The Trucking Recovery Is Already In Big Trouble

[00:00:00]My friends, how are you? It is absolutely fantastic to see you for yet another video today. I hope you're doing well out there. I'm doing okay. I just woke up for a nap and I damn it well earned every bit of that nap. So, uh, if you guys are concerned cuz the video is out late today. I was over here getting some rest. Anyways, you guys know how I'm always bringing you bad news related to the economy, especially when it comes to the trucking industry. See, as a truck driver, of course, I get hands-on observations of things going wrong out here, and I get to tell you all about what's going on. And every once in a while, sometimes I get emails from people asking me to shut the [ __ ] up about trucking. And it's quite an interesting thing. They send me an email. I'm serious. They're in my inbox that say, "Josh, I love your videos. I love when you tell us what's going on in the world, but could you please shut up about trucking? I don't want to hear any more about it." And I always find that kind of amusing because I'm not talking to you all about trucking because I really really want you to show an interest in the trucking industry and this old trucker over here. Well, maybe I want you to show some interest in this old trucker over here. But I tell you because um it's kind of a leading economic indicator of what is going on in the world. And you guys know how recently um I have had the uh Trump humping truckers running to me because they are making so much money right now that they just can't believe it. and their daddy Donald Trump has saved us all. And they they want me to repent, my friends. They want me to uh praise Donald Trump and talk about how good he is for the American truck driver. And they say, "You have to do what I do now, Josh. You have to suck his tiny little pee pee and lick Donald Trump's disgusting taint and tell us how good he is because now truck drivers are making so much money." And recently I even had to concede in a video that yeah, the trucking industry appears to be up in some ways, way down in others. By the way, you have to look at everything going on. But as a trucker that's still left standing after the 100,000 in a year that have lost their jobs and after the multiple trucking and I mean trucking companies that have closed their doors uh filed bankruptcy over the last year and a half, yeah, the last few left are making a little bit more money than we used to. And that was what I was supposed to get excited about. You guys remember uh they came and told me how great he was and uh I need to start figuring out what the [ __ ] going on because I don't know what what he's talking about. And I had trouble coming to terms with that because yeah, it's easy for me to say, sure, as a trucker that survives so far the [ __ ] show that's going on um in the United States as related to the supply chain, I do make a little bit more money than I used to. But also, how do I uh sit here and take a victory lap and talk about how I made more money than I used to with so many people that have lost their jobs in uh the United States due to Donald Trump's mismanagement of the economy?

[00:02:45]And I always kind of laugh at me a little bit when I say mismanagement because that sounds like a very, you know, innocent thing like he just kind of screwed up a little bit, you know, goofy old Donald. Sometimes he just missteps a little bit and then he screws up. No, Donald Trump is hellbent on the destruction of the workingclass Americans in service of the billionaires that want us to basically be slaves by the time it's all said and done. And as far as I've heard from many people in the comments, look, I haven't done the research on this, but I guess there's a plan by the billionaires to kind of reduce the population. I don't know enough about it to uh figure it out, but I do seem to remember, I believe it was uh Steven Miller that talked about a plan to uh reduce us down to, you know, just a few million of us left or something like that. And look, the plan seems to be working okay. They're getting us fired from their jobs. Nobody can afford food anymore. Hell, hardly anybody can afford to live indoors. And I guess it's only a matter of time before we're all [ __ ] dead and guys like Steven Miller get to take a victory lap about how great everything is for them. But I have to tell you something, my friends. After all these Trump humpers ran to me and told me how amazing everything is because of Donald Trump and how we're making so much money, I just found out recently that that gravy train, that very short-lived gravy train, by the way, is coming to a very abrupt end. Because what people need to learn about Donald Trump and living in his America, if he ever sees that the working class is making a little bit too much money, then uh he will put a stop to that almost immediately. And after uh the cheers of every all the truckers of America going, "Donald Trump has caused us to make so much money, we are now in a situation where, like I just said, that is coming to a very, very quick end." And uh yeah, you were a little too loud in your celebrations. Donald heard you and he was not happy to hear that you were making some money. And uh now all hell is going to break loose as that money we thought we were making, hell, it's all gone, my friends. And we're going to talk about that today. I got a little something I want to talk to you guys about. Um, besides that, I know that a lot of you don't necessarily look at my community tab, the post that I put up there. So, I wanted to uh take a few minutes to have a celebration with you, my viewers, because we made something very big happened today for those of you that did not see the community post. You see, about a uh couple months ago, yeah, a couple months ago, I had put out a video uh showing the uh diesel prices going on in America right now. I had shown you one of my very own receipts that uh to fill up my truck. It cost me something like it was like $97 that day to fill it up. And I was showing that to you guys because I wanted you to know how expensive diesel was in a truck.

