- The trucking industry is a vital part of the US economy, but it is facing a shortage of drivers.
- The problem is not necessarily a shortage of drivers, but rather a high turnover rate and low job satisfaction.
- Truck drivers are often not paid for waiting time at loading docks, leading to frustration and safety concerns.
- Government regulations on driving hours and breaks can be frustrating for drivers and limit their agency.
- Many trucking companies classify drivers as independent contractors, giving them control over their day-to-day lives.

- Many companies misclassify truck drivers as independent contractors instead of employees.
- Drivers have little control over their company's success and lack benefits and protections.
- Being classified as an independent contractor allows companies to avoid paying taxes, workers' comp, and minimum wage.
- Independent contractors are responsible for all costs and risks of truck ownership.
- Port truckers and last mile drivers are also affected by misclassification.
- Amazon and other companies distance themselves from liability by using independent contractors.
- Lease purchase agreements rarely result in drivers successfully owning their trucks.
- Drivers can end up owing their company money due to various charges.
- Multiple trucking companies have settled over predatory lease-to-own agreements.
- The Departments of Transportation and Labor are examining predatory truck leasing and driver pay.
- Changes need to be made to improve working conditions and retain drivers.

- A new reality show called "Truck Dom" is being promoted
- The show focuses on the lives of truck drivers in America
- It highlights the challenges they face, such as tough weather, bumpy roads, and budgeting
- The show also includes drama, humor, and romance
- It showcases the fast-paced nature of the freight industry
- The show features not only truck drivers but also company owners
- It promises excitement, adrenaline, and a glimpse into the trucker life
- The show will air on the History Channel.

- The trucking industry in the US is experiencing a shortage of drivers due to high turnover and low job satisfaction.
- Drivers often face frustrations and safety concerns, such as unpaid waiting time and government regulations.
- Many trucking companies misclassify drivers as independent contractors, leading to lack of control, benefits, and protections.
- Independent contractors are responsible for all costs and risks, while companies avoid taxes and minimum wage.
- Predatory lease-to-own agreements have resulted in drivers owing money to their companies.
- The Departments of Transportation and Labor are investigating these issues.
- A new reality show called "Truck Dom" will air on the History Channel, showcasing the challenges and excitement of trucker life.

John Oliver explains how truck drivers get paid, how they often don’t, and how companies exploit them to increase profits.

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Everybody loves them, from kids who like the fact they go, honk, honk, to producers of reality shows who, it seems, cannot get enough of trucks and their drivers.

Across America, giant trucks with cargoes worth millions vanish into thin air.

There's no better way to learn this job than actually doing

World's Toughest Trucker, all new series.

Ice Road Truckers, begins Sunday, June 17th at 10.

Apparently, people like their reality trucker shows the same way I like my coffee, full of ice and intense enough to make me shit myself.

But trucks are not just a staple of reality TV.

They're a vital part of our economy, carrying 70% of the tonnage that moves around America.

And the drivers involved know just how much this country relies on them.

Because nothing you eat, wear, drink, drive...

It's pretty upsetting to realize that without trucks, after just a week...

Every produce department in America would go from fully stocked market to all-you-can-eat raccoon buffet.

So it's No wonder trucking's a huge industry, with more than 3 and a half million people in America working as drivers, from port truckers, who bring goods off ships to rail yards and warehouses, to long-haul truckers who move them across the country, to last-mile drivers who take care of local delivery.

And yet, as you've probably heard recently, the whole industry is facing a massive problem.

All right, we're gonna turn now to a nationwide shortage of truck drivers.

Major truck driver shortage, straining the already stretched chain, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

Empty store shelves signal a supply chain in crisis.

Exacerbated by a shortage of truck drivers.

The only time I'm actively rooting for a supply chain crisis is whenever a container ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal.

I don't care If the entire global economy collapses, I'd just love to see that big rectangle stuck.

The point is, trucking companies have been quick to claim they're suffering a shortage of drivers.

They've been saying that for a while now, but the truth is, their actual problem is less a problem of driver shortage and more of driver retention.

Because hundreds of thousands of people become truck drivers every year, but hundreds of thousands also quit.

Job turnover for truckers averages over 100%.

And at some companies, it's as high as 300%.

Meaning they're hiring 3 people for a single job over the course of a year.

And when a field this important has a level of job satisfaction that low, it sure seems like there is a huge problem.

So tonight, let's examine the trucking industry.

