Why FMCSA's HOS "Flexibility" Won't Save Trucking Or Its Drivers

How Cultural Shifts, Economic Crisis, and Misguided Policy Created an Industry in Free Fall

On September 15, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy stood before a gathering during National Truck Driver Appreciation Week and announced what he called a breakthrough for America’s truckers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would launch two pilot programs designed to give drivers more flexibility in managing their hours of service. “Truck drivers are the backbone of our economy,” Duffy declared, “and we owe it to them to explore smarter, data-driven policies that make their jobs safer and more enjoyable.”

The reaction from the frontline? “We don’t need more flexibility,” said Mike Reynolds, a 28-year veteran driver from Ohio. “We need to get paid for our time. All of it.” Reynolds represents a growing group of drivers who say federal regulators are solving the wrong problem while the industry burns around them. After a six-month investigation into the economics of trucking, driver compensation structures, and the industry’s ongoing freight recession, the evidence suggests Reynolds is right, and that the consequences of Washington’s disconnect from trucking’s realities may be catastrophic.

The two pilot programs announced by FMCSA would allow 512 commercial drivers to participate in experiments with hours-of-service regulations. The Split Duty Period program would permit drivers to pause their 14-hour on-duty clock for up to three hours while waiting at shipping docks, a response to the industry’s chronic “detention time” problem where drivers sit unpaid for hours while cargo is loaded or unloaded. The Flexible Sleeper Berth program would allow drivers to split their mandatory 10-hour rest period into different configurations, including five-and-five-hour splits instead of the current seven-and-three requirement. Participating drivers would receive smartwatches to monitor their sleep patterns, and the data would be collected over four months, one baseline month following current rules, followed by three months under the experimental flexibility.

On paper, it sounds reasonable. In practice, drivers and carriers alike say it misses the fundamental crisis consuming the industry. That crisis is not about flexibility. It’s about money, or more precisely, the complete absence of it.

To understand why drivers are rejecting FMCSA’s olive branch, you must first understand the economic catastrophe that has gripped trucking for the past three years. The Great Freight Recession, and unlike previous downturns that hit fast and recovered quickly, this one has been a slow-motion collapse. Freight volumes have declined roughly eight to nine percent, far less dramatic than the 24 percent drop during the 2008-2009 Great Recession, but the prolonged nature of this downturn has proven more lethal to carriers.

The numbers tell a grim story. According to data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the industry experienced a staggering 10 percent decline in the number of active motor carriers during 2024. In the first six months of that year alone, nearly 10,000 carriers closed their doors. The carnage accelerated in 2023, when approximately 88,000 trucking companies and 8,000 freight brokerage firms ceased operations, a mass extinction event that rivals any in the industry’s history. Yellow Corporation’s bankruptcy in 2023 resulted in the elimination of 30,000 jobs in one stroke, marking one of the largest single mass layoffs the trucking industry has ever experienced.

The bleeding has continued into 2025. On April 2, LTI Trucking, a Madison, Illinois operation with 250 drivers, 300 tractors, and 575 trailers, shut down without filing for bankruptcy. The company had been a major shipper for household names like AB InBev, KraftHeinz, Nestle, and Tyson. No reason was given, but none was needed. Everyone in the industry understood. Later that month, Florida-based Davis Express, operating 160 trucks and employing 140 drivers, announced it would make its final deliveries on April 23. Owner James “Jimmy” Davis told employees he was retiring and wouldn’t wait any longer for the business to turn around or find a buyer. The language was diplomatic, but the subtext was clear: the company was hemorrhaging money with no hope of recovery.

Michigan’s Equity Transportation laid off its entire workforce of 100 drivers and ceased operations in March 2025. The company operated 109 power units, not an insignificant fleet. On a single day, April 7, three unrelated trucking companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection: C&C Freight Network of Georgia, Best Choice Trucking of Massachusetts, and Best Logistics of Tennessee. These weren’t fly-by-night operations that appeared during the pandemic boom. Many were established carriers with decades of history. And they’re still failing.

