Wake Up America Podcast: Is this the end of small trucking?

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[00:01:10]Welcome to the Ste everybody. Hold on. Let me uh get this off of the screen. My mic is on, so that's good. I'm trying to figure out how to do something.

[00:01:30]I used to be able to share out a bunch of different uh like when I made a Facebook post or Facebook thing, I used to be able to share it out a lot. I'm not though for some reason and it's kind of confusing to me and I don't know why.

[00:01:45]But today's conversation is going to revolve around the Supreme Court hearing yesterday because I think that is pretty important. I think there's a lot of misinformation going around about it or the Supreme Court hearing from yesterday. So, I'm going to try to share it out to as many of these Facebook groups that are related to the trucking industry to try to give an explanation on what this actually means for the trucking industry or at least my opinion on what it means for the trucking industry. Because I think a lot of people, like I said, are uh it depends who you listen to, but I'm very active on social media, specifically Facebook. And so many people on Facebook just or um um Twitter rather, so many people have this weird variation or this weird like feeling about what's going on, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because they're just wrong, you know?

[00:02:37]They're just wrong. So anyway, yesterday, so good morning everybody.

[00:02:40]This is Wake Up America. It's late because I had something to do. I sold one of the cars and so I had to wait for the guy. Actually, I took a partial payment to reserve it, but he's going through some stuff. So I was like, "Whatever, I got you." So anyway, yesterday the Supreme Court issued a startling 9 to0 unanimous decision to basically hold, you know, I'm just going to trunicate this version to basically hold freight brokers uh reliable when they hire a negligent carrier, right? So if they are negligent in their u onboarding or their compliance and they hire a carrier that really shouldn't be on the road based on safety and and security, they can be held responsible.

[00:03:21]So, just to give a quick rundown, if you're not familiar with the transportation industry, freight brokers use this exemption. I call it the NA exemption, NAA. It was a they were preemptive, which basically meant they they couldn't be held liable or or some states ruled that they couldn't be held liable for the hiring actions of another, right?

[00:03:40]So, if they hired a carrier that has a high, you know, a conditional safety record, they could be held financially responsible or back then they couldn't be held financially responsible. And so it kind of shielded them and that's why there's so many brokers out there and blah blah blah. Um yesterday the Supreme Court court ruled that they can in fact and will be um held responsible if they hire someone that is unqualified to be on the road. Now the reason why I say social media has taken a weird turn on this is because there's a huge fraction of America right now that's hyperfocused on illegal immigration. uh and they're hyperfocused on the fact that we have illegal operators in the United States that are operating 80,000lb missiles down the roadway, right? And that's a big problem because it happens all the time. We have people that are illegally operating a truck. And when I say illegally operating a truck, they either don't have a CDL or they were given a CDL by a Democratic a Democrat state.

[00:04:36]And it's against FMCSA guidelines. They don't speak English. you know, they're kind of, you know, a lot of these people are making a mockery of of the trucking industry, you know, peeing and pooping all over truck stops and throwing their garbage out and washing their feet in the sinks in the bathroom and all sorts of weird stuff. Needless to say, they don't speak English. And that's a problem because in order to comply with the FMCSA regs, you must speak English.

[00:05:01]There's an English proficiency requirement if you are driving a commercial vehicle. Now, that doesn't mean a CDL vehicle. That means any commercial vehicle in the United States.

[00:05:10]So if you are operating a commercial vehicle and you do not speak English, meaning you can't read or understand English, you're in violation of that the those guidelines, right? So if you're driving a 26,000lb box truck, you're not required to have a CDL for it. However, you still need to be able to speak English because if you get pulled over at a DOT station and they give you an ELP exam, guess what? You fail. And once you fail that, then you have to prove you're displaced out of service. Once you you have to prove that you can speak and understand English and then you're back on the road again. It's just like having a flat tire. You know, if you get a flat tire as a truck driver and you go through a scale, you're put out of service until that tire is fixed, right?

