It’s National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, when the American Trucking Associations holds its annual hot dog and hamburger lunches for the same drivers it spends the rest of the year screwing through its lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. This year, however, drivers might enjoy the free food, cheap swag, and various other perks — if they happen to be in the yard for them — with just a little less cynicism. That’s because the industry’s annual PR stunt happens to coincide with something considerably more valuable: the kind of tangible political "appreciation" that actually produces real change.Most Americans would probably be astonished by how easy it has been to summon a trucking company into existence. On Monday, August 31, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech in Sterling Heights, Michigan, in support of Republican congressional candidate Mike Rogers ahead of the midterm elections.Though Vance started with praise for Rogers and other members of the party, he quickly pivoted to problems in the trucking industry and the administration's efforts to address them, while also highlighting the hard work and sacrifice of American truckers and the displacement they have faced in recent years.“For too long ... the Biden administration allowed American workers and American drivers to be endangered and have their jobs stolen by foreign fraudsters,” Vance said. “Today is about restoring the basic principle that if you want to drive a big truck on America's roads, you ought to be able to speak English, you ought to be a legal resident of the United States of America, and you ought to have basic qualifications because trucking is too important to let it go to foreign fraudsters.”Flooded with foreign laborVance, like anyone else paying attention, can see that the trucking industry has been flooded with foreign labor, helping keep the freight costs of Fortune 500 America low while externalizing the real costs onto everyone else.The Trump administration's crackdown has illuminated the scope of the problem. A 2025 analysis prepared for J.B. Hunt by transportation economist Noël Perry estimated that the administration's English-language requirements, immigration enforcement, and restrictions on non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses could ultimately remove as many as 614,000 drivers from the industry — nearly 16% of the nation's heavy-truck driver population.Speaking more freely to Overdrive, Perry said the number could go as high as 800,000 — a figure more in line with estimates I've heard coming from administration insiders.The obvious losers in all of this have been legitimate American trucking companies. An already brutal freight market has been made even harder by competition from unscrupulous operators willing to cut corners by skirting the licensing, training, labor, and safety standards responsible carriers have to meet.And the problem is compounded by Mexican trucking companies engaging in illegal cabotage — hauling domestic loads between American destinations using Mexican trucks and drivers. More than 20 trucking-related companies sought bankruptcy protection during one 30-day period this spring alone, and another 21 transportation and supply-chain businesses filed for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 between late July and August 25.The administration's crackdown is finally beginning to tighten the freight market and push rates back up. But in a classic case of you win some, you lose some, diesel prices have now hit record highs.License to kill?Vance's speech also coincided with an announcement from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy of a “whole-of-government” attack on another part of the problem: deficient CDL schools churning out poorly trained and sometimes completely unqualified drivers onto American highways.The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a division of DOT, issued immediate shutdown notices to 110 truck-driving schools and put another 160 on notice that they could be removed from operation.The stakes are much higher than faulty paperwork. According to DOT, non-domiciled drivers who would no longer qualify for licenses under the administration's new rules were involved in at least 17 fatal crashes that killed 30 people in 2025 alone. Yes, 30 innocent Americans died thanks to drivers who can't read road signs, don't know the rules of the road, and have no business getting behind the wheel of what is essentially an 80,000-pound missile. On the other hand, somebody saved a bundle on labor costs.Say their namesThis summer has been just as deadly. In July, 21-year-old University of Massachusetts Lowell soccer player Tobias “Toby” Forsythe was killed on Interstate 71 in Ohio when a tractor-trailer driven by 42-year-old Bekhzod Asrarov slammed into the back of his car.Asrarov, an Uzbek national who entered the United States through the diversity visa lottery in 2024, held an Ohio CDL but needed Google Translate to communicate with first responders at the scene. According to court records and law-enforcement sources, he also tried to destroy or conceal his dashcam and other electronic devices after the crash.Ah yes, another highly skilled, conscientious immigrant doing his part to help alleviate America's fake trucker "shortage."And the deaths continued during the very week of Duffy's announcement.In the early hours of September 4, in Mesquite, Texas, 33-year-old Lisa Maldonado was killed in a crash involving a truck driven by Khasan Begbaev, who was working for a subcontractor hauling for Knight-Swift, one of America's largest trucking companies. Begbaev has been charged