Submitted by Gord Magill for American Truckers United:
The Trucking Industry in America received a major boost from President Trump on the night of Monday, April 28, when he signed an Executive Order titled “Enforcing Commonsense Rules of The Road for America’s Truck Drivers”. The primary aim of the order is to overturn an Obama-era memorandum that waived enforcement of English Language Proficiency requirements as required under 49 CFR 31.11 (b) (2); that waiver having opened a massive loophole, which matched with a program from the Biden Administration, allowed for the insourcing of a great deal of unvetted foreign labor onto America’s roads as ‘truck drivers’.
This move to restrict the insourcing of foreign truckers into America, which was a deliberate attempt to suppress American’s wages for the bidding of massive corporations like Amazon, whom are known and a major client of subcontractors that abuse such labor, is welcomed and acknowledged by the trucking community. We hope that this is only the beginning of a number of reforms which ought to see the return of a healthy, sustainable, and safe trucking industry to our roads.
Another crash… and once again, the driver couldn’t even speak English.
How are companies out here hiring truck drivers who can’t communicate on the road?
Make it make sense.
Should English fluency be required for commercial drivers?
— Tony Lane 🇺🇸 (@TonyLaneNV) April 28, 2025
Another Trucker that can’t speak English on Canadian roads causing absolute carnage.
Do you feel safe sharing the road with these guys? pic.twitter.com/bSyLxetL7J
— Bruce (@bruce_barrett) February 9, 2025
Your refugee CDL-licensed, non-English-speaking truck drivers are still all over the highways in America today because MAGA isn’t serious about reversing demographic change. https://t.co/uIGRGQcBqr pic.twitter.com/EsX2TONN3T
— Tom Hennessy (@Tomhennessey69) March 25, 2025
Another major problem coming over the horizon is likewise tied to the same Covid demand spike that saw the Biden Administration make the terrible mistake of allowing the insourcing of all of these excess entrants into the market. Drivers are only one component of the trucking industry; where do the trucks come from for people to drive, and how were they paid for during this period? As it turns out, many of the trucks we see on the road today are “under water assets” that are not being paid for, and a situation akin to the 2008 financial crisis is taking place right now, not with real estate, but with trucks.
In an interview (via Autonomous Truck(er)s) with Harvey Beech, President of EOS Trucking in North Little Rock, Arkansas, a number of details about this problem are revealed.
“When you look at what happened with used truck prices, that’s where this started. It’s very similar to the housing bubble, where we had unchecked lust and greed which took over and we started seeing Freightliners with 450,000 miles being retailed out there for well north of $150,000 at 12 to 15% interest. And it went on at scale.
…
We’ve been conditioned to expect downturns in freight cycles. And that’s why so many of us in the first quarter of 2023 …we knew we were going into something … really intense with regards to truck pricing. We knew there was a lot of trucks bought at over inflated prices … and as soon as things turned we knew those would be the first to have their trucks re-possessed.”
Curiously, Beech tells us, those trucks were not actually repossessed.
“We did not expect the banks to allow what has become eternal deferrals … we learned in 2008 … that you have to have cash reserves, and hunker down, and wait on everyone else to have their trucks repossessed. In May of 2023 … we had financing companies say ‘Hey, you might want to think about not making your truck payments.’
As everyone runs out of cash … one of the things you have to do is request deferral which means you’re not making your truck payment, which means you’re going upside down … the banks are supposed to repossess … in 2008 there were oceans of trucks repossessed … they had to rent cow pastures to park the trucks.
November of 2023 I’m hearing of big carriers going into their 6th month of deferrals … 2024 we expect to see a turn, and it doesn’t come …. And the turn of this year it still hasn’t come. No one’s trucks are being re-possessed … never has there been this much widespread non-performance on loans.”
And why wouldn’t financing companies or dealerships want to repossess equipment their customers were incapable of paying for?
“The truck makers and financial institutions that chose to take part in that huge bubble that was created (in 2021- early 22) … now that has caused them to be so far upside down that they can’t repossess trucks … back in 08 it was 90 days, by 120 they were repossessing trucks …the banks failures to repossess trucks has drained the cash reserves of those of us left to compete all this time against carriers on six month to a year or more of deferred payments … the financial institutions will not execute … some truck financing institutions are at 80% in deferral … that is bank failure material … they cannot repossess the trucks .. because they have to record that loss, and this is so widespread, like never before … if they repossessed all of the trucks, they would have had such losses because of the overinflated prices … that it would collapse the financial institutions altogether.”
There are others in trucking reporting similar problems, but unlike Mr Beech, would only report their observations under the condition of anonymity.
“This has been the toughest past 3 years we have experienced in 30 years”
“My fleet received deferrals from four lenders starting in late 2023, following nearly two years of industry downturn. Three deferrals lasted 3 months, with two extended for an additional 3 months.”
“We haven’t taken or asked for payment deferrals from anyone. I did bust the balls of my banker telling him I felt they were complacent in extending terms and letting payments go 6 months in arears for other borrowers. I felt that the reason was they financed trucks and trailers at numbers they didn’t want on their books. Stock prices were really good and moving up so they were better off to not take back a $100,000 truck that was worth $50,000 not because of the write off they could with stand that it was what it might do to stock valuation.”
“We are approaching our bank renewal for the trucking business and I do not know if they will have much confidence in us. 25 months in the red is not something that gives confidence“
As the effects of Trump’s Tariffs begin to be felt, no doubt some carriers who are in dire straits will be wiped out of the market. If not for the Biden administration flooding the trucking industry with insourced labor in 2021, and the greed of financial institutions repeating the same lending mistakes of 2008, many of those carriers would have weathered this storm.
Are we about to face another, perhaps smaller, financial meltdown caused by the malfeasance of lending institutions? How many American trucking companies are they going to take down with them by kicking this can down the road?
Will government leaders and the banks ever learn?
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