[00:05:22]Because it's easy to look at the price of diesel and say, "Yeah, it's pretty [ __ ] expensive." But then a lot of people don't realize how many goddamn gallons a truck takes. And if you uh I wanted to visualize for you how much it actually cost uh to move freight in this country. So I I did that. I talked about the prices and how it was harming the American truck driver, especially the owner operators. But the company drivers are going to pay the cost too through the form of like lower wages and [ __ ] like that, right? And not as many job opportunities for them. Hence the 100,000 truckers or I got to correct this for the very very adamantly correct about everything. 100,000 people related to the trucking industry over the last year lost their jobs. Right? When we talk about that number though, it gets a little bit fuzzy because uh we can look at the W2 employees that lost their jobs be but the trucking industry is still heavily filled with um uh 1099 contractors and um and uh small business owners and things like that and how many of them lost their asses in the last year also. Well, then you start to get into the very real numbers. So, for anyone that wants to correct me on that 100,000, nu-uh, well, you go count everything and tell me how many actual truck drivers are sitting their ass at home now. And then we actually have an honest number we can work with, but that's kind of a hard number to find. It really, really [ __ ] is. But anyways, um, when I was showing you guys that, and by the way, that $900 worth of diesel, it'll last about 2 days. Just so you know, when I was showing that to you guys, um I was talking about the uh you know the prices and out of nowhere a lot of my viewers started uh put pitching in uh super thanks on the video saying here's a little money for diesel and things like that and that amount ended up coming out to $300. Right around that time I was also documenting the uh how do I want to say this? The lack of freight leaving Denver, Colorado. And I have left Denver, Colorado for years. I live there. I live in Colorado, right?

[00:07:19]And I have always known that you leave Denver for very little money as an owner operator. That's just sort of the way that money works. But what I was pointing out to you was not uh cheap freight. I was pointing out to you no freight, right? And I was uh talking and that's a huge difference for for the other [ __ ] that say everybody knows you leave Denver empty. That's not true.

[00:07:38]Uh it it's always been widely known that you leave Denver for very little money.

[00:07:41]The idea that there's no freight leaving Denver is [ __ ] wild and should be a concerning thing. And that's not to say that there's always no freight leaving Denver. That's to say that there are instances that I've personally seen on three occasions where I've had to deadhead 5 600 miles to get a new [ __ ] load because Denver didn't have [ __ ] that day. And that should be alarming. And one of the things I pointed out was that um I used to haul a lot of Pyina out of there, a lot of pet food. And I openly pondered, are people having trouble feeding their pets right now? And a lot of people commented that, yeah, that's a real thing. People are having trouble feeding their pets. Um, people are ending up giving their pets to the shelter because they can't provide for them anymore in this [ __ ] up economy that we live in. And I came to the conclusion with you guys that we were going to um uh uh make take that $300 that you guys gave through Superhanks and we were going to donate that money uh to some sort of uh pet um charity that helps people keep their their pets and helps feed them. And uh we were all on board and then what happened is I got hit with a a [ __ ] lot of uh truck repairs out here. And I asked your guys' permission in a video.

