Responding to Criticism of Truckers Tikka Masala piece

An Old Head weighs in.

An old trucker friend of mine emailed me with some criticisms of the Truckers Tikka Masala piece I released on Saturday, and I was quite chuffed to receive such a thoughtful and substantive bit of criticism from a man whom I hold in great reverence and admiration. The gentleman in question has been in trucking longer than I’ve been alive, and at one point many years ago I worked for him in a part time capacity.

His criticisms are well thought out, and I agree with some and disagree with others, but some of the issues in trucking I regularly discuss are fleshed out very well in his letter to me, and I thought it would be a worthy exercise for my readers if I engaged his letter in public, both as a matter of keeping myself honest, and in bringing a deeper understanding of the business and culture of trucking to you.

In the interests of maintaining his anonymity, I will reveal no further details of his identity, and throughout this response will refer to him as Paul. The email subject line from my man was “Paul Harvey Moment”, in reference to the old radio bits that would detail some story and reveal an unknown piece or component.

Each of these vignettes would end with Mr Harvey’s now infamous phrase “And now you know, The Rest of The Story.”


Paul’s letter will be presented in Italics and mine in normal type.

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Humbolt

Why does the entire world completely ignore the fact that it took 2 drivers to cause this horrific crash?

Mr. Sidhu committed one of the most deadly sins that drivers can commit. He ran through a stop sign that he completely missed. Go find me 10 drivers with more than 20 years of experience that can look you in the eye and tell you they have never committed that very same sin or an equivalent. The honest ones will be able to share similar experiences where they got lucky and didn’t make the nightly news. What about the bus driver? Did he not have the huge responsibility to be the best he could be, in fact be better than average because of that trust he was tasked with? Go ask those same 10 drivers if they have ever been faced with a situation similar to that of the bus driver where they had to go above and beyond and do something radical or ultra imaginative to avoid what could have been a similar tragedy. There will be those who will defend the bus driver due to the vegetational growth restricting the visibility at that intersection. It was likely a very real contributor to the crash and if everyone was looking at the big picture and took the time to dig down to all the root causes of this and other tragedies. Due you suppose the province of Saskatchewan has done a study examining the likely thousands of similar intersections? It was far too easy to vilify Mr. Sidhu and make him out to be the only villain and the only person who made a mistake that day.

I completely agree with Paul here that the province of Saskatchewan does a terrible job of maintaining their roads and the infrastructure around them, and there has been plenty of discussion about this intersection being a problem. Anyone who has had to deal with the secondary and grid roads in that province would only need to add tropical vegetation to the scenery and they would be forgiven for thinking themselves driving through Cambodia rather than a modern western country like Canada.

That said, a stop sign is a stop sign, and my larger point here is not to necessarily vilify Mr Sidhu, rather, the system which brought him to Canada from India on a student visa, and then let him go from zero trucking experience to pulling a set of super-Bs in the space of about four weeks. Paul is well aware that he and I both worked for people who understood the madness of such an arrangement, and we both learned from the ground up over a much longer time frame.

One wonders about the cultural programming in Mr Sidhu’s head that lead him to believe he was worthy of such a responsibility, but that is another matter.

Driver Inc.

You did a great job of exposing the ugly underbelly of the current quality and capability truck drivers in both Canada and the U.S. You did however forget to mention or stress just how complicit Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh are in the current state of our industry here in Canada. Not only are the majority of these drivers victims of human trafficking buy very few of them and their employers are paying taxes and none of them are receiving any benefits or protections under government labour standards. At a meeting between Shamus O’Regan and the Punjab truckers association Justin and Jagmeet’s minister of Labour actually apologized for the use of the “offensive” term “Driver Inc.” and promised to discontinue the use of such a derogatory term. Rather than prosecuting these crooks he assured them that any enforcement of the law would come in the form of education rather than prosecution.


I was unaware of this meeting between Mr O’Regan and the Punjabi truckers, and learned something new. Thanks Paul!