Unlike previous recessions where companies could see the bottom approaching, this downturn has defied every prediction of recovery. Experts initially forecasted improvement in late 2023. Then early 2024. Then late 2024. Now, many have stopped making predictions entirely.

The root cause…too many trucks chasing too little freight. The pandemic created an unprecedented boom in freight volumes as Americans shifted spending from services to goods. E-commerce exploded. Supply chains strained. Shipping rates soared to historic highs. Sensing opportunity, thousands of entrepreneurs launched trucking companies. Existing carriers expanded their fleets. The industry added capacity at breakneck speed. Then demand normalized. Freight volumes fell back to, and in some cases below, pre-pandemic levels. But all those trucks remained on the road, creating a massive oversupply that has crushed pricing power.

Shippers now enjoy a buyer’s market unlike anything seen in decades. With abundant capacity available, they’ve driven contract rates down and kept them there. Spot market rates, what shippers pay for one-time shipments, have fared even worse, finishing the first half of 2025 below year-over-year levels. The imbalance is so severe that long-haul truckload demand reportedly plummeted 25 percent in the first half of 2025, with trucking increasingly becoming a short-haul delivery method for the final leg of freight movement rather than the backbone of long-distance transport.

This glut of capacity has created what some in the industry darkly refer to as “zombie carriers”, companies operating at or below break-even levels, technically insolvent but kept alive by lenders unwilling to take losses on their truck loans. These walking-dead companies continue accepting unprofitable freight because taking any revenue is better than sitting idle, but their presence prevents the market correction that might allow rates to recover.

While revenues have collapsed, costs have done the opposite. The American Transportation Research Institute, the trucking industry’s primary research organization, released its 2025 “Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking” report in July. The industry’s average cost of operating a truck in 2024 was $2.260 per mile, representing a 0.4 percent decline compared to the previous year. That sounds like good news until you examine what drove the decrease: a seven-cent drop in fuel costs per mile, the largest year-over-year change in the survey’s history and attributable primarily to falling diesel prices.

When fuel is excluded from the equation, the picture darkens. Non-fuel operating costs rose 3.6 percent to $1.779 per mile, the highest costs ATRI has ever recorded for non-fuel operating expenses. That figure represents a record, and in the context of a recession, it’s devastating. Carriers face escalating expenses across nearly every category simultaneously. Truck and trailer lease or purchase payments rose 8.3 percent to a record 39 cents per mile. These costs have increased 70 percent since 2015, far outpacing inflation, which accounts for only about half that increase. Insurance premiums climbed 3.0 percent in 2024 to 10.2 cents per mile, another record high, following a 12.5 percent spike in 2023. Driver benefits costs rose 4.8 percent to nearly 20 cents per mile.

Driver wages, which had been the primary contributor to cost increases in the three years following the COVID-19 pandemic, rose just 2.4 percent in 2024, half a percentage point below the inflation rate. By the first two months of 2025, driver wage growth had slowed to just 0.9 percent year-over-year. This deceleration reflects the market reality: carriers cannot afford to pay more when they’re losing money on every load. Wage growth has stalled in part because driver productivity has declined.

The ATRI report documents numerous operational impacts caused by the ongoing freight recession. Truck capacity dropped 2.2 percent as carriers sold trucks or parked them indefinitely. Empty miles, the percentage of miles driven without cargo, rose to an average of 16.7 percent, meaning drivers spent more time and fuel moving between loads without generating revenue. The number of drivers per truck fell to 0.93, indicating that carriers were parking trucks faster than they were losing drivers. Another cost-management strategy involved reducing non-driver staff by 6.8 percent, cutting into the ranks of dispatchers, safety directors, and maintenance personnel.

Despite these desperate cost-cutting measures, profitability has evaporated. Carrier operating margins suffered across all industry sectors, with average margins below two percent in every segment except less-than-truckload operations. The truckload sector, which represents the majority of over-the-road freight movement, posted an average operating margin of negative 2.3 percent. That bears repeating: truckload carriers, on average, are losing 2.3 cents for every dollar of revenue. They’re not surviving. They’re dying slowly.

