Some American truckers say they are getting paid more per mile as President Donald Trump’s enforcement policies are pushing many of President Joe Biden’s illegal migrants from the highways.
“[I] Normally do Chicago to Fargo for $1200,” a trucker declared via X. “Had a [delivery] broker call and offer me $1800. Needless to say, I took him up on the offer. Lord do I hope this hangs around a little bit.”
The post-election gain for American truckers comes amid a cargo slump that is threatening the economic stability of many trucking firms and brokerage companies. The slump is especially damaging to the companies that exploited the huge population of low-wage illegal truckers who are being pushed off the roads by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s enforcement of long-ignored safety regulations.
The exit of the foreign drivers is good news for the American truckers working in the relatively small “spot market” of online orders and unique loads. Under Biden, the per-mile rates in this market were slashed by many cheap illegal drivers from India and Eastern Europe, including Serbia and Croatia. But Duffy’s crackdown is creating a “Compliance Crunch” that enables American truckers in most districts to get higher per-mile rates.
“Volumes are anemic, but spot rates rose [2 percent] anyways,” noted Craig Fuller, founder of the FreightWaves news site. “What gives? We are seeing the bottom feeders get squeezed out of the market, since these firms don’t operate in the contract market.”
“The raids by immigration agents on roads in a number of US states, in which about fifteen Serbian truck drivers have been arrested in the last few days, are continuing,” the Serbian Times reported in early October, adding:
[Federal] Agents are confiscating CDL [Commercial Driver’s Licenses] licenses for large trucks from those with work permits if they do not also have an I-94 [customs] form, more precisely if they do not have confirmation that they entered the country legally, says our source from another transport company.
The sudden economic change is driven by Trump’s crackdown on the huge population of wage-cutting illegal-migrant drivers welcomed by Biden’s deputies. Many migrant drivers in many states are being forced off the road because executives are nervous, lawyers are suddenly eager to sue, and insurance companies are raising rates for companies that have not fired their high-risk illegal drivers.
So far, the many drivers in the “tender” market of multi-delivery contracts are not yet getting pay gains.
The extra wages in the spot market are a tiny share of overall transport costs, and so create no danger of inflation. However, if wage gains spread to the larger market of planned deliveries, the retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, are expected to claim that drivers’ wage gains create an inflation threat to the nation’s currency.
But the increased costs will likely be offset by American truckers’ ability to cut the heavy costs imposed by the growing number of trucking accidents, delays, fraud, crimes, deaths, and cargo thefts enabled by foreign operators in the United States.
“Almost 1/3 of our nation’s freight is hauled by non-citizen drivers,” trucking expert Bill Skinner posted on X. “That’s not just a safety issue — it’s a national security risk.”
Biden’s cheap-labor policy “is affecting American drivers,” Duffy told Fox News on October 8:
We have Americans who have been in the trucking industry for 50 years through family businesses. They can’t do business anymore because you have these illegals coming in, living out of their trucks. You have teams of drivers, they’re not safe, they can’t speak the language, and they come in under price … way underprice.
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