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.
Chicagoland here. We have a pet theory that covid changed how people drive. From where I sit, it is not just semis ( though those will have the biggest impact should something happen ). That said, just yesterday I was dodging ice balls falling from massive semi ( my only real question was how... was it just getting on the road or something? )
Ice forms on the roof and they need to get up there manually and clear it off and I don't think they do. :)
I was driving the Gaspe coastal road once after an ice storm and we were on the road with a bunch of semis early in the morning. The switchbacks had massive sheets of ice coming off them over the sides. It was wild.
It wasn't so thick that driving over the shattered pieces was an issue but it was a sight to behold and turned a white knuckle drive into a real jaw clencher.
Was there for a family issue and had to be somewhere otherwise I wouldn't have been on the road that day at all, let alone first thing.
My feeling is the same, but I would love to see data from insurance companies. It feels like a lot of new drivers who bought cars with stimulus, constant use of phones while driving, and general normalization of anti-social behavior.
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?
Society might care about cost _including externalities_. A truck running on discarded frying oil might offer a lower price and there’s no way to account for the resulting health outcomes. Exceeding capacity lowers unit price and usually doesn’t lead to an accident. Many industries around the world have shown that without functioning enforcement of reasonable rules you immediately get the tragedy of the commons.
I agree. The OP claims that small fleets are cutting costs to extremes that are bad for society, but the OP provides no evidence of it. By evidence, I mean data. Do you have data on this?
From the article: "Despite billions spent on safety technology, fatal truck-involved crashes are up ≈40% since 2014—almost entirely because of untrained, overworked, and inexperienced drivers now operating 80,000-pound rigs."
From a quick analysis, non-trucker fatalities per mile was about even or slightly increased from 2014-2023. I would conclude it’s not worse than it appears in the trucking situation.
I was reading a book recently called "the secret life of groceries" by Benjamin Lorr. He took a ride with truck drivers delivering groceries, and he found that they are terribly abused, underpaid, and that the truck driving schools will literally clean out halfway houses, drug clinics, shelters, anyone they can find who will sign on the dotted line and what is little more than indentured servitude.
If anything, deregulation of the trucking industry has had the exact opposite effect. There should be stringent rules on the drivers, but just as equally stringent rules on those that employ and train them. It's a horribly abusive industry, and we should regulate it.
> enables them to compete more effectively with large fleets, making this market much more competitive than it ever was?
Here's an idea: using slaves in coffee and sugar-growing plantations. This will enable slavers to compete more effectively with large non-slave plantations, and the society as a whole would benefit from less expensive coffee and sugar.
Yes, the OP claims many small-fleet drivers are being overworked, but provides zero evidence of it. By evidence, I mean data, not anecdotes. Do you have data on this?
The article provide this: "Despite billions spent on safety technology, fatal truck-involved crashes are up ≈40% since 2014"
Though I wonder how much that number compares to how much the trucking industry grew in that time. If it grew 200% that would actually mean a big win for safety.
Edit: some quick, AI driven research suggests it might've grown 20%. So... Still an issue
I just looked briefly at the data provided by the NHTSA, and what I see is a jump after the pandemic, followed by declines in 2022 and 2023, contradicting the OP:
Because you only went to 2018. The article mentions 2014, and if we use your own DOT tool to build a table [0] from 2013 to 2023 (the latest year available), and filter to include large trucks and fatal collisions, we see... a ~42% increase in fatal accidents from 2014-2023
Yeah, me too. I tried to avoid linking the actual page (the generated table has a yellow banner explicitely calling out that the link cannot be bookmarked), but with a private window I get 401'd too.
Unfortunately I don't have time to go beyond an imgur link, or asking you to generate the table yourself :/
Your second link shows a slight reduction from '21 to '22, but even then it's still significantly higher than during '18 - '20. And it doesn't show anything prior to '18.
You describe the two states as if those are mutually exclusive somehow. They are not. But that does not answer the real underlying question: is it true?