Operating costs average $2.26 per mile. Current contract rates in many lanes range from $1.90 to $2.10 per mile depending on freight type and region. Carriers are losing between 16 and 36 cents on every mile driven, and that’s before considering the overhead costs of running the business itself, office staff, facilities, insurance, legal compliance, and all the other expenses that don’t directly involve putting a truck on the road. Every load hauled represents a financial hemorrhage that carriers hope will stop before their company bleeds out.

Into this economic catastrophe walks the truck driver, and the conversation about compensation has become increasingly bitter. The traditional trucking pay model is cents per mile. Drivers receive a set rate for each mile driven, typically ranging from 45 to 85 cents depending on experience, cargo type, and carrier. A driver covering 2,500 miles per week at 50 cents per mile earns $1,250 weekly, or approximately $65,000 annually, excluding bonuses and other incentives. This model has dominated the trucking industry for decades, dating back to the regulatory structure and labor exemptions established in the mid-20th century.

The mileage-based system made sense when it was implemented. It rewarded productivity and efficiency. Drivers who could safely cover more ground earned more money. It simplified payroll administration for carriers and it aligned driver interests with company interests, both parties benefited from keeping trucks moving but the system has a fundamental flaw that has grown more apparent as industry conditions have deteriorated: drivers don’t get paid for time when they’re not moving, even when that time is work-related and mandated by the job.

When a driver arrives at a warehouse to pick up or deliver cargo, they often wait hours for loading or unloading. The appointment time might say 10:00 AM, but the dock might not actually start the loading process until noon, then take two hours to complete. The driver has been “at work” for four hours but hasn’t driven a single mile. Under the typical CPM structure, they’ve earned zero dollars. Some progressive carriers have begun paying detention time after a certain threshold, usually two hours, but this is far from industry standard, and the rates are often nominal. A driver might earn $15 or $20 per hour for detention, a fraction of what their effective hourly rate would be if calculated from their mileage pay.

Traffic delays, weigh station inspections, repair and maintenance stops, fueling, pre-trip and post-trip vehicle inspections, all of these consume time but generate no miles and therefore no pay under the CPM system. Drivers have a term for this: “donated time.” The trucking companies insist it’s part of the job and that the mileage rate is calculated to account for these delays. Drivers increasingly dispute that claim, particularly as efficiency has declined and the time spent not driving has expanded.

The frustration has led to growing calls for hourly pay, mirroring the compensation methods used by most other industries. Hourly wages for truck drivers in positions that do pay this way, typically local delivery jobs, range from $20 to $35 per hour. A driver working 50 hours per week at $25 per hour would earn $1,250 weekly, or $65,000 annually, seemingly equivalent to the mileage-based example above. This equivalence is superficial, though, and breaks down under scrutiny.

Consider the actual working hours involved in a typical over-the-road trucking job. Federal hours-of-service regulations permit drivers to work a maximum of 14 hours per day, within which they can drive up to 11 hours. They must then take 10 consecutive hours off duty before beginning another work cycle. Over the course of a week, drivers operating under the most common rule set can work either 60 hours in seven consecutive days or 70 hours in eight consecutive days. Most over-the-road drivers approaching their maximum allowable hours are working 60 to 70 hours per week. Their mileage pay, therefore, is spread across a workweek that would trigger substantial overtime premiums in most other industries.

Truck drivers are exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This exemption dates to 1938 and has survived numerous legal challenges. It means carriers can work drivers up to the federal maximum hours without paying time-and-a-half after 40 hours. If carriers switched to hourly pay while maintaining this exemption, a driver working 70 hours per week at $25 per hour would earn $1,750 weekly, a $500 increase, or 40 percent jump, in labor costs compared to the mileage-based payment for the same work.

The push for hourly pay often comes bundled with demands for overtime premiums. If carriers paid time-and-a-half after 40 hours, that same 70-hour workweek becomes 40 hours at $25 per hour ($1,000) plus 30 hours at $37.50 per hour ($1,125), for a total of $2,125 per week, a 70 percent increase in driver compensation.