[00:05:49]So, a lot of people like and and I've been kind of hard on on X, you know, a lot because a lot of people say that um man, I don't even know if this is actually live anywhere. Oh, my numbers aren't updating. That's why. Uh but a lot of people are just wrong about what this Supreme Court case is and a lot of people think it has to do with immigration and a lot of people are just saying hey this is great because it's going to shut out the illegal carriers right the carriers that are just doing things wrong which in in you know in effect it will have that so the carriers that are are uh or the brokers that are hiring carriers that do not speak English they're going to be held culpable like for example I was talking to one of the largest auto brokers in the United States a couple of months ago. I wrote about it on social media. I I've commented about it during my morning show as well. This one of the largest auto brokers uh and they they own auctions and everything. I was talking to the guy that's in charge of their carrier and compliance. He is like as high as you can go and he said 80% of the drivers that he is talking to every day. That means 80% of the drivers that they are contracted to haul with that those guys do not speak English.

[00:07:01]and and so it's hard for him to communicate. And I asked him point blank, I said, "Why are you giving them loads?" And he goes, "Because we'd never be able to get cars moved at the the price point we need to in order to be competitive in this this auction market."

[00:07:15]I was like, "You understand that you're violating the law, right?" And and I think they had that shield. So, we're likely the one good thing that comes out or another good thing that's going to come out of the Supreme Court hearing is it may carry over to the auto industry, the auto transport industry, which to me I'm kind of fascinated with now because I think the auto transportation industry is ripe for people to actually go back through and try to figure out, hey, why did all these guys that were on the freight side all come over to the auto transport industry? Because they did. A lot of them did. So, but a lot of people are talking about on on Twitter specifically saying that this has to do with uh foreign drivers and they're they're the only drivers that that are going to be impacted. And one big YouTube channel, Bonehead Truckers. He's maintaining that without really he's downplaying the fact that this is also going to cause a lot of small operators, a lot of independent owner operators that do not have a safety rating or just do something wrong and end up getting an out of service rate. And I and I spoke about it yesterday when I left uh my role as the chief operating officer at Reed. I decided I was just going to set my own company up and I would go and haul, right? I didn't get inspected or pulled in for inspections for months and then the FI and I had my my safety audit, my new entrant audit, passed that and then I immediately within a week got pulled into a scale for level one inspection. I had my emergency brake connector from the gooseseneck. Right? So it's a little breakaway thing. I had that connected to the chain because that's where I left it when I would take off my trailer, which I did every night uh when I would unhook from it and I forgot to hook it back.

[00:08:50]So, it was it was about an inch away from where it needed to be hooked to the frame of the truck. So, they put me out of service for it, said I could fix it and then go on my way, right? But that gave me 100% out of service ratio uh rating. Now, a carrier like like say say a broker hired me at that point, right?

[00:09:07]And the broker said, "Hey, I'm going to give you a load." and then I'm hauling that load and under the Supreme Court rags and now the broker could be held liable. So, say I do something negligent and I forget to hook up my trailer the right way and I have the chain the the breakaway cable hooked to the chain instead of hooked to the frame like it's supposed to be because essentially what it does is pulls it out and engages the brakes and your trailer is supposed to slow down on its own if you come uncoupled with the the hitch. So, that's the whole idea behind the breakaway container or breakaway uh mechanism on on a trailer. So obviously it's pretty important, right, to be safe. If a broker hires me now under the Supreme Court ruling and I get to an accident, my coverage, my liability is only a million bucks, right? So say I I'm driving down the road, my I hit a bump.

[00:09:53]I didn't connect my trailer properly. I don't have the breakaway cable connected. The trailer, you know, bounces off my my hitch and then, you know, rolls down the road. It's not going to stop. And say a family, you know, hits that trailer. I can be sued for up to a million bucks or more. but I could be sued. My insurance is only going to pay it a million bucks. Now, with the Supreme Court ruling, they could go after the broker that hired me.

