Ask a Lawyer Live: The Supreme Court Ruling Reshaping Freight

The Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC has put broker liability and carrier selection practices squarely in the spotlight, and the freight industry is still working through what it means.

This is your chance to ask a transportation attorney directly.
In this live episode of On the Move, Matthew Leffler, The Armchair Attorney, joins us to walk through the ruling and answer your questions in real time. What does this mean for how you qualify carriers? How should you be talking to customers right now? What should your team be preparing for? Bring what's been on your mind.

We'll also explore the broader implications across risk, reputation, operations, and customer communication, because this ruling touches more than just legal teams.

Check out the Transportation Sales and Marketing Association (TMSA) website or engage with us on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Welcome Live And What’s At Stake

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome to On the Move, a show where we share transportation sales marketing success stories. I'm Jennifer Carpis Romain, Executive Director of TMSA, A Trade, Nonprofit, Educating and Connecting Marketing and Sales Professionals in the Space. And today on the show, I'm very excited to have Matthew Leffler, the armchair attorney. And this is a live show. And we are excited. We both do podcast podcasts often, but I normally do recorded ones. And we were just talking before we came on. We have weather issues, internet issues, but we're here with you guys live. I have my questions for Matthew, but hit us in the chat if you have them as well. I am remembering to monitor the chat here on this live show. First things first, Matthew, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I am doing well to medium well. That's a little bit of stake humor for everybody. No, it's great. It's a beautiful day in Chicago. It is dark, it is windy, it is pouring rain. Any minute we could have our internet go out. So right now we're living uh La Vita Loca

The Supreme Court Shifts Broker Risk

SPEAKER_01 1:24

the best we possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

I love that and thankful that you still came on the show. So all this kind of started about was there's big things going on in the Supreme Court affecting our industry. Last week at TMSA Elevate, we actually were able to spend an hour discussing all the ripple effects of that Supreme Court broker liability ruling. And I immediately was like, hey Matthew, can you help us with a legal perspective? Like, can't you just change your entire life plans and come promptly to Denver? And you're like, no. And I was like, understandable, but can you make a recording and then come join me on this live podcast? So here we are. Absolutely. And for those of us joining, for those of us joining this conversation today, what do you think is that biggest takeaway that you want transportation leaders to understand about the decision and how it could affect them?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

The real question here is um not whether brokers should be held responsible or not. The reality is now, as you're a broker, you're on notice. Uh, your vetting platform, your vetting strategies, how you uh bring a carrier into your network, how you keep them within your network, those are going to be scrutinized in ways we have not seen before. Now, before Montgomery case was decided, we did have a split among the federal circuits. So you did have the Ninth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit saying, hey, uh, if you're a broker and you're part of an accident that happens, we might uh come looking at your vetting processes. So we we were familiar with it uh originally. But now at the Supreme Court, especially with a unanimous decision, now that question is all across this country, all 50 states, all federal appellate courts. It is going to be the question of what is a safe motor carrier and what is a reasonable vetting process. And unfortunately, there is no clear answer for either of those.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Oh no. Do we lose Matthew already?

No Clear Standard And Insurance Shock

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, so the question is TIA has challenged the FMCSA to provide quote unquote standards in carrier selection. Do you see this having an impact as this gets vetted out in the courts across the country? This is exactly what the FMCSA and the Department of Transportation argued before the Supreme Court. They essentially said, look, the federal government is the one that can determine the quality and safety of a motor care. It's not the private sectors that can do this. The challenge that we have is the FMCSA is a very small organization. Essentially, it's a billion-dollar-a-year administration that is tasked with regulating hundreds of thousands of motor cares, tens of thousands of brokers, 4,000 interstate bus companies, and millions of commercial drivers. So even if we wanted the FMCSA to come in and say, here are safe motor cares, here are unsafe motor cares, here are conditional motor cares, they don't have the resources to do this. 94% of all motor cares have no rating, not satisfactory, not conditional, not unsatisfactory. It is no rating whatsoever. 6,000 trucking companies enter this industry every single month. And the FMCSA, if they're lucky, can audit maybe 6,000 a year. So the goal for all of us in this industry is we need to see the FMCSA with far more authority and far more resources to actually say here are safe and here are unsafe. As of right now, there is no standard and there are no resources. So we're as an industry kind of left asking the question, what are we supposed to do next? And that is everyone's taken the approach differently. Some of them have increased the amounts of insurance that motor carriers should have. But clearly the FMCSA needs to provide more oversight and has to have more resources to fulfill their mandate of being the safety administration for the industry.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Awesome. Thank you for that. And know that they can see us both now. So we're doing great things here. Tiffany always, she's our podcast producer, handling things on the back end, but she says, You're making it work even without power. Thank you for being here. And thank you to Tiffany and Gary for letting us know that you can, in fact, both see us while we do this podcast. That's that's the goal here.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Modern technology, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I know. You love it, you hate it. Sometimes it loves and hates you back. But here we are. Um, so since the ruling was issued, what reactions from the industry have stood out to you the most?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

