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Gord Magaill - BOOK - End of the Road · Brian Thomas

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  Speaker 1: It's eight oh six here fifty five Carsity Talk Station.
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  Speaker 1: Brian Thomas wishing you're on a very happy, good Friday
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  Speaker 1: in advanced early happy Eastern and please to walk home
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  Speaker 1: to fifty five Carsite Mornings. She be looking forward to
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  Speaker 1: this since I saw he was on the rundown. He
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  Speaker 1: is Gordon McGill, originally from Hamilton, Ontario. He spent twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years behind the wheel of a big truck. And
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  Speaker 1: yes he's a trucker, written a book on that we're
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  Speaker 1: gonna talk about there in a minute. And he's he's
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  Speaker 1: been down the ice roads of Canada's Northwest territories. Since
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  Speaker 1: he's from Canada, that may make sense. But hauling logs
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  Speaker 1: down volcanoes in New Zealand, steering road trains across the
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  Speaker 1: outback of Western Australia, running freight on our own highways
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  Speaker 1: here in the United States. Gordon McGill, Welcome to the
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  Speaker 1: fifty five KOSEE Morning Show, author of End of the Road,
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  Speaker 1: Inside the War on Truckers. It's a pleasure for having
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  Speaker 1: you on the program today, Gord.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, good morning, Brian, thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 1: How's going It's going great and what a fascinating life
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  Speaker 1: you've had. You know, I love to drive, and you know,
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  Speaker 1: I listen, it's too late for me. I'm sixty years old.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to become a trucker. But you know,
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  Speaker 1: I the idea of being behind the wheel, as long
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  Speaker 1: as you don't have a family that you want to
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  Speaker 1: see all the time, it sounds like it might be
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  Speaker 1: a fascinating way to make a living, gord your experience
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  Speaker 1: and maybe address that family. Man. And I say this
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  Speaker 1: within the context of a broader reality young people are
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  Speaker 1: thinking about when it comes to their careers. Can artificial
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  Speaker 1: intelligence eliminate the job I'm thinking about, Gordon. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think they can when it comes to trucking.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, they're working on it. I take a neutral
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  Speaker 2: approach to their technology because that's not my forte, but
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  Speaker 2: certainly the discussion around it is full of what you
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  Speaker 2: might call misinformation. As for myself, yeah, I've sort of
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  Speaker 2: had this unique career arc and you know, it's certainly
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  Speaker 2: gotten the way of having kids. I didn't have children
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  Speaker 2: un while I was thirty nine, but yeah, I did
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  Speaker 2: spend a lot of time on the road. I quite
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  Speaker 2: enjoyed driving. It's actually a very human activity to navigate
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  Speaker 2: this planet we live on with a tool, which is
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  Speaker 2: your vehicle, employing you know, skills and competencies developed over time,
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  Speaker 2: and it's a competency and human enjoyment and activity that
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  Speaker 2: we give over to technology at our own peril.
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  Speaker 1: Indeed, Well, Gordon, the name of the book suggests it's
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  Speaker 1: not always right in the world. Obviously, end of the
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  Speaker 1: Road inside the War on Truckers suggests that we got
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  Speaker 1: problems out there. And I know we've dealt here in
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  Speaker 1: the United States with illegal immigrants who can't read English
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  Speaker 1: getting commercial driver's license, which is just beyond my comprehension.
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  Speaker 1: Is that the kind of concern you have for the industry.
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  Speaker 1: Are we talking about something much broader than that, Gord.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's a component of it, and my
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  Speaker 2: book outlines how we sort of arrived where we're at today.