[00:10:15]Prior prior to this, they couldn't because a lot of the circuit courts were saying, "No, brokers had had this this protection based on the NAA, the previous law." Now, you don't have that protection or or at least it it'll be a lot easier. There's precedent now because the Supreme Court overruled it.

[00:10:30]There's precedent now for them to go after the brokers, the broker that hired me. And the brokers have a lot more money than a solo truck operator. Let's just be honest. You know, brokers are making a percentage off everything. And and there's going to be a lot of people that are going out and trying this, right? That are going to get in an accidents that are going to sue. There already is. Like you see a truck down the road. You know, for scammers, they see a truck 80,000lb truck driving down the road. For them, it's money. They don't see a truck. They don't see the livelihood of the driver in it. They don't see anything. The only thing they see is money. And that's why you got people doing brake checks in front of tractor trailers trying to get rear ended so they can claim, you know, there's that big one in Louisiana where they arrested like 22 people, including chiropractors and judges and lawyers and and investigators that were all tied to this big scam where they would have cars go in front of trucks. A car in front of a car in front of a truck, right? So, a car two lengths ahead would slam on its brakes, causing the the car in between the truck and the other one to slam on his brake. the truck hits him and they all go and sue sue the truck driver and then they go to a this fake chiropractor and he says, "Oh yeah, it's really bad injuries and a fake doctor, all this real doctors, but they're scammers and then they go and get these big payouts from the insurance companies and then they divide it and and I think there's been like 22 convictions in Louisiana, which was one of the bigger ones that they've caught."

[00:11:50]So, what this ruling does is it basically says that uh freight brokers can now be held liable when they hire someone negligently, right? So, a freight broker could make the determination even though I was a safe driver, never had any speeding tickets because of that one time that I hooked the chain up wrong because I didn't hook the breakaway chain to my my um my uh the frame of my truck. I could I had and because I had a 100% out of service rating because I couldn't get them to give me another inspection after and I begged the guy. I was like, "Please don't give me uh you know an out of service for this. Just let me move it an inch and I promise it'll never happen."

[00:12:27]He's like, "No." You know, and because again for him, he m makes his quota by putting a truck out of service. That's the goal for for the Tennessee State Troopers. Uh, so he put me out of service and even though I literally had moved the chain over in like 5 seconds and I was free to go immediately, I still had that on my record. In fact, if you pull that company, it still shows 100% vehicle out of service rating, even though I've had three level threes after that. The level threes I all pass. Level three is just paperwork and all that stuff. A level two, I believe, is paperwork and eight hours of service plus uh lights. And then a level one is to be honest, you don't have very many level ones. The reason why you'll get a level one is like I was having a level two and he walked around, he saw the chain, he gave me a level one, failed me on the level one inspection, which holds a higher bearing on me, but he didn't need to check anything else because he already failed me. So, you know what I mean? He could have probably tried to find more, but my truck was new and my trailer was new. I just didn't wash it that day. And I should have washed it because whenever I had a dirty truck, um, I would get pulled in. And whenever I had a really clean truck, they would just wave me right by. Because they're like, and and this is the truth in the matter. I've been to trucking for 20 years now. If your truck is clean, you roll through a scale, they're going to say, "This guy takes care of his truck."

[00:13:43]If your truck is dirty, they're going to be like, "He doesn't take care of his truck." And they're going to pull you in for an inspection. I believe there's science behind that. So now freight brokers can go after or freight brokers have to tighten up their um their compliance to asssure that the drivers that they're hiring and the companies that they're hiring, there's nothing that's going to come back to them. And so that's why there's a lot of people on freight X or or on X right now, myself included, that are like this this Supreme Court ruling, while yeah, it's going to make the road safer, it is going to cause massive amounts of companies to go under. you know, independent small truck fleets, one, two, three truck fleets. Because here's the thing, even if you're running a 20 truck fleet, if you have a bad week during, you know, break week and you get put out be, you know, we had we had a driver that was fully qualified, a perfect driving record, the guy one day rolls through a scale and he had blown out two tires previously and he didn't know or he blew out one on the inside of of uh the tandemss on on the trailer and then one was below pressure. So, he was put out of service for that. He got I mean he got fired because you have to do a pre-trip, you know, and one of your tires was at like 20 PSI. So, I mean, you can't do that. But one of them had blown out and that stuff happens, right?

