NASTC |

When Doing Everything Right Isn’t Enough

Danielle Chaffin — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:06:34 +0000

The unintended consequences of automated carrier vetting.

Imagine doing everything right for years, only to be rejected by a broker in a second by a rule you cannot see.

Welcome to automated carrier vetting!

Modern carrier vetting systems emerged for a reason. Fraud has grown faster and more extensive than human reviews could keep up with. Fake carriers, identity swaps, double brokering, and cargo theft rings. The scale absolutely demanded automation. Technology stepped in and built defenses at machine speed, but machines lack the ability to understand context.

Most vetting platforms are not making moral judgments. They aren’t using human intuition or industry knowledge. They are simply pattern-recognition engines. They pull from public and commercial data: authority records, inspection history, insurance filings, corporate registrations, phone data, email age, address type, and activity levels. The software compares those signals to behaviors associated with fraud. When patterns line up, a big red flag appears.

The system says, “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…” Yet, anyone who has spent twenty minutes in trucking knows it is rarely, if ever, that simple.

The rules were set to catch the bad guys, rightfully so. The problem is that bad actors often mimic behaviors that are completely ordinary in the life of a small carrier or owner-operator. A truck sits idle, a phone number changes, insurance renews, an address is residential.

To a human, these are explainable. To an algorithm, they are inputs. The systems cannot tell whether a truck was down for a transmission rebuild or staged for theft. It cannot tell whether the number changed because of a new provider or a disappearing act. It only knows the pattern matches something it has been trained to distrust.

Any one of those examples deserves a closer look. None of them, standing alone, equals fraud. Yet, the system still places the carrier in a ‘do not use’ status.

Fraud prevention is necessary. No serious person argues otherwise. Without it, the market collapses under manipulation and theft. But in the race to shut out criminals, the net has widened in ways few anticipated, and small, legitimate carriers are absorbing the brunt of the impact. Without context or conversation, normal business behavior begins to resemble criminal intent.

When legitimate carriers are filtered out by an invisible algorithm, freight doesn’t stop moving. It goes to whoever can pass the screening test. If the goal is fewer small carriers, the system is wildly effective. If the goal is a resilient, competitive supply chain, what we have is a flawed approach to vetting.

Owner-operators built this industry, and small fleets supply the flexibility, regional knowledge, and capacity everyone depends on when the market tightens. Any safeguard meant to protect freight has to work for them too. Otherwise, protection becomes a very polished form of exclusion.

The system tells us that years of safe performance matter far less than a recent data change. This is absurd. This isn’t risk management. It’s distortion.

Repeatedly rejecting legitimate carriers is not proof that technology is succeeding. It is proof that the model is unfinished. The future of vetting cannot be just detection. It has to include dialogue; a path to clarification, a way to challenge inaccurate data, a mechanism that separates coincidence from intent.

The people on the receiving end of these decisions aren’t data points. They are businesses, families, and careers built over decades. We must protect them.

Fraud prevention has to evolve without criminalizing ordinary small-business life. Until it does, thousands of professionals will keep doing everything right and still find themselves locked out.

A system that can exclude a carrier should also provide a clear path back in.

The post When Doing Everything Right Isn’t Enough appeared first on NASTC.

Thank You Letter To EPA Administrator Zeldin

David Owen — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:26:24 +0000

February 13, 2026

The Honorable Lee Zeldin
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004

Dear Administrator Zeldin:

On behalf of the 14,000 member companies of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies (NASTC), thank you very much for acting boldly and prudently in recent actions that will have the positive, beneficial effect of restoring appropriate balance between protecting our environment and the commercial activity vital to America’s economy and prosperity.

As you know, NASTC is the industry voice for a distinct segment of the trucking industry not expressly represented by any other trucking association. NASTC is a member-based organization whose motor carrier members range from a single power unit to more than 100 power units, the average being 12 power units. These carriers for the most part operate in the long-haul, over-the road, full-truckload, for-hire sector of interstate trucking. NASTC’s members are small motor carrier businesses, the largest segment of America’s long-haul trucking.

NASTC strongly supports the Trump administration’s broad deregulatory agenda. And we tremendously appreciate and fully back the consequential step of withdrawing EPA’s “endangerment finding.” Designating greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, a threat to public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act has defied sound science and mocked responsible environmental policy. This finding has empowered big-government politicians and eco-extremists to impose on American citizens and essential business sectors green mandates that neither the American public nor market forces have sought (nor under which can compete with foreign competitors).

Moreover, NASTC commends and fully backs your decisions that will rectify the overreaching GHG3 and NOx rules, which have hung over the trucking industry and have inflicted very significant operational and financial hardships on truck drivers and motor carriers, particularly small trucking businesses.

We applaud your initiative and the goal of discontinuation of DEF derates. We applaud that the forthcoming rule to accomplish this most welcome outcome will be evidence-based, relying on data gathered from DEF product makers related to DEF system failures. We applaud your pursuit of details about DEF systems’ warranty claims, failure rates, and repair information for commercial vehicle model years 2016, 2019, and 2023.