Briefly, it ought to be noted that ‘Driver Inc’ is a made up term by the Corporatist Scum at the Canadian Trucking Alliance, and a skim through their website indicates that the way they use it has nothing to do with anything I said in the piece, nor in any of my other writings on trucking. The CTA’s beef is with ‘self employed’ drivers, whom the CTA believe are merely avoiding taxes by not engaging in a traditional employer-employee relationship. Perhaps our recent arrivals from the Punjab are implicated in that issue, I’m not sure; given that the head of the CTA is a known Trudeau Fellator and has donated to the Liberal Party, let us just say that corruption piles atop corruption.

I did mention Mr Trudeau throughout the piece, though perhaps I did not heavily enough emphasize his complicity in the morass of problems in Canada that are downstream of his utterly retarded immigration policies. Not a mistake I usually make, given how I have criticized him for everything else at length in nearly every other single I thing I have written.

Perhaps Paul missed this the last time we spoke in person, or maybe I failed to mention it, but I was the recipient of a phone call once from the ‘Protective Investigations Unit’ division of the RCMP, Canada’s equivalent to the Secret Service. A constable Clowery (I still have the email he sent after our call, and am never deleting it) wanted to chew on my ear for sending mean tweets at the Prime Minister, even though I now live in the United States, and am protected by the First Amendment.

Surely a legitimate use of valuable taxpayer resources.

Deregulation

You need to have a better understanding of what government regulation looked like pre deregulation. Picture if you will a good ol’ boys club made up of the very same players that control the OTA as well as the CTA. Now imagine that those players controlled the issuance of operating authorities. Technically authorities were issued by governments but the good ol’ boys were allowed to oppose your application individually as well as their “organizations” would oppose on behalf of its members. The organizations had all sold their souls to the government in the form of supporting whatever half brained regulation the government put forward in payment for the ability to freeze out any and all newcomers thus protecting their monopolies. Let me assure you, life under that form of regulation was far more restrictive in the form of wage levels, working conditions and the welfare of the consumer, the very definition of price fixing. The core fact of the matter is that during the early days of deregulation there were only ever 3 true regulators in the trucking industry and the government was never one of them. First there were the equipment finance companies, if you couldn’t demonstrate the wherewithal and the industry knowledge you couldn’t get your first truck financed. Next were the insurance companies, if you couldn’t convince them of your ability to safely manage a trucking company you couldn’t get insurance at any price. Last were the bankers, if you couldn’t demonstrate to them that you had what it took to manage and operate a trucking company you were denied access to operating lines of credit. All 3 of these pillars of the industry got greedy and no longer cared or even looked to see if you had any chance of being successful in the long term and were more interested in taking your money every month to maintain their “market share” and to provide their shareholders with bigger and better returns. The next evolution if this trifecta of scoundrel were the one stop shop oligarchs that now will sell equipment to these poor indentured slaves. They will then finance that equipment, they will then sell them their fuel and last but not least they will factor their receivables to provide operating capital. Now factor in the human trafficking operations you have shone the light on and you have a better understanding of exactly where the industry stands today and why.


Paul, this is such an extremely valuable, insightful, and succinct description of the deregulation issue, I think I’m going to frame it, or otherwise re-purpose it for use in future writings. You nailed it.


I did allude to the nuances of the necessity of deregulation in the piece, though I was both rushing to finish the damn thing, and also keep it from spooling off into a book length screed.

One could argue that reform to how the industry was regulated was necessary, but anyone looking at trucking in 2024 can see that the pendulum swung way too far in the opposite direction.

With the passing of Jimmy Carter yesterday, I will venture to write something much more substantive and nuanced about the pros and cons of deregulation, and will factor in some of this history as you have written.

Wages

We have had this discussion before today and you know where I stand. I will give you the numbers and you do the math and extrapolate the answer for me. In 1976, prior to deregulation I had a job driving a truck that was 2 years older than I was. The job involved pick up of a loaded trailer of produce, essentially hauling it 300 miles and hand bombing the load off at a grocery chain distribution center. If you really hustled, you could get the job done in 8 hours but it usually took closer to 10 hours. For my efforts I was paid 32.00 total BEFORE tax deductions. Call it 10 cents a mile and 2 bucks for pitching the load off. Here we are almost 50 years later. If you are a good, safe, competent truck driver that is willing to work hard and you don't have a gross annual income in excess of $100,000.00 you need to change jobs. Your working conditions in terms of equipment comfort, availability of showers and most other on road amenities has never been better than it is today. The highways you drive on are so much better it was back then allowing you to achieve far better productive use of your time thus allowing more and better productivity and higher income.