Or could it be that the tech bros have enabled shifting costs to externalities, like road safety, and the tax funded social safety net keeping underpaid drivers fed? Startup ideas that collect ongoing transaction fees are a hot pattern in investing. The money for those fees has to come from somewhere. Not necessarily a productive somewhere.
This sounds like an echo of ride hailing, where people will now pay a bit more to ride a Waymo so they don't have to tell their financially desperate driver that they'll get a bigger tip for calming down a bit.
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.
Worked over a decade in transport logistics, various forms, tech in the latter half.
ELD manipulation is as old as the first ones were introduced on the market.
Check the previous FW [0] article regarding undercover DOT officers, uncovering real-time manipulation of ELDs, and the blatant freight theft, mostly with corporate identity theft on top of that.
Paper logs - as known back then - were literally written out daily. To rewrite, you would just tear it out, and redo 7-10 days worth, right?
Well electronic manipulation is even easier, especially when outsourced to Eastern European countries with teams who work 24/7 in providing that service.
USDOT announces which ELDs aren’t allowed to be used - regularly. Usually because of backdoors, but in other times, the sucky software.
It is odd that they mention several plausible reasons for the problems they see but really seem to single out immigration as the key problem. That seems backwards to me. If safety regulations are no longer being enforced as they claim, where the drivers were born is irrelevant.
Sure but that still gets back to training drivers and enforcing regulations as the core issue. We don’t allow people who can’t pass proper medical training to be doctors no matter how many undocumented people may apply.
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.
One state in India is particularly strong with its labour centric protectionism. As far as I have seen, most families' earnings come from one family member working in "Gulf". The labour unions there are a big reason why industry hardly ever takes root. One example: https://x.com/Bharatiyan108/status/1948757576427901138
The immigration route only works temporarily, of course: their children will no longer be immigrants and less likely to remain in that business. Hence why relying on immigration to keep replenishing some sector is like having anemia and living off blood transfusions. You’re effectively a vampire.
> 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.
Yes, I think when you work in implementation, it's obvious that you made a bad decision (to yourself before others see it) and you are quick to say "I made a mistake, let's fix it before the mess gets worse". Your skillset in this hypothetical I'm creating is "implementation". You decided on the implementation but that's only part of the entire thing you are responsible for (plan, build, maintain).
For execs they are responsible for monitoring key indicators and deciding on what to do.
When things go wrong it could be they weren't monitoring the right things and missed it or the direction the took initially was wrong (either right away or as things changed and they didn't see it).
That's their entire job, more or less. Not trivializing it. The stakes are high pretty often.
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.
From the comments on the article, it sounds like regulators have been largely neutralized, and there are lots of shady semi fictitious brokers out there.
> 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.
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).
> 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.
The hours pre- and post-strictness changes were the same, it's just with electronic logbooks it's harder to fudge the numbers than the older paper charts.
This would imply he was worker longer hours than was strictly allowed (at a slower pace/speed). After hours could not be fudged, it meant that the pace had to go up to cover the same distance.
What should have happened was that the expectations of what was possible in a work-rest cycle should have been adjusted.
Further, one big issue with trucking (often came up in Bloomberg's Odd Losts podcasts on this topic) is that drivers are paid per load, rather than (say) per hour. Often what happens is that they're stuck at a warehouse waiting to un/load for potentially hours, which they're not paid for. The source/destination doesn't care because whether the driver is waiting for 30 or 300 minutes the fee is the same: they have no motivation to be efficient. This kills what the driver can earn in a day/week if warehouse folks lollygag.
You are drawing a picture of where individual decisions are ineffective in a deregulated environment. Either collective action through a union, or state action through regulation, are needed to induce a safe and sustainable work environment.
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)
I think you’re missing the point. EU size/amount of countries, and shared regulations, etc, makes much sense. North America has that too, where USA, Mexico and Canada drivers are able to cross the border and deliver freight.