[00:08:52]I was also in the middle of transitioning my truck to a different company and it was a whole [ __ ] show.

[00:08:57]So, I asked your guys' permission in a video if I could postpone that $300 donation so I could get through the [ __ ] that I had going on because the truck repairs and the transition to a different company had [ __ ] wiped me out. I was flat [ __ ] broke. I had did not have the $300 anymore, right? And uh to my [ __ ] surprise, you guys just unloaded in my [ __ ] comments with the uh super thanks. Yeah, super thanks come through on the the comments uh with a sizable amount of money to help me with the problems that I was having. Right now, there's [ __ ] out there that spin a narrative surrounding that entire thing where um they they say that I uh freaked out because I didn't have money to fix my truck, which the truck repairs were already done by that point. I love making fun of the narratives a little bit, so you'll have to forgive me. But they said I didn't have money to fix my ch truck, so I freaked out and I made made a video where I was crying, begging my subscribers to provide for me financially so that um so that uh I would have the money to fix my truck and and that's the way I'm able to stay in business. Now, that's an interesting thing because YouTube money doesn't hit till like a month after, right? It's like around today of the month that YouTube money uh normally hits. So, even if I was begging my viewers for money, I would have still been up [ __ ] creek if I couldn't have afforded it, right? Um, and uh that's uh the weird narrative people spin that I took advantage of my own viewers. And I will admit that you guys did make me cry on a video, you sons of [ __ ] I love you for it, but like what the [ __ ] You're going to make me cry on a video. Why would you do that? Thank you. But the um the money came in like quickly off of me asking to postpone that donation, right? And um it it did help me out a lot a great deal with uh the situation I had going on. I ended up in a situation where I just had to keep going and survive until that YouTube money showed up, right? And uh that happened today. Uh the YouTube money showed up. So what I did um in our name, in the name of the uh the Enemy from Within community, is I found that pet charity online and I did not make that $300 donation. I'm sorry to let you down. What I actually did was I made a $1,000 donation uh based off of the money that you guys sent to help me out uh when I uh just acknowledged that I didn't have the money to make that donation. And I did that in the name of all of us. That was every one of you helping out uh with the entire thing.

[00:11:22]And um look, you guys are obviously uh fantastic people that saw a guy just having a hard time, not begging you for money like uh some have implied uh but uh telling you about the the struggle I was going through as a working-class uh small business owner basically. And uh you showed up and you you helped me out and I owed you one for that. I owed you a big one for that. And that has been done now. That has been taken care of.

[00:11:45]So next time Donald Trump flips the [ __ ] out, they're eating the cats and dogs.

[00:11:49]we can comfortably say the dumb son of a [ __ ] No, we're not. We're feeding the cats and we're feeding the dogs, you [ __ ] And uh then we can laugh about it because I've been thinking all day how many times I've been labeled as Antifa. And I'm like I I mean I Yeah, I mean I'm anti-fascist. What do you want me to say? But yes, that's what Antifa does right there. We feed the cats. We feed the dogs. We've made many, many donations on this channel. Um and uh we will continue to do so. And I appreciate you guys so much for that support. And uh wanted to tell you about that, the donation that we've made. And what a lot of people don't know is this is not like a new thing for me. I have been donating uh a lot of my money for a lot of years because I live by a very strict rule, my friends. And that rule is um I don't allow myself to have too much money anymore. There was a time in my life where I actually did have too much money. And I'm going to tell you about it. I had a trucking video years ago go absolutely [ __ ] viral. It was bonkers. It just happened overnight. The video was like 3 years old just sitting on a channel and it just went [ __ ] nuts. And you guys would be shocked at um how much money depending on how viral it goes, but how much money a viral video pays a [ __ ] You can afford to support a family for years depending on how viral it is. It's insane. And at the time, I had never seen that kind of money in my [ __ ] life. And I was just blown away by it.

