Detailed Info

how the OOSCA came to be

I am an owner-operating small carrier who’s fed up with the way things are going in our beloved Trucking Industry. I love what I do, and can’t imagine doing anything else, but the shippers, brokers, mega-carriers and the Government have all ganged up on the Owner-Operators & Small Carriers (OOSC) that collectively move most of everything in America. The reason they’ve been able to do so is because we won’t stand up for ourselves and fight back, even though we have all the power in this industry. Shippers and brokers are literally banking on our division and the OOSC’s competitiveness. Instead of going after shippers and brokers, we remain their slaves while making fun of our own brothers and sisters to help pass the time as we struggle to make ends meet. While brokers are having meetings discussing how well they’re doing and how they were able to lower their transportation costs yet again to show record profits quarter after quarter, we’re bickering with each other while hurtling toward our own demise. We’d like to show record profits too, since we’re doing all the work, but why should brokers care if we don’t care about ourselves? If they can take advantage, they will and do. Have you actually ever taken a look to see what some of these broker companies are worth?! I’ll go over that a little later in this text, but the numbers are staggering. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked them up, and the only way they’ve been able to get such high valuations is off of our blood, sweat & tears! Do we ever hear of any brokers going out of business?! How about shippers?! All we ever hear about these days, and often, is that a lot of carriers are going out of business because we are the only ones that take on all the hard work, responsibility & liability, while hauling for peanuts! It’s clear who they think are expendable, but we’re the most important link in the supply chain and should have all the power, because if the OOSC trucks stop moving…they all die! The shippers and the brokers stand to lose the most from the OOSC uniting, while we stand to gain the most but don’t because we’re blinded by our division instead of uniting for tomorrow’s opportunities.

This is the reason I decided to start developing a plan to make trucking great for truckers, and that’s how the idea of this Alliance was born. The Owner-Operator & Small Carrier Alliance (OOSCA) was created with a sole purpose of becoming the most powerful collective voice of the Owner-Operators & Small Carriers (OOSC), the people who are responsible for keeping America surviving & thriving. Shippers, brokers & mega-carriers are waging WAR on the OOSC while posting record profits year after year, leaving the OOSC’s income to deteriorate to the point of our businesses becoming unsustainable. We are the most important link in the supply chain, and while we are too powerful for anyone to defeat us, it is always our own division that destroys us. Only by standing together will we be able to fight for fair terms, compensation & respect for everything we do and the many sacrifices we make for our beautiful country. It’s time we hold wealthy shippers and brokers that have been robbing us for way too long accountable to provide OOSC with what we are owed & deserve. We’re determined to end the race to the bottom so we can all thrive to be able to keep America moving AND our families fed. Make no mistake: we are at WAR and we are losing, badly, but we haven’t lost yet! The entire country relies on us and only us to keep everything moving, so there’s still a chance for us to band together and take this industry by the horns and make it bend to our whims! The only thing stopping us is our own division. The time to act was yesterday or last year or 30 years ago, but we don’t have that luxury, so the time to act is right now and not waste another second to win back our beloved industry!

Some people may be scared or pretend they like things the way they are or not believe in our power to accomplish our vision for a better trucking industry, but it is my hope that enough of us will understand the value of our plan and the urgency to act now, especially since it doesn’t involve any losses or liabilities to our businesses like all the other efforts tried so far. Those of us who understand that we can’t lose our business for any reason will understand the value that the OOSCA’s plan creates, while the rest will keep doing what they’ve been doing and go out of business like the many that have already done so. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing you’ve been doing but expecting different results.

Take a look at all the info on our site where we go over the industry and its’ issues, as well as our thoughts on the various methods we have at our disposal to transform the trucking industry to benefit its’ hardest working members, without any sacrifices on our part. It is our hope that you will join OOSCA so we can finally unite in our pursuit to save trucking! This is something we’re very passionate about but are powerless to do ourselves. We’ll need as many members as possible to join the fight because there’s great strength in numbers. Only when we are united in our common goals will we have enough power to get what we want & deserve. Simply put, our failure to unite will keep us fighting for scraps forever!

If you agree with our way of thinking & direction, we hope you’ll join the fight and become a member of the OOSCA so we can unite to form the strongest Alliance the trucking industry has ever seen to transform it into something we can all love & respect!