[00:14:57]There's there's videos of people with blown out tires sitting outside in a truck stop in line to get their tires fixed. They get safety inspections. Now, those were overturned based on the research that I was able to find, but it's true. If you think about it, say you blow a tire and a cop happens to be right behind you. That cop could put you out of service because you got a blown tire, which is now going to go on your safety record. If you only have a couple of trucks, right? Say you have five trucks and two of your trucks get, you know, say one of your drivers messes up on his foreman on his logs and he doesn't have the um shipping number, right? Because that's a form and manner violation. It actually counts. So, say he forgets to put his shipping number on his his logs and the DOT officer wants to be an ass and ends up writing him for it. That's one violation that's going to show up as a forum and manner violation, which does count for your safety score.

[00:15:48]Then, say the driver, he screwed up. He was trying to find parking. He couldn't find any. He didn't click over to get an exemption for traffic or whatever the case is. And so, he rolls into PC, which goes over his clock, right? So, you got 11 hours of driving. He ends up going over by like 20 minutes. As he's pulling into a truck stop, DOT officer pulls him over and demands to do a level three inspection. His logs show a violation because he was PCing, blah blah blah, whatever. And you could make the argument that that's fine because he's looking for a safe haven. But if he didn't switch it over to PC and he was just strictly in violation, his log shows a violation, he gets put out of service for 10 hours, even though that's what he was going to do anyway. but on their driving record or on their safety score now it shows uh you know an out of service for the truck or for the driver rather. So then so now you have the national average of out of service ratios which I think is like seven or or 12% or something but most fleets are sitting there at like 7 to 12%. Uh because they catch drivers simple as not putting on uh not putting on um you know a shipping ID. I've had drivers that actually get uh tickets and get, you know, warnings, not warnings. They call them warnings, but they're not. They actually go on your safety score. You'd be better off getting a ticket, but they get in trouble for not putting their shipment ID or not. You know, now with the ELDs, it's a little bit harder to to fudge up on your paperwork. But I could tell you there's been one. So, I got the out of service for the brake lines and then I I got put out of service for a form and manner violation twice, actually, now that I'm thinking about it. once was um in in Hartford, Connecticut in Danbury. They put me out of service there and I had to call I was the owner of the company so I had to call one of my drivers in on his off day and he had to come pay pick up the truck and continue the deliveries because they put me out of service for 10 hours. And then the other one I don't remember what what it was, paper logs or something.

[00:17:41]And I think I forgot to throw away my first day of logs, you know, because listen, paper logs, you got to do what you got to do back in the day. It's not the same way anymore. You can't get away with it. But I think I had, you know, I was I was running hard back in the day.

[00:17:54]So I had my days logs and then I'd go and fix the log. You know what I'm saying? You know, with the tearway logs.

[00:18:00]Yeah. Anyway, I I got I got caught in Arkansas. That guy uh put me out of service as well, but because I was on the side of the interstate, I had to drive to a rest area. And uh when I pulled off, I noticed he got off on an exit before me. And I was like 20 miles to the state line, so I went anyway, which was stupid. I don't recommend anybody do that. But the thing is now brokers are going to increase their compliance on carriers. So if you got a carrier that you know uh is driving gets an out of service ratio or rating for something is something as small as I mean nothing's small, right? But say he blows out a tire, he doesn't really realize it. His trailer's empty. He doesn't pay attention that he blew out a tire. He did his pre-trip that morning.