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  Speaker 2: The last year and a half or so, the trucking
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  Speaker 2: industry has been under intense scrutiny in the media, by
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  Speaker 2: the public, and by the government, and an awful lot
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  Speaker 2: of holes in various systems and agencies, both federal and state,
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  Speaker 2: have have sort of opened up and allowed the trucking
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  Speaker 2: industry to become parasitized by various actors who you know,
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  Speaker 2: maybe aren't all that great at following the rules or
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  Speaker 2: even caring about them. And because these loopholes have been
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  Speaker 2: opened up following many decades of other degradations against barriers
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  Speaker 2: to entry and forcing down the sort of skill level
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  Speaker 2: required to be to become a truck driver, this all
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  Speaker 2: has sort of added up to a bit of terror
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  Speaker 2: on our highways.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it certainly has, and some loss of life on
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  Speaker 1: top of it. So but come on, Gord, isn't it
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  Speaker 1: because there is a desperate need for over the road
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  Speaker 1: long haul truckers and lord knows, we didn't have these
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  Speaker 1: illegal immigrants or any person coming into the country and
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  Speaker 1: satisfying the demand that isn't being met by the population here. Well,
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  Speaker 1: we're all going to be without freight. Is there any
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  Speaker 1: truth to that narrative? Gord?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a couple of chapters in my book
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  Speaker 2: dedicated to this question. Unfortunately, some corporate lobbyists called the
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  Speaker 2: American Trucking Associations have been very good at misclassifying a problem,
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  Speaker 2: which is retention and churn because it's become advantageous to
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  Speaker 2: them to do so. Because that churn and retention problem
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  Speaker 2: has allowed them to unlock again state and federal moneies
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  Speaker 2: to subsidize truck driver schools. Not because there's not enough
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  Speaker 2: truck drivers. They produce like hundreds of thousands of them
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  Speaker 2: every year. It's because they quit and don't come back
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  Speaker 2: because the industry doesn't want to fix itself and doesn't
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  Speaker 2: want to pay people properly. And that sort of pre
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  Speaker 2: existing corporate welfare program based on the lie of a
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  Speaker 2: shortage ran into the mass migration problems we've had over
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  Speaker 2: the last few years and brought us to where we
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  Speaker 2: are today.
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  Speaker 1: And of course some states are a little more apply
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  Speaker 1: a little bit more scrutiny on who can qualify than others.
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  Speaker 1: And maybe with the terrible accidents have happened as a
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  Speaker 1: consequence of people w can't read signs comes to more
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  Speaker 1: and more people's attention, more and more legislation will end
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  Speaker 1: up on the books, which prevents that kind of thing.
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  Speaker 1: And I know that's already happened already, So maybe the
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  Speaker 1: problems will come up with a solution and solve that area.
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  Speaker 1: But one of the things you identify in the book
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  Speaker 1: End of the Road inside the war on truckers, and
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  Speaker 1: I'm curious about this because I am certainly not familiar with,
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  Speaker 1: and I don't know if my listening audience is the
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  Speaker 1: Motor Carrier Act of nineteen eighty, which you say fundamentally
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  Speaker 1: rearrange the economics of the trucking business, and is the
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  Speaker 1: and I'm just reading this the underlying cause of every
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  Speaker 1: other problem we've seen since. Can you break that down
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  Speaker 1: for is Gord right?
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  Speaker 2: So? The Motor Carrier Active nineteen eighty was one of
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  Speaker 2: a number of economic reforms brought about by the Carter
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  Speaker 2: administration to address economic doldrums in the nineteen seventies. The
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  Speaker 2: previous sort of regulated trucking industry was sort of sclerootic
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  Speaker 2: and created a bunch of cartels, and it needed to
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  Speaker 2: be reformed. That we did need the Motor Carrier Active
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  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty. The problem is is that it's swung so
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  Speaker 2: far in the opposite direction that literally anybody with a
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  Speaker 2: pulse and three hundred dollars could open up a trucking company.
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  Speaker 2: And unfortunately nobody's been keeping an eye on just at
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  Speaker 2: the insane number of trucking companies that open up, and
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  Speaker 2: then the fact that a lot of those trucking companies
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  Speaker 2: are opened up as sort of ghost LLC's to allow
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  Speaker 2: companies that get shut down for poor behavior and unsafe
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  Speaker 2: operations and demerit points on their drivers and shoddy equipment,
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  Speaker 2: they just shut down their company, move everything to another
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  Speaker 2: LLC and another motor carrier registration number, and keep on trucking. Sure,
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  Speaker 2: so this system, this system that was meant to sort
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  Speaker 2: of free things up and increase competition and make things
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  Speaker 2: better for the almighty consumer, has been completely weaponized against us.