a stick in a bundle can't be broken

the OOSC massacre

The OOSC take on the most responsibility and liability just to have very little, if anything, to show for it, and are therefore suffering and dying. The industry is in the gutter because the way it operates leaves the OOSC to fight for the left-over scraps. The brokers participate in a bidding war against each other in order to secure the shipper contracts, offering absolute lowest garbage rates just to outbid each other. Even when they win the contract, they will again be outbid at some point by another broker, bringing the rates even lower. At the end of the day, the shipper is happy and the brokers don’t care how low they bid because they’re not the ones losing money. They’ll just steal their profits from the OOSC because that’s their standard procedure, just like it is for the shippers to have brokers fight for their loads so they can line their pockets and show higher profits to their investors. The winning broker will then sell those loads after taking a healthy 40%-60% profit, leaving the scraps to the OOSC. The rates most of them offer are not even enough to pay our bills, let alone put food on the table. Brokers get to spend their days in a comfy air-conditioned office, chit-chatting with their fellow scumbags while making huge profits and getting to go home to their families every evening, we work days & nights while struggling to sustain our businesses and support our families. So what do we have here: not only are the shippers winning because they got the unbelievably low rates to move their products, but the scumbag brokers also win, taking a good chunk of our money for themselves while assuming no risk at all, and repeating that process as many times a day as they want to screw as many carriers as possible to maximize their profits. The OOSC, however, are the hardest working part of this equation and the clear losers because we assume all the risks & responsibilities while getting robbed by the shippers, brokers, the regulating & taxing government, fuel, maintenance, repairs, parts, fluids, tow services and road service and so on and so on and so on… Everyone’s got their hands in our pockets and I say it’s about time we stood up for ourselves to put an end to this disrespect & highway robbery.

Industry Issues: Shippers

The shippers have it made. They may have had to pay a little extra during the pandemic, but everyone lost a lot and some lost all during those dark times. That doesn’t mean their standard procedure isn’t to have brokers underbid each other just to have us haul it for less and less. This is a winning business strategy for everyone, except the ones doing all the actual work.

We don’t have to talk much about the shippers, because the only reason they’re able to continue doing business this way is because we let them by going thru the brokers for our loads. Sure it’s easy and convenient, but we can no longer allow this losing practice to go on.

Shippers will ultimately do as the truckers say for one simple reason: we control the movement of their products, not the brokers, and without the ability to ship their products, they won’t be able to make any money and they’ll go bankrupt. They know their freight has to ship no matter what and no one can transport it for them except us. If their brokers are not able to hire any carriers, the shipper will have to deal with us on our terms. After all, they are already paying $4 to $5 per mile to the brokers, and the brokers are stealing most of that money for themselves. We’ve all heard that the brokers are able to take as much as 60% off the load, sometimes more, and leave us with the scraps. Think about it, when the market was good, loads were paying over $5 per mile and most shipper and brokers paid without issue while still being able to profit and expand, but now loads are paying $2 if we’re lucky and scumbag brokers like TQL are pocketing a good 50%+, which means the shippers are paying that $4 to $5 per mile either way, but the money goes to the brokers instead of the people who do all the hard work and assume all the responsibility & liability. It’s time to make sure all that money goes to carriers, and if the shippers will cry that they’ll go out of business due to increased shipping costs, let them cry. I’m sure they’ll be just fine because they were paying higher rates during the pandemic and they survived just fine. Another point is that all their competitors’ transport costs will also increase at the same rate, leveling the playing field. Even if the shippers are not currently paying those higher rates, they will, unless they want to buy their own trucks and hire their own drivers and haul their own crap, at which point they will understand why we deserve what we want. But let’s face it, they will pay what we ask because they’re not going to start a transportation company and I’m pretty sure they won’t want to file bankruptcy either. In any case, I say no more of this fighting for scraps!

Industry Issues: Brokers

What can be said about these scumbags that hasn’t already been said? Have you ever seen brokers talk to one another online or watched one of their videos on youtube?! It makes my blood boil with unbelievable anger. Brokers are usually these big conglomerates that take advantage of carriers, but they don’t have to be big at all to rob us. All it takes to become a broker and start robbing carriers is a $300 broker authority (a license to steal), a $100 cell phone, a $200 laptop and the comfort of their mother’s basement. It’s not always that simple, but it kind of is, and this represents a broker based in the US. Of course, they can be based in Russia, India, the Philippines or anywhere else for all you know, where a laptop goes for a couple of walnuts or somewhere around there. It doesn’t take much to become a scumbag broker.

On the other hand, we all know the difficulties of becoming an owner-operator and staying in business. It takes a hell of a lot more than that, not the least of which is buying and maintaining the crazy expensive equipment, which you may have just paid $150,000 for, while also being stressed at all times knowing that we can kill people on the road while also watching out for the cops at every turn because they can turn a barely profitable load into a losing one. We are hurting due to inflation, rising fuel costs, rising insurance costs, rising toll costs, rising interest costs on equipment, expensive and scarce quality equipment, rising parts and labor costs, harder and harder to find parts (which are mostly made in China to maximize shop profits), getting robbed by tow services, road services, shops that don’t know what they’re doing most of the time and let’s not forget the weigh stations that are always looking to make a couple bucks… the list goes on and on, including the things that nobody wants to discuss like driver physical and mental health and alarming rates of driver depression (we’ll get into that a little later), but what are the brokers hurting from?! No matter if the shipper is paying more or less on their loads, they will always be profitable because they’ll just take our money and put it in their pockets because they can and we haven’t done a single thing to stop them.