Carriers cannot afford this. Remember, they’re already operating at negative 2.3 percent margins while spending $2.26 per mile in costs. A 70 percent increase in driver wages, even accounting for the elimination of per-mile pay, would push operating costs per mile to somewhere between $2.80 and $3.00 depending on the specific carrier and route structure. With contract rates at $1.90 to $2.10 per mile, carriers would be losing approximately $0.90 per mile. At typical weekly mileage levels, that represents losses of $3,000 to $4,000 per truck per week. The industry would experience accelerated bankruptcy on a scale that would make the current recession look mild.

There’s another dimension to this compensation debate that rarely makes it into polite industry discourse, even though it dominates private conversations among fleet managers, dispatchers, and veteran drivers. The driver workforce has changed, dramatically, and that change has profound implications for productivity, profitability, and the economic sustainability of the current business model.

The driver persona has changed. We’re in a different time. The driver culture of the old era had a mix of nostalgia and pride. Drivers showed up to work in Oxford shirts, often tucked in, and boots. Clean-shaven or well-groomed. A professional appearance reflected a professional attitude. They were representing a company and representing themselves as skilled pro drivers.

The biggest problem dispatchers had with drivers like this was that they wanted to work too much. Hours-of-service regulations were seen as the enemy because they limited earning potential. They ran hard no matter what; if work was available, we accepted it. We wanted miles, and they wanted to give them to you because that’s how we made money. Work-life balance wasn’t even a phrase back then. The goal was simple: provide for your family. Make money. That was it.

The attitude was transactional in the purest sense. If you paid us, we’d haul it. If you needed it done, we’d do it. The only question was ‘What’s it pay?’ We’d figure out the rest. Delays were frustrating not because drivers felt entitled to compensation for their time but because delays meant not moving, and not moving meant not earning. Drivers were self-motivated to pressure dispatchers to get them out of detention situations or find them another load. Time was literally money under the CPM system, and drivers acted accordingly.

Walk through a truck stop today, and the contrast is wild. Flip-flops and gym shorts have replaced boots and button-downs. Personal grooming standards have largely disappeared entirely. The professional presentation was quaint, almost from another era entirely. The crazy we see today would have been unthinkable to previous generations of drivers, urinating on the side of the road rather than using facilities, throwing trash out of trucks, and a general disregard for the public image of the profession.

The conversation used to be ‘how much will you let me work and how much can I make?’ The driver wanted to stay busy. Now it’s ‘How many miles is that load?’ If the answer is too high, they don’t want it. ‘That’s too far. I don’t want to be out that long. Do you have something shorter?’

Work aversion represents a fundamental shift from the traditional trucker mentality. The conversation increasingly centers on what drivers won’t do rather than what they will do. Maximum permissible hours become ceiling limits to avoid rather than targets to achieve. The attitude that work is something to be minimized while compensation should be maximized has created a tension that carriers struggling with negative margins cannot accommodate.

The training deficit compounds the problem. We learned to drive growing up on farms or with parent drivers or veteran mentors, gaining experience over months. We understood load securing, defensive driving techniques, customer service expectations, and the unwritten rules of professional conduct. Many current drivers complete MAYBE three or four-week CDL training programs, often called “CDL mills” by industry veterans, that provide just enough instruction to pass the licensing test and not much else. They enter the workforce without truly understanding how to back a truck properly, how to secure unusual loads, how to read shipping documents accurately, or how to interact professionally with customers. They’re legal to drive, but they’re far from fully trained.

The consequences manifest in myriad ways. Backing accidents increase as inexperienced drivers struggle with maneuvers that should be routine. Cargo damage rises due to improper securing. Customer complaints about driver behavior and appearance increase. And the illegal U-turn that Harjinder Singh attempted on Florida’s Turnpike, killing three people, stands as the most extreme example of drivers making catastrophically poor decisions that any experienced professional would immediately recognize as dangerous.

The Singh case, detailed in earlier reporting, illustrates multiple failures: a driver who couldn’t speak English adequately, who failed to identify basic traffic signs, who made a decision so reckless it defies explanation. But it also illustrates a broader point that makes industry veterans uncomfortable: the barriers to entry have dropped so low, and the professional culture has deteriorated so far, that people who have no business operating an 80,000-pound vehicle are nevertheless doing so, and carriers are hiring them because bodies with CDLs have become scarce.