How drivers make a living, how they often don't, and how companies benefit from the whole miserable system.

And the first thing to know is, it wasn't always like this.

In the 1970s, truck driving was a solid middle-class profession, with trucker culture even becoming trendy through songs like Convoy, movies like Every Which Way But Loose, and TV shows like BJ and the Bear about a trucker and his chimpanzee friend.

And you're thinking, that show sounds weird?

BJ was a happy-go-lucky trucker who would haul anything for a price.

The guy hauls anything anywhere for a buck and a half a mile, no questions asked.

But this time, his cargo was 11 young women escaping from a white slavery gang.

And the Bear next Wednesday at 9, 8 central and mountain.

The true golden age of television right there.

This whole medium peaked in 1979, and we will never see the mountaintop again.

That promo started, started, with a driver living with a chimpanzee, and it escalated so fast, Casey Kasem didn't have time to mention the chimp.

It seems we're shooting guns from helicopters at other helicopters now.

Those details are just gonna have to wait.

Every year, the Emmy should release a statement saying, all awards go to BJ and the Bear again.

But the truth is, truck driving was genuinely a decent job.

But that began to change in 1980, when Jimmy Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act, deregulating the market in an attempt to lower prices for consumers.

That set off a race to the bottom in cutting wages among trucking companies.

And 40 years later, the base compensation for long-haul truck drivers is estimated to be down 50 percent in real terms.

And there are 3 key problems with the way the industry's currently set up that we're gonna look at tonight.

Because most long-haul drivers are paid by the mile, not by the hour, raising obvious questions like, well, what about when trucks are waiting to load, unload, and reload?

This is a huge sticking point for truck drivers.

If you ever go on Trucker YouTube or TikTok, which you absolutely should, you will see a lot of videos like these.

Why do we have to sit in a dock for 3 hours, or 3 and a half hours up to this point?

No other, not many other jobs where you can just be on the job and not get paid.

Sitting over there judging me, but I don't have a reload.

I can't help it the dispatcher's slow as shit.

The waiting time, that is, not the fact that dogs don't have thumbs and can't use a phone.

That is probably a good thing, because if they could do that, they would literally never stop texting you shit like, -"Fuck, fuck, fuck, I just saw a squirrel." --LAUGHTER And, miss you, love you, -"Fuck, just saw the squirrel again!" --LAUGHTER And while this isn't a new problem, long waits at loading docks have actually jumped significantly in recent years.

And if you are paid per mile and lose half your workday waiting, you are incentivized to try and make up for that time once you're on the road, which does make sense, doesn't it?

If I only got paid per joke about AT&T, I'd try and cram in as many AT&T jokes as possible.

I'd be dropping them like AT&T drops calls, because the more Johnny burns, the more Johnny earns.

-♪ ♪ -♪ But this can be a real safety problem for all of us.

5000 people each year are killed in crashes involving large trucks.

Now, the government has tried to address safety concerns by mandating breaks and limiting the number of hours truckers can be on the road.

They even require electronic monitoring devices like this 1 that log when the truck is moving to ensure compliance.

But many drivers find that frustrating in a different way because it limits their agency over how and when they can drive.

The thing this does do is it forces you to get up and go if you're tired.

It forces you to get up and go if you don't feel good.

And it's not about running 24 hours a day.

It's about making a common sense decision on how you feel, how the road conditions are, whether or not you want to run through rush hour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Look, there are some jobs you can absolutely do if you don't feel good.

Because this desk isn't moving towards you at 80 miles an hour, so the consequences of my poor job performance are not likely to kill anyone.

And when these rigid rules bump up against unpredictable work hours, drivers are put in an impossible position.

Take this driver, whose company made him take his ten-hour break during the day when he couldn't sleep, and then found himself driving exhausted at night.

And when he called his dispatcher to say that he felt unsafe to drive, just watch how badly the call went.

Hey, man, We got a bit of a problem, dude.

I'm starting to fall asleep going down the road here.

The K&B dispatchers, instead of telling him to just get some rest, hot potato Abe from 1 dispatcher to another, each of them with the same advice.

Get some coffee and then let's, we don't have a choice on this.

Get a cup of coffee, walk around the truck, do something.

That, what is it, about 10 degrees outside?

I'm telling you, I'm not safe to drive at the moment.

That's not how we work your game, you know.

I say I'm not gonna hurt anybody out here on

That's dramatic **** that I don't need this morning, right?