I think that the first thing that really surprised me, and I'm not terribly surprised ultimately, is a lot of people said this doesn't change anything. This is the same as it's always been. There's no reason to panic. And just for everyone who's watching and listening, I panic about everything. That's just kind of the nature of who I am. So that aside, uh, the Supreme Court does not take cases on that are not material. They take cases that are incredibly important. And one of the things I think is going to come out of all of this is the requirement, whether it's legal or not, for brokers to have liability insurance, whether you call it contingent auto or third-party liability, whatever that looks like. Because here's the reality the minimum insurance you have to have as a motor carrier in this country is $750,000. That was established in 1985. Also, the year that I was established, it was 1985. And we've never adjusted it for inflation and we've never increased it. And so what has happened is medical expenses have skyrocketed, accidents continue to happen. And ultimately, when you are a broker and you move freight and a truck is involved in an accident, no one knows if you're responsible or not. We don't know what your vetting process was. We don't know what you knew about that specific motor carrier. But we're gonna find out, and we're gonna find out through litigation. And insurance, many brokers do not carry liability insurance because they're not legally required to do that. And at this moment in time, if you're sued, you really want that insurance because there's two things insurance provides the duty to defend, to pay for your legal expenses, and the duty to indemnify, to pay your liability up to the policy limits. And so what we're going to see, what we are seeing right now, is when brokers who already have liability insurance go for renewals, they're seeing those numbers increase sometimes three or five times what they were the month before. And the same goes for people who are finally getting quotes for insurance. Well, that quoting process is hard at this stage, and those rates are gonna be very expensive. For the big ones, the C.H. Robinsons, the Echoes, the RXOs, they're gonna be okay. Like I wouldn't worry too much about them. They're gonna make it. But for the smaller or mid-sized brokers that have not been thinking about liability insurance, you may add a new cost on your PL that you weren't anticipating. And there is no relief in sight. There is no real big activity from the federal government or from the associations to say this is what you have to do for vetting. So everyone's gonna have to learn these rules as these cases kind of go through the system.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Yeah, I was wondering too. Like, I think some people are like, oh, well, we already do best practices. Like we work with safe carriers, we make sure that we're paying attention so it shouldn't affect us that much. And in some regards, maybe that's true. But again, to what you're saying, there still may be changes on that bottom line for your PL that you aren't expecting. So, what are those misconceptions that you're hearing, either from

Vetting And Monitoring That Holds Up

SPEAKER_00 8:46

the brokers or the carriers or the shippers, about what this actually means?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, so I love preventative maintenance. I will always talk and scream about preventative maintenance. If you do something preventatively, it means it's less expensive when it happens when it's random. Like it's good to be in top of what you're doing. And that goes the same for vetting processes. If you think you're following best practices, I hope that you are. You should absolutely work with your insurer. You should absolutely work with outside counsel. Let me be very clear, Jennifer. Do not take legal advice from a podcast or a webinar. If you think you need a lawyer, you probably do. And it's not me. Unless you're paying me, then I'd love to be your lawyer. But the reality is you need to have these things looked at at least once a year, probably every six months, because what is reasonable today may not be reasonable tomorrow. As technology gets better and the different technologies are increasing exponentially, you have to use what is going to be considered best in class. It's not going to be a sole provider. You're likely going to have to have multiple providers. The one thing I think will be really interesting, Jennifer, and I'm really excited for this. For many years, the really large brokers have looked at their carrier vetting processes and carrier monitoring processes as confidential proprietary information. Well, that's not going to be confidential or proprietary because every single time one of these cases happened, that is exactly what's going to be litigated. What did you do? Who did you work with? When did you know it? And so we're all going to see what everyone is doing as time goes on.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

And um, I'm glad you brought up like the vetting process because that was so at TMSA when we had this session, we had your video, then we had one from carrier source that talked about vetting, and then one from Highway that talked about like the operational sides of things. And then we ended with like a PR viewpoint of like, you should be prepared for this if you get put into a lawsuit and you shouldn't be talking about it for the first time when that happens, but like way before. But vetting is such a major topic and such a piece of this. So, how can they really be evaluating right now? Like I know you said, like make sure that they're checking in and it's not something that you're doing, you know, every so often, but actually building a plan. But what is the best way to stay on top of this and be evaluating when it comes to carrier selection and risk management?