We spend all our money on equipment and its’ maintenance, keeping ourselves legal and insured and all the other stuff just to then have to deal with a scumbag broker trying to give us a load for $400 after stealing a $1,000 off the top, while we may have mortgaged our house to get into this industry with the best equipment we can barely afford and are now screwed because of broker’s shady business practices that will make us lose our house! The point is, we assume all the risk for very little reward, while brokers get to have a normal life, go home to their families every day and make way more than we do. This is not right, and cannot be allowed to continue! It’s come to a point where brokers are charging 40% to 60%+ off the top just by taking advantage of the fact that we need to keep going to pay for our equipment and feed our families and don’t want to go work for Swift. If this continues, most of the OOSC will be bankrupt and the mega-carriers and scumbag brokers will survive and thrive without us. The company responsible for the load and everything else should get most of the money from that load, not the other way around!

Another aspect to all this is if the shipper decides not to pay, the carrier is the one that loses everything, not the broker. The broker isn’t responsible to make sure everyone is paid, or anything else besides robbing carriers. If my truck breaks down and I have to cancel a load, is the broker going to hop into their own truck to make the shipper happy and deliver their load? Of course not. They’re just a broker, which is nothing but a middle man, so why do we allow them to get paid equal to or more than us?! Here’s another scenario: imagine a scumbag broker can no longer continue their operations, so they decide to take all the loads they can from shippers, have the carriers deliver them, but then don’t pay any of the carriers and just keep all the money for themselves because they’re on their way to bankruptcy anyway, so why bother? And to make matters worse, insurance companies have no problem with this scam, going against carriers all the time, offering us a tiny fraction of what we lost, if anything at all. What about double-brokering and then robbing the carrier? What about when we ask for a couple extra bucks on a load we’re calling about just to have these scumbags tell us the load’s gone and that they sold it for the money they were offering or less, just to rub it in our faces. And how about when we leave bad broker reviews somewhere or say something they don’t want to hear like we don’t haul cheap freight, so they try to get our carrier info (mc numbers) to blacklist us in their system and report us to other brokers thru Carrier411 in an attempt to bankrupt us for going against them. And after all their lies, when we don’t trust them and want to call the shipper just to confirm our appointment and to check if we even have one, we get yelled at by these scumbags for going behind their backs. Their list of tricks goes on and on, just like the lies they tell us. All of this is despicable behavior but I say we do the same and go against them in full force!

So with all that robbing, cheating and stealing the brokers do, how successful are they really? I mean, carriers are going out of business left and right. You see it in the news all the time: 140 driver company closed or 455 driver company went bankrupt and couldn’t even afford to pay their drivers to get home, leaving them stranded. Surely the brokers are also hurting in this down market, right?! Wrong! They are thriving like they always have, reporting great profits to their shareholders, but where do those profits come from?! We all know the answer to that question. They come from the aforementioned robbing, cheating and stealing from us, but don’t take my word for it. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked up the values of some of the biggest scumbags calling themselves brokers today:

TQL: $8,000,000,000

CH Robinson: $12,000,000,000

JB Hunt: $18,200,000,000

Schneider Nat’l: $5,000,000,000

XPO: $4,000,000,000

Obviously some of them do other stuff that accounts for some of their value, however, their brokerage divisions do very well. But the question remains: how could brokers be worth so much without robbing carriers?! The simple answer: they can’t. All their income was stolen from OOSC. Simply put: that’s our money!!! Any of your hard-working OOSC companies worth $4,000,000,000? I didn’t think so.

Even the Ford Motor Company is getting their act together and getting rid of brokers (the independent dealer network). In a recent report, Ford is sick and tired of dealers up-charging whatever they want on top of MSRP to rip off their customers, so Ford decided to sell their cars directly online and just use the dealers for test drives and repairs. Smart move to get rid of the brokers and go direct. I say we follow suit. Brokers are always saying it’s our fault for taking cheap freight and we don’t have to take their loads, so I say, using their logic, we don’t have to take their loads or use brokers at all and make them a thing of the past!

Industry Issues: Mega-Carriers

Mega-carriers (MC’s) are a huge part of the problem as well. Not only are they usually brokers too, taking all the good loads for their own trucks and selling all the garbage to us for high profits, but they also lobby in Washington for more regulation on a regular basis. Regulation that suits their needs. They have large budgets set aside for that specific purpose, but what do they want for all those millions they spend? They want to level the playing field to be the ones left standing after the massacre, which means they want all the OOSC to lose everything and go out of business. They’d love that because that would leave only one option which is to come running to them begging for jobs. If the small carriers fail, where will all the drivers go?! No one will have a choice but to join the ones left standing or quit the industry. I don’t know about you, but I love this industry and don’t want to hand it over to anyone! If we continue to do nothing, they’ll be the only ones left standing because they’re able to haul for less because profit is multiplied by tens of thousands of trucks, so they can just wait it out or buy everyone out like they’ve been doing.