Economic and cultural problems persist within a rigid regulatory framework that limits the amount of work drivers can legally undertake, regardless of their willingness or ability. Understanding these constraints is essential to understanding why the compensation debate has become so intractable and why FMCSA’s flexibility pilot programs are unlikely to resolve the underlying tensions.

Drivers can work a maximum of 14 consecutive hours after coming on duty, and all driving must be completed within that window. Within those 14 hours, actual driving time cannot exceed 11 hours. The remaining three hours can be spent on other work tasks like loading, unloading, inspections, and paperwork. After 14 hours, the driver must take at least 10 consecutive hours off duty before beginning another work cycle. Additionally, drivers cannot drive after accumulating 60 hours of on-duty time in seven consecutive days, or 70 hours in eight consecutive days, until taking 34 consecutive hours off duty to reset the clock.

For passenger-carrying drivers, such as those operating buses, the rules differ slightly: a maximum of 15 hours on duty, 10 hours maximum driving, and a minimum of eight hours off duty, with the same weekly limits of 60/70 hours. The property-carrying rules are more relevant for this discussion since over-the-road freight is where the compensation crisis is most acute.

These regulations exist for legitimate safety reasons. Driver fatigue contributes to accidents, and unlimited working hours create dangers for both the driver and other road users. But the constraints create a ceiling on potential productivity that didn’t exist before electronic logging devices made enforcement truly effective. In the paper-log era, violations were common. Drivers routinely exceeded hours-of-service limits when loads needed to move and money needed to be made. The combination of hard ELD enforcement and cultural shifts toward work-life balance has pushed actual working hours down from the theoretical maximum.

Consider two scenarios that illustrate how productivity has declined even within the legal framework. In the first scenario, representing the old driver mentality, a driver works 70 hours per week on an eight-day cycle, approaching the maximum legal limit. They drive 11 hours per day when legally permitted, averaging 60 miles per hour, generating 4,620 miles per week. At 50 cents per mile, this driver earns $2,310 weekly, or $120,120 annually. They’re maximizing their earning potential within the rules by prioritizing efficiency and availability.

In the second scenario, representing the new driver mentality, a driver works 50 hours per week, well below the maximum but enough to satisfy their desire for work-life balance. They drive eight hours per day, averaging 55 miles per hour because they’re less experienced and less efficient. This generates 3,080 miles per week. At the same 50 cents per mile, they earn $1,540 weekly, or $80,080 annually. They’re earning 36 percent less than the old-guard driver, but they’re also producing 33 percent fewer miles.

The carrier’s problem becomes clear when you layer in the cost structure. Using ATRI’s $2.26 per mile operating cost and assuming $2.10 per mile in revenue, the old-guard driver scenario generates 4,620 miles per week. Total operating cost: $10,441. Total revenue: $9,702. Loss: $739 per week. The driver received $2,310, which represents 22 percent of the revenue. The new-guard driver scenario generates 3,080 miles per week. Total operating cost: $6,961. Total revenue: $6,468. Loss: $493 per week. The driver received $1,540, representing 24% of the revenue. Both scenarios lose money, but the lower-mileage scenario at least loses less in absolute terms.

Now introduce the hourly pay demand. The new-guard driver earning $1,540 per week on mileage wants to earn what the old-guard driver made: $2,310 per week. But they don’t want to work 70 hours; they want to maintain their 50-hour schedule. This requires $46.20 per hour. For the carrier, this changes the cost equation dramatically. The operating cost calculation replaces the $1,540 in mileage-based driver pay with $2,310 in hourly pay, increasing total operating cost to $7,721. With revenue of $6,468, the loss increases to $1,253 per week, 154 percent higher than under the mileage pay structure.