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  Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this cord that sounds remarkably
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  Speaker 1: like problems that we've had here in the CINCINNTI here,
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  Speaker 1: but I'm sure it exists everywhere. You have absentee landlords
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  Speaker 1: that allow their properties to deteriorate to the point where
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  Speaker 1: sam action needs to be taken. There's litigation that's filed
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  Speaker 1: against the LLC that owns the building, and lo and behold,
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  Speaker 1: the LLC just goes out of business. They reform is
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  Speaker 1: a different one, and you got to start the whole
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  Speaker 1: legal process over. That sounds remarkably similiar familiar, Yes it is.
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  Speaker 2: And you know what else is happening in Ohio. I
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  Speaker 2: know you're in Cincinnati. I have I have some colleagues
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  Speaker 2: and friends in the trucking business. There. There's a little
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  Speaker 2: town called Mainville, Ohio, and this is happening in other
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  Speaker 2: areas of southern Ohio where various migrant communities are using
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  Speaker 2: this system to open up all these multiple trucking companies,
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  Speaker 2: abusing the immigration system and asylum and refugee claims and
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  Speaker 2: mass immigrating themselves into these small towns in Ohio, using
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  Speaker 2: fraudulent trucking companies to launder or create money. And then
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  Speaker 2: you know, I think in Mainville they're constructing a mosque
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  Speaker 2: and most of the money behind that is coming from
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  Speaker 2: these trucking companies that employ migrants from Uzbekistan almost exclusively. Hmm.
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  Speaker 1: That sounds like john American workers might do, Gord, They would.
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  Speaker 2: If you paid them appropriately and didn't treat them like
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  Speaker 2: crap and expect them to just tolerate that abuse without correction.
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  Speaker 1: H What about those who would say, well, it's market
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  Speaker 1: forces and these people are capable of doing it if
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  Speaker 1: they're willing to work for less, then that just works.
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  Speaker 1: The American consumers benefit because everything that we you know,
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  Speaker 1: we eat and we get in our we purchase, it's
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  Speaker 1: all brought to a store or a venue that's by
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  Speaker 1: a semi tractor trailer. We all know that. So isn't
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  Speaker 1: this an inflationary reality when you argue for better pay
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  Speaker 1: for the trucker's cord?
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  Speaker 2: H No, there are a couple of things going on there.
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  Speaker 2: The cost of trucking, as reflected in the market retail
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  Speaker 2: price of any possible good or service never exceeds three percent,
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  Speaker 2: and it's usually down around one percent. And who are
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  Speaker 2: the consumers themselves but workers, And if they don't have
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  Speaker 2: any money, they're not going to consume so much. America
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  Speaker 2: is not a work camp for the third world? Should
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  Speaker 2: it be on a death drive to unemploy everybody?
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  Speaker 1: Good point, Gord. That's why I threw that softball at you.
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  Speaker 1: I figured you're cracking out of the park, Cord. What's
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  Speaker 1: the fix for the problem you identified earlier with these
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  Speaker 1: these sham companies that you know, when they're identified as
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  Speaker 1: a problem, they disappear and then reform. Is that sounds
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  Speaker 1: like an easy fix, assuming someone's looking out for it.
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  Speaker 2: And and well, you know, God bless a Transportation Secretary Duffy,
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  Speaker 2: he's listening to us. And the new administrator of the FMCSA,
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  Speaker 2: Derek Bars, is listening to people within the industry, and
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  Speaker 2: they know all this stuff is going on. Their problem
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  Speaker 2: is is that the FMCSA has been focused on other
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  Speaker 2: things rather than the important things. They also have a
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  Speaker 2: little problem employing a bunch of the corporate lobbyist folks
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  Speaker 2: from the American Trucking associations I mentioned earlier. Hopefully the FMCSA,
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  Speaker 2: you know, directs the resources more appropriately towards these very
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  Speaker 2: pervasive issues.
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  Speaker 1: Well, going back to the idea that if you are
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  Speaker 1: making a decent salary in the trucking business and some
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  Speaker 1: you know, an illegal immigrant has an undercut your salary
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  Speaker 1: just because well they're more than happy to do it
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  Speaker 1: that way. Is this a good career choice? So those
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  Speaker 1: out there again going back to the whole idea that
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  Speaker 1: we all have to do with AI now and young
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  Speaker 1: people looking for maybe a career in the trades. This
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  Speaker 1: is a form of trade and again I don't I
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  Speaker 1: can't see it being eliminated. Is it a good career
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  Speaker 1: choice assuming you got the right personality type to want
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  Speaker 1: to be on the road, Gord, It can.