[00:18:41]His paperwork shows he did his pre-trip and then he was coming out and he curbed something and blew a tire. and he didn't really realize it yet, but he's pulling out and that DOT officer stops and takes him uh or or get puts him out of service because he's got a tire. What that means is he can't move until that tire's fixed. You know, he probably would have done that anyway. If that driver knew that the tire was blown out, he probably would have got it fixed. But because the cops are looking to get their quotas, they put him out of service, meaning he can't go anywhere. um and then until the the truck is actually fixed. But now he's got 100% out of service rating if that's his first ever inspection. And the problem with that is now based on these new guidelines, the broker could be held responsible. If they hire a carrier with 100% out of service rating, it doesn't matter whether he's not rated in totality of safety or has a conditional rating. That doesn't matter.

[00:19:33]90% of all all carriers on the road are unrated, which means they do not have a rating because the FMCSA is all backlog on doing their audits. So now this driver's got 100% out of rating. He may be on time for every appointment. He may be the best driver ever. He just had a blown out tire and he got a cop that was in a pissy mood that day and ended up putting him out of service. Brokers now are going to have to think twice about hiring that guy because if he blows out another tire down the line and wrecks it and someone, you know, gets killed and they look into who he's hauling for, uh, and that broker approved this guy with 100% out of service rating, that broker now could be held financially responsible. So, I like I think a lot of people are missing that point. You know, like the bonehead trucker guy. He's he's just full force talking about how this is great for the industry. It's gonna shut shut down all the illegal carriers. It's going to shut down the small brokers that are not going to be able to hang if they get a big lawsuit because now they're going to be have to be held negligent uh if they negligently hire someone. But they're forgetting the fact that this is also going to disproportionately affect the small carriers that are out there busting their ass every day trying to do things the right way and just got a cop that woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day, you know, and and and I don't know how quickly we're going to see it.

[00:20:51]I did put something on Facebook yesterday that I I you know, I prompted AI to write this whole thing and then I put it on on my Facebook because I was curious to see what it predicts was going to happen. And they basically said, "Hey, uh, essentially now brokers are going to have to hard, you know, have a hardline compliance approach.

[00:21:08]They're only going to accept carriers that have like 100%, you know, on time ratio, 100% compliance with FMCSA regs that do not have out of services and things on social med on uh, on safer and all the other companies that won't be able to find any freight anymore because the brokers aren't going to load them.

[00:21:26]those guys are going to be forced to either one go lease on with the big companies that have better safety scores or two just straight up close. And then it also said there'll be some attrition for brokers, right? Because a lot of these smaller brokers are going to be like, "Hey, you know, making a $50 rip on a on a LTL load may not be worth it if that LTL carrier has a shitty safety rating and and then, you know, they kill someone and now I could be held responsible." Now, I don't necessarily think we're going to see a big mass exodus from the the freight brokers and the third party companies out in a while, but I think within a week or two, we are going to start seeing some of these small carriers that aren't able to get loaded. No matter what kind of great safety score, like, and I'll be honest, I would affect that change. Like, if I worked at a broker right now, I would be working on my compliance and changing my whole compliance structure. anybody that's unrated, anybody that has any negative citations or tickets, you know, I would not be loading. I'll be honest with you, I just wouldn't do it because frankly, I can't take that risk. I just simply put, I cannot take the risk. What you know, if if I hire a driver and that driver ends up crashing and killing someone and he's an illegal driver, if I can be held responsible for that, then I can't do it anymore. You know what I mean? And that's that's a a thing that that I think a lot of people are even if the driver's good, even if the driver is a great driver, even if the driver's been hauling me for me for a long time, I I'm not going to be able to work with him again because the chances of him screwing up could potentially bankrupt me as a broker. Do you know what I'm saying? And I think that that's what a lot of the people are missing about because I think a lot of people are like, h, you know, it sounds great, you know, now, oh, they're going to go after all these companies that are hiring illegal drivers and doing all that. But I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that it's not just going to happen to those people. It's just not. It's going to happen to everybody, you know. Um, someone said, uh, how much do truckers make on average? I know it's a broad question, but regular average semi-truck, it all depends, man. you know, some some drivers, you know, that are that don't own their own equipment that are just, you know, company drivers make anywhere from 60 to like 120 or more. Like the Walmart drivers are paid really really well. Owner ops make a little bit different because they have a lot of expenses, but it's uh it's crazy, you know, it's it kind of makes you wonder if if what's going to happen with the the industry as a whole, right? So, a lot of people are talking out their ass right now, especially on X. A lot of people are talking out their ass. You know, there's people that are are purposely pumping it all up and trying to make it sound like, oh, the world's, you know, the the world is caving in and they're doing it on purpose because they're in the media side. And if they get clicks and they get views and they get, you know, all this, it helps them, right? It helps them in terms of money.

