Profile For Brett Aquila

Also drives me crazy that your experience means nothing anymore unless it’s recent over the road. I have 8 years but for the past 2 and a half years I’ve been local And nobody is accepting that

That's the way it has always been. I've been in the industry since '93, and I agree that it doesn't make much sense. I never did get a straight answer from anyone as to why OTR companies don't count local experience. Maybe they figure the OTR lifestyle is an entirely different beast? That's all I can figure, because it isn't the driving part that's harder. Local driving tends to be more difficult than OTR much of the time because you spend more time in traffic, have to maneuver through tight parking lots more often, and you're doing difficult backing far more often as well.

Maybe they've found that local guys who go OTR don't last because they're used to being home. I don't know. It is a bit puzzling.

I drove for 15 years and loved it, but then I decided it was time to move on permanently, so I didn't renew my CDL back then either. It forced me to move on to something else.

Be real damn sure you're done with trucking before you let that CDL go, or you'll likely be facing an expensive and time-consuming process of getting it back, and who knows how that would affect your chances of getting hired.

Things will have to play out for a while yet, maybe a few months to a year, but if they continue to crack down on non-English speaking CDL holders and immigrants, things will swing back in the favor of drivers again.

Correct, its not an immigration issue, its a national security issue and a wages issue and a safety issue.

Exactly!

It's also about protecting our industry, bolstering our economy, and preserving our culture and our way of life.

There are right and wrong ways to approach immigration and allow foreign workers to participate in our society. We already have laws to protect us, and they need to be followed.

Many experienced drivers here have called out the headlines about driver shortages as fake news, and for good reason. The 'driver shortage' is the perfect excuse to demand the allowance of foreign drivers and reduced CDL requirements, neither of which is in the best interest of the general public, current drivers, future drivers, or the overwhelming majority of people in our country.

The cost of transporting goods is a tiny percentage of the overall cost of goods on shelves. We don't need to reduce the cost of shipping overall because our industry is already incredibly efficient. We can move 23 tons of goods 3,000 miles in a climate-controlled environment on very short notice in two days for a few thousand bucks. That's incredible!

Our industry is phenomenal. Trucking is one of the last great American blue-collar jobs, and it's the ultimate American adventure. If people want to be part of it, they can earn their way into our industry, just like we had to.

I have absolutely nothing against immigrants; my family was exactly that a few generations ago. But we did things the right way. We came here legally, learned the language, earned citizenship, abided by the laws, and assimilated into the Amercan culture. I see no reason we can't expect the same from others.

You must be 18 to drive a commercial vehicle for the purpose of Interstate commerce. I would support a law that requires you to be a U.S. citizen to do the same. That would protect our wages and defend trucking as one of the best blue-collar careers in America, one of the few left that pays a salary that can support a family.

Well, Zerohedge has once again posted an article highlighted how dangerous the highways are with the dramatic increase in CDLs going to non-domiciled immigrants during the last administration.

Not only have they flooded the industry with unsafe foreign drivers, but they've actually reduced the standards for getting a CDL in many places.

Here is a link to the article:

American Truckers United Issues Dire Warning On 'Unsafe' Highways Amid Flood Of Migrant Drivers, Crashes

Here are a few of the most important facts highlighted in the piece that really stuck with me:

• Concerns over Unvetted Drivers: ATU has found that truck-involved incidents and fatalities have been on a steady rise since 2016, and the correlations with federal immigration policies under the previous administration saw a spike in non-domiciled CDLs.
• ATU revealed that Walmart and Amazon displayed navigational signs at their trucking hubs in foreign languages
• ATU has previously noted that the Biden-Harris regime "bragged about bringing 876,000 new drivers into the market, effectively doubling the average annual output of new drivers."

"Our highways are no longer safe. Reckless immigration policies and weakened licensing standards have unleashed a deadly crisis on our roads."

- Shannon Everett of the trucking advocacy group American Truckers United

Self-driving trucks are not currently a threat to safe highways or driver wages. Flooding the industry with immigrants is the greatest threat to our industry. Just ask the business owners in landscaping, farming, and many construction trades what would happen to their businesses if they had to pay wages to American workers. They would go bankrupt in short order.

But it's worse than that. They're not making more profits than they would be with American labor, because their competitors are using foreign labor as well. There is no advantage to be gained from something if everyone is doing it.

• Hiring foreigners does not increase your profits for long.
• It ruins good paying jobs for American workers.
• Foreign workers send their wages home, draining our economy of the spending that would have come from those wages as well.

The trucking industry is still an amazing blue-collar opportunity in our society today, one of the few remaining ones left. It's a career that will challenge you, one you can be proud of, and it's an adventure like no other.

I strongly believe the current administration is fixing this problem, and companies are already looking harder for drivers than they have been the past few years. I think they will dramatically reduce the number of foreign drivers back to what it was historically, and our great industry will continue on as it has for many decades.

Time will tell.

What do you guys think? What have you seen lately on the highways? Has anything changed over the past six months since the new administration took over?

Wow, PJ. So you encountered drivers that could speak little or no English at EVERY Weigh Station???

So it certainly doesn't sound like an exaggeration that a significant percentage of CDL holders out there are immigrants now.

I've said for years that self-driving trucks are not the concern, but I worried about bringing in immigrants for cheap labor, just like they've done in many other industries. Well, it's here now, but will it last? Time will tell.

I can tell you this - almost no one has been looking for new drivers for the past two years or so. This past month, people started calling me again. If Trump's team stays in charge and can focus on this issue, I think they'll clean it up pretty well. It's not rocket surgery. But if they don't get it cleaned up, wages will drop hard.

I have noticed our office people are being asked to do more with less personnel.