Large shippers need MC’s because they have the capacity to move all of their freight and if they don’t, they’ll just use their in-house brokerage to move the rest. This gives them a lot of power over the market, not to mention lots of profit. With that profit, they’re able to always get new equipment and attract new drivers due to their training programs. With all that in place, they’re able to not pay their drivers much and keep them down to barely afford their lives, let alone buying a truck to become an OO. MC’s have all their power because they control a lot of trucks. Swift, for example, just bought out US Xpress so they will now control 25,000 trucks and 93,000 trailers, which they can run for a lot less than us to lower market rates and run us out of business. They’re playing the long game. The only thing we can use to fight this WAR is our unity, because united we control a hell of a lot more trucks than them (more on that later). Our strength will only come from our total numbers. MC’s can’t move America without us, not even close, so we hold all the power. When we all join the OOSCA to unite and gain power, the MC’s will lose power and they won’t be happy about that, but they have the money and connections to wage war against us. We must stay strong, smart and ahead of all their efforts. If we’re successful, MC’s won’t be able to compete with us because they won’t be able to match what we’re paying our drivers so all their drivers will want to drive for us, or the MC’s will have to charge their shippers what we charge or more, thereby leveling the playing field. The only thing we need to win the war is unity.

Industry Issues: Government

Oh, the Government, the same Government that’s supposed to help and protect us, especially since we’re the only reason America is able to survive, but all they seem to do is make life worse, not just for truckers but for all Americans. Let’s start off by stating the obvious: the Gov doesn’t care about the OOSC, as long as the loads keep moving. That’s a very important distinction: as long as the loads keep moving. The Gov cares about the MC’s because they have their lobbyists greasing the palms of the politicians, so the Gov treats them as if they represent the whole trucking industry, but they don’t. Not even close. Let’s talk numbers:

Trucks move about 72.5% of America’s freight, so our trucking industry controls 3/4 of America’s lifeline!

The trucking industry earned a whopping $1.36T in 2022 and it’s rising! That’s $1,360,000,000,000! Did most of that money go to the OOSC?! Of course not

There are about 3.5 million employed truck drivers and about 400,000 owner operators in the U.S. as of 2021. We have the numbers on our side!

91.5% of trucking carriers in the U.S. operate with six (6) or fewer trucks. In addition, 97.4% operate with fewer than twenty (20) trucks, showing that the vast majority of U.S. trucking carriers aren’t owned by large companies. We have the numbers on our side, but are not united in our efforts to control it. The OOSC should control the US trucking industry and should be profiting from it the most. The only way to control our industry is to join forces, which is where the Owner-Operator & Small Carrier Alliance (OOSCA) comes in!

Based on the numbers, we wield all the power, but aren’t organized to use it to our advantage. You better believe the Gov knows this but is not on our side, but when have they ever been on anyone’s side but their own?! In any case, I’m sure most of you have seen this or at least heard about it, but let’s quickly talk about what the trucking industry represents in the US:

If our trucks stopped moving:

within 24 hours:

Medical supplies deliveries would cease
Hospitals & Pharmacies will run out of supplies
Fuel stations will begin to run out of fuel, with no more fuel deliveries coming. Super long wait lines will form, and the price will skyrocket instantly
Manufacturers will run short on supplies needed to produce their products
Mail and package delivery services will cease
Food shortages will begin to develop

within 2 to 3 days:

Food shortages will happen all over, especially in the face of hoarding & panic. We all remember the toilet paper fiasco
Essential supplies like bottled water, powdered milk and canned meat will disappear from store shelves
Banks & ATM’s will run out of cash and banks won’t be able to process any transactions
Fuel stations will completely run out of fuel, including diesel for our trucks
Garbage trucks will also not be able to run, meaning garbage will start to pile up everywhere
Container ships will sit idle in ports
Rail transport will come to a standstill
Theft, Crime & Murder will be everywhere from now on! Hopefully you’re a member of our Armed & Ready Club, in which case you should be just fine

within just 1 week:

Most cars will not be able to drive due to lack of fuel, and fuel theft will happen often
Hospitals will run out of supplies, including oxygen

within 1 month:

Clean water supply will be gone
Illness will greatly increase, further taxing an already weakened health care system

Scary thought, but not all that impossible, or even unlikely. As you most likely already know, grocery stores, like most stores, operate on a just-in-time inventory system to save on storage costs, and would therefore go out of stock of everything in just 3 days (most likely much sooner) if trucks stopped driving, not to mention medical supplies, ATM cash (which would become pretty worthless pretty fast), fuel… garbage would pile up, packages would go undelivered and even water treatment plants wouldn’t have the chemicals they need to make water potable. Hospitals would run out of supplies and medicine, not to mention pharmacies, and doctors and nurses may care more about being home protecting their families than going to work. You get the idea, total collapse of our way of life. Our whole civilization rests solely on our shoulders, but are we being treated fairly or even respected?!

Scary indeed, but let me get back to the point I made earlier: the Government doesn’t care about the OOSC, as long as the loads keep moving. Let’s face it, we all have to survive so we’re taking as good of a load as we can get just to attempt to pay our bills, which keeps the loads moving and the shippers, brokers & the Government happy.