The difference is that Canadian drivers are vetted in Canada, and drive in the US. Where as Eastern European/Asian(Indian) drivers who are NOT here on a visa/temporary residence(green card)/citizen status, are able to get privileged driving status.
They work 3/4 months, make so much money (in comparison to back home), live there a few months, then come back for more earnings.
All the while, their freight pay, doesn’t even cover the cost of running that truck.
Example: $1.60ish per mile, is required to run a truck/trailer to break even: equipment payment, insurance, tires, diesel, taxes (!!!!), payroll, etc.
Normally, a truck wouldn’t take that freight, unless they are in a tough spot, something got cancelled or whatever, they will only take it as a last ditch effort to make it to the next trip.
But consistently the freight being covered, is paying sub-$1. Literally barely covering FUEL expenses only. How do I know? Cuz the brokers giving out these freight contracts tell us the price they got it covered when you ask why the price is so low.
> Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?
There are lots of people that do not have the capacity to move up the 'value chain'. All they are capable of doing are 'simple' jobs:
> To enlist in the Army, aspiring recruits typically must take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test and earn a passing score. The ASVAB, with a maximum score of 99, requires a minimum score of 31 for Army enlistment.
> The ASVAB test encompasses various subject areas or subtests, including general science (GS), arithmetic reasoning (AR), word knowledge (WK), paragraph comprehension (PC), mathematics knowledge (MK), electronics information (EI), auto and shop information (AS), mechanical comprehension (MC), and assembling objects (AO).
If all/many of those jobs are automated away, how are those people supposed to make a living? It's possible to be 'too stupid' to even be in the military (or at least be in it and have a useful role).
Ideally you would also think about what the truck drivers would do in this new reality where they aren't just unemployed but rather unemployable.
Truck driver is the most numerous blue-collar profession in the US, if I remember correctly it counts several million people. I wouldn't expect all of them to become automotive AI model trainers overnight.
I agree completely, and I think it's only a matter of time until the short haul is completely autonomous. The trucking industry is slowly working themselves out of a job, and it's not just deplorable working conditions, or terrible pay, outright fraudulent schools, or the predatory trucking companies, it's also the rising cost and antipathy towards the very, very very critical role that truckers play in modern society.
This is a bit complicated even in Czechia, with its densest network of railways in the world.
Trains are most efficient when they are long. 30+ cars, ideally. Capacity of railway lines is limited and lines tend to be shared by passenger traffic as well, so freight mostly moves at night and short freight trains are economically unviable.
It might take a long time to gather enough stuff/containers to fill 30 freight cars in one particular railway head (obvious exceptions such as Port of Rotterdam apply). Which means that you may have to wait for 10 days before your shipment actually starts to move.
>long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends
Calling bullshit here. If they weren't doing that work, they probably would not, in fact, get extra time with family/friends.
>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,
Team drives can cover a majority of the day if need be for long hauling. Short hauling/last mile is capped not so much by miles traveled, but cargo load and unload times.
N == 1, but I used to live in a block of flats with three truck driver families. All three marriages collapsed over their fathers' frequent absence from home.
You can say that they would have collapsed over something else if they stayed at home, but this is what the people themselves told me.
Driving to Spain and back takes two weeks. After two weeks of his absence "I felt like a young widow already", said Hana, the youngest of the wives.
>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"?
Regulations are only as good as the will of the enforcers. It would be trivial and cheap to use all the technology available today (GPS, broadband mobile networks, high definition cameras, image recognition) to enforce the laws, but the overwhelming political priority is keeping goods cheaper, at the expense of a few more collisions and casualties.
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.
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).
"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.
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.
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 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.
At one point, more than 500 carriers and brokers used this one mailbox-sized building as home base — until the address got caught in the sunlight and, true to the species, they scattered like logistics cockroaches.
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 –
the entire industry would look different tomorrow.
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
But let’s be honest: none of that is happening before the Dolphins win the Super Bowl.
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.
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