Originally published at: Carrier owner says cheap labor, CDL fraud tilt trucking’s playing field - FreightWaves
Small fleet owner Steve Troyer says non-domiciled CDL drivers and weak enforcement are undercutting compliant carriers.
Non Domicile truckers need to be gathered up and shipped back to the ■■■■■■■. Hindues hate the U.S. Bin Laudin swore that the U.S. and christians will pay that the twin towers and the Pentagon bombings were just the beginning of taking diwn the United States and he swore the Hindus would take over the U.S. and here it is hundreds if thousands here driving our frieght where ever in the U.S. they want to go Biden opened the flood gates he should be the first to go!!!
I’m here to say that these lax enforcement policies have been going on for a lot longer than 5 or 10 years. It was not uncommon to see trucks with 3, 4 or even 5 persons operating a truck back in the early 2000s. There is only 1 reason why these things have been swept under the rug. That reason is profit, plain and simple.
So, who do you blame? Frankly, I feel we are all guilty of allowing complacency to infest our industry. We sit back and watch companies hire these individuals and just turn the other cheek. “Its not my problem” or “why should I care, I’m making good money” were the common responses. Well, now all the sudden now thats affecting your bottom line, all of the sudden it has become important to you?
Myself and many other drivers have been screaming about this for over 25 years. We kept saying that this was a major problem but it fell on deaf ears. You, the business owners, fleet owners, management, warehouse owners, owner operators, independent contractors and yes even the company drivers have been too busy paying attention to your own little world and not recognizing the long term effects of what complacency truly does.
“That doesn’t effect me”…
Congratulations, you have now reaped what you have sewn.
I for 1 am happy I work for a private fleet and no longer have to work for scraps anymore.
It is time for people to put on their big boy pants, take a long look into the mirror, and make some hard decisions.
All American truckers need to stop running for a week. Let the brokers know we’re not dealing with the cheap freight anymore. Meanwhile allowing ice to go after all those still running illegally. I said this years ago, now the Russians and Ukrainians are trying to do the same. If we stop for a week this country will shut down, and then we will get the attention that’s needed……. I digress 
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Hi, the question should be does the government really care, its big businesses (BB) that control immigration by paying off GOV officials which provides an avenue into the country to uncut your wage for BB profits. Look at all the fast food and coffee shops is there any domestic workers, its not just the trucking industry, BB don’t want to pay you or care.
This Is Not a Freight Cycle. It’s a Governance Failure.
Steve Troyer’s account should put to rest the comforting fiction that today’s trucking collapse is “just another downturn.” Three and a half years of freight moving below operating cost is not cyclical. It is structural — and it is the predictable result of a system that rewards noncompliance and punishes those who follow the rules.
Trucking has always been competitive. It has never been sustainable when labor and compliance become arbitrage tools. That is what Troyer describes: carriers gaining a 25- to 75-cent-per-mile advantage not through efficiency, but by exploiting cheap, transient labor, fraudulent CDLs, and lax enforcement. When fuel, insurance, tires, and maintenance cost the same for everyone, the only way to undercut the market is to break the rules. And today, the market rewards exactly that behavior.
This is not about nationality or accents. It is about governance. Non-domiciled CDLs, fraudulent licensing, and rotating drivers are symptoms of a deeper failure: the United States no longer verifies who controls trucking assets, who dispatches freight, or who disappears when enforcement finally arrives. Authority is granted instantly. Oversight comes late, if at all. Penalties fall on drivers and small fleets while opaque control networks remain untouched.
Troyer’s plea is modest and correct: enforce the laws already on the books. Trucking does not need new rules; it needs consistent, credible enforcement that creates a level playing field. Without it, compliant carriers bleed capital, take on debt, and ultimately exit — leaving behind a hollowed-out industry optimized for survival, not safety or resilience.
The rise in truck-related fatalities since 2016, despite electronic logging mandates, is a warning flare. Technology cannot fix a system that incentivizes exhaustion, corner-cutting, and disposability. When compliance becomes a competitive disadvantage, safety collapses alongside economics.
What happens next matters far beyond trucking. Surface transportation is critical infrastructure. A freight system that cannot sustain compliant carriers cannot surge in a crisis, secure sensitive shipments, or support national resilience. If we continue down this path, the United States will not end up with cheaper freight — it will end up with fragile supply lines controlled by actors who bear no long-term responsibility.
Steve Troyer is not asking for protectionism. He is asking for fairness. If policymakers ignore voices like his, the “market” will keep selecting for fraud, opacity, and short-term exploitation — until there is no stable trucking industry left to save.
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I have a serious question… why don’t the Teamsters have anything to say about this? Even if a lot of drivers are owner-operators (and I assume non-union), wouldn’t the union be hit by this as well? Surely they are not advocating for this abuse?
Any excuse to define a “you people” category and then bring the full weight of the US federal government to bear…?
That gets pretty ugly when you end up in one of those target categories….