Originally published at: Duffy plans to expand driver enforcement to shippers - FreightWaves
In his appearance on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show” today, Duffy signaled a notable expansion in his enforcement strategy, pivoting from primarily holding trucking companies (carriers) accountable to also targeting shippers for enabling non-English-proficient commercial truck drivers. This move aims to broaden road safety measures amid ongoing crashes and debates on immigration and federal…
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Good work Craig. The industry has needed this kind of regulation for years. Nowhere near pre deregulation years is needed. However, something needs to be done. And don’t worry about a driver shortage. Just increase earnings for drivers. A 48 state driver should earn about $ 200,000 a year with time off gaurinties, medical, and pension. This should fix any driver shortage.
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Craig doesn’t want brokers to disappear. Read his other articles on them this week. Brokers are a large part of the problem in the freight industry. The language barrier is to and to be honest, a ridiculous one we should have never allowed. I completely agree with you on the driver shortage. That can be remedied when the spot market takes over and we stop having these ridiculous rates to drive 7 hours for $450 in some lanes.
How is this not smoke&mirrors blister to cover for kneejerk firing 200,000 drivers without individual cause? Or for claiming every 4th driver that federal inspectors question can’t speak English? Texas and Wyoming can only find it on a paltry three and seven percent on their stops—and they’re the highest ELP ticketers out there! How is this not just more out of control bashing of a created boogie man scapegoat? Aren’t these the folks similarly putting kids out of food knowing the damage will happen before the courts can get off the dime to do anything? Supposed ELP, non-domicile, not enough piggy bank to work for free for the months of court appeals—does that sound like a win by default formula for their agenda?
Should we be buying kool-aid stock?
This is kind of major. The government will likely have to step up and sue a broker or shipper before it’s actually enforced and that may go over about as well as trying to sue a ■■■ store owner for selling a ■■■ that was used in a crime. Hard to hold people responsible for other peoples actions. Troopers can only pull over so many trucks a day for enforcement and ELP isn’t their primary goal. I’ve stood in line countless times while a shipping clerk has struggled to understand , communicate and help a driver who doesn’t speak English well or at all. Its going to be interesting to see that now is it’s going to fall on these same clerks to tell these people that they can’t pickup a load because they don’t speak English well enough.
People make this out to be all about language issues. That is a small component of what is being discussed nationally. This is about many thousands upon thousands of persons who were allowed to get into a truck with less paperwork, testing and training than a 16 year old does to get a license, and who are not in this country legally by any reasonable standard, and those enablers that make it happen and have taken advantage of an ill-conceived plan to address capacity shortfalls during COVID. It is that population of the driving labor force that is the issue. A subset would be those who may not be able to read and speak English well enough to communicate with an officer in the event of an accident, but the former group and not the latter who are causing honest, qualified drivers to lose their jobs or at the very least work for much less than they are worth. Its laughable this issue which has been very well known for at least two years is now seemingly a surprise to insurance companies, equipment lessors, brokers and shippers. They have all made money off of this - and knew they were and continue to do so. Simply relying on enforcement officials to fix what has been created will never yield results. Until those enabling these businesses to survive are held accountable nothing will change materially.
I think every mega carrier should be investigated
Their lease purchase programs should only allow them a max 10% of the load
But also for every foreign driver not naturally born us citizen they should be fined $50,000
Also they should close doors on companies like super ego ..ice needs to raid every truck stop and start deporting these non English speaking drivers.
We are all sick of these foreign drivers.
So really they will just target Amazon, JB Hunt and Schneider? Or their power-only boards…