Tale Lites Issue 38

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ATTENTION DRIVERS: If you are local or in the Boston, MA area on Wednesday 10/15 From 8-6pm Please E-mail [email protected] for a Local News Interview about truck parking!

🚛 CEO of FreightWaves says “Duffy’s halt of non-domiciled CDLs could wipe out illegal operators”

This is a follow up to last week’s Tale Lites where we covered new regulations regarding Non-Domiciled CDLs where back on September 26, 2025, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued an emergency order forcing states to immediately stop issuing or renewing non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses, something that can not only improve highway safety, but could take down the massive shadow market of motor carriers who have been operating outside of the law.

Several states issued CDLs to non citizens without employment based visas or they even extended them beyond visa expirations. That loophole created an entire system of drivers willing (and sometimes unwilling) to work for lower pay, run excessive hours, and undercut compliant American carriers.

Many of these drivers come from Eastern Europe and South Asia, working under conditions that violated safety and labor standards, but are still paid better than wages than their country of origin. A lot of trucking companies, many of them foreign owned, exploited this system: import cheap labor, skip compliance, and keep trucks running nearly nonstop. Two half brothers were sentenced for this in San Antonio in 2024.

While the rest of the industry has been trying to weather the worst freight recession in modern history, these shady carriers thrived by ignoring regulations and cutting costs. The industry hasn’t just been bad for carriers, brokerages have been going belly up these last few years as well, and in a reactionary fashion brokers began to look the other way because they were able to move freight faster and cheaper to retain customers.

The CEO of FreightWaves, Craig Fuller believes all of this may be coming to an end, and with more bankruptcies on the horizon, but this time for the bad guys

⚙️ Craig Fuller, “If You Built on Quicksand, You’ll Crumble.”

Craig Fuller, goes onto say this may be the most consequential trucking policy in decades, and one that exposes how fragile some carrier business models really are.

Fuller points out that many carriers built their survival strategy on cheap, overworked labor. Their success depended on drivers willing to run 1,000 miles a day, ignore Hours of Service rules, and accept pay that wouldn’t sustain an American household.

Subverting a nation’s laws does more than benefit criminals, it wound up distorting the entire freight market. Brokers began to expect unrealistic timelines and rock-bottom rates, punishing carriers that played by the book. Look no further than LinkedIn for brokers’ opinions on that

💣 Short Term Impact

• Bankruptcies may surge as carriers lose the drivers they depended on.

• Capacity will tighten, driving up freight rates.

• Legal, compliant drivers could finally regain leverage.

• Brokers and shippers will have to recalibrate expectations for delivery speed and price.

But in the long run, this could be the “Great Reset” the industry needed to go back towards fair competition and real safety compliance.

Fuller says the purge could help end the Great Freight Recession by stripping out excess capacity from illegal operators and restoring balance to the market.
The question now is how many companies can withstand the reset.

🗣️ Tale Lites’ take

This is the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and its consequences. Where “deregulation” sounds good, sometimes it’s best to trust the devil you know, because all that it has caused were the erasure of historic family owned companies like Lombard Bros Inc. and create a race to the bottom. Deregulation enabled all of the biggest issues the industry faces like safety, freight fraud, and cargo theft. The American trucking industry quietly tolerated this system for a while, because the lower prices to ship goods was a short term gain that eventually grew a system that rewarded rule breakers and punished professionals.

Duffy and the DOT’s new order, whether you view it as political theater or overdue reform, strikes right at the heart of current imbalances.

Read more at FreightWaves

I want to hear from you! For Driver Submissions, questions, and comments contact me at: [email protected] or Text me directly at 423-275-2444

Tale Lites Throwback

Happy October! Check out this clip from an October 1966 Edition of Tale Lites where they feature some old company rules from the 1850’s at an Engineering Office in West Virginia. Do you want these rules for your company?!

🏛️ How Does a Government Shutdown effect Trucking

As you may have seen in the news the US government has entered into another shutdown because Congress couldn’t reach an agreement on funding.

About 750,000 federal workers are being furloughed, which includes more than 12,000 employees from the Department of Transportation.

For truckers, that typically sounds like something you’d celebrate. Closed scale houses, less inspections? Not quite!

⚙️ FMCSA, FHWA, and NHTSA Stay on the Road

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration , Federal Highway Administration, and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will keep operating as usual.

The reason why is because their funding doesn’t come from Congress’s annual budget.
They’re financed through other resources like the Highway Trust Fund, meaning those inspections, regulations, and compliance systems will keep running. (Which is good given the above article!)

Which means this isn’t a time to double down on doing the right thing! HOS, audits, and safety checks are happening. Even more now with ICE at Ports of Entry

Fun Fact, FMCSA employs about 1,084 workers, FHWA has 2,268, and NHTSA another 574, who are all staying on the job.

✈️ The Biggest Hit: The FAA

Where things do get rocky is in the air. The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to furlough over 11,000 employees, including thousands of support staff, while air traffic controllers will still work, but without pay.

All of this sounded oddly familiar because it actually came up on my Facebook memories! The last major shutdown (back in 2018–2019) lasted 35 days, making it the longest in U.S. history. That shutdown caused serious flight delays and strained safety operations across the country.

🔥 Pipeline and HazMat Stay Active

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) will furlough about 190 of its 389 workers.

That means reduced staff, but the agency says it’ll still handle pipeline safety, accident investigations, and hazardous materials enforcement.

So while they’ll still be operating, response times might be slower if an incident occurs.

Rep. Sam Graves, Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called on the Senate to resolve things quickly:

A “Tale Lite” as old as time, as government can’t figure out what to do with money that isn’t theirs, regular people pay the price.

📩 What Do You Think?

Should DOT programs keep running during shutdowns, or should politicians feel the fire like everyone else?
Reply to this email or text (423) 275-2444 — I want to hear what real drivers think about Washington’s woes!

Health Tip of the Week - Winter Hydration

As the temperatures begin to cool down, people begin to take focus off their hydration. For good reason, it’s not as hot, not sweating as much, but that’s why it actually becomes more dangerous, and can dehydrate you faster!

Here’s why:

• Cold air dehydrates you faster than you think. Every breath you take in chilly weather releases moisture, and you don’t feel the sweat like you do in summer.

• Caffeine and heaters dry you out. Longer drives with hot coffee and blasting cab heat can still pull water out of you.

• Dehydration slows reaction time and focus. Even being mildly dehydrated can make you feel tired, stiff, and foggy

• If you’re hydrating less, and you’re doing some winter tarping, or fixing a breakdown, you may fatigue a lot quicker, and still leave yourself open to heat exhaustion

Keep a reusable water bottle within arm’s reach and aim to drink at least 8 ounces every hour on the road. If your lips feel dry or your urine dark, you’re already playing catch up! Remember the electrolytes too!

Hydration isn’t seasonal!

Partner Post of the Week

Check out our Partner Trucker DC where he shows how Truck Parking Club came in clutch in a tough area in Southern CA! Use the promo code truckerdc for $20 off your next booking!

@trucker.dc

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Truck Parking Club Partner Program

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