I think your anecdote here is useful in providing more nuance to the deregulation story.

As you say, you were hauling produce in 1976; in America, at least, all hauling of agricultural products was exempt from the strictures of regulation. This might explain why you were being offered such a paltry sum, as the rates for that work were by government dictate much lower than those charged by carriers operating in the rest of the economy.


You mention that drivers operate in a much improved environment today, with far better roads and amenities available that a driver teleported from 1976 would be amazed at. That is all true, however, the driver today is also subject to far more scrutiny by the state in the form of mandated surveillance technology, and the exponential increase in enforcement on the road from the likes of the DOT, all the while working for customers who still grossly abuse their time. You win some and lose some, I guess.

You also make the mistake of failing to acknowledge averages. Yes, there are some trucking jobs that pay in excess of 100k a year, but there are so many that don’t, and so many of these indentured servants running around operating below cost, that the average is in the toilet, and those guys at the bottom end are forcing the wage floor down for everybody else.

I also don’t have to remind you that 100k ain’t what it used to be, especially under BidenFlation, and it doesn’t even begin to reflect the cost in sacrifice of those who spend so much time away from home.

I do want to be respectful to you and your family, though - you guys are the top operators in Canada, and have done right by me and everyone else who has ever worked for you, be it monetarily, and in the departments of proper training, and affording the respect required to professional men. Because you are looking at things from your perch as the best in the business, it clouds the fact that so many of the other choices available to drivers are shit, and they can’t all work for the likes of you, which is part of the reason I write what I do.

Driver Shortage

You are absolutely correct, there is no shortage of truck drivers today, however there is a CRITICAL shortage of good truck drivers. Apparently, you and our governments think the solution is more regulation. Step back and ask yourself, does anyone or any industry really need more government? The very reason we are in this mess is because is because of unfettered government regulation. Intrusion into our rights to privacy and the ability to make a living. Forcing us to sleep when we can’t and drive when it isn’t safe to do so. ELD’s have essentially put a stop watch on every commercial driver in North American forcing them to take chances and drive in a manner they wouldn’t otherwise consider. We certainly don’t need any more laws or regulations, all we need is the elimination of the ones that we have proven don’t work and far more importantly, the enforcement of the ones that do work. What if every driver had to complete a written test on their own without the use of an interpreter that may or may not be doing a little couching as well. What if every driver upon successful completion of that test had to perform a proper comprehensive road test given by someone that is actually licensed and qualified to operate that vehicle and that possessed the integrity to refuse to accept the bribe offered by the crook and alternatively ensure that person was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and imprisoned as result. You think that sounds harsh, how about we ask the family members of the Humbolt hockey team if they think it is harsh. Once that person has managed to secure that license how about the companies that hire them be held accountable to make sure they ride with a seasoned veteran until that same seasoned veteran feels comfortable turning them out onto the roads with the motoring public. Make sure it is the seasoned veteran that makes that call and not some schooled up expert in HR or God help us someone from the government. You and I both know that works best because that is how we learned. No amount of pretend experience at a driving school will ever come close to that level of training. The very last thing we as an industry need is to place more barriers to entry to the young people graduating high school to get enthused about a career in trucking. Has anyone ever wondered why we don’t attract good young people? Could it be that we won’t allow them to participate in our industry until they are 21 years old and have been out of school for most of 4 years and have had to find a means of supporting themselves and their families for what may as well be an eternity? You trained with some and I know you have worked with people that grew up on a farm or an environment that placed them around and operated machinery since they were able to climb up on it and start it. Do you think it is fair that that person should have to endure the same restrictions and timetables as the person who immigrated here from a country that doesn't even have motor vehicles? Perhaps it is time people be graded and qualified on merit and ability rather than dates on a calendar or the authority of an unqualified and/or unscrupulous agent of the government?