with manslaughter. Police say he was reversing down a freeway entrance ramp before the crash.On September 3, 50-year-old Brenda Watson was killed in a head-on collision in Ohio after a semi driven by Manjit Singh pulled out to pass another vehicle and struck Watson's car. Transportation Secretary Duffy subsequently said Singh was being held on an active Homeland Security detainer and that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was investigating both his carrier and the training school where he received his CDL.Two days earlier, police in Moab, Utah, stopped 30-year-old Chamkaur Singh (no relation) after clocking him driving a semi-truck 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. When officers ran his name, they discovered a nationwide warrant for vehicular manslaughter stemming from a California semi crash that killed four people. California authorities had reportedly been searching for him for two months.Amazon's shameAlso on September 1, a horrific crash took place in Tennessee involving a tractor-trailer pulling an Amazon trailer. The truck crossed the median on Interstate 40, crashed into several vehicles, and burst into flames. Its driver, 35-year-old Farahov Fhsvaisov, was killed and three other people were hospitalized.The cause remains under investigation, and little has been publicly reported about Fhsvaisov beyond his registered Brooklyn address — an essentially meaningless bureaucratic detail. As for Fhsvaisov's actual citizenship and licensing status, that is precisely the kind of information Kathy Hochul's New York is now suing to keep out of the Trump administration's hands.And it's not just New York. More than 20 states and the District of Columbia have joined the challenge to federal demands for access to commercial-driver information held in state databases. The states cite privacy concerns and argue that the federal government lacks the authority to obtain the information; the administration says access is necessary to uncover fraud and illegally obtained commercial licenses.Amazon's apparent involvement in the Fhsvaisov crash can't help but recall long-standing questions about the company's enormous network of outside trucking contractors. A 2022 Wall Street Journal investigation found that frequent Amazon contractors were more than twice as likely as comparable carriers to receive poor unsafe-driving scores; a later CBS News analysis found Amazon contractors had unsafe-driving violation rates at least 89% higher than other carriers in every month of the six-year period it examined. Highway to hellYet while Secretary Duffy and other elements of the Trump administration are trying to restore sanity to the trucking industry, truckers are being attacked not only by the forces bringing insourced labor to compete with them, but by many on the left who want to preserve that system. Truckers are also being threatened by the clumsiness of some of Duffy's reforms as well as elements in the Republican Party that want to replace truckers not only with insourced labor but eventually with robots.Let's start with licensing.In March, the FMCSA issued a new rule limiting who can be issued what is called a “non-domiciled” CDL.Non-domiciled CDLs began as a narrow exception for drivers who could not obtain a recognized commercial license where they lived, including certain foreign drivers. Under the Obama administration, the old “nonresident CDL” was renamed the “non-domiciled CDL.”The category became far more consequential over time. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, the FMCSA issued guidance — later endorsed by the American Trucking Associations — allowing foreign nationals with federal work permits to obtain non-domiciled CDLs.Then came the Biden immigration surge. As the administration extended work authorization to huge numbers of migrants, it also vastly expanded the pool of foreign workers who could take advantage of the non-domiciled CDL system. Investigations into the system through 2025 found that roughly 200,000 drivers had been issued these licenses illegally and would see them revoked, or at least would not be renewed on expiry.The Trump administration has now effectively closed the broader EAD pathway, limiting non-domiciled CDLs to a much narrower group of foreign workers with specific employment-based visas.'Public' menaceThe new rule is now being challenged in federal court. The lawsuit was filed by Public Citizen, the progressive advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, on behalf of two immigrant truck drivers, AFSCME, and the American Federation of Teachers. It argues that the FMCSA does not have the legal authority to remove such a large class of legally authorized immigrants from CDL eligibility.For their part, the unions claim to be advocating on behalf of immigrant members who could lose their jobs under the rule. That puts two major American labor unions in the strange position of fighting a reform that could remove a huge pool of foreign labor from competition with American drivers. How organized labor wound up fighting to preserve cheap foreign competition is a question for another piece. Curious readers might begin by looking into the sprawling network of nonprofits and foundations funding Public Citizen; several of them are also major backers of more permissive immigration policies.RELATED: The deadly trucker crisis — and why mass migration is to blame Justin Hamel/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesDalilah's LawThere is, however, a straightforward way for supporters of the crackdown to fight back: Put the reforms into federal law.Dalilah's Law is named after a California girl who suffered catastrophic