How is someone here illegally behind the wheel of an 80,000lb truck?

This is the question I am asked more than any other. It deserves a real answer, but it’s not simple. In fact, Gord Magill () wrote an entire book to explain how we got here. I highly recommend reading it if you have even the slightest interest in the American trucking industry and what is happening on our highways.

This article will cover part of it, but not everything.

The Border, or lack thereof.

For years, immigration policy created a class of individuals who were in this country without legal status, yet were still issued Employment Authorization Documents, or EAD cards, or ‘work permits.’ This gave them legal authorization to be employed in the United States while their cases moved through an immigration system that operates at the speed of a 1994 fax machine.

There’s really no need to wonder how we ended up here.

This EAD card does not establish citizenship, in any manner, but it was enough to enroll in CDL school, obtain a non-domiciled CDL, and get a job, or start your own company.

This image was publicly posted on Instagram.

Federal regulations require a non-domiciled CDL to expire when the driver’s work authorization expires. The immigration document sets the ceiling on the license.

What actually happened is a different story.

Your taxes, your truck driver shortage.

I’ve written about this before, and I’ll keep writing about it.

The “truck driver shortage” narrative has been recycled in industry press releases since the 1980s. It was never about a labor crisis. It is a mechanism. One that opens the dam on federal funding. The perpetual shortage fairytale unlocked years of federal workforce development dollars. Grants, nonprofit “training partnerships,” and tuition assistance programs. $38 million here, $55 million there, all in service of getting as many bodies behind the wheel of an 80,000lb machine as quickly as possible.

What could possibly go wrong.

Federally funded CDL school tuition is available for those who qualify. You know who doesn’t qualify? Almost any American citizen who genuinely wants a CDL, like my brother. You, my fellow Americans, will pay $ 4,000-$ 6,500 out of your own pocket to get a CDL so you can provide for your family and earn a living.

Then, you’ll pay taxes to fund workforce development programs for refugees and asylum seekers to obtain their CDL for $0.00.

Your tax dollars funded this pipeline.

“We can help you set up your company!”

Inside the Somali, Haitian, Ethiopian, Central American, Central Asian, Afghan, and other immigrant trucking social media communities, you will find posts offering full-service trucking company setups. Insurance agents who specialize in new operators and know which carriers will write a policy for a driver with no history. People who walk you through the LLC filing and the USDOT registration process.

It is a complete, functioning parallel infrastructure for getting someone from “I have a CDL” to “I have a trucking company” in a matter of weeks.

This type of service isn’t illegal. People helping people navigate a complex system is not a crime. It is, however, strangely easy for a brand new arrival in a brand new country to complete all of this paperwork and get through the setup process.

Trucks move freight.

Now that we have a registered business and a CDL, we must find a truck. Without a truck, you can’t make money.

Some new drivers get absorbed into a trucking company owned by someone from the same ethnic community, but more often than not, the new driver is expected to run under the company’s authority as an independent operator. It’s his truck, and it’ll be his problems. Almost certainly a truck that he cannot afford.

The lease-to-own model in trucking is one of the most predatory financial products in America. Yes, there are great companies that do this the right way. And there are others that exploit and abuse every part of it.

Carriers and the financing arms attached to them offer lease agreements to new owner-operators that are structured to appear, on paper, like a path to ownership. You drive, you pay, you get paid for your work, and eventually, the truck is yours. It’s the path to the American dream! Or so they say.

Again, Facebook provides incredible intel.

The lease-to-own model is a mechanism designed to extract maximum labor at minimum cost. The weekly payments are structured so that after fuel, cargo insurance, ELD fees, trailer rent, maintenance, and the lease payment itself are accounted for, many of these drivers are netting almost nothing. Some are effectively working for free. If they fall behind on payments, they lose the truck, the investment, and the business. And they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

These programs are specifically marketed to new, inexperienced drivers, often immigrants or low-income, who don’t yet know enough about the industry to see it coming. By the time they understand what they signed, they’re already stuck in it.

Small Business Loans

Small business loans are the other avenue. Certain lenders, some predatory, some simply opportunistic, have identified the immigrant population as a target market.

Who wins?

Not the immigrant truck driver. He’s broke or in debt and is stuck in a situation that he cannot escape.

The American trucker doesn’t win. He’s spent decades building a career and is now competing against rates propped up by federally subsidized training, predatory leases, and a market that loves cheap rates.

Americans traveling on our highways don’t win. We’re sharing the roads with undertrained or never trained truck drivers.

The trucking company wins. The CDL school wins. The insurance agent wins. The lender, who collects months and months of payments, wins. The nonprofit responsible for facilitating the arrival and placement in the workforce program gets to report another successful placement to justify next year’s federal funding request.

They win. The machine wins, as it always does.

The system is the villain.

The man who went to a federally funded CDL school and got talked into a predatory lease was told this was a path to a better life. He believed it, as most people would. Should he be driving an 80,000lb machine without proper training? No. But he’s not the only villain.

The people responsible for this are the ones who designed the system. Who dressed a financial scheme in the language of workforce development. Who took federal money intended to lift people out of poverty and used it to churn out disposable labor. Who knew exactly what the lease terms meant and handed a new driver the pen anyway.

The immigrant driver is not the only one exploiting this system. More so, he is being exploited by it. And so is every American taxpayer who funded his training, every professional American truck driver competing against the rates his presence suppresses, and every innocent family driving on a highway that now carries the consequences.

He has the truck because the system was built to put him there.
And the system was built that way on purpose.

Danielle Chaffin, Highway Veritas

The American Trucker Dream, Weaponized.