How the trucking industry in America turned into a nightmare

In recent months, I have had in-depth conversations with numerous top executives from some of the largest trucking companies in the U.S. Almost all of them have stated that they were only recently made aware of the massive influx of foreign truck drivers and carriers. Many assumed this trend had been gradual, but they were shocked to learn that it had grown exponentially. Few were familiar with the term "non-domiciled CDL" or understood how drivers with little or no formal training had flooded the industry. These shifts were prompted by a long-standing belief, heavily advocated by the American Trucking Associations (ATA), that the U.S. was facing an ongoing, severe truck-driver shortage. The ATAs proposed solution was to lobby Congress and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to lower entry barriers, confident that large ATA-member fleets would be the primary beneficiaries.

This assumption was based on an outdated understanding of the trucking world: two decades ago, only the largest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Smaller carriers and brokers had to rely on phones, faxes, and leftover freight. However, that environment no longer exists. Bolstered by billions in venture capital, freight brokers have not only caught up technologically but have surpassed the major fleets. They now provide single-source routing guides, superior automation, andimportantlyare under no obligation to enforce hours-of-service rules, speed limiters, or driver qualification standards. Brokers simply procure the cheapest capacity available. When the ATA succeeded in lobbying to remove entry barriers, it unintentionally handed control of the market to brokers and the least compliant operators.

Key regulatory changes that contributed to the situation include:

• 2016 The Department of Transportation ceased enforcing English proficiency requirements for CDLs.
• 2018 The Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate was implemented, but with loopholes that allowed for self-certified devices capable of unlimited edits to driving hours.
• 2019 The introduction of non-domiciled CDLs allowed foreign nationals to obtain U.S. commercial licenses.
• 2022 The Entry-Level Driver Training rule led to an explosion of unaccredited CDL mills offering licenses for $500 to $1,000, with almost no training required.

These minimally trained foreign drivers do not meet the vetting standards of large, compliant carriers (due to issues like lack of work authorization, poor English, and zero experience). As a result, they often end up with small, frequently foreign-owned fleets that pay significantly below market rates and force drivers to work 1420-hour days using tampered ELDs.

Three additional factors accelerated this downward spiral:

• Freight brokers now control around one-third of all loads and primarily award contracts to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates below the cost of lawful operation.
• The immigration surge during the Biden administration brought millions of new arrivals seeking employment, many of whom were recruited by foreign-owned fleets offering higher pay than their home countries, minimal experience requirements, and "free" housing in sleeper berths.
• During the COVID freight boom, many dispatch and brokerage jobs were offshored. When the Great Freight Recession struck and those positions were eliminated, many of the overseas workers laid off used their industry knowledge to orchestrate cargo thefts, often from areas beyond U.S. law enforcement's reach.

The consequences of these changes are clear: legitimate carriers and drivers are struggling to break even, while trucking has become an economic backwater for motor carriers that follow the rules. Cargo theft has reached an industrial scale and become a national security issue, with foreign dispatchers and brokers coordinating thefts alongside foreign-born drivers operating within the U.S.

Despite billions of dollars spent on safety technology, truck-related fatalities have risen by nearly 40% since 2014largely due to the presence of untrained, overworked, and inexperienced drivers handling 80,000-pound rigs. In summary, a well-meaning but deeply misguided campaign to address the truck driver shortage, combined with regulatory gaps, unchecked immigration, technological loopholes, and offshoring, has caused a collapse of America's trucking industry in less than a decade. Shockingly, few in Washington or in corporate boardrooms saw this crisis coming.

Author: Chloe Ramirez