But as long as the loads keep moving, the Government doesn’t care about the OOSC. If they cared, we wouldn’t be paying outrageous money for diesel or they would actually enforce the law and regulate the brokers a little bit to make them show their profit on every load, as per the law. I don’t think that’ll change anything because that still won’t stop them from taking our money, but that’s just me. It doesn’t help the bank to know how much money the robbers stole.

What about when they instituted all these emissions systems in our trucks that don’t work at all, except to line the pockets of all the repair shops that are half-assing repairs but charging hard-working truckers an arm and a leg, while not caring if we have to spend weeks waiting to get our trucks even looked at and then just patching up the problem so they can get paid and hope the truck can make it a couple hundred miles before breaking down again with the same issue, but being far enough from the original shop so the truck can’t come back?! What’s the point of all these American truck pollution regulations anyway?! America barely contributes to global pollution. While America is the world’s largest economy by a wide margin, it produces less than 14% of global pollution, and most of it isn’t even coming from trucks. Our Gov likes to pretend like they’re changing the world, but they’re doing nothing except duping people to vote for them. Climate change will have to be decided by impoverished nations like Asia (including India) and Latin America, by poor people, who couldn’t care less about climate change, because they’re poor and they’re worried about where their next meal is going to come from more than pollution. How can you make a person with no running water and an outdoor poop hole in the ground care about pollution? But those are the very same people who are, by far, responsible for most global pollution.

What about this new thing with adding trailer side underride guards to protect the idiots in cars so they are safer when they run into our trailers?! Or what about them trying to increase the legal weight limit from 80k lbs to over 90k, which I’m sure shippers and brokers won’t wait to exploit and will immediately result in higher repair and maintenance costs to us! Or what about the article I read that says cops are now giving out tickets to truckers who are eating while driving?! I can’t take a bite of a sandwich or drink water or coffee and drive? How is that any different from driving a manual truck with one hand on the shifter?! Anything to make a buck off the people everyone relies on to survive.

All the Government knows how to do is regulate us to death, by a pencil-pushing imbecile who’s never stepped foot in a truck, but thinks he knows how to run it better than the veterans who have millions of miles under their belts, not to mention putting all truckers into the same category to run under the same rules. No offense to anyone, but how can a 75 year old get tired at the same rate as a 21 year old from driving 11 hours?! Doesn’t seem likely. Also, does every single person need 10 hours of sleep per night? What if a driver is just not able to sleep more than 5 or 6 hours per night? What if he doesn’t want to take a shower and has food with him in the truck? Why does he have to waste an extra 4 to 5 hours of their day because some random guy in Washington said so?! I know you can split the sleeper birth time, but that adds a whole other set of issues which we shouldn’t have to deal with at all. The other side of this conversation is the drivers having to drive when they are told, according to the ELD, no matter if you’re tired and falling asleep. A driver can be tired, but has to drive because the ELD says so. We can’t listen to our body anymore, because we have this thing plugged into the truck that supposedly knows better. That means even if the driver is tired but the ELD says he has to drive, he’ll have to or risk losing his job or load or business. This is extremely dangerous, not only to us but everyone else on the roadways, and the Gov’s own accident research data proves it! This isn’t a conversation about the ELD or any other Gov shortcomings, however, once the OOSCA gains strength in numbers, I have a plan to make trucking the way it’s supposed to be and go after the Gov and their pollution regulations, HOS, ELD and so on! They’ll have to listen because if they don’t, I’ll refer them to that “what if trucks stopped running” section. They’ll have no choice, but to listen.

Worthless Trucking Associations

ATA (37k members), OOIDA (160k members) and the smaller “trucker representatives”, and I use that term loosely, haven’t done anything for the OOSC. If you think they have, just look at what’s going on with the market and our industry. The ATA & OOIDA have been “fighting” for us forever, ATA since 1933 and the OOIDA since 1973 and we’re still completely screwed to this day. These associations say they’re in Washington fighting for our rights, but what have they done for us? You remember when they did that one thing? Yeah, me neither. Also, to work with Washington you have to play their game. You have to be just like the scumbag lobbyists or members of congress. You have to act like them and be buddies with them, basically be a scumbag yourself, and that’s who we trust to represent us?! I say we don’t want to be associated with anyone like that. The only thing those associations know how to do is take our hard-earned money to pay their bills and take their bonuses, nothing more. If they were on our side, we’d have less regulations on us and way more on the brokers, who do have regulations they’re supposed to follow, such as being completely transparent as to how much they’re scamming off the top, but no one is enforcing that as of yet, but maybe these so-called trucking associations just need another 50 or 100 years to get the ball rolling to get around to lobbying for us, right?