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  Speaker 2: Be assuming a right personality type and b working for
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  Speaker 2: the correct company and those are fast coming the correct
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  Speaker 2: company to work for is harder to come by than
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  Speaker 2: the supposed shortage of drivers.
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  Speaker 1: I can see that. I guess that's an experience thing
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  Speaker 1: you'll just learn from. Well, I guess just jumping in
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  Speaker 1: the water and doing it now. I got to ask
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  Speaker 1: you this, considering the your your bio, your background, that
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  Speaker 1: I just sort of pulled a couple of fun facts
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  Speaker 1: out when I was introducing you. How in the world,
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  Speaker 1: Gordon McGill from Hamilton, Ontario, did you end up in
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand and in the outback of Australia and then
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  Speaker 1: of course driving around here in the United States of America?
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  Speaker 1: You've been all over the place? How did that happen?
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  Speaker 1: As a trucker?
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  Speaker 2: I just I wanted to go places. I availed myself
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  Speaker 2: of temporary work visas in OZ and New Zealand for
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  Speaker 2: one year, places where I speak the same language and
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  Speaker 2: understand the word temporary and didn't plan on sticking around
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  Speaker 2: to parasitize their economy. And I went home. Something I
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  Speaker 2: think some of our recent arrival friends here should understand that.
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  Speaker 1: Is brilliant Gordon. It is brilliant so other than other
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  Speaker 1: fellow truckers, or maybe just to enlighten folks like me
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  Speaker 1: who are not savvy to the problems that have been
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  Speaker 1: a sort of the self harm inflicted by again the
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  Speaker 1: Motor Carry Act of nineteen eighty or the American Trucking Association.
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  Speaker 1: Who'd you write the book for?
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  Speaker 2: I wrote the book sort of in defense of my
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  Speaker 2: fellow truckers, I mean. I was approached by a publisher
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  Speaker 2: about eighteen months ago because I write on substack. My
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  Speaker 2: substacks called Autonomous Truckers dot substack dot com. I host
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  Speaker 2: a little podcast, and the whole idea was, pardon me
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  Speaker 2: to take my sort of observations and my own research
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  Speaker 2: into why the industry functions in the way that it
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  Speaker 2: does and share them with, you know, just my fellow
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  Speaker 2: drivers for them to consider. And so I guess that's
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  Speaker 2: sort of who I wrote the book for, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: and the wider public. It's it's a fairly smooth read,
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  Speaker 2: and it's not I don't think it's too heavy with
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  Speaker 2: technical jargon or insider information. I think most people reading
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  Speaker 2: it will get the points and trying to put across,
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  Speaker 2: even if they're not truckers or in the transportation industry,
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  Speaker 2: and I.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine come away after reading it with a more profound
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  Speaker 1: respect for the truckers in the world.
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  Speaker 2: Good well, mission accomplished.
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  Speaker 1: There you go, Gord McGill. Man, it's really been cool
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  Speaker 1: having you on the program. Cool life you've had getting
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  Speaker 1: all over the world in trucks and of course supporting
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  Speaker 1: the idea that young people can still pursue this as
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  Speaker 1: a career. We just need to get the baggage out
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  Speaker 1: of the way, and obviously you've provided a guidepost to
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  Speaker 1: anybody that wants to read it, maybe elected officials on
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  Speaker 1: how to smooth out the bumps they have intentionally placed
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  Speaker 1: in the road. Gordon McGill and the Road inside the
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  Speaker 1: War on Truckers. We've got your book on my blog
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  Speaker 1: paget fifty five cars dot com, so my listeners can
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  Speaker 1: easily click on it and get a copy of it,
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  Speaker 1: and I hope they do. Gord, it's been fun man.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you have a great, good Friday and a
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  Speaker 1: wonderful Easter weekend and be safe out happy Easter.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. And the books also available
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  Speaker 2: on audible for those that are driving around and like
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  Speaker 2: to listen to it while they're driving.
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  Speaker 1: They will certainly do that as well. Gordon Micgael, it's
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  Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Be safe out there on the roads.
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  Speaker 1: It's eight nineteen right now here at fifty five Carsiti
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  Speaker 1: Talk Station. Just Trek'll open the phone lines. We've got
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  Speaker 1: some time to talk between now and the end of
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  Speaker 1: the show, and I really would love