injuries after the car her mother was driving was rear-ended by a commercial truck. If passed, the law would tighten CDL standards, reinforce English-proficiency requirements, restrict eligibility for non-domiciled licenses, and crack down on deficient driver-training schools.It would also address the outsourcing of freight brokerages and dispatch services overseas, a little-discussed but important part of the problem. If a load broker in Serbia or Pakistan fails to perform necessary due diligence in vetting a carrier, holding that broker accountable from the United States can be extraordinarily difficult. Dalilah's Law would bring more of this activity within reach of American regulators.No good deedWhile all this is going on, the FMCSA has undertaken a revamp of the federal system through which trucking companies register. In an interview with “60 Minutes” earlier this year, FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs described the industry as having a “front door” problem: It has been too easy for bad actors — including so-called chameleon carriers, unsafe trucking companies that shut down and simply reappear under new names — to enter or re-enter the market.Most Americans would probably be astonished by how easy it has been to summon a trucking company into existence. Just pay the $300 federal operating-authority fee, provide insurance and paperwork, and list a U.S. business address.On paper, that address has to check out, and within 12 months you're supposed to undergo a safety audit, followed by monitoring for the rest of an 18-month probationary period. But that assumes an overwhelmed system actually gets to you.To address this, our bureaucrats have decided to bureaucrat some more with a new system called Motus, which has produced the results typical of government: penalizing operators who attempt to obey the rules, while essentially giving a free pass to anyone determined to break the law. In a detailed examination of the rollout, trucking-industry writer Danielle Chaffin documented legitimate carriers unable to operate because Motus incorrectly showed them as inactive or saddled them with erroneous insurance requirements. At the same time, she found carriers with out-of-service orders — including some with no insurance on file — still showing as active in the new system. As one carrier put it, Motus was “waving the bad actors through the gate and choking the honest ones out.”It seems like decent American companies continue to get stuck in the pincer between the open border policies of the previous administration, and the seeming unwillingness of government agencies to go full Genghis Khan against the bad actors allowed into the industry.Backing the botsAs if displacement and replacement by foreign labor weren't bad enough, we are also looking down the barrel of driver replacement by automation — something the Trump administration is actively encouraging even while it takes steps to protect truckers from foreign labor.On September 3, DOT released its “National Strategy for Automated Vehicles,” laying out the administration's priorities for automated-vehicle technology through 2030. The document largely concerns the bureaucratic minutiae of regulating vehicles that may or may not accommodate a human driver at all. But it will also help guide how the government deals with autonomous trucks.Congress is considering the BUILD America 250 Act, a major surface-transportation bill that includes a federal framework for autonomous commercial vehicles. Republicans are also behind legislation such as the AMERICA DRIVES Act, introduced by California Republican Rep. Vince Fong, provisions of which have been incorporated into the larger bill.The legislation seeks to limit state-level regulatory authority over autonomous commercial vehicles, including state requirements that certain highly automated trucks have a human being aboard.Supporters argue that a national framework is necessary to prevent a patchwork of state regulations from strangling an emerging American technology. But Republicans should understand why their messaging looks confused to America's truckers and why Fong's bill seems at odds with their usual commitment to federalism.On one hand, the administration is finally addressing their replacement by foreign labor. On the other, Republicans are working to remove regulatory barriers for technology whose ultimate promise is to move freight without anyone sitting behind the wheel.Stuck in the middleDo we have any friends in government at all?The left appears happy to defend policies that allow American trucking companies to replace domestic labor with cheaper foreign drivers. Republicans are finally addressing that problem, but they also appear remarkably credulous when dealing with autonomous-vehicle developers whose technology could eventually supplant truckers' jobs altogether.Vice President Vance said in his speech that “we care about America's truckers because for generations they have represented something much greater ... the very best of this country's character, people who spend long hours away from their families.”“In some ways, truckers are the modern cowboys.”I would submit to Vice President Vance that the administration's actions thus far have been welcome and helpful for America's truckers, and they deserve to be commended. But the administration needs to do more. It should continue removing bad actors from the trucking industry, pass Dalilah's Law, make sure its own bureaucracy doesn't punish legitimate operators, and be more realistic about what emerging technologies mean for us and for our economy.The modern cowboys would like to keep on trucking for as long as we can.