[00:24:23]And you see a lot of people um you know because if they have monetized larger uh ex accounts and they're monetized then they're making it's clickbait right so they're saying oh the world's going to cave in and so they're making clickbait revenue off of it and then you see other people that are just going out and they're pushing an agenda without any fact behind it right and then attacking anybody that chooses to say hey you're wrong here you're forgetting about the your audience and the bonehead guy is one of those it it's I know him I've met him personally several times um He's wrong. He's wrong cuz he's just he's just saying that this is going to have to do with uh or his his main focus from what I've been able to see via his text is this is about immigration. It's not at all. This is not about immigration.

[00:25:06]And this isn't just going to take out those drivers that can't speak English.

[00:25:09]It's not. It's going to take out the small mom and pop operations that screw up and have a shitty driver. You know what I mean? Because brokers are not going to be able to work with them. I I'll be honest. I own a brokerage. I got a meeting at 11:30 where I'm going to have to tell one of my high volume agents that moves 100 plus cars a a week. I'm going to have to tell him, uh, we have to follow these procedures now to onboard a carrier and if you don't, you can't work. I'll cut I'll cancel his agreement. I have no choice because I can't get sued because, uh, we hire a carrier that has, you know, paper tags or something like that. I just can't do it. If the driver doesn't speak English, we can't work with them. It's simple as that. You know, if if their safety score is 100% out of service rating, I don't care how good they are. You know, I don't care how many miles are on their thing. If they only have one inspection in the past six months and it's an out of service, guess what? We're not we're not working with them. We can't because I have to protect my business. You know what I mean? And I don't even actively move freight. I've got an agent that that moves freight. He moves all the cars himself and his his crew that does it, but he's working under my authority.

[00:26:11]So, I have to tell him, "Hey, this is the rules. This is what we're going to do. You have to adhere to it. If you can't, then I get it and I'll cancel your agreement effective today, you know, because I can't get sued, you know? I've got two kids and a wife and I I'm not I'm just my house and cars and trucks and all I'm not losing all my [ __ ] because we hired a driver that, you know, we shouldn't have, you know, and and to be honest, a lot of people are also saying, "Hey, these are existing rules. These are existing rigs." Yeah, you're 100% right. But now what this did with the Supreme Court ruling on this case, it just opened it up. So now I guarantee every single truck accident that happens out there, you've got lawyers that are going to the scene trying to figure out who the victims are in order just to sue because it's an easy thing. It's an easy thing for a trial lawyer to go in there and be like, "Pay me a million bucks, progressive, or I'm not I'm not backing down. I'll make you spend a h 100red,000 bucks. Just pay me your insurance money." And so we're likely going to see an increase in rates, too. You know, broker, the insurance brokers are going to have to spend more because or they're going to have to insure for more because brokers are going to want uh carriers to have a higher insurance rate to cover the loss, right? So, if a carrier's only covered for a million bucks and they kill a family of four, a million bucks doesn't cover that and no attorney is going to try to get a million. They're going to try to get a hundred million or 500 million bucks.

[00:27:30]And so brokers are going to try to limit their liability by because they're secondary anyway. So the carriers insurance, they're going to start requiring carriers to carry instead of a million dollars in liability, they're going to start, mark my work, mark me, as they say in the old western whatever shows. Um my wife would get a kick out of that comment. None of you guys did, but she she would get a kick out of it.