[00:13:08]And it didn't take long for me to like [ __ ] that up. Uh you guys know what I started doing with all when I had too much money? I started drinking myself stupid and making really poor decisions uh with my professional life, with my personal life. And then one day um I kind of woke up and I was completely [ __ ] broke. Um I had drank myself [ __ ] silly. Um as far as people uh being around me still in my life, that hardly existed at all. And I had [ __ ] blown up everything, right? It was a it was a tragic thing. I don't mind telling you guys these stories. I don't [ __ ] care. And um ever since then, I I took a long time to get my [ __ ] together. Um, and uh, stop with like drinking myself [ __ ] senseless and all these things that I used to do and try to make better decisions. And now these days, if I I see that a little too much is happening, I actively try to get rid of it. It's a weird [ __ ] thing. I on my trucking channel I used to run um, I didn't make a lot of money on that after the whole viral thing. I would make about uh, $700 a month, I think, off my trucking videos. And I would take 10% of that, but I would always just round it up to $100. And I used to donate every month to the the Micro Foundation for helping young people get into the trades and [ __ ] like that. And none of this is to pat myself on the back. Um, this is to say that I've made a conscious effort to not have too much money uh for for uh quite a few years now so that I don't uh make dumb decisions cuz I think I'm [ __ ] rich. It keeps me grounded, my friends. Um, so at this point, you know, I uh I was able to build a little bit of a nest egg from from your guys' donations that will help me to uh keep the truck fixed. Hopefully, it's not a a ton, but it should help me with some problems that come up. And also, um, uh, you know, uh, some people in my personal life helped me with the last breakdown.

[00:14:51]I straight up couldn't afford it.

[00:14:53]They've been paid back and, uh, everything's great in the world again.

[00:14:56]Uh, we've got a little bit that we can, uh, uh, do in case something happens with the truck again. So, I don't care how much time I took there. Y'all are my tribe. Y'all are my people. We don't do this for the algorithm anymore and try to appease everyone out there because I've seen where that gets me. I don't like this [ __ ] video. Why are you yelling at me? Go watch another [ __ ] video. Like, what what do you want from me? Um, but anyways, uh, I just wanted to tell you guys that we did that is the point that I'm trying to [ __ ] make.

[00:15:21]And I know that took me a while to get through, but uh, you know, we we as a community made that [ __ ] happen. So, now you're probably wondering what's going on with the trucks and why truck drivers are no longer going to make the money uh that they thought they were making. How the gravy train is ending very very rapidly for all these truck drivers that came out and said, "Look, Donald, he saved us. Donald has saved us and Josh, you need to uh suck him off. That's what you need to do." And I'm going to tell you about it now. See, what happened was Donald Trump through uh his his illegal tariffs, his uh trade wars, his liberation day tariffs, had started obviously [ __ ] up the supply chain in America. And that was when we started to see the downfall of a lot of trucking companies in America. Uh that was during the tariffs, I believe. Yeah, that was before the uh illegal Iran war. Um and we started to see all these trucking companies go under. And what Donald Trump was doing uh through that stupidity was lowering the capacity of uh trucking companies in the United States. He was getting rid of us. And uh through that trucking is a very simple supply and demand thing, right? I have this many loads that need to move leave this city. How many goddamn trucks are here ready to leave? And then you start to come to an idea of how much it's going to cost to move that freight, right? Just very straightforward supply and demand type of thing. And uh as you start to take that capacity out of the market um the market tends to tighten up and uh people start the people left start to make more money from that uh situation.

[00:16:47]Excuse me. And then Donald Trump uh also started that Iran war, right? And that was a big [ __ ] deal because that also on top of the problems, the headwinds that we already had, had caused diesel prices to go through the [ __ ] roof to the point that the trucking industry had no choice but to raise its rates because we would have been uh running for less money than we were making, right? And I'm sure there's a term for that, but I'm just a humble trucker, right? We would have been running I don't know.

[00:17:13]Does it sound fancy if I say we would have been running at a deficit? Does that work? Is that is that pretty good words for a trucker? I'm not really sure. Actually, I think that does work.