Get out of here with that dramatic shit until at least 1 p.m.

It's like the mug says, don't confront me with the potentially lethal consequences of my reckless decision making until after I've had my coffee.

So Drivers end up getting squeezed between regulations and the companies that they drive for, and at no point in the process are their own feelings or needs taken into account.

And that is not the only way that they get squeezed here, because the second exploitative quirk of this industry concerns the relationship between drivers and trucking companies.

Many carriers classify drivers not as employees, but as independent contractors.

And while there are some to whom that label truly applies, those who genuinely have the freedom to choose between different loads and haul for whomever they want, the fact is, many companies misclassify drivers as independent who work exclusively for them, and whose day-to-day lives they fundamentally control.

And there are obvious reasons for companies to do this, as this trucker explains.

I am classified as an independent contractor, but I have very, very little control over the success or failure of my company.

Despite his so-called independence, Pryor works exclusively for shippers, which doles out his daily routes.

He's seen his paychecks dwindle and has none of the protections he would get as an employee.

Long as we're independent contractors, they don't have to cover benefits, they don't have to cover sick days, bereavement, leave time, holiday pay.

Yeah, of course this is attractive for companies.

They don't even have to give you time off when a family member dies.

So, unless your nana's wake is being held in front of the diesel pump at a Wawa, you're probably not gonna be able to attend.

And it actually exempts them from even more than what he just said there, because it also allows companies to avoid paying payroll taxes, workers' comp, and unemployment insurance, as well as the minimum wage.

And if that wasn't enough, being an independent contractor means all the costs and risks of truck ownership get pushed onto the driver.

Just watch as this former trucker explains exactly what was left of her household earnings once she and her husband had accounted for all their costs.

Okay, so right there, now I made $50,000.

But I didn't really because you know, you get an oil change every month, so it's $300 a month.

You still have to do all the maintenance.

I mean, I choked up a little just thinking about it, because it was...

And it was $13,000, and we were off work for 2 weeks.

end of the year, with that $150,000, by the end of the year, we'd made about 20...

And look, I am no CPA, despite the face, glasses, and insatiable horniness for numbers that strongly implies otherwise, but that seems like a pretty shitty bottom line.

And while most of the drivers that you've seen so far tonight have been in long haul, this independent contractor problem also very much applies to those at either end of the shipping process, too, like port truckers, where 1 study estimated two-thirds of them are misclassified, and also last mile drivers.

Those are the people who drive box trucks or sprinter vans to deliver stuff directly to your door.

You know how you see FedEx ground trucks?

Those aren't actually FedEx employees, despite every visual indication to the contrary.

They may wear a FedEx uniform, their truck may say FedEx on it, and they may exclusively deliver packages for FedEx, but they are technically independent.

If you look carefully at the side of their trucks, you will see small fine print indicating who actually owns it, and it's not FedEx.

Amazon uses a similar model with its delivery service partners.

And again, the appeal for Amazon is obvious.

Using drivers that aren't direct employees allows them to distance themselves from liability when things go wrong, which they do, particularly given the ridiculous pace that Amazon expects.

You've probably heard all of the stories about drivers having to urinate into bottles because they didn't have time to stop.

That speaks to the relentless pressure to deliver hundreds of packages per shift.

People are busting their ass, driving way over the speed limit.

People are running through stop signs, running through yellow lights.

Everybody I knew was buckling their seatbelt behind their backs because the time it took just to buckle your seatbelt, unbuckle your seatbelt every time was enough time to get you behind schedule.

I thought that everyone knew the only place it's absolutely fine not to have a seatbelt is for some reason, a school bus.

That is where we collectively agreed to skimp on them as a society.

We'll put a little stop sign on the outside.

And if you think that non-stop pressure seems like an accident waiting to happen, It already has.

Investigations by ProPublica and BuzzFeed found that in a four-year window, drivers delivering Amazon packages have been involved in more than 60 crashes that led to serious injuries, including 13 deaths.

Or as that's more commonly known, a Bezos' dozen.

But again, Amazon is basically off the hook here because these drivers are not their employees, they're independent contractors, meaning that the contractor is responsible for anything that goes wrong, not them.

In fact, under Amazon's contracts, they're even reportedly responsible for paying Amazon's legal bills in the event of a lawsuit, which, you know what, is actually only fair.

It's not like Jeff Bezos can afford to pay all those lawyers.