[00:27:51]Um, but uh they're going to start requiring carriers to have a higher insurance rating so that way they can be, you know, their insurance is the primary insurance that'll be affected by these these lawsuits. So, it it's very interesting. You know, someone said they had to do something to crack down on illegal alien drivers. This has nothing to do with illegal alien drivers. That's a thing that everybody is forgetting.

[00:28:16]This Supreme Court case has nothing to do with illegal alien drivers. The driver that hit thrott or the driver that hit the car was not an illegal alien from the best of my knowledge. It has nothing to do with it. This isn't about cracking down on illegal aliens.

[00:28:30]Is it going to have a disproportionate effect on illegal operators? Yeah, 100%.

[00:28:34]Because they're operating illegally.

[00:28:35]Brokers are not going to hire them. If you hire a driver that doesn't speak English knowingly, you're going to lose your [ __ ] because you're going to be held liable for hiring that driver. Now, that's what this case sets precedent.

[00:28:46]This case sets precedent. Whereas if you hire someone negligently, you can be held financially responsible, which isn't really that far-fetched. It should have happened. But it's also going to disproportionately affect small carriers. The guys that don't the guys that are out there busting their ass every single day trying to make a living, trying to provide for their families. And and simply put, they're not going to have that opportunity anymore because brokers are going to have to protect themselves even more, you know, and shippers are going to be the ones requiring this. It's not brokers just in in in terms of protecting themselves because this Supreme Court case also opens up the door to shippers, right? Because if you hire a broker that you know is not qualifying carriers properly, then guess what? You can also be held liable. And so shippers are going to now require that brokers have detailed onboarding and detailed uh procedures. And then it's going to carry down onto the carrier who's going to have to have increased insurance premiums, have to have safety plans in in place, which they should already. Um, and and all of this, make sure driver qualification files are good, making sure they're actually fully running background checks. It's like running on Facebook right now. I see all these people are like, "We could have you set up in a day." You can't onboard a driver in a day. There's no way to do it legally.

[00:29:53]You can't because if it's a CDL operator, you got to get a drug test.

[00:29:57]How are you going to have them driving in a day and get the results of that drug test back? You're not. So, there's a ton of people that are advertising fake ass companies online that are the companies that are going to be, you know, affected by this. All of those guys that are leased on to those small companies, they're going to lose their [ __ ] too, because they're already giving up a huge percent. There was one guy I talked to who's given up 23%.

[00:30:18]23% of every load plus insurance and plus a factoring fee in order to to run under someone else's authority authority. I literally told him, I said, "You know, you'd be making so much more money if you just registered your own damn company." And he's like, "Oh, yeah, but I won't be able to get loads." I'm like, "Just haul cars for a year. Age your MC that way. Get your safety scores. Go drive around, you know, clean up your truck, make sure it's good. Take it somewhere to get a, you know, your annual inspection. When you pass, boom, go drive around a way station 15 times till they pull you in and demand a level one and say, "I'm going to keep driving through if you don't do it." Guess what?

[00:30:51]You'll get a level one. You know, and then that that's how you can improve your safety score, too. You used to be able to go back in the day, used to be able to pull into these scales and say, "Hey, can I get a level one inspection?"

[00:31:02]I've had drivers do that for years. You can't anymore. You know why? because people did what I did and we took our best brand new truck that we knew was perfect and we'd go and send drivers on routes through open way stations because then it would give us inspections that were clean. So yeah, ultimately it's my fault why you can't do that anymore.

[00:31:19]Plus a lot of other people's fault. Uh someone said uh this is opening the door to AI self-driving trucks. Know a lot of people say that too, but I don't think so because I think the whole AI self-driving truck thing is going to end the first second one of those AI trucks hits a car and kills, you know, a family. It's going to be over because there's going to be a massive massive lawsuit and no matter what, AI is not going to predict predict, you know, a human and in their reaction time, right?