The productivity collapse extends beyond individual driver behavior. Asset utilization, how efficiently the company deploys its expensive trucks, has deteriorated industry-wide. A truck generating 4,620 miles per week operates approximately 231,000 miles annually over a 50-week working year accounting for holidays and brief downtime. A truck generating 3,080 miles per week operates 154,000 miles annually. That 33 percent reduction in miles means the carrier needs 1.5 trucks and 1.5 drivers to accomplish what one old-guard driver achieved. But the carrier still has fixed costs for insurance, licensing, facilities, and overhead for those additional trucks and drivers. The entire operation becomes less efficient, and in a negative-margin environment, inefficiency accelerates failure.

Which returns us to FMCSA’s September announcement and why it landed with such a thud among the people it was designed to help. The Split Duty Period pilot program would allow drivers to pause their 14-hour clock for periods between 30 minutes and three hours when at a shipping or receiving facility. The stated goal is to address detention time and give drivers the flexibility to rest or handle other tasks without burning their available driving hours. The Flexible Sleeper Berth pilot would provide additional options for splitting the mandatory 10-hour rest period, potentially allowing drivers to align their sleep schedules with their natural rhythms and the demands of specific freight lanes.

The agency’s announcement emphasized safety and well-being. “FMCSA believes that the exemption covered by the proposed pilot program provides the flexibility to take extra rest, avoid driving during traffic congestion, and mitigate the impacts of unreasonable detention times, thereby improving the working conditions of America’s truck drivers,” the agency stated in its Federal Register notice. Secretary Duffy’s remarks at the announcement framed the pilot programs as recognition of drivers’ value and an attempt to make their difficult jobs more manageable.

FMCSA included a caveat in its proposal, one that reveals the agency’s awareness of how flexibility might be exploited. “FMCSA acknowledges, as noted by comments received in response to the 2019 HOS NPRM, that the potential benefits of increased flexibility could be undermined if the pause is used by carriers, shippers, or receivers for purposes other than the productivity and safety of drivers, e.g., to justify existing or further delays in loading or unloading.” The agency promised to “actively monitor and watch for any indication that shippers, receivers, or employing motor carriers are inappropriately influencing or misusing a driver’s ability to determine how and when to utilize the flexibility provided by the exemption.”

The flexibility isn’t really for drivers; it’s for the supply chain. The 14-hour clock creates pressure on shippers and receivers to load and unload efficiently because extended detention times leave drivers with insufficient hours to complete their runs. Allowing drivers to pause the clock relieves that pressure. Suddenly, a shipper taking four hours to load a truck doesn’t consume four of the driver’s 14 available hours, it becomes “paused time” that theoretically doesn’t count against the driver’s day. The shipper has less incentive to improve efficiency, and the carrier can schedule tighter runs knowing that detention won’t kill the driver’s hours.

The compensation issue remains entirely unresolved. Drivers sitting for three hours at a dock can now pause their 14-hour clock, but they’re still not getting paid for those three hours under most compensation structures. The flexibility makes their day longer, potentially turning a 14-hour day into a 17-hour day, without increasing their pay. Old-guard drivers might have tolerated this because they were primarily concerned with maximizing miles and saw detention as an unavoidable cost of the job. New-guard drivers explicitly reject this framework. They want compensation for all their time, and giving them the ability to pause the clock doesn’t address that demand.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the leading advocacy organization for truck drivers, expressed skepticism about the pilot programs despite supporting increased flexibility in principle. OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh testified before Congress that the association supports pausing the 14-hour clock but emphasized that the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act needs to pass simultaneously to prevent shippers and receivers from exploiting the flexibility. That legislation would eliminate truckers’ exemption from overtime pay requirements, forcing carriers to pay time-and-a-half after 40 hours. Pugh’s testimony illustrates the linkage in drivers’ minds, flexibility is acceptable only if accompanied by fundamental changes to the compensation structure.

The sleeper berth pilot faces similar issue. Drivers who prioritize efficiency and miles, increasingly rare but not extinct, might use the additional split options to optimize their schedules and increase productivity. Drivers who prioritize minimizing work hours might use the flexibility to work even less while maintaining the appearance of compliance with rest requirements. The pilot will collect data on sleep quality and fatigue levels, but it won’t address the economic desperation of carriers or the compensation expectations of drivers.