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, this is a really tough question. And this is the one that everyone is scratching their heads around. No one knows right now what is a reasonable process to vet a carrier. Same with reasonable monitoring. And so, what we're trying to understand is how can a private company know more about a motor carrier than the federal government that authorizes them to do this work? And so, what oh my gosh, the lights any moment, any moment. We're just on pins and needles. Oh, this is the foreboding of the question, the whether exactly the reality is that um you're gonna have to use multiple sources of intelligence. You can't just rely on highway or RMIS or carrier assure or gen logs as your sole provider. You have to have multiple ways of understanding that motor carrier. And I think what ultimately it's gonna look like, from my my consideration, is that you're gonna look at motor cares that are conditional, like have conditional ratings, and probably never work with them because we've already seen in the Montgomery case that a conditional rating might not be a sufficient thing to use. And so you're gonna be looking at data around how long have they been in business, how much liability insurance they have. And those are things that are gonna be really important to navigate over the weeks and years ahead. Presumably, the shippers are also gonna have to wrestle with the same set of facts. There are many shippers that I work with that have their own process of uh selecting motor carriers, and they don't they don't use brokers. And now they might have the same type of liability of what is an unsafe motor carrier, you usually don't know until after the accident takes place. And then you're going backwards and say, okay, well, how do they get in the network? Oh, we we did this, we did this. The most important thing, the most important thing for everyone who's watching this and listening to this, if you have a process that is documented and it better be documented, do not deviate from that process. Don't say, Well, I met him, he seems like a nice guy, he just doesn't meet our conditional. No, don't do that. Because when you deviate, that's when people like me get our hooks into you and say, well, well, well, it seems your process wasn't all that reasonable, was it? This wouldn't have happened if you had been more diligent in your process. And so the even though we don't really have a clear answer of what every broker ought to be doing, the most important thing, which we all know we should do is follow our written processes, have outside counsel or your risk team, monitor your vetting processes. And if new technology comes out, you better check it out. I mean, you don't have to buy it, but you should at least know what it does and see does it replace me that I already have? Is it better than what I have, or is this another thing we have to spend money on? I if I was a freight broker right now, man, I'd be loving all the SAS stuff. Everyone's got a platform, everyone's got a subscription.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah, that was um when we talked about this last week at conference, that was one of the nuggets that stayed with me the most was um somebody in the audience was like, document your process, stick to your process, and be ready to defend your process in court if you're called upon. And it was such like to me, that was what stuck in my brain through all of it is because you're right, like if you're saying we have the best practices, if you deviate from that and then something happens, how are you going to defend that deviation? And so having that process, documenting it and being able to be like, this is why we do this, and this is our best practice and why, that's so important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And you're gonna see every single broker's processes, like they'll be stuck behind the non-disclosure agreements initially. But once these things get subpoenaed and they start getting produced, everyone will see who is being utilized. And for me, and I think for all of our listeners and viewers, we really need to get our FMCSA with more resources. Like you are talking about an organization where half of its budget of the billion dollars they receive goes to projects of roads and bridges and things. So they do not have the resources for the task in front of them. And if we want the roads to be safer, and every single one of us should want that, um, the only way you get that is not by passing liability from one party to another party. It's about giving our government the resources to do the job they've been mandated to do. And I think we could, again, we could all agree that we want the regulator