Prior Failed Attempts at Fixing the Industry

Lots of ideas have been tried by truckers to fix the industry, without success. We REALLY appreciate our fellow brothers and sisters for trying, but those attempts had no chance. Some people drove their trucks to Washington and wasted their time and money for no reason because as long as the loads continued to move, the Government didn’t care. Some people like to park their trucks, but the other carriers, including mega-carriers, are happy to take our revenue and clients while we’re parked, so that does nothing except make our situation even worse. I mean, you’re sending brokers and shippers into the arms of the mega-carriers because they can be relied on to not park their trucks or drive to Washington. Some people tried hunger strikes, but that only hurt themselves and their families, not brokers, shippers or the Gov. Some organizations try open boycotts, but all that does is make the brokers blacklist those carriers and report them on Carrier411 so no other brokers will want to work with them either. The carrier associations say they exist to help us. Just keep sending them your money like you’ve been doing for the last hundred years and they’ll lobby “for us” in Washington, but that clearly goes nowhere, except our money going into the pockets of the association employees and the lobbyists that do nothing for us. Some say the Government should uphold the law that’s already in place and make sure the brokers have to be transparent about how much they’re scamming off the top, but all that’ll do is show us how much we’re being robbed. All that effort with nothing to show for our sacrifices except more loss.

🚽 Economy is in the Toilet 🚽 How Can Trucking get better without Change?

Obviously we have a lot of problems in this industry, but there are other huge issues to consider that will sink the OOSC way lower than even our current position if we don’t act right now. Our thinking on this matter is as follows:

America is apparently a piggy bank, wasting money all over the place like we have an unlimited amount, or can print as much as “we” want. While our citizens are starving and becoming homeless, America is sponsoring all the wars around the globe, sending trillions of dollars to pay for god knows what. “We’re” paying for all the corporations and banks that are failing after they thoroughly robbed the public to take their profits and bonuses right before they file bankruptcy and all the depositors lose their entire life savings… no matter, we’ll just print more money. Print and print and print and print… but by printing all that money, inflation gets out of control making our once-great US dollar more and more worthless. Venezuela is a great example of what’s to come. They have millions of their worthless Bolivars laying all over the streets, and our money is well on it’s way to becoming toilet paper with every fresh sheet we print. However you want to look at it, inflation is another form of taxation, like we don’t already have enough of that. If you don’t think so, just compare how much groceries (or truck parts, supplies…) cost even last year to what they cost this year. The prices are skyrocketing with no sign of slowing down, and it’s not because the farmers and retailers and everyone else suddenly got greedy. It’s because of inflation. But most of Americans were already living paycheck to paycheck before all these issues. Since inflation is getting more and more out of control and people don’t have enough money to cover their basic expenses like groceries and rent, how are they supposed to have extra spending money to go get something they want, like clothing for example. There are lots of examples that can be used, but since there’s no extra money, there’s no extra spending, and since there’s no extra spending, the stores no longer need our trucks to bring them their inventory.

This economy is worse than it’s been in a long time, no matter how low the Feds tell us inflation is or if you identify more with red or blue. No matter what, we don’t see how it can get any better. The wars will go on and our involvement in those wars because they’re extremely profitable. Things may, in fact, get worse if NATO gets pulled into the current conflict, and the bank closures are just the beginning since there have been a few recent articles saying hundreds more banks were in serious trouble and may go under. Of course the Government is going to bail them out at an astronomical cost to US citizens, making the cash in our pockets even more worthless. And have you heard about the BRICS nations coming out with a gold-backed currency to dethrone the US dollar as the global reserve currency? Lots of countries are lining up to trade their US dollars in for that. It has a lot of support and may very well be the end for us. If the amount of money we’re getting paid to do these loads doesn’t go way up, and soon, everything we’ve worked so hard for will fail. No one is coming to our rescue, so we have to unite in our efforts to WIN THIS WAR! It’s up to us to make trucking profitable or we’re finished.

Owner-Operators & Small Carriers

The OOSC make up a huge number of trucks on the road, so the numbers are on our side. We hold all the power, the only thing missing is unity!!!

As I mentioned earlier, the first source I looked at stated that 91.5% of trucking carriers in the U.S. operate with 6 or fewer trucks. In addition, 97.4% of all carriers operate with 19 or less trucks.

Another source stated that the smallest owner fleets (1 to 6 trucks) make up 502,626 carriers out of 584,437, making up 86% of the industry. If you include the next size up (7 to 19 trucks, considered very small), of which there are another 53,332 carriers, that number goes up to a total of 555,958 carriers, out of 584,437 total. Together, we total a whopping 95.13% of the industry! No matter what source or statistics you listen to, it’s clear that we represent the entire trucking industry and should hold all the power!