[00:31:47]Or whatever the case may be. It's just not going to be able to do it. And so my belief is that there we will have a massive massive fatal accident involving one of these AI self-driving trucks and it's going to put an end to that whole whole spiel. I'm I to be honest I'm very surprised it hasn't happened yet. You know I'm very surprised it hasn't happened yet where someone is driving down the road, you see it's an AI truck and you swerve into that truck. You know what I mean? Because it's a guaranteed payday. You know these are AI companies that are VC funded worth billions of dollars. you if they're going to go after a mom and pop trucking company that has a million dollars in liability insurance, you don't think they're going to go after a a multi-billion dollar uh AI company that's running autonomous trucks down the road with no safety uh no verifiable safety records or anything to actually verify whether it's safe to operate because there's never been any other accidents involving these trucks.

[00:32:40]So, that's that's the interesting thing.

[00:32:41]So, I I don't I don't really think AI I've never really thought that we have anything to worry about in the trucking side from from AI fleets. I just don't believe it. Uh because frankly, I think just like I said, someone is going to get killed by one of these trucks and they're going to get a massive windfall lawsuit. Especially because so many people are distrustful of AI. Like think about it. If I was a trial attorney, I'd be I'd be following around these AI trucks just to see who they clipped and just go get pay because a jury juries are super skeptical of AI right now. Can you imagine an AI truck kills the family and then the lawyers go in front of a jury and say, "Hey, AI did this. AI planned wrong. Maybe AI did it on purpose." You could literally make so many crazy arguments. And you have all these movies and all this real life, you know, evidence that AI is kind of still trying to figure it stuff out. You could use all the cases where AI is trying to, you know, with the suicide stuff with chat GPT. Literally, you could make it would be such an easy lawsuit. It just hasn't happened yet. And my belief is that these uh these fully autonomous.

[00:33:44]Now, this doesn't doesn't account for like the self-driving modes where you need to have a driver in the truck. I'm not counting those too because then you have a driver that's able to to react in real time. I just don't think the computer is going to be able to to avoid something like that. Ultimately, it's still an 80,000lb missile. If you're coming over the crest of a hill in fog and uh and you're supposed to, you know, a driver is going to slow down. The AI may slow down, but then you can't stop and you come over the crest and there's a traffic accident. No matter what you do, you're going to hit that vehicle.

[00:34:18]At at that point, you just say, "Hey, it's AI driving. It's it's money." in my head. That's the way I feel about it.

[00:34:25]And so I don't have I don't have a lot of confidence that AI is going to is going to be like um the end all. And I've seen a lot of people that say that.

[00:34:34]Now, with that said, AI compliance tech that uh that brokers and shippers can integrate into their system to detect whether like so I developed this program that I don't have anybody using. If you guys are a trucking company, anyone watching this and you're interested in it, let me know. But I developed this program where basically it goes off of your ELD information and your driver payroll information and it could predict uh and and and I don't know what the percentage of prediction is yet because I can't get anyone to actually let me test it because everyone's nervous about tech. But basically I and I call it retention AI, right? That's that's my name for it. And basically, it'll predict when the driver's going to quit because it looks at their mileage. It looks at their happiness score, you know, and all sorts of other stuff that I built in there and their driver pay.

[00:35:19]And so they if if they have weeks where the mile is down and the driver pay is down, they're ultimately there's a higher likelihood that they're going to quit versus, you know, if it's sustainable. And so it alerts the dispatchers or the carrier managers to call that driver and say, "Hey, what's going on? We notice you're not driving as hard. We notice you're taking more rest breaks. We notice this. We notice that." And a lot of drivers not going to like that. But eventually like so I built that tech and I did it just because I was like hey you know what this is a good idea and uh there's just all different like you know things that you can do to help you know compliance wise um on the broker side even on the carrier side a lot of these things can be implemented on the carrier side as well. So, I don't know. But that's that's been your little freight episode of Wake Up America today. Uh, this weekend I got a bunch of stuff going on. Um, so I won't be doing any live streams. And next week, I'll try the new schedule. So, like I said, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll do the normal 8 a.m. show. I think Tuesday, and Thursdays, I'm going to try to do a later show to see if uh if we could boost some stuff up. But, if you like this show, please make sure you like, share, and subscribe. And everybody, I'll see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.