NASTC and its member companies were encouraged by last year’s EPA and Small Business Administration guidance that requires manufacturers to provide a software solution replacing the radical derate schedule with one more reasonable: gradual torque reductions over 340 engine hours with a slowest speed of 25 mph. This deregulatory move was a good first step. Eliminating DEF derates entirely will be the optimal final outcome.

NASTC thanks you for and strongly supports the intended withdrawal of the 2022 Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle NOx rule, scrapping the derate approach for trucks model year 2027 and newer. We also appreciate that EPA’s final rule disapproves the California Clean Truck Check, relieving out-of-state trucks from certain California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations.

In our correspondence of August 27, 2025, NASTC “urge[d] you to push the envelope as hard as you can to ease and, if achievable, eliminate the derate framework altogether. We urge[d] you to expel CARB from having any regulatory power outside the confines of the state of California and, in cases where federal law is controlling, preempt CARB and state regulators. We urge[d] you to enact a transparency regime at EPA.”

It appears you took NASTC’s requests to heart. We are thrilled with your deregulatory initiatives and greatly appreciate your common-sense, reasonable, beneficial actions. The American trucking sector will be better off for them.

NASTC stands ready to work with you and lend support for achieving as much deregulatory progress as possible. Please let us know how we may be of assistance.

Sincerely,

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More ELD Companies Decertified (Part 2)

David Owen — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:03:50 +0000

Below is part 2 of an article that was featured in last quarter’s newsletter from David Owen’s desk concerning the shortsighted nature of many rules, regulations, and laws that come out of Washington. If you recall, the letter was directed at the cost to small trucking companies and owner-operators because FMCSA allowed ELD manufacturers to self-certify.

Does anyone inside the beltway ever consider the tremendous amount of money that must be absorbed by trucking companies, drivers, shippers, receivers, and the consuming customer at the end of the supply chain, to “re-do” over and over the mandates from DOT and FMCSA?

Going back some twenty-five years when the FMCSA was formed, please humor us while we exercise a little critical questioning concerning performance:

Why were ELD’s mandated in the first place?

As we have made clear for almost 35 years, NASTC is and has always been adamantly opposed to the MANDATE! We have always maintained that the decision to use ELD’s or paper should be a COMPANY POLICY decision not a one-size-fits-all requirement. More than 50% of companies forced to use ELD’s never approach an hour-of-service violation.

Besides that, the almost eleven-year experiment with Werner Enterprises proved that there continued to be a huge gap between HOS compliance and actual safety (i.e., accidents, fatalities, and property damage). FMCSA’s own study on the cost-benefit analysis came up with 17 lives saved annually which is in fact and retrospect, statistically insignificant. Our safety numbers have gone up drastically, and many believe that the ELD mandate has cost lives, not saved them.

Why is it that there is zero requirement in the regs for companies to audit logs?

NASTC has maintained that it should be a requirement for all active MC credentialed carriers to audit all driver logs and be responsible for on-going enforcement and training with the HOS. This would have codified a high level of HOS compliance at a fraction of the cost of ELD’s.

Why were companies supplying mandated ELD’s allowed to self-certify? Why were companies required to start using this technology before it was clear to the product providers, FMCSA, and the trucking companies exactly how they were to be designed? Why were they demanded before the enforcement community was trained to read the data uniformly and supplied with the proper technology to do their respective jobs?

If this were an isolated example of Congress, FMCSA, CVSA and ATA promulgating and developing well-meaning but half-baked laws, regs, and guidances that were rolled out for our industry indiscriminately without any regard for small carriers, owner-operators, or the driving public, NASTC might be inclined to give them a pass. However, that is just not the case. I have grown tired of “unintended consequences.”

Other examples include:

The establishment of the Certified Medical Examiners Directory

This well-meaning, half-baked idea has had the following UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:

– It effectively eliminated a qualified MD pool in rural areas and small towns and replaced them with chiropractors, nurse practitioners and inside the beltway MDs connected to sleep doctors.

– This directory was established to mitigate the chance that practicing MDs in rural areas could be taking payoffs under the table to pass unqualified drivers to get their medical cards. Ironically, it wasn’t until after this directory was in place that a chiropractor in South Georgia was convicted of this exact practice and 10,000+ medical cards were decertified because of this pay-for-play scheme.

– This also led to the out-of-control Apnea scare that was promulgated by CME’s trained in STOP-BANG protocol implying that, to quote Joan Claybrook, Co-Founder of Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT) “that 65% of America’s truck drivers have apnea and that is equal to or worse than, driving drunk.” The connection between apnea and driver fatigue was exaggerated out of context so badly that almost all male drivers over fifty were forced to take sleep studies to prove they didn’t have an ailment that WE ALL HAVE. By the way, this entire blunder was put in play through GUIDANCE and as such didn’t have to accommodate The Administrative Procedures Act.