He's spending his money on things that truly benefit society, like launching himself into space before disappointing everyone and coming back home safely.

And amazingly, I've got 1 more exploitative quirk of this industry to show you, and it's something called lease purchase agreements.

This is a system where drivers who cannot afford their own truck offer the chance to lease 1 from the company they drive for with the promise that they'll earn enough to eventually pay it off and own it.

Here is 1 company giving you the hard sell.

Find your true potential and earning power with truck ownership.

Western's lease purchase program is like no other.

There's no money down, no credit check, and no balloon payments.

At Western Express, we deliver independence, 1 driver at a time.

Okay, for what it's worth, I am immediately suspicious of phrases like, own your future and find your true potential.

Companies with selling points like that typically leave you with nothing but debt and a closet full of leggings designed to turn your crotch into a magic eye poster.

And the fact is, drivers who participate in lease-to-own agreements almost never succeed.

1 trucking company executive even estimated that of all the drivers entering into their lease purchase program, only around 5 to 10 percent actually ended up successfully taking ownership of the truck.

And as for the whole delivering independence part, that is the real irony here.

If you are leasing a truck from the company you work for, you are now tethered to them.

You are reliant on them to give you loads to earn money, which you are then paying back to them to pay off your lease on top of all the other expenses they can throw at you.

This has been a common problem for both long-haul and port truckers.

until each week, they get paid each week, and it could take them until Wednesday or even Thursday before they even begin to make $100.

And the reason for that is because the company charges them to use the company truck.

They charge them to maintain the company truck, to buy new tires.

They even charge these guys to park the company truck at the company yard overnight.

They don't, they can't even take it home.

In 1 case, a company even charged contractors for using company toilet paper.

All of which can lead a driver to actually owe their company money at the end of a work week.

Can you imagine picking up your paycheck and finding an envelope full of negative $5 bills, you'd be absolutely furious.

And yes, that is John Wilkes Booth on the negative 5, which makes sense.

You know, just like how Aaron Burr is on the negative 10, And the negative hundred features the 72-ounce steak Ben Franklin choked on while trying to win a T-shirt.

If they stay with the company, they can end up scraping to get by, but if they leave, they risk losing the truck they've poured so much into, as most lease-to-own agreements stipulate that if the driver leaves the company, it can take back the truck, leaving the driver with nothing.

It is frankly no surprise multiple trucking companies have settled over accusations brought by drivers who found their lease-to-own agreements predatory.

And in fact, Western Express, the Own Your Future company, is currently awaiting court sign-off of a 15 million dollar class action settlement right now.

And I know at least 1 person who might be happy to hear that because Just watch this former Western Express driver talking about how she felt misled after opening a paycheck that came to, after all the company's deductions, just $293.

If I had the strength to pick this truck up and throw it straight to Mars, I would.

Don't listen to those recruits, because I'm telling you, they fucking lying.

Yeah, and it is probably a good thing that people aren't strong enough to hurl a semi-truck to Mars, Because if they were, NASA would probably have to plan their rover missions around the constant rain of 35,000 pound debt traps.

Well, first, we should probably recognize that we have all gotten used to the idea of free next day shipping.

But crucially, someone somewhere always pays the price.

Second, the work arrangements that drivers endure and the fundamental lack of value placed on their time clearly needs to be addressed.

And the good news is, the Departments of Transportation and Labor are set to examine the type of predatory truck leasing arrangements that we just talked about.

They also plan to study the issue of driver pay and unpaid waiting times.

And hopefully, they won't just study it, but actually also fucking do something about it.

Because the key way to stop this so-called shortage of drivers that we've actually had for years now is to make this a job that people actually want to stay in.

And until we make big changes here, the very least we can do is make our trucking reality shows a little more reflective of what life on the road for so many drivers is actually like.

They flow across our highways, driven by people tough enough to do 1 of the grittiest jobs on earth.

There's a lot of ways you can die out here.

From the makers of Ice Road Truckers and World's Toughest Truckers comes the realest reality show yet.

Each week, Watch the best drivers go up against the biggest odds.

Navigating tough weather, bumpy roads, and hardcore budgeting.

These old road dogs have diesel in their blood, and they're living the American dream!

I just got to haul what my company tells me, where they tell me, during the hours that they specify in a truck that I pay for and do not own.

There's no slowing down for these road warriors, because in the freight industry, every minute counts.

Is this a charge for company toilet paper?

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