I think you are disagreeing with my advocacy for the imposition of a graduated licensing system on truck drivers, and you make some great points.

If such a system were to be put in place, I would want there to be carve outs for those like us who grew up around trucks, and were already driving them before we even finished high school, or, like in Alberta, we allow the licensing process to begin much earlier for young people who grow up working on the farm. I absolutely agree with you here about all of that.

One of the reasons I believe such a system would work is that I have seen how it operates in other countries, namely New Zealand and Australia. Yes, those countries mandate that you must have the equivalent of a CDL B for one year before you can go towing a trailer, and in the case of Australia, another year of towing a single trailer before you can graduate to B Trains and Road Trains. What the industries in those countries have done to make that work is incorporated a lot of ‘Hub and Spoke’ delivery systems, both to provide the necessary training to new entrants to the business, and to make up for the limitations on large vehicles in urban areas.

Given the problem we have with illiterate peasants being brought to North America and the utter stupidity of ‘Wokism’ and its belief that we are ‘all the same’, some mechanism has to be imposed to make sure these people know what they’re doing before they get to do the same job you or I and our decades of experience get to do.

Maybe there is another mechanism, I don’t know, but I do reference the graduated system from Down Under a lot because it does work for them.

As for the nuances you shared about the real shortage of experienced truck drivers, I have expounded on that in a few other articles, perhaps you missed them?

https://americancompass.org/crash-and-churn/

A newer trucker advocacy organization called CDL-Drivers Unlimited did their own investigation into the number of active commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) in the United States and found that there were roughly three times as many licensed CDL drivers in circulation as jobs that require one. But often, a new driver trained by the taxpayers, even if he only sticks around a year, is cheaper to employ than any of those drivers who left after discovering how the industry really functions.

This real shortage—of experienced truckers—itself has substantial effects. Many niche market and specialty carriers express concerns over a seeming lack of truckers capable of hauling hazardous materials, or navigating the roads with oversize and overweight loads. The industry chews through so many people that not enough drivers stick around to attain the level of experience required for these types of trucking jobs.

I’ve also mentioned this issue of the fake driver shortage creating a real one of experienced drivers in numerous podcast appearances, most recently with my friend

Grant Martsolf

of

The Savage Collective

Substack.

Have a listen when you get some time, I think I provided some very detailed and nuanced responses to Grant’s queries about the business.

Last but certainly not least

Certainly our governments at all levels have been the primary authors of the demise and the current state of our industry. Don’t ever loose sight of the enablers. Don’t forget to shine the light of shame on the biggest and most complicit members of our industry that have learned if they give no or little regard to the capability, qualifications or integrity of the most unscrupulous of operators in our industry they can still turn a profit. The big carriers and 3PL provider can make far more money misrepresenting themselves to their customers as being the safest most conscientious carriers in the country out of one side of their mouths while pimping that freight out to whatever scumbag they can reverse auction the load to with the cheapest rate giving no real regard to any other factor, least of all safety or integrity. This is all done under the guise of “tractor service” , in many cases pulling that very culprits trailer because that carrier can make more money pimping the load than moving it on their own equipment. Maybe it is time these shining stars of our industry be held responsible for their greed. Don’t have to be a mathematician figure out why a tractor service can provide a rate that is half what you need to move the load on your own truck. Maybe the same accountability should apply to shippers that only look at the cost and don’t exercise the proper do diligence when choosing a carrier to ship their product on? If you dig down deep enough and take a good hard look at the root of the disease rather than the symptoms in so many cases it comes down to accountability . Maybe a huge dose of accountability would be the best medicine for our ailing society as well as our floundering industry.


Standing Ovation!

Well said, Paul, and this last part here ought to be understood by the many freight brokers who read this substack.



Once again, I want to thank you for your extremely thoughtful and detailed response to my piece. I have received many positive comments already here on Susbtack and over at Twitter, and the piece, at time of writing, approaching 3500 reads and I already have a major media player asking if they can repurpose it for their own website. Hearing substantive and honest criticism like this can only make everything better.




As always, questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and strongly encouraged.

Why not send me a great email like Paul? - gordilocks@protonmail.com