– The latest unintended negative consequence is going on as we speak. FMCSA in an effort to go paperless without the proper preparation, came out with the “improvement” that did away with the requirement for drivers to have a physical medical card on their person. Unfortunately for the industry, our companies, and our drivers, FMCSA didn’t co-ordinate with a dozen or so states who weren’t prepared to go paperless.

Since our guys and gals are in interstate commerce, they could possibly be in 10-15 states in a single week whereby they may be legal in some and put out of service in others. Why couldn’t someone in the beltway anticipate this?

Another example is the not-so-new requirement for pre-CDL entry level driver training. NASTC was one of 26 organizations asked to participate in a “reg-neg” or negotiated rule making concerning this requirement. There have only been two of these in transportation’s history and this one was ordered because Congress had passed a resolution requiring such training back in the 1980’s and no one within the government could figure out how to implement it without violating The Administrative Procedures Act. We were advised at the beginning of this year-long exercise that FMCSA could only implement our complete recommendations if there was a consensus of at least twenty-four of the twenty-six represented groups. NASTC was one of 2 dissenting votes. Without digging into the details, we dissented because we wanted more “behind-the-wheel” training, and we felt there was no evidence that there would be a cost benefit. We also felt that a negative or unintended consequence would be that a young individual would have to spend a substantial amount of time and money with a “self-certifying” training school, only to find out he was not cut out for long haul trucking. That last objection has proven to be correct and our pool of potential new entrants as CDL holders has been flooded with non-citizens, non-English speaking and sometimes, illegal immigrants that have circumvented the proper and legal path to a CDL. Once again this is an example of poor communication and procedural guidance from FMCSA to the various State Motor Vehicle Administrators. Also, it brings into question the many CDL schools that have sprung up around the country without proper vetting. Can we expect in a few years to start getting notices from FMCSA listing training schools that are no longer certified?
There are other glaring examples of mismanagement and negligence by FMCSA over their very short twenty-five year history such as allowing EPA to go beyond low sulfur diesel to ultra-low sulfur diesel, the introduction of catalytic converters, DEF, and all the associated and expensive problems caused by false positives, poor design, and parts and supply issues put in place in conjunction with the EPA and The Green New Deal. The not ready for prime time mandate for automatic braking systems, and the grandaddy of them all, The Compliance, Accountability, and Safety debacle that continues to not only be dysfunctional in rating carriers but has put 100’s of perfectly safe carriers out of business because of distorted data and design flaws.

What went so badly wrong?

To begin with FMCSA became a DEI, political football that has only listened to self-serving, inside the beltway, ideas and proposals. CVSA, The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance is a Non-government Ad hoc committee that is dominated by safety organizations, labor unions, and retired enforcement people. They are non-elected, and they answer only to FMCSA and The American Trucking Association, who funds them with tax-payer dollars. They pick and choose who will be FMCSA’s administrator and who will sit on the Motor Carrier Advisory Board. With the exception of Todd Spencer and OOIDA, there is no representation from our hundreds of thousands of million-mile drivers, and their policies and programs seem to be designed not only to make entry into trucking difficult but also to eliminate the owner/operator model entirely.

As I stated before I’m weary of unintended consequences and after the fact apologies when practices from inside the beltway, classrooms and laboratories have an obvious and measurable negative outcome for our industry and the safety of the driving public.

NOTE: As we speak (mid-February 2026), there is underway a restructuring of the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Board. I certainly hope that our industry is more equitably represented going forward. NASTC is on record as recommending a couple of appropriate candidates who have shown an interest in serving and who are very qualified to speak on behalf of owner-operators and small companies. We have further recommended that the advisory board consider forming a driver group that rotates every year or two that would include current multi-million mile drivers. These drivers could be supplied through ATA’s Road Team, TA/Petro’s Citizen Drivers of the Year, NASTC’s Drivers of the Year, recipients of OOIDA’s Safe Driver Awards, and Women in Trucking’s Driver of the Year. Such a group could help mitigate some of the laboratory, classroom, and inside the beltway foolishness that ends up in the regulations.

The post More ELD Companies Decertified (Part 2) appeared first on NASTC.

How NASTC’s NEST Class Helps Carriers Beat the Odds in Their First Two Years

James Caperton (Member Sales & Technology) — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 15:38:00 +0000

Starting a trucking company is an exciting step — but for many, it’s also a short-lived one. Industry data shows that 85–90% of new trucking companies fail within their first 2–3 years. The reasons vary, but most come down to the same core challenges:

Cash flow mismanagement
Inability to find consistent, profitable freight
Underestimating costs
Lack of compliance knowledge and operational structure

At NASTC, we’ve worked with thousands of small carriers — and we’ve seen firsthand what separates the companies that make it from those that don’t.

That’s why we created NEST — the New Entrant Survival Training class — a focused, two-day training program designed to help new carriers build a solid, sustainable foundation from the start.

The Results: NEST Graduates Outperform the Industry

We don’t just believe in the power of NEST — we’ve measured it.

87% of NASTC members who attend the NEST class are still in business two years later.