However, we are the ones who hurt the most in this industry. We are constantly getting woken up by brokers in the middle of the night wanting to get location updates or to ask some other dumb questions like where are you located when they are tracking you, or the unloaders banging on our truck doors like we owe them money. Some of us have it even worse, waking up to gangster looking guys on our property repossessing our trucks, or even worse, our houses. Some of us don’t have enough money to cover necessary repairs or even the fuel to make it to the next load. Some of us come home after being out for a month and all our money went to expenses so we have nothing to show for it. Some of us have to live in our trucks because we can’t afford a home. Some of us got screwed by buying a truck at the height of the market at the highest possible price and are now upside down on the loan, or bought a brand new truck that’s made of cheap Chinese parts with the goal of making the manufacturers and repair shops and tow trucks and road service and everyone else money thru breakdowns. Trucks used to run a million to a million and a half miles before needing an engine rebuild, while now you’re lucky if you get 400k miles on it before a rebuild is necessary. They’re made to break down as soon as your warranty expires (known as Planned Obsolescence), which is just another issue that plagues owners, and not at all brokers or shippers or the Government, yet we’re the ones that get paid like we’re nothing in this industry while taking on all the expenses, responsibility, risk & headaches.

Some of the biggest equipment problems carriers deal with are emissions-related. These EGR, DPF & DEF systems were put in place by the Government, but they didn’t do enough (or any) testing to make sure they work and it all falls on us carriers to take care of it at huge losses of money and time (which is also money). How about when you get to a dealer with your emissions system issue and they tell you they know exactly what the problem is but you’ll have to wait 3 weeks because there are 150 trucks ahead of you with the same exact problem. So now you or your driver will have to spend that time at a hotel, which is expensive, and who is supposed to pay for that, along with food and all your normal business and life expenses while this is going on?! Even if your truck is brand new, and the dealer will “fix” it for free (until it breaks again in a couple weeks), you still have to cover the costs of your hotel, food and the rest of your expenses while the POS truck is in the shop, not to mention the huge amount of money you lost not hauling loads all that time. You can rent another truck, but that’s another huge expense to you as well, and with today’s rates it’s probably not going to be worth it. I recently saw a brand new truck, hauling 2 other brand new trucks, break down on the highway on the way to the dealer. It didn’t even make the trip from the factory to the dealer! Owners are having to rethink their choice of business, which is not great for one of the greatest industries in the country. We love what we do, but we have been taken advantage of for way too long and it’s time to take back what belongs to us: the whole damn trucking industry! The time is now, our path is clear!

Trucker Health & Safety Concerns

Let’s talk about some other huge issues of the job: health & safety. Trucking is by far America’s deadliest industry, which has the highest number of occupational fatalities each year, by a wide margin. Truck drivers have a much greater level of responsibility to be safer than most other people on the road. We are responsible for our safety, the safety of everyone else on the road, our equipment and cargo. The weight of these huge responsibilities cannot be taken lightly. According to the National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, more than 1 of every 7 work-related deaths was directly related to heavy-duty trucking. In 2019, there were 843 trucker deaths and it has been steadily going up every year.

If you’re lucky enough not to die in a horrific accident, trucking still doesn’t provide drivers a healthy lifestyle. More than 50% of truck drivers are obese. Let that sink in: more than 50%, compared to the national rate of 26.7% (which is also extremely high, but that’s another issue). Compared to the general population, the prevalence of diabetes is 50% higher & 87% of truck drivers have hypertension (high blood pressure).

Then come the long hours. Truckers work long hours on a daily basis and are pressured to meet time deadlines, often multiple times a day. We often don’t get enough rest, resulting in being fatigued while driving. Sleep deprivation not only leads to poor health, but a fatigued truck driver is more susceptible to causing an accident, injuring himself and others.

Then we got our good friends in the Government attempting to screw us at every turn. Their latest project is to implement yet another great idea of speed limiters, which we all have had to deal with when one truck doing 62.1 mph is attempting to pass another truck doing 62 mph and everyone is stuck behind them for miles without a safe way to go around. That makes people angry and results in road rage, which then leads to unsafe driving and accidents.

And I’m going to have to mention the ELD yet again, because a recent study concluded that the federal ELD mandate has not reduced accidents at all. In fact, the study found its implementation directly correlates with an increase in unsafe driving incidents and speeding citations, which caused a significant increase in accidents. That increase happened as a direct result of the federal ELD mandate, and was especially true for owner-operators. The stricter hours-of-service enforcement led drivers to try to compress their routes into the time allotted, which didn’t help anyone. Owner-operators experienced a whopping 11.6% increase in accidents, while small carriers with 2 to 20 trucks had a 9% increase, according to the 2022 study. If you’re wondering, fatigue-related crashes are way up as well. The researchers’ analysis of unsafe driving infractions for different sizes of carriers during the light (12/2017 to 4/2018) and strict (after 4/2018) enforcement periods showed that these also increased. This was true for all size carriers, but the increases were greater for small and medium-sized carriers that had not been using an ELD before the mandate.

And what about relationships? It is nearly impossible for a driver to build any sort of relationship living in a box on the road not knowing what city you’ll end up in next, which contributes to driver depression being at an all time high, so while we’re sacrificing and suffering to do our jobs, wealthy shippers and brokers are squeezing transport contracts at every turn, which means corners have to be cut in safety on our end to make ends meet. And who, if not the hardest working members of this industry, stand to lose everything we’ve built while it’s business as usual for the shippers and brokers.

