT Census Report. This is the master database produced by the U.S. Department of Transportation, overseen by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — a $945 million agency staffed by roughly 1,450 people, most of whom apparently have never met a spreadsheet they liked or a fraudulent registration they noticed. This where you can find this data: [https://data.transportation.gov/…/az4n-8mr2/data_preview](https://data.transportation.gov/…/az4n-8mr2/data_preview)

The Census Report is built from the MCS-150 form, the self-reported “Tell Us About Yourself” document that every carrier, broker, or semi-ambitious scammer must fill out to get a USDOT number. Whatever they type — truth, fiction, ■■■■■ tale, or their cousin’s address — gets loaded into the federal database, no questions asked.

As of this morning:

    1,164,093 motor carriers are listed as “Authorized for Hire.”

    107,757 freight brokers are “Authorized for Hire.”

    And right now, 206 of them list 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY 82801 as their primary address.

And yes — almost daily, my inbox pings with an email from “Garry Cooper of VAB Logistics,” proudly claiming to operate out of 30 N Gould Street, Suite 4235, Sheridan WY 82801.

Suite 4235. In that building. The one in the photo above.

Unless Wyoming real estate comes with Narnia portals, Suite 4235 would be located on the 42nd floor of a building that barely has one.

But 30 N Gould isn’t the only such address. There are dozens of these ghost-office maildrops scattered across Wyoming, Montana, Delaware, and South Dakota — the Bermuda Triangle of Corporate Invisibility. But Sheridan’s Gould Street is the crown jewel. The Las Vegas Strip of regulatory opacity. The spiritual homeland of ghost brokers, reincarnated MC numbers, and dispatch “offices” located somewhere between Bengaluru, Belgrade, and a Best Buy parking lot.

And this — this building — is where FMCSA could start fixing freight fraud, chameleon carriers, identity laundering, and foreign-operated outfits hiding behind U.S. mailboxes.

But here’s the rub: FMCSA doesn’t seem to know how to read a map.

They can revoke 17,000 CDLs in California. They can threaten states over expiration dates DHS approved. They can spend years chasing non-domiciled drivers who’ve never had a violation. But they cannot, with their $945 million budget and their Census Report full of duplicates, fabrications, 42nd-floor fantasies, and mailbox empires, identify the obvious: If 200+ carriers share the same five-foot-wide doorway, something is wrong.

Every fraudulent carrier.

Every ghost broker.

Every reincarnated MC number.

Every identity wash job.

Every foreign dispatch operation pretending to be domestic.

Every problem we’ve discussed from deregulation to FMCSA’s blind spots to DHS’s database failures — it all shows up right here.

At 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY 82801.

And the truth is unavoidable:

    If FMCSA started its enforcement roadmap with literal maps,

    if it simply opened Google Street View instead of another “pre-decisional memo,”

    if it asked, “Does Suite 4235 even exist?”

    if the FMCSA would use its enforcement authority and get out into the field to visit these companies at these companies offices –

But until then?

The trucking crisis will continue.

The fraud will continue.

And I will continue receiving emails from “Garry Cooper,” CEO of a Fortune 500 empire supposedly headquartered between a trash bin and a tree in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Because nothing exposes the absurdity of modern American trucking quite like a federal regulator who could clean up half the industry…

…if only it were willing to zoom in.

So — how do we fix trucking? Experts have proposed:

Rebuilding FMCSA’s auditing system

    Strengthening training standards

    Fixing DHS data

    Eliminating fraud

    Paying drivers a living wage

    Building actual truck parking

    Reversing 45 years of economic entropy

    Getting Congress to read something longer than a tweet

So here is the real Brian-Watt-style solution: We simply mail every trucking problem in America to 30 N Gould St., Sheridan WY, since everything else in trucking already ends up there anyway.

Bad carrier? Send it.

Ghost broker? Already there.

Duplicate MC numbers? They breed there like rabbits.

FMCSA regulations? Just drop them in the lobby next to the potted plant shaped like a freight claim.

Once all of trucking is consolidated into this one mail drop, we send a guy with a big net and a jar labeled “Common Sense.” Whatever we manage to scoop up becomes the new federal regulatory framework.

In conclusion:

Yes, America’s trucking system is chaotic, confusing, deregulated, poorly enforced, and occasionally terrifying.

Yes, the databases are broken, the schools are broken, the policies are broken, and the iPads are absolutely still sitting on top of the parking payment machine where you left them.

But fear not. If you ever get lost, just point your truck toward Sheridan, Wyoming. Somebody there will take your freight. Or your money. Or your identity.

Either way, it’ll be the most consistent part of trucking you’ve experienced all year. By the way, that truck you are passing on the Interstate? I’d get around it quick. You never know when the driver might make a sudden U-turn.