That’s a remarkable contrast to the national average. And it’s no coincidence.
NEST gives new carriers the education, strategy, and tools they need to navigate those early years with confidence.

What Makes NEST Different

NEST isn’t a webinar, a sales pitch, or a generic training. It’s a hands-on, two-day classroom experience taught at NASTC headquarters in Nashville, TN — led by industry professionals who understand the unique challenges small carriers face.

Here’s what’s covered:

DOT & FMCSA Compliance
We break down regulations into practical, real-world steps to help carriers avoid shutdowns, violations, and audit risk.

Financial and Cash Flow Strategy
We dive into the financial realities of trucking — from managing receivables and factoring to understanding true operating costs and avoiding common financial traps.

Insurance and Risk Management
Attendees learn how to manage insurance costs while maintaining the coverage required to stay on the road and grow responsibly.

Fuel Strategy
Fuel is one of your largest expenses. NEST provides insight into how professional fleets manage fuel purchasing — and how to avoid retail traps that eat away at profit.

Driver Hiring & Retention
From building a compliant hiring process to finding (and keeping) quality drivers, we help carriers develop systems to build a strong team from day one.

2026 NEST Class Schedule
All classes are held at NASTC Headquarters in Nashville, TN.

January 16–17
February 20–21
March 20–21
April 17–18
May 15–16
June 12–13
July 17–18
August 21–22
September 18–19
October – NASTC Annual Conference
November 13–14
December 11–12

Don’t Just Launch a Trucking Company — Build One That Lasts

The majority of new carriers won’t make it to year three — but you don’t have to be one of them.

Whether you’ve just activated your authority or are navigating your first year of operations, NEST (New Entrant Survival Training) is your opportunity to take control of your future, avoid common mistakes, and build a business that lasts.

Secure your spot in an upcoming class and let’s build your success story — together.

The post How NASTC’s NEST Class Helps Carriers Beat the Odds in Their First Two Years appeared first on NASTC.

Victims’ Advocates Distort Truck Crash Data – Yet Again

David Owen — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:22:19 +0000

An Overdrive report published in early October detailed commentary and statistics from the Truck Safety Coalition about a report the TSC calls “The Deadliest Truck Crash States.”

The report concludes that the “deadliest dozen” states for fatal truck-involved crashes in 2023 (per 100,000 population) are 12 states where, but for three of them (Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama), fewer than 100 total fatalities resulted from a crash involving a large truck over the course of that year. The remaining roll call of “deadliest” states is a who’s who of what some coastal elites might call “flyover country”: Wyoming, New Mexico, North Dakota, Idaho, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana and South Dakota.

The Truck Safety Coalition’s conclusion is a statistical fairy tale, using the ratio of fatalities per 100,000 population to say our most rural, small-population states are the most deadly. Is it a coincidence that all of these states are politically red? Is it a coincidence that almost all of these rural states have higher posted speed limits, thus lending credence to the suggestion that speed-governed trucks might make sense (mandated speed limiters is long a goal of the TSC, after all).

Since when did we not use miles driven for all ratios concerning fatalities?

Using just the number of total fatalities, if we want to rank states for this metric, here’s a run at a better “deadliest” states list for truck-involved fatalities, also highlighted in a TSC-released infographic but otherwise glossed over in its press materials:

Texas (730 fatalities)
California (392)
Florida (341)
North Carolina (192)
Illinois (190)
Georgia (188)
Pennsylvania (180)
Ohio (167)
Arizona (155)
Tennessee (154)

In some ways the sheer size of these states explains their high fatality numbers, but isn’t it interesting that the top three also happen to be the three states with the most sizable intrastate truckload carrier populations? They’re also three states shown to have issued glaringly large numbers of non-domiciled CDLs to foreign drivers in recent years (Illinois is in that category as well). What might an analysis of intrastate truckers’ crash rates show us about the fatality statistics in those states? What about a deep dive into the stats in states where 18-year-olds can get CDLs?

Incidentally, the last time I suggested to federal representatives that we use state numbers for miles driven, I was told such numbers couldn’t be relied on for the reason that many of the states exaggerated or inflated their numbers indiscriminately so they would receive more federal funding. I guess the crash victims advocates and large-carrier trucking interests aren’t the only entities that pervert statistics.

The Truck Safety Coalition is a partnership between Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH) and Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT), two groups that have seemed to enjoy political leverage with another non-governmental organization, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, which is mostly funded by and exists at the beck and call of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

The above organizations, often enough though not always align with the aims of the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and the Trucking Alliance of large motor carriers, and have used such statistical gymnastics in attempts to illustrate “relative risk” to make their cases. Any conclusions drawn from their reports must be questioned and scrubbed for bias against our industry. The TSC’s recent “deadliest states” rankings beg for such scrutiny.

There’s one point my own organization, the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, can wholeheartedly agree on with these groups — the truck-involved crash fatality numbers in 2022 and 2023 per 100 million miles driven were some of the worst in more than 30 years!

