Juno News - North American trucking industry is being undermined by migrant-run companies

In this episode, we talk about the trucking industry in the U.S. and Canada, and why it s not as simple as it sounds. We talk about what's going on with trucking companies, and how they're using "backdoor" workers to get into the market.

00:00:00.000 Gosh, we've seen it in so many streams, especially coming out of COVID, where it's like you've given an inch and people have figured out how to take a mile.

00:00:07.840 Many miles.

00:00:08.700 Yeah, you have the big consultocracy, can efficiency culture the heck out of this?

00:00:14.220 And I would very much like the opportunity here to do a McKinsey episode and to do a Dominic Barton episode and to go into this.

00:00:21.760 Because what you're describing, too, I've written about this quite recently in the hub and part of my work with a group called Project Ontario.

00:00:30.360 This also sounds like the student summer job market.

00:00:32.940 This sounds like what's happening to young men or unemployment in Canada with young men and particularly Ontario.

00:00:39.160 It's like at super duper record highs.

00:00:42.560 And it's just why can't you just pay them a little bit more?

00:00:46.080 Can I share something even more insidious that's connected to the trucking thing in the U.S.?

00:00:51.360 absolutely and i believe it's going on in canada as well i just wrote about this on my substack

00:00:56.720 these guys are so brazen now like you mentioned that there there was a you know a recruiter

00:01:02.880 consultant you know immigration person that helped the singh guy get in even though he was an illegal

00:01:08.000 yeah there are these small trucking companies now run by all these migrant groups and it's not just

00:01:13.600 indians it's guys from russia uzbekistan central america all over the place they have just decided

00:01:19.200 that the united states trucking market is theirs now okay they advertise in facebook groups and

00:01:25.120 they are implicit if not explicit in their advertising saying we offer flexible elds

00:01:32.800 the l eld electronic logging device in 2017 the american government was like we have to do

00:01:38.320 something about road safety we are going to make all truck drivers have a government mandated

00:01:42.400 electronic tracking device to monitor their hours put in their trucks canada now has the same

00:01:46.800 it was immediately apparent that that produced the opposite because they didn't address the

00:01:52.960 economic circumstances right so crashes go up speeding goes up aggressive driving goes up all

00:01:58.740 these things go up what these foreign companies are offering is they're telling the people they're

00:02:03.900 hiring we have backdoor guys that will get in and adjust your hours so that you can keep working for

00:02:10.360 18 or 20 hours a day and if the cops pull you over we've taken it out of your eld for you oh and

00:02:15.820 where are all of these ELD backdoor operations located? Serbia, the Ukraine, Russia, Colombia,

00:02:23.200 the Philippines. These guys are everywhere interfering with the sort of safety monitoring

00:02:29.060 that's supposed to be going on in the North American trucking industry. And when they hire

00:02:32.620 drivers, they are telling them, hey, you can run 4,500, 5,000, 6,000 miles a week, right?

00:02:39.020 And then when you call them, a fellow sort of trucking social media guy started calling these

00:02:44.220 guys he comes to find out that he has to pretend to be somewhere else the first question all of

00:02:50.660 these companies ask you where are you originally from

Juno News - August 27, 2025

North American trucking industry is being undermined by migrant-run companies

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