[00:17:21]It sounds pretty good to me. It's not bad. Um and uh so we had no choice but to raise rates to respond to that, right? And the companies that did not respond quick enough, they were already on thin ice having a hard time, they also went under, right? And then what happened was those prices went up and shot up and like I said earlier in the video, the the truckers that were still left standing, as a matter of fact, did make more money uh than they did uh just a month or two ago. Well, it seems now that that is changing very very rapidly as there is new plans to move freight around the country in different ways.

[00:17:56]And that is that the shippers in this country are quickly changing their tune from we're going to put this on a truck somewhere to they are trying desperately to use the railroad as much as possible.

[00:18:07]And isn't that [ __ ] convenient?

[00:18:09]Because that's one of those things where obviously everything goes to the billionaires in this country, right? You can't be just a guy that like learns how to be a railroader and then one day you become an independent owner operator and you go buy yourself a [ __ ] train. I don't even know what that would [ __ ] cost, right? You've got to have a lot of goddamn money to own a train in this [ __ ] country. Well, in any country, I imagine. I think trains are just [ __ ] expensive, right? So, now uh that we were making a little bit too much money.

[00:18:35]um the billionaires in this country, the ones that are responsible for or not responsible for um but are looking at the bottom line when it comes to moving goods around this country and seeing how they can be even more profitable because they do not have enough [ __ ] money.

[00:18:49]Have looked at the situation and said, "Uh [ __ ] those trucks are costing us just a little bit too much now." And they are heavily heavily looking towards the the rail to move that freight at a cheaper rate for them. which means the excess capacity that was shaken off of this industry um that caused the rates to go up, we temporarily made more money, right? If they continue to look to the rail to uh try to move more freight around this country, then we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we once again have excess capacity and the rates are going to continue to fall again, shaking off another 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 truck drivers before uh the market sort of uh stabilizes yet again. And then we go, "Look at us.

[00:19:32]We're making all kinds of money and everyone else was [ __ ] fired." Right?

[00:19:36]And I know that the the rail doesn't necessarily uh eliminate everything and doesn't uh what I mean to say is eliminate every truck driver out there.

[00:19:44]Um because there the rail is a little bit limited in the sense that it can't go it can't go straight up to the dock of a shipper and receiver and load or unload that individual specific rail car. That I believe there were times in America where we used to do things like that. I've worked in warehouse warehouses where where the railroad runs right through the middle of the [ __ ] and they maybe used to do things like that, but our infrastructure isn't set up that way right now, but they can eliminate the need for a lot of over the road truck drivers right now by shipping it the long distances and having it arrive in a railard in any different location and then having a a local truck driver uh go and uh deliver that product. they're saving them the the the billionaire a lot of money on the shipping cost because it's just cheaper to do the rail in bulk numbers right now. See, that's what's going on.

[00:20:33]Uh so it is very interesting to me and I know I spent a lot of time talking about that charity and I don't want to talk your ear off on this entire subject because it's really really straightforward. They now are changing and there's articles about this. I'll put I'll post an article in the link, but the only article I could find from today in the link an article in the description, but the only article I could find from today specifically was Wall Street Journal, and that's behind a payw wall. But uh what I'm telling you is yes, uh that this uh this uh boost in the pay to the American truck driver that everybody was so happy about and praised Donald Trump for looks like it's going to be very shortlived. uh the whole um methods of shipping things around the uh country are going to shift heavily towards using the rail as much as possible and uh using a truck only when necessary to do it. And here we go again. Our rates fall yet again. And uh and uh that that's that that's the whole point. This video sucks cuz I did just wake up from a nap and I'm still trying to like my head's still kind of foggy.

[00:21:31]Hope you guys enjoyed though and I made sense. I got to I would say I got to get back to work, but I don't actually start till tomorrow uh with my next load. And I could always use another nap. So, love you guys. Bye now.