Raw numbers are bad enough. There were 5,969 truck-involved fatalities in 2022 and 5,472 in 2023. The former year was the first time since we’ve been recording data that more than 1,000 CDL drivers themselves were killed in their trucks during a crash.

Truck-involved fatality numbers have been on a generally steady increase since 2010, the year CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) pushed carriers’ inspection, violation and crash data into the public realm. In real-number terms, truck-involved crash fatalities had posted two years of all-time lows in 2009 and 2010, below 4,000. Some would argue that the low numbers were attained because of the trucking recession that lasted from 2007 to 2010. Yet the number per 100 million miles driven had also reached an all-time low.

(Coincidentally, 2010 delivered the lowest driver-turnover rate our mega carriers had ever seen. Is it possible that there may be a meaningful correlation there?)

That’s to say nothing of fault in these truck-involved accidents, which the TSC report doesn’t bother to address, either. (Fault studies we do have show the large majority of truck-involved crashes are the fault of the other vehicle involved, not the truck, at a rate that’s getting bigger over time despite the horrible recent-history truck-involved fatality numbers!)

Overdrive pointed out that FMCSA in August kicked off the process to launch a new study into fatal heavy-duty truck crashes, as required by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act. The process will start with an information collection request to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a study titled “Crash Causal Factors Program: Heavy Duty Study Data Collection.” Beware — and I quote, “this study focuses on fatal crashes involving class 7-8 trucks, collecting and analyzing data on driver, vehicle, motor carrier, and environmental factors from about 30 states that were identified as key sampling locations for a nationally representative sample.”

The study has a start date of this coming year. It will run for two years! Why don’t we just digest and analyze all the available data from 2023? A great start would be to throw out the 84% of accidents where the truck wasn’t at fault, throw out the crashes where deer or other animals are the primary causal factor, throw out the number of accidents involving non-resident or illegal CDL holders, throw out the accidents caused by acts of God, or natural disasters, and for goodness sake throw out the despicable “swerve and squat” or other intentional acts causing an accident in the commission of insurance fraud.

What would be left would be true accidents, not those caused by drunk driving or impaired CDL holders, not accidents where the hours of service rules were ignored or abused, and not accidents where the clear and undisputed fault was the other vehicle’s driver rather than the CDL holder’s!

We need honest statistical data.
We need drivers that understand and speak the English language.
We need less, not more technology in the truck.
We need a better-educated populace concerning safe driving around large trucks.
We need a drastic decrease in driver turnover.
We need support from the insurance community to not roll over and settle in questionable at-fault cases.
We need tort reform.
We need to enforce the current rules and roll back existing rules that make little sense, not more rules.

What we emphatically do not need are any of the suggested proposals put forth by the Truck Safety Coalition:

Require Automatic Emergency Braking (AEBs) for all new CMVs. No. This technology is not ready for prime time and will create an increase in accidents.
Have FMCSA require new motor carriers to pass a knowledge exam proving that they know and can implement procedures required to operate a regulated motor carrier business. How can this possibly happen when FMCSA already can’t properly rate carriers, timely perform currently required New Entrant audits, or perform successfully any function suggested by Congress or the DOT?
Incentivize carriers to comply with post-crash drug/alcohol testing statutes in place. This is already happening despite the reticence of state enforcement who are on the accident scene and who refuse to do such testing.

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Pros and Cons of Communication

David Owen — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:22:57 +0000

Dear Member:

In a podcast conversation with Kevin Rutherford recently, we discussed the pros and cons of communication through emails, blogs, and texts versus real conversation in person or via the telephone. In business today I feel there are many misinterpretations and misunderstandings directly resulting from one-way communication and unfortunately almost 100% of our current generation prefer using one-way communication as the only channel available.

We both agreed that the biggest negative about this is the lack of nuance. You just can’t identify that through emails.

Kevin dug back into his treasured trove of trivial wisdom and recalled a psychological example of how dangerous the lack of context and/or nuance can be in using our language. I thought I would share this with our membership below:

With this eight word sentence you can change its entire meaning eight times by emphasizing each of the eight words.

“I never said your sister stole my money.”

“I never said” (someone else did)

“I never said” (not ever, never did)

“I never said your sister…” (I actually printed it)

“I never said your sister…” (it was someone else’s sister)

“I never said your sister stole” (it was your brother)

“I never said your sister stole my…” (I gave it to her)

“I never said your sister stole my money” (it was someone else’s)

“I never said your sister stole my money” (it was actually just a piece of cake)

Is it any wonder that one of the first counter measures to mitigate fraudulent activity is to confirm with whom you’re dealing by making a phone call? In today’s strange world even that stop-gap has been made impotent and unreliable because AI can kidnap not only one’s identity but their voice as well. I guess we need to go back to the old standby – what’s your mother’s maiden name?

