A Post for New and Old Subscribers
A Short List of Published Material; also, I seem to have missed that my Substack 'Welcome E-Mail' had never been customized.
Good Morning, and Happy Tuesday.
In the interest of showcasing some of my work to recent subscribers, here is a list of various essays and articles I’ve written in other places, as well as a newly updated Welcome Email - my apologies, but I thought I set one up when first arriving here over a year ago, and it appears I did not.
Let’s start with that, shall we?
Hi there, and Welcome to Autonomous Truck(er)s, and The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast.
My name is Gord Magill, and am a 25 years plus veteran of the trucking industry, having driven rigs in places as far afield as the Ice Roads of Canada’s Northwest Territories, down the sides of volcanoes in New Zealand, across the vast deserts of Western Australia, and probably somewhere very close to you if you live in The United States.
This Substack is the host for much of my writing on the trucking industry, which focuses a critical eye on many issues within it that work together and make life more difficult than it needs to be for the men and women behind the wheel. From the decades long fake driver shortage narrative, to corporate welfare, to the transfer of regulation from the C Suite to the drivers seat, the examinations offered here pull no punches in taking on the real and mostly unseen problems which plague this industry. Myself and various associates also discuss the looming issues surrounding Automated Vehicle Technology; thus the name of this Substack.
I also make stops along the way to discuss various tangential topics, usually but not limited to Canadian Politics, and the crisis of meaning facing Western Civilization.
My writing appears not only on this platform - I often make contributions to other publications including Newsweek, Compact Magazine, American Compass, UnHerd, American Affairs Journal, The American Conservative, and various smaller blogs and web journals. Typically I will crosspost links to that work here for your examination.
I hope you enjoy what I have to say, and find it useful in your thinking about what really goes inside the industry which puts food on everyone’s table, and is the blood which allows our economy to circulate.
If you do find value in what I write, and would like to engage in a Value-For-Value proposition, please hit the paid subscription button below, and help make it possible for this project to continue.
Thank You, and Happy Trails.
For those of you new(ish) to my project, here is a small selection of my previous writings which various major publications commissioned; there’s more in the pipe, which you will be amongst the first to know about by becoming (or remaining) a subscriber.
Why not begin with the very first online interview I ever gave? Geography nerds will love this website, as I do, and the interview gives a fairly rough sketch of my life on the road.
(And, for the record, this is from 2015; I never did ‘exit’)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/exit-interview-i-spent-20-years-behind-the-wheel-of-a-big-rig
Speaking of firsts, here is a rant/screed I gave the folks over at Glibertarians on the eve of the implementation of the ELD Mandate in 2017.
https://www.glibertarians2017.link/2017/12/06/end-of-the-road-truckers-are-soon-to-be-replaced-by-robots-but-the-state-has-already-been-roboticizing-the-driver/
Many of you have probably already seen many of these, but in the interest of the new folks, here are some of the Op-Eds I have written for Newsweek.
Extra special thanks to my girl Batya Ungar-Sargon for asking me to contribute my initial thoughts on the Freedom Convoy in Canada, which has lead to about 8 articles for them in total, including commentary on removing the exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act which excludes truckers from paid overtime, the utter uselessness of Unions in the face of Wuhan Plague, and the ongoing scandal of Political Prisoners being held in Canada.
https://www.newsweek.com/elites-are-smearing-truckers-because-were-doing-their-job-representing-people-opinion-1675022
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-want-support-working-class-vote-andy-levins-trucker-bill-opinion-1715058
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-canadas-unions-siding-government-against-workers-opinion-1679077
https://www.newsweek.com/meet-four-men-being-held-political-prisoners-canada-opinion-1831823
For a full list of my Newsweek contributions, click here.
For those more economically and policy inclined, I’ve been blessed to have contributed two pieces to The American Conservative. Many thanks to Micah Meadowcroft for making this happen.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/lighten-the-truckers-load/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/pay-truckers-for-their-work/
Lots of places with American in the name, which is somewhat ironic for this Canadian. As a side note, usually Canadians who do well next door in America are given some sort of recognition at home; alas, that has yet to happen.
Oren Cass and the folks at American Compass asked me to contribute to their Edgerton Essays series, which gave voice to working class people not normally heard from in the media. I was happy to oblige!
https://americancompass.org/how-essential-are-the-email-job-caste/
In yet another publication with American in the name, I present you what I consider to be my finest piece of writing - a review of Cornell Sociologist Karen Levy’s fantastic book, “Data Driven - Truckers, Technology, and The New Workplace Surveillance”
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/02/panopticons-of-the-interstate/
You can listen to an interview I had with Karen right here -
More recently, I have also been contributing over at Compact Magazine, a new project which seeks to examine current events and ideas outside of the traditional frameworks of today’s political discourse.
In this piece here, I bounce my own ideas on Automated Vehicle Technology off the works of Karen Levy, mentioned above, as well as America’s best philosopher working today, Matthew B Crawford.
https://compactmag.com/article/the-war-on-driving
More of my writing at Compact can be found here.
That’s it for now; for those who want to keep digging, I suggest you scroll on down my Substack; there are plenty of writings and podcasts there to keep you informed about what’s really happening in the background with all of those trucks you see out on the road.
When I get some time in the near future, I will also post a list of other podcasts where I have appeared and expounded coarsely on most of these issues.
Thanks for reading, and as always, the best way to honor this project is to pass it around to as many people as possible, especially my fellow truckers, and others who work in trucking, logistics, and supply chains; as well as to those who care enough about their society to take no shit from The Machine.
Happy Trails!