The Highway Safety Consequences of Economic Dependence

Congress has spent years addressing labor trafficking, worker exploitation, wage theft, unsafe transportation, cargo theft, and supply-chain vulnerabilities. What many policymakers have not recognized is that these issues increasingly intersect within one segment of the trucking industry: employer-controlled lease-purchase programs that classify economically dependent drivers as independent contractors.

REAL Women in Trucking and Big Rig Nation support legitimate independent owner-operators and small business entrepreneurship. We oppose business models that use the label "independent contractor" to disguise economic dependence, debt, and employer control.

We are asking Congress to carefully examine the Department of Labor's proposed Independent Contractor Rule (RIN 1235-AA46) through the lens of highway safety, not just labor policy.

You can read our joint letter to members of the Congressional Trucking Caucus and our submitted comment to the Federal Register in April 2026 that was drafted with the help of Democracy Forward below.

RWIT and Big Rig Nation Call on Washington DC Talking Points.docx

Download DOCX • 600KB

RWIT IC Comment Submitted to the Federal Register.pdf

Download PDF • 224KB

Misclassification, debt, unsafe training, inadequate truck parking, cargo theft, and highway safety reinforce one another through the same underlying system of economic dependence.

Every Member of Congress should be asking three questions.

1.    Can the driver realistically haul freight for another company?

2.    Can the driver negotiate their own freight rates?

3.    Can the driver leave without losing their truck or livelihood?

If the answer is "No," Congress should look beyond the label "independent contractor.

Congress cannot separate labor policy from highway safety

Sharecropper Trucking is not the American Dream

While predatory lease-purchase does not directly cause cargo theft. It contributes

to a system in which economically dependent drivers have less flexibility to make the safest operational decisions, including when and where to park due to the degree of control some of these carriers exert over their drivers.

These operational pressures intersect with the nationwide shortage of secure truck parking and create opportunities that organized cargo thieves’ exploit.

Twenty-Five Years of Warnings

The authors of these books approached trucking from different disciplines, economics, sociology, journalism, technology, and public policy yet they reached remarkably similar conclusions about the industry's race to the bottom.

• Michael Belzer (Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation)

• Steve Viscelli (The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream)

• Karen Levy (Data Driven: Truckers, Technology and the New Workplace Surveillance)

• Benjamin Lorr (The Secret Life of Groceries)

• Anne Balay (Semi-Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans and Black Truck Drivers)

and most recently,

• Gord Magill (End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers)

All have documented the trucking industry's race to the bottom through labor exploitation, economic dependence, and increasingly sophisticated forms of worker control. These works reinforce what professional drivers have been telling policymakers for years: predatory lease-purchase is not a pathway to entrepreneurship; it is a business model built on debt, turnover, and dependence.

These books document debt peonage, and the expanded degree of control through electronic monitoring, algorithmic dispatch, forced and coerced lease-purchase models, and economic dependence and illustrate how technology increases managerial control over drivers.

REAL Women in Trucking didn't just read these books, we lived them. Our organization has worked directly with many of these researchers, and we arranged the ride-along that informed Benjamin Lorr's reporting in The Secret Life of Groceries.

Gord’s recently published book has been added to our "MUST READ" list "Trucking Industry Research vs Research on Truck Drivers"

While other organizations are urging Congress to broadly protect the independent contractor model with misleading information about entrepreneurship, REAL Women in Trucking and Big Rig Nation are asking lawmakers to distinguish between legitimate independent businesses and economically dependent lease-purchase drivers.

America needs more owner-operators, not more debtors. Protect highway safety.

Protect legitimate entrepreneurship and oppose economic dependence disguised as independent contracting.

Stop Mistaking Debt Peonage for Entrepreneurship

Recent national reporting has highlighted concerns about labor exploitation, questionable recruiting practices, and the use of economically vulnerable drivers within portions of the trucking industry. These developments reinforce the need for stronger oversight of business models that rely on economic dependence rather than genuine entrepreneurship.

Congress needs to hear from working truck drivers and those who support them, not just industry lobbyists.

With autonomous trucks on the horizon, and the same failed recycled recruiting campaigns being fired up, we need to emphasize a willingness to modernize the job and not just the truck.

A SHORT COUNSEL ROADMAP FOR CONGRESS

Policy objectives: Close identifiable safety gaps without undermining legitimate independent contractors or due process.

A. CDL CREDENTIAL INTEGRITY

Direct USDOT/FMCSA to establish disqualification standards for specified serious sexual offenses. Define qualifying convictions, duration, review, and due-process protections, with particular attention to violent, coercive, child-related, trafficking and repeat offenses.

B. ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE + SAFETY

Require transportation policy and research to examine whether compensation structures, carrier-controlled debt and inability to refuse unsafe work contribute to fatigue, unsafe dispatch, turnover, training shortcuts and other highway-safety outcomes.

C. COMPENSATION IN AN AUTOMATED ERA

Convene drivers, carriers, safety researchers, labor/economic experts and technology stakeholders to develop compensation models that recognize ALL required working time as automation changes the professional driver's role.

Download the REAL Women in Trucking Federal Policy Counsel Brief

RWIT Federal Policy Counsel Brief.pdf

Download PDF • 201KB

Call Washington D.C

U.S. Capitol Switchboard Operator (202) 224-3121

Take 30 minutes to:

• Call your U.S. Representative.

• Call your two U.S. Senators.

• Any Listed Committee Member from your State (see list)

• Ask to speak with the legislative staff member handling labor or transportation.

• Tell them you're calling about the highway safety consequences of economic dependence in the trucking industry, predatory lease-purchase, unsafe training and credentialing gaps.

Respectfully ask them you to oppose business models that use the label "independent contractor" to disguise economically dependent workers. Lease purchase is not entrepreneurship.

• undertrained drivers

• high turnover

• debt coercion

• retaliation

• unsafe dispatch

• inability to refuse loads

• inability to leave abusive situations

Congress now has an opportunity to reverse that trend and protect legitimate independent contractors. Protect honest trucking companies. Protect new CDL drivers and protect the traveling public.

Sharecropper Trucking is not the American Dream

The elected representatives below were chosen because they are on labor and transportation committees such as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Senate Commerce Committee and subcommittees, House Education and Workforce Committee, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Congressional Trucking Caucus.

Senators to Call in addition to your own State Senators

Members of Congress to Call in addition to your own State Representatives