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Court Blocks FMCSA Rule Targeting Non-Domiciled CDL Drivers

David Owen — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:50:04 +0000

Court Blocks FMCSA Rule Targeting Non-Domiciled CDL Drivers

Last week, a federal court blocked the FMCSA’s new rule that aimed to phase out non-domiciled CDL holders — many of whom operate with unverifiable driving
records. The rule was designed to improve safety and accountability across the industry.

NASTC is disappointed in the court’s decision. We disagree with the claim that the industry will be forced to rely on inexperienced drivers to fill the gap.

The truth is: there are plenty of highly qualified, U.S.-based drivers currently sidelined due to the freight recession. We don’t have a shortage of drivers— we have a shortage of freight and standards that need enforcing.

We continue to support FMCSA’s effort to uphold the integrity of the CDL system and protect the motoring public.

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The Dehumanization of Transportation

David Owen — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:07:03 +0000

I’m the last person in the world to have any credibility in an argument about uber-technological advances, unbelievable artificial intelligent capabilities, cloning, robotics, or getting to Mars. I’m the last person in the world to not have a cell phone. I own the majority interest in a software development company but use my computer to park sticky-notes. I’ve never used an ATM machine, an alarm clock, or even a wristwatch but I’m never without cash, I always know what time it is, and I’m never late for an appointment. Prior to Covid, I’d never gone through the drive thru window at a bank. As an aside, because of that when I started my company I hand carried my deposits to the teller’s cage, uncovered my “Deposit-only” stamp from the cardboard tent next to the window, made my deposit, and actually communicated with the tellers. Over time, I got to know several of them and had the opportunity to watch them work. As my company grew and I needed young, smart, responsible folks to assist in my company’s growth, I let them know I was hiring. I ended up hiring five wonderful employees from that bank who collectively have been employed by me for 120 years. The bank manager called and complained saying, “you’ve got to quit hiring my best people”. My response was “you’ve got to start paying them better and allow them some vertical opportunity within your bank or you’ll never keep good people”.

The operative words in that opening paragraph are “actually communicated with”.

Today I have a controlling interest in five very successful companies. All five are positive growth companies without debt. We have no employee turnover to speak of and, over 36 years, we’ve never had a workers’ comp claim. We’ve never sued anyone, nor has anyone successfully sued us. We’ve never been successfully hacked nor compromised although in today’s world attempts are made almost daily. We handle over 1,000 inbound calls per workday and a real person answers every call. Hold time is not an issue in that our real person directs the inbound call to the appropriate person with the appropriate company or program. If immediate attention by them isn’t possible we take a call back number and that person is called back. I do not screen my calls at all. If someone calls for me by name or title, the next voice they get is mine if I’m available. If not, I get a call back number and call it as soon as possible, almost always within an hour. My people are trained not to screen in any way. They do not ask if the person is a member or even what the call is about – if they ask for me, they get me. When you don’t have a cell phone, you can’t hide behind it. When you don’t have a computer, you can’t hide behind that either. My secretary gets my emails, prints them off, and puts them in my inbox. I pretend they’re a FAX and if I want to respond, I hand write my response and give it back to her to send. I do not respond to all my emails.

What I’ve just described is unheard of in today’s business world, but I believe it gives our companies a tremendous competitive advantage. We spend millions of dollars advertising to get people to call us and then we don’t answer the phone??? – that makes zero sense. Once again, the operative word here is COMMUNICATION. That word implies a conversation between at least two people. An email or an automated or robotic response mechanism does not qualify as a communication in my book.

I wrote my “take” on artificial intelligence and published it in our newsletter. Below is a reiteration of that comment:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an oxymoron.

I’m certainly no computer science specialist, but I recall when the first computers were built, and the technology was referred to as binary. The computer cards were programmed with long streams of zeros and ones which to me suggests a series of “two choices”, i.e., yes/no, right/wrong, left/right, etc., along a portion of programming. As Yogi Berra is credited with, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

To some extent the human mind is designed similarly with a few major exceptions. Our senses – seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting are the primary human functions that filter data. Just with those five basic senses we homo sapiens deal with billions of data bytes every nanosecond and yes, even when we sleep. Added to that the abilities to learn, remember, and reason, and to enjoy emotions, intuition, passion, and morals, love, hate, sadness, happiness, and grief, we realize that human intelligence will never be rivalled by artificial intelligence, which is still not much more than X’s and O’s, zeroes and ones.

We need to all remember that when the human element is compromised, sometimes it’s difficult to put that genie back in the box.

Another example of the “old-school” mentality that I believe is worth retaining, you’re holding in your hands. We still spend the money to actually print and publish our quarterly newsletters. We still spend the money to send each of you at least one copy via snail mail. Although we do post this electronically to our website where you can pull it, we provide this as an additional option or redundancy not as your only avenue to hear our thoughts. Although we have regular contributors outside of NASTC we have not outsourced or sold our rights to anyone outside our vendor partners. By the way, we think that this form of printed COMMUNICATION makes our newsletter one of the most read in our industry.