Shippers In The Crosshairs

SPEAKER_01 15:22

to have the resources they need to be successful.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Next question from the audience. Good old Gary Cornelius. He's the one who initiated this whole topic for conference, too. So he's very excited to have his questions answered. But do you expect shippers to be the next ones brought into this in their processes of selecting brokers and carriers?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Oh, 100%. I mean, this is clearly the playbook of the plaintiff's attorneys. Their goal is to find the deepest pockets available. The reality is if you're Werner or Night Swift, your pockets are pretty deep. You don't really need to go looking for other pockets. But if you're talking about a small broker who hires a small motor carrier on behalf of a large shipper, they're gonna go after the shipper. And the argument will be very similar. It'll say, you, broker, were negligent in selecting this unsafe motor carrier. And you, shipper, selected this dangerous and ill-prepared broker, you should have known better too. And that still has the layers of protection for limitations of liability and indemnification agreements and all of this. But if you're insolvent when this lawsuit happens with your motor carrier broker and you have indemnification where you're going to pay on behalf of the shipper if they get found liable, doesn't matter. It's coming for the shipper. So we know that this is the goal that the attorneys have. There's been some cases I think are encouraging for shippers. There's a Home Depot case just a couple of weeks ago in Texas where they sued Home Depot saying, hey, you selected uh a bad motor carrier. But the reality was Home Depot selected Werner. And if you can't select Werner and be like defensible in terms of hiring a good motor carrier, I can't help you. And there's no way around that. So ultimately, Home Depot was successful. But the goal is absolutely to go after those shippers, especially if you're a shipper who manages their own transportation, selects the motor carriers, they're gonna look at you the same way they look at the broker and say, oh, you should have known this was an unsafe motor carrier.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Mm-hmm. To kind of add to that, I think when when things like this happen and all the answers aren't there, it's a little bit of chaos all of the time. And so where do you see companies, and whether that's the carrier, the broker, or the shipper, potentially overreacting or underreacting to this ruling and what their next step should be?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah, I think that this way to look at this is not that dissimilar to the Wabash case in Missouri a few years ago where the back of a trailer was hit and Wabash had this astronomical $400 million verdict. People are like, oh, should I replace all of my rear impact guards? Like, no, don't replace everything. But what this really does stand to people to understand to think about is that we really do need to have better vetting processes and better resources at the disposal of shippers, brokers, and motor carriers. The reaction that you want to have is to skeptically look at your internal process with a third party. Look with an outside council, look with your insurance companies, work with your trade associations and say, what am I missing? What am I not doing that I could be doing? And then it's to go and look at other types of technologies that may be useful, whether it's like a, again, highway or truck stops, RMIS product, or any other platforms like Genlogs that are out there, you should look at those. But the biggest thing I think you're gonna have to reconcile is that even though the government only requires a broker to have a $75,000 surety bond, you're gonna need insurance. And many brokers already have this. But if you don't have this because the government doesn't require you to have it, you're gonna wanna have that because litigation, even if you're right, even if you're going to win, can be $10,000 to $20,000 a month of your cash flow going to defending yourself. That's why that duty to defend is so important with insurance. So if you're out there going, like, I don't think I need this, maybe you don't, but I have to imagine the worst case scenario. And that is eventually you'll be the target of a lawsuit. And when you are, you want to have someone who can help defend you. It's not going to put you into a cash flow uh position where you can't keep the business operating.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I think that's really great advice. And so obviously, like you're

What Sales And Marketing Should Say

SPEAKER_00 19:34

that legal perspective, you are closely paying attention to what's happening as you should. Compliance teams are on top of it. But one of the reasons why I wanted you to come on the show and to talk about like we are sales and marketing people, and people may view those categories as like, oh, they don't need to pay attention as much, but they really do. You need to be able to communicate it, you need to be able to sell it, you need to be able to know what your team's doing to be able to talk about it. So, what conversations do you think that leadership, sales, marketing, operations teams, everyone outside of the people that you think should be thinking about it and talking about it, what should they be discussing right now?

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I mean, this is the greatest opportunity for sales and marketing professionals. Is to one of the best ways I ever sold was not how well I could communicate or the graphics that I would produce. It was a certificate of insurance with the umbrella policy with a $4 million like piece sitting there to protect my customer from liability. So when you understand what the actual challenges are within this industry, how do you vet? How do you sustain? How do you monitor? Those things are critically important, not just for your own business, but for the stakeholders. And the stakeholders include your customers and your prospective customers. So understanding what is happening is critical. And that's why they come to you. You are their smart friend who can help them navigate these things. It's also really important to note, and I this is a very important advice that always gets outside counsel. This is not legal advice, but generally speaking, you shouldn't say we're safety is our number one priority. Say we're we're the safest company out there. Don't, don't do that. Um, you don't want people to think or the plaintiffs to think, oh, well, if safety is the most important thing for you, here's all these instances where safety wasn't the most important. So are you lying now or were you lying then? You don't want that. But what you do need to have is people in your team that understand what your business is going through and how you have used your agility to position yourself to thrive in this kind of environment. So absolutely, sales and marketing people should know what the processes are and be ready to deal with those questions because the shippers are a little bit slower sometimes about what's happening in this world. But when they learn, like, oh, I should be asking questions about liability insurance or vetting processes, like you want to make sure you can speak to those things competently.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up of being like safety first. Um, the PR perspective that we got, that's what she talked about too. It was like, don't say we only use. Safe carriers because that is creating a liability nightmare for you. Because even if you go into the world with the best of intentions and only try to use the best carriers, if something happens, then you're liable because you said that we won't ever do that. And no one can actually make that promise or guarantee. We can only do our best. Absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I mean, you're not the courts are not asking you to have the safest process. What the courts are asking you and requiring of you is that your process is reasonable. And reasonable is of is a continuum. Like if you're just throwing darts at the wall, that's probably not reasonable. But if you're following a process of they have to be in business for this long, they have to have this level of insurance, they have to do this. And those are the types of things that you can you can sell into your customer and say, here's what we do, here's what how we're consistent, and here's how we evaluate this thing and how we evaluate motor carriers. Because again, 94% of motor carriers in the United States have no rating. Not safe, not unsafe, not conditional. It there is no rating. And so, in order to say, well, we've selected a good motor carrier, um, maybe you call references. I don't know. But the reality is you have to have a documented process signed off by outside counsel that you follow rigidly. And when people deviate, you better punish them, write them up, give them, like you know, suspend them or terminate them. That is what you're gonna have