That's funny, because one of the majors recently told me, "I was told to try getting more without giving more."

I said, "Well, you wouldn't have a very business-savvy boss if he didn't expect that sometimes."

I think almost everyone is trying to stay conservative in this volatile environment, but I believe enforcement is having a positive impact on driver demand (and hopefully salaries) and will continue to do so for the coming months and years. As is often the case, fixing the mess will take longer than creating it.

It's incredible that they gave almost one million non-domiciled CDLs to immigrants in an industry with three million drivers.

What have you guys been seeing regarding roadside checks in recent months? It's summer, so enforcement always goes up with better weather, but do you think this administration is pushing enforcement harder than the last administration?

The great news is at the end!

Zerohedge posted an article:

Letter Urges Transportation Sec. Duffy To Ban Foreign CDLs Amid Series Of Highway Crashes Tyler Durden's Photo

...a powerful movement is gaining momentum in Washington to address a national security crisis in America's trucking industry...American Truckers United has sent an urgent letter to Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy, demanding a ban on non-domicile Commercial Driver's Licenses (CDLs) for non-citizens and restrictions on foreign CDLs to commercial trade zones.

The letter exposes how illegal labor, exploiting loopholes from Biden-era policies, has flooded the industry with unvetted drivers. A recent Zero Hedge report highlighted how CDLs were handed out "like candy," creating a "public safety nightmare."

Another quote from the article:

The majority of the truckloads in Americas two largest ports are now being hauled by Non-Citizen truck drivers when shipped over the road by semi-truck

There has been a multi-pronged strategy to flood our country with untrained, unskilled, and inexperienced truck drivers.

Over the past few years, the government flooded our highways with immigrants, granting almost one million non-domiciled CDLs. Mexico has been handing out CDLs illegally as well, and sending drivers over here to haul freight. Several states have had major corruption scandels regarding bribery for handing out CDLs.

The Great News

Enforcement on the highways has increased in recent months after President Trump issued an executive order titled "Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America's Truck Drivers."

It seems to be working. Two of the majors have contacted me in the past two weeks, saying they need more applications. Not only has AI killed traffic to websites where they used to get many of their applications, but the flood of CDL holders that invaded our highways in recent years is in retreat.

Demand for drivers is picking up again and will continue to do so in the coming months.

I believe our economy is on solid ground and will gain momentum over the coming months and years. I think Trump is making the right moves, not only with tariffs but also with his executive order aimed at cleaning up the trucking industry.

This bodes well for driver demand, which will drive wages higher.

Have you guys been getting the miles?

Earlier in the conversation I said this:

I use AI daily. I build AI-driven apps. I can tell you from quite a bit of experience that AI will give you graduate-level science in one paragraph, but then screw up 3rd-grade level facts in the next. It is WILDLY unpredictable, even in many of the simplest tasks. You must not take your eyes off it, even for a moment.

Just now, I was trying to determine how many days it is from sept 11, 2001 to may 15, 2025.

Grok (x.com) said it's 5,013 days. The correct answer is 8,647 days.

I asked Grok how he derived it and he gave me a long explanation of the math, which was obviously wrong. I told him the answer was wrong and asked him why that happened. He said he miscalculated and the correct answer is 5,002 days. He gave an explanation longer than a typical blog article as to why the new number is correct.

To be fair, Gemini (Google) and ChatGPT (OpenAI) both got it correct.

But Elon Musk (owner of Grok) touts his robots, self-driving taxis, and Grok as world-changing technologies ready for prime time. None of them are anywhere near the claims he makes.

I love Elon and I think he's critically important to our future, but like all fabulously wealthy business owners, he's a marketing dynamo who will say anything to build a following and promote his products. Take nothing he says at face value if he stands to profit from it somehow.

Do not trust AI. Use it, but never blindly trust it. Also, be aware of who creates the one you're using because every AI has its own built-in prejudices. I trust Elon more than I do Google or OpenAI, but right now his AI is trailing the others.

TRUMP, once again, kickin' azzes, 'n takin' names

He sure is! This term is off to a glorious start.

Dont get me wrong but was Biden president in 2016?

Don't get me wrong, but your TDS is interfering with your reading comprehension. Read better.

I'm not really going to worry about self-driving trucks until the lane departure and collision alerts on my truck can tell what is and what isn't a concern.

It's almost impossible to believe that here we are in 2025, and trucks still have the same unreliable, primitive object detection systems that regularly give false alarms. You guys know I started driving in '93, and from the start, that garbage beeped in my ears all day long.

Guardrails, bridges, and everything else set that thing off. I can't remember a single time in my career when a safety device alerted me to something I was unaware of.

Clearly, tech companies' marketing and money-raising departments rely on people not noticing that nothing has changed in 30 years, even though, according to them, we're always "on the cusp of the final breakthrough. "

Funny you mentioned this, I literally saw one today mowing the large empty field at the mall. It got my attention because it has a bunch of flashing lights on it, and I was like "oh there is nobody riding that one".

They can use GPS to guide farm tractors and mowers in fields, but object detection and terrain detection are a problem. If you're in a big, open field like a cornfield or a football field, it's no problem. But if they put that tractor in a suburban yard, you'll have a lot of repair work to do. It can't do that kind of thing.

Same with these "self-driving trucks" that can only go from one Interstate exit to another. It's funny how they never mention self-driving trucks navigating major cities. It seems to me we could have developed a strong freight train network if we wanted to move a ton of goods in a straight line long distances without using many people. Developing self-driving trucks seems like an awful long and expensive way to accomplish that.

I have a couple of drones. They have object detection. It works great, until it flies straight into a tree for no apparent reason (ask me how I know)