One of our most valuable assets is our membership list. We protect your identity as a group as best we can. We do not publish our members list in any form even to our members, nor do we decal or identify your trucks and drivers as NASTC affiliates. However, this doesn’t prevent you from telling others in the industry about us or referring us to potential companies that might profit from NASTC membership.

One other example of our strong opinion about old fashioned COMMUNICATION centers around our advocacy presence in Washington. We have a real and very talented man in Washington, Dr. Jim Edwards. He will be participating in several breakout sessions and panel discussions at our Annual Conference. Also, he has written a book titled “To Invent is Divine” that will be included in your conference package. Join us at the conference, take the opportunity to COMMUNICATE with Jim, and he will sign your book! Jim has been with us for well over a decade, we talk almost daily, and we’re constantly communicating with folks inside the beltway with FMCSA, Congress, and a variety of agencies like, the EPA, the Small Business Administration, OSHA, and others. Our advocacy efforts have been forthcoming for over 25 years, and we have spent the money to represent full-truckload, small, rural based, family companies in Washington – whether they are NASTC members or not. Once again, your COMMUICATION is very valuable to us in these efforts. However, if you want a great example of poor communication try getting to anyone in Washington, the phone company, your cable provider, or now, even a freight broker.

With all these high browed systems using AI, robotics, and advanced technology, WHERE IS the “just in case” button and how can you get it fixed when it’s broken?

Be sure and listen to one of our next Podcasts entitled “More Tech, More Problems” for more on this topic.

The post The Dehumanization of Transportation appeared first on NASTC.

Carrier-Lease Purchases: Let’s Not Just Throw The Baby Out With The Bath Water

David Owen — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 21:36:21 +0000

A recent headline in Overdrive caught my attention:

“Carrier lease-purchase programs ‘meaningful’ for at least half of lessee operators”

In reading the article and the related comments from drivers about both good and bad outcomes from lease-purchase agreements, I decided to comment on this issue and FMCSA’s typical one-size-fits-all, throw the baby out with the bath water, knee jerk reaction that would disallow companies from leasing to their drivers at all.

Their proposal to do away with this established business practice not only does not accurately fall under their authority to do so but also is a bad idea and represents just another example of a governmental agency getting into the middle of a business contract because some carriers take advantage of lessees, and some drivers are naïve about the truthfulness of driver recruiters.

When our industry was de-regulated in 1980, The Interstate Commerce Commission was sunset in 1995, and FMCSA created in 1999, small carriers and owner-operators were invited into long-haul trucking and allowed to operate under CONTRACT authority and not COMMON authority. Many drivers decided to get their own authority and operate under that authority as one-truck owner-operators. Many chose to “lease-on” to larger entities and run under their authority, thus creating the leased-on business model. From these generally large company models, the driver and the company entered into a contract that spelled out their respective terms, conditions, and mutual expectations. From these contracts came many creative concepts that would mutually benefit both parties – the driver and the company. Over the years it seems that some companies have pushed the envelope to such an extreme as to be viewed as predatory lessors not only with equipment leases, but with other areas in the contract such as fuel programs or other ancillary offerings. Many began to treat their lessees as profit centers and in some cases, the company made more money off their drivers than they did hauling freight. Most of the F— The Driver, (FTD) companies gained a reputation as predatory and their driver retention and driver turnover rates reflected that. However, for every one company that is considered predatory, there are ten who sincerely put these well-thought-out contracts together to help the driver succeed, take ownership of his own truck, and drive long-term as a leased-on owner-operator.

Let’s begin to regulate and legislate from a positive perspective rather than a negative one that represents an attempt to reach perfection. Let’s let the marketplace repair itself and not mandate industry wide policy based on a few bad actors. Let’s let true de-regulation create the level competitive playing field that it is designed to accomplish.

As some drivers pointed out, there are some cases where the lease purchase agreement is the only option their particular circumstances will allow.

Think about it: How many people ever pay off their house?

The post Carrier-Lease Purchases: Let’s Not Just Throw The Baby Out With The Bath Water appeared first on NASTC.

Letter To The Editor: Challenging A Misinformation Campaign

David Owen — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 21:27:38 +0000

https://www.ccjdigital.com/perspectives/article/15744018/challenging-a-misinformation-campaign

Apr 25, 2025 | Updated May 7, 2025

An article that appeared in the April 8 edition of CCJ in the Business, Workforce Development section entitled “Study Reveals Driver Fatigue and Mental Health Struggles” caught my attention and angered me almost to a stroke level.

CCJ needs to do a little fact checking before it regurgitates a vile, vicious, and vilifying portrayal of the trucking industry, its companies and its drivers in print.

The article took down several libelous factoids and misrepresentations that cannot in good conscience go unchallenged.

We can all agree on one central theme and that is the job of a professional CDL holder in full-truckload, long-haul trucking is a very difficult one. It is lonely, mentally and physically demanding, and requires special people to carry it out safely.

Our industry is quite proud of our drivers – our heroes of the road – who literally save hundreds of lives and avoid hundreds of accidents every week despite the irresponsible, careless and reckless behaviors of the driving public with whom they share the road.