It broke my heart to learn of all the issues plaguing our brothers and sisters, not the least of which are physical and mental health including depression. Wouldn’t it be great if trucking was a brotherhood (& sisterhood) again and we could do things like meet new friends in the industry or even mentors, find love or learn how to take care of and repair a truck you were thinking of buying in the future, or learn how to run the whole business before even buying your first truck? That’s why I decided to do something about it and create the other side of this Alliance called the ClubHouse. It is a collection of different support clubs to help drivers with as many issues as we possibly can.

Check out all the clubs we have to offer (so far) on the ClubHouse page

Who will this Alliance benefit?

This will obviously benefit the Owner-Operators and Small Carriers, for whom the benefits are clear: way more money and a refined industry geared towards keeping truckers paid and happy, but it would also greatly benefit company drivers. If the small carriers are doing great, the battle for drivers will reignite and the company drivers’ wages will go up as all the carriers will again fight to attract the most drivers to take advantage of a hot market. That would be great news for drivers as they will be able to weigh multiple offers and choose the best position that fits their needs and wants. If the jobs will be plentiful and start paying great again, it will allow company drivers to save their money much faster to become owner-operators or be able to easily pay for their home and food again. I’ll tell you who our Alliance won’t benefit: the shippers and scumbag brokers, and that’s ok with me.

Accomplishing our Goals

We all know that there have been a lot of ideas floating around on how to change our industry, but unfortunately, none of them have worked out at all, and in fact have caused a lot of drivers to lose time and money with nothing to show for it. Sure an FMCSA representative may come outside to patronize us for 10 minutes, let us know they’re working on something or other that should make things better, but that never comes to fruition. I’m tired of seeing our brothers and sisters go out of their way at their own expense to try to do something, but their don’t have millions for lobbying to attract the Government’s interest and even then, it would do no good because they don’t have the right plan to get what we need accomplished. Our plans of action must start and end with shippers. Some of us do try as best they can, but it ultimately goes nowhere. Not long ago a group of 1,100 drivers arranged a protest, which is no small feat to get 1,100 drivers together, but it was just a tiny drop in a very large bucket to our Government, relatively speaking. Out of 3,500,000 drivers, a group like that was unfortunately just unfortunately wasting their time. No one in the Gov would take them seriously because they know that all those drivers will just go right back to work after their protest, unfortunately accomplishing nothing.

Our thoughts on this matter are different. Our plans are a lot more ambitious without the need for anyone to sacrifice anything. Everyone’s situation is different. I personally have a family to feed, so I don’t have the luxury of taking time off and driving somewhere, or parking my truck for a week or a month or just boycotting a broker here and there that’s obviously part of the problem but also may happen to be part of helping me feed my family should there be no other alternatives. There is only one way to accomplish our goals and it doesn’t involve brokers, at least not much. It’s obvious that both the shippers and brokers rely heavily on the OOSC to be able to make money and cannot survive without our blood, sweat and tears, and that’s key to accomplishing our mission.

Once we agree to finally unite for the noble pursuit of taking our future into our own hands and form an Alliance the likes of which has never existed, there will be no stopping us! We will not waver, tire, falter or fail in our resolve to pursue a future in trucking of which we can all be proud! Running a trucking business is very expensive and stressful. It’s about time our income reflected that!

check out the Rates & Rules page for more info on what we feel is fair compensation

The How

The Mission Objective of this Alliance is to bring the fight to the shippers while avoiding damage and/or failure of our businesses so we remain able to feed our families. Some people may have lots of money saved and can afford to go all in no matter the outcome, or take road trips to protest, or just really believe in their ability to do something great for our industry and are ready to pay the ultimate price. We really respect their resolve, but we’re not ready to risk our family’s well-being for any reason on this planet, so no matter what, we’re not going into this all or nothing, but with the understanding that our businesses have to survive by any means necessary. That means we can’t openly boycott brokers and get blacklisted, or shut down for a week or month or until things get better, or go take road trips to Washington or anything else that will hurt our bottom line. Money has to keep coming in day in and day out, so the first thing we have to consider is doing this the smartest way possible. Besides, every load we don’t take, for whatever reason, will be taken by someone else like the mega-carriers that will be all too happy to do it while laughing at us all the way to the bank. That’s just us losing business, and for what?! We’re not going out like that, guns blazing while not thinking or caring about our future.

The OOSCA’s strategic plans are not dangerous or costly. They don’t involve blocking highways, or Washington, or us from continuing our operations and making money while strategically working on accomplishing our mission. The OOSCA’s plans will circumvent all the people currently in power, giving our members the ability to make real changes to our income and the entire trucking industry.

We can fight or we can do nothing (as we’ve always done) and just keep whining impotently about problems we don’t have the stomach or attention span to address. It’s up to us, as it’s always been. Our Alliance gives us hope where, for a long time, there was none. If what OOSCA represents makes sense to you, join our fight by joining the OOSCA. We hope to have your support for a better future in trucking.