Public comments on the pilot programs, due November 17, will likely reflect the industry’s divisions. Some drivers will express enthusiasm for anything that provides more control over their schedules. Others will dismiss the programs as meaningless window dressing that ignores the real problem: inadequate pay. Carriers will split similarly, with larger carriers that have sophisticated safety departments expressing support for data-driven policy while smaller carriers struggling to survive will question whether FMCSA’s priorities align with industry realities.

The investigative evidence accumulated over six months leads to several conclusions that various stakeholders will find uncomfortable. The first truth is that trucking faces not primarily a driver shortage but a professional driver shortage. The industry has plenty of CDL holders. What it lacks is a sufficient supply of skilled, experienced, productive, and professional drivers who treat trucking as a career rather than a temporary job. The proliferation of three-week CDL programs has ensured a steady flow of licensed drivers, but these programs cannot instill the professionalism, judgment, and work ethic that used to be passed down through years of mentorship.

The second truth is that driver wages cannot increase substantially under current market conditions without triggering widespread bankruptcy. Carriers operating at negative margins cannot afford to pay more while generating less productivity. The math doesn’t work. Drivers deserving higher compensation for the difficult and important work they perform doesn’t change the economic reality that paying those higher wages would destroy the companies writing the paychecks. This creates a tragic impasse where drivers’ legitimate grievances collide with carriers’ legitimate inability to address them.

The third truth is that the shift from production-oriented to comfort-oriented drivers has reduced industry productivity even as technology has theoretically made operations more efficient. Electronic logging devices were supposed to improve compliance and safety, and they have achieved that goal. But they’ve also exposed how much previous productivity depended on violations that are no longer possible. Combine stricter enforcement with a cultural shift away from maximum effort, and the result is trucks that cover fewer miles per week despite being more reliable mechanically and more sophisticated technologically than ever before.

The fourth truth is that hourly pay, even without overtime premiums, would increase carrier labor costs by 40 to 70 percent depending on actual working hours, and carriers simply cannot absorb this increase. Even if society concludes that drivers deserve hourly compensation for equity reasons, implementing that change in the current market would accelerate the industry’s collapse. Every solution proposed to the compensation problem runs into this wall: the money isn’t there. Drivers can’t squeeze blood from stones, and carriers can’t pay with funds they don’t have.

The fifth truth is that FMCSA’s pilot programs on hours-of-service flexibility are addressing a real but secondary issue while ignoring the primary crisis. Driver fatigue is important. Schedule flexibility matters. But when the industry is experiencing negative margins, record bankruptcies, and a three-year recession with no clear end, tweaking rest break rules feels disconnected from the burning building everyone is standing in. The pilots will produce data that may inform future policy, but they won’t stop carriers from closing, won’t increase driver pay, and won’t resolve the fundamental mismatch between operating costs and freight rates.

The sixth truth is that the market needs more carriers to fail before conditions can improve. This sounds callous, and it’s devastating for the people whose livelihoods depend on those carriers, but it’s economically accurate. The overcapacity created during the pandemic boom must exit the market before supply and demand can rebalance. Until that happens, shippers have no reason to accept higher rates, and without higher rates, carriers cannot become profitable, and without profitability, they cannot pay drivers more. The zombie carriers being kept artificially alive by lenders unwilling to realize losses are prolonging the recession and preventing the necessary correction.

If these truths are accepted, they point toward solutions that various constituencies will resist. For drivers, the path forward requires accepting that the old transactional relationship, high effort in exchange for high pay, produced better outcomes than the emerging model of minimum effort with maximum demands. Drivers who want professional wages must deliver professional performance: appropriate dress, reliable productivity, skilled operation, and courteous service. Work-life balance is a worthy goal, but in a profession that requires extended time away from home and compensation tied to productivity, achieving that balance means accepting lower total compensation than drivers who prioritize maximum hours.

For carriers, the path forward requires refusing to haul freight at unprofitable rates even when the alternative is parking trucks or closing. Every unprofitable load hauled subsidizes shippers at the carrier’s expense and undercuts competitors attempting to charge sustainable rates. The market cannot correct if carriers keep accepting rates below operating costs out of desperation to maintain cash flow. Yes, refusing freight means reduced utilization. Yes, it might mean layoffs or closures. But continuing to operate at losses guarantees eventual closure anyway while making the entire market worse in the meantime.

For shippers, the path forward requires recognizing that unsustainably low freight rates ultimately threaten their own supply chains. When carriers fail, capacity shrinks, and in a supply shock, rates spike dramatically as shippers scramble for available trucks. The Fortune 500 manufacturer that spent three years beating down carriers on price will pay emergency spot rates of $5 or $6 per mile when their preferred carriers have disappeared and their production lines face shutdown. Paying sustainable rates proactively, rates that cover carriers’ actual costs and provide modest profit margins, is far less expensive than paying crisis rates reactively.

For regulators, the path forward requires acknowledging that flexibility initiatives, while well-intentioned, are insufficient to address a systemic economic crisis. FMCSA has limited statutory authority, but within that authority, several actions would more directly address industry problems. Mandating detention compensation after a specified waiting period would force shippers to improve efficiency and provide drivers compensation for unpaid time. Requiring brokers to disclose their margins would reduce information asymmetry and help carriers understand true market rates. Raising insurance minimums and strengthening enforcement of existing safety regulations would force the lowest-quality carriers out of the market, reducing overcapacity. Increasing the difficulty of obtaining a CDL through more rigorous training and testing requirements would reduce the supply of marginal drivers and elevate industry professionalism.

Each of these solutions faces fierce opposition. Drivers resist accountability for productivity when the compensation structure penalizes them for time beyond their control. Carriers resist turning away freight when their alternative is immediate bankruptcy. Shippers resist paying more when abundant capacity gives them negotiating power. Regulators resist actions that might be characterized as “destroying jobs” or “hurting small businesses” even when those actions would improve long-term sustainability. The result is paralysis, where everyone agrees the status quo is unsustainable but no one is willing to accept the short-term pain required to fix it.

The old system wasn’t perfect. Drivers got taken advantage of sometimes. The mileage pay meant you ate the delays and the traffic, but you worked hard, you made decent money. Now, younger drivers want the money without the work. They want someone else to solve all the problems, and I don’t know how that’s supposed to work when the companies are going broke.

The real problem is simple: there are too many trucks, not enough freight, rates are too low, costs are too high, and nobody wants to be the one who blinks first. Drivers won’t work more for the same money. Carriers won’t pay more money when they’re losing on every load. Shippers won’t pay higher rates when trucks are lined up begging for freight. Somebody’s going to have to give, and it’s probably going to take a lot more companies failing before that happens.”

The industry is waiting for a breaking point. More bankruptcies. More capacity exiting. Enough pain that the remaining participants have no choice but to accept new realities. Freight volumes may recover, driven by economic growth or demographic trends, which will pull the industry out of recession through increased demand. Capacity will finally contract enough that rates recover, allowing carriers to pay drivers more while returning to profitability. Regulatory intervention may impose solutions that the market cannot generate on its own.

Or perhaps the industry continues its slow-motion collapse, shedding capacity and hemorrhaging experienced drivers until the supply chain faces a genuine crisis. Emergency conditions eventually produce emergency responses, and the costs of those emergency responses, to shippers, consumers, and the economy, will dwarf what would have been required to address the problems proactively.

What seems increasingly clear is that pilot programs on hours-of-service flexibility, however well designed, will not prevent this reckoning. They represent tweaks to a regulatory framework while the business model underneath that framework is failing. Drivers want higher pay. Carriers can’t afford it. The math doesn’t work, and giving drivers the ability to pause their 14-hour clock, while potentially improving their quality of life marginally, doesn’t address the fundamental economic crisis.

Secretary Duffy’s declaration that “truck drivers are the backbone of our economy” is unquestionably true, but recognizing their importance and actually improving their circumstances requires confronting hard truths about productivity, profitability, and the unsustainable trajectory of current industry economics. The backbone metaphor is apt, when the backbone breaks under too much weight and insufficient support, the entire body collapses. Trucking’s backbone is fracturing, and FMCSA’s flexibility pilot programs, whatever their merits, are not the spinal fusion surgery this patient needs.