When there is a car/truck crash the fault is not with the truck but with the auto in 84% of those accidents. Billboard ambulance chasers like Gruber Law ignored this inconvenient truth and provided to CCJ an internal study from 2019 to 2023 (during the COVID years) where they produced a series of big lies that are not supported by any statistical information. Let’s peel back the onion so to speak and look at some of these.

What is a big lie? It is really a psychological concept that basically says that an undocumented statement that is repeated over and over again by a reliable source is eventually perceived as being true, regardless of how absurd it might be at the outset. There are many examples of the big lie in history, but the most famous was the series of lies told by Hitler’s regime to the German people concerning their Jewish population.

CCJ echoes several big lies in the article in question:

The very beginning of the article where it is stated, “Truck drivers are struggling with extreme fatigue, isolation and high rates of depression leading many to self-medicate with alcohol and stimulants to keep working.”

The report, according to Gruber Law, utilized data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, American Addition Centers, RPM Moves, and peer-reviewed research along with 3,000 long-haul and regional drivers from 2019 to 2023 (during the height of COVID). Though these creditable sources are supposedly attached to the data, there are no direct quotes, footnotes, or any traceable evidence of what these studies showed.

The big lie that I’m quite familiar with is the one concerning lack of sleep. The report referenced in the article states that “nearly half of truck drivers sleep less than six hours a night.” She then extrapolates that to “sleeping fewer than five hours results in a tripling of the crash risk and that the report (by Gruber) avers that fatigue of this sleep level is equivalent to 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC) impairment.”

The idea that crash risk triples with less than five hours of sleep is totally made up and probably comes from the FMCSA’s rationalization that driver fatigue went up exponentially as the shift time increased from hour one to hour 13. The agency used “relative risk” theory that was discredited and debunked as statistically absurd when it was pointed out that the relative risk increase was based on the theory that the likelihood of a crash went from six chances in hour five to 13 chances in hour 13, which they erroneously reported as doubling the likelihood of an accident. This is not only disingenuous, it is statistically unsupportable to state that six chances in 1,500,000 and 13 chances in 1,500,000 would result in over a more than 100% increase in the relative risk. Ergo, relative risk did not apply. Actually, that study discovered that the first hour in a shift was statistically the most dangerous hour although there is little or no fatigue at that time.

As far as the idea that sleeping five hours or less is criteria for a sleep deficit is also totally made up and unsupportable. Col. Belenky, who studied battle fatigue for over 20 years, told us in 1999 at a driver fatigue symposium that nothing he had uncovered in his 20 years of research indicated to him that a one-hour nap was not as restorative as a full night’s sleep. I suppose that this reinventing of the truth came as a result of the big lie told at that very symposium when Joan Claybrook stated that 65% of America’s truck drivers had obstructive sleep apnea and that was equal to or worse than driving drunk.

That irresponsible hyperbole has been repeated over and over inside the beltway and in the halls of Congress. Most of the unproductive, unnecessary and, in some cases, dangerous elements of hours of service and driver health has been erroneously built around that double lie. Sleep apnea, or hypopnea, is perfectly normal in all humans. As mammals, we all stop breathing while asleep. Unless there is chronic daily drowsiness associated that results in a severe sleep deficit or narcolepsy, there is no fatigue risk with apnea. And, if there were, why was STOP-BANG protocol not mandatory for all safety sensitive jobs that would include doctors serving their residencies, governmental agency employees, and Congress?

To my knowledge obstructive sleep apnea has never been cited as the primary cause of a car/truck accident. Fatigue, however, is a contributory factor in all accidents, whether on the highway, in the home or in the office, and each of us is responsible for managing our own fatigue, not FMCSA, Gruber Law, or a trucking company owner.

The most egregious misrepresentation of fact comes with Gruber Law’s assertion that, “alcohol and amphetamine use is also high at 91% and 82.5%, respectively. Drivers are abusing substances to self-medicate untreated mental health issues.”

Where does this come from?

Without going into how large this misrepresentation truly is, I will point out prior to bringing on mandated alcohol testing for truck drivers, the government did a two-year study in four states and performed 66,000 random roadside tests for alcohol. They had eight positives at the 0.08 BAC level proving, at least for me, that long-haul professions do not drive impaired.

The insignificant results did not deter FMCSA from including random alcohol testing and that remains a rule that forces the smallest of companies to perform these tests. NASTC administers the drug and alcohol program for 5,000 trucking companies. We have over 8,000 drivers in our consortium, and over the last 30 years you can count the number of positives for alcohol on one hand.

This supposed study by Gruber Law has since publication been taken down and CCJ has agreed to publish my rebuttal based on more responsible facts. However, this serves as an ugly reminder of how badly we need to oppose these types of self-serving attacks to our industry by entities like Gruber Law and loudly begs for someone to do something about tort reform and the proliferation of so-called nuclear verdicts in our industry.

The post Letter To The Editor: Challenging A Misinformation Campaign appeared first on NASTC.