The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is extremely honored to have had the opportunity to introduce to you Mr Shannon Everett, of a legitimate trucker advocacy organization called American Truckers United that has been crunching data on the flooding of America’s trucking market with foreign ‘drivers’, and how our political class is allowing and actively encouraging our replacement.
ATUs look into the issue of Commercial Drivers Licenses (CDLs) over the past decade has revealed some very questionable spikes with various states issuing them at 5 to 10 times the normal rate starting in 2020, and continuing into 2024. The Covid demand spike in 2020 and 2021 does not explain all of this as the spike has continued through the freight crash and recession that started in 2022.
Shannon tells us why.
ATUs research has also shown a major correlation between the insourcing of foreign labor onto our roads and a slow and steady increase in truck involved collisions and fatalities that curiously start around 2016, when the FMCSA, under the Obama Administration, waived any enforcement of English language proficiency as required under 42 CFR § 391.11 (b)(2).
It should be no surprise to anyone involved in trucking that the introduction of the ELD mandate in 2017 did *squat* to curb this.
Shannon also describes for us how various states are actively writing legislation not to stop any of this, rather, they actively encourage it by changing definitions and lowering standards for the privilege to operate a Big Rig in America.
But he is fighting back, and has an Arkansas State Representative named Wayne Long, who with ATU crafted legislation to prevent Arkansas from lowering standards that allow the insourcing of unvetted foreign labor on to our roads.
https://arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/Detail?id=HB1569&ddBienniumSession=2025%2F2025R
There are many examples of people being killed on our roads by ‘truckers’ who have been allowed to be insourced to America very quietly under the radar all the while corporate lobby groups like the American Trucking Association cry about a truck driver shortage that is not real and never has been.
On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials told Denver7 Investigates Cruz-Mendoza was in the U.S. illegally and had been ordered to be removed to Mexico. The agency had been aware of Cruz-Mendoza since an arrest in Jefferson County, Oregon, in April 2002. Since then, an ICE spokesperson said Cruz-Mendoza had faced multiple removals and returned to Mexico at least 16 times.
Kentucky State Police say Caldwell was loading a vehicle onto a rollback when a commercial truck hit him. Caldwell was pronounced dead at the scene. 29-year-old Shodmon Yuldashev was charged with tampering with physical evidence. The citation says he was actively watching YouTube on an ELD tablet. Safety is a growing concern for these drivers.
Upon an investigation, the citation reported that Shodmon Yuldashev tried to conceal his "ELD or Electronic Log Device" on the dashboard after he was stopped. Several troopers reportedly saw the electronic device "actively playing YouTube" before a detective arrived on the scene to inspect the vehicle.
According to the citation, Yuldashev was allegedly "watching YouTube on his ELD Tablet with a tablet mounted on the center of the dash visible to the driver."
Mr Yuldashev, at time of this posting, has still not been apprehended, and it may just be that he’s back home in Uzbekistan.
Speaking of Uzbekistan, a freight brokering operation located there was behind farming out a load to a contractor for FedEx employing a driver from Haiti who killed two people in Texas back in 2021. That freight broker in Uzbekistan enagaged in an illegal practice known as ‘double brokering’. His MC number was shut down, but he later opened up under a new one and is still out there giving loads to illiterates that have no idea how to drive safely. Find out more about that tragic incident in this clip from WFAA here -
Thankfully, members of the media such as WFAA are starting to notice a pattern, and as of this morning, American Truckers United was featured in a Wyoming newspaper looking into the problem, as Wyoming has some very high truck crash numbers relative to the rest of the country. This article is definitely worth a read, and I want to thank the Cowboy State Daily for publishing it.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/02/28/with-trucking-fatalities-on-the-rise-some-blame-drivers-who-cant-read-english/
The facts don’t lie.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/large-trucks/
Shannon also described the economic aspect to this problem, and how the insourcing of all these foreign drivers to America has effectively created two parallel trucking markets that each play by a different set of rules, and, more importantly, a different set of costs, which allows one market to vastly undercut the other.
2024 was another bloodbath for small to medium sized trucking companies in America, and if you want to read about the hundreds of closed companies, those seeking bankruptcy protection, and the thousands of drivers who are now unemployed, head on over to FreightWaves - they have an entire section of their website dedicated to nothing but news of this economic disaster.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/category/news/business/layoffs-and-bankruptcies
I want to ask everyone who has listened to this podcast or read through the notes here to head over to ATUs website and sign up to become a member, and thus keep up with all of the news in the battle to save the American Trucker, and many lives.
https://americantruckers.com/sign-up-now/
In addition, you can follow ATU co-founders Shannon Everett and Harvey Beech on Twitter -
Shannon - https://x.com/atutruckers
Harvey - https://x.com/EOSTrucking
Shannon and Harvey, along with fellow co-founder Cliff Bates, have been doing the hard yards of pursuing the statistics and data where others would rather pretend there isn’t a problem, either from a fear of the woke culture we still live under, or because they profit from ignoring it and pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
As mentioned in the show, please share this podcast with as many of your fellow truckers as you can, and send it, along with all of the information presented here, to your state and federal representatives, and demand that they improve road safety and do something to stop yet another American industry from being totally destroyed by the forces of globalism and greed.
If you want to read how this problem is playing out in Canada, have a read of a Substack post of mine from a few months ago - it is now the most read piece I’ve ever written here at nearly 7000 reads according to Substack’s analytics.
You will also have heard that I am writing a book about the War on North American Truckers - ATU will be featured prominently in it.
If you would like to hear more about that book, and possibly pitch in to help me get it written and out the door by the end of this year -
You can donate to that project here -
https://www.givesendgo.com/EndOfTheRoad
Thanks for listening/reading, and for paying attention.
Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and strongly encouraged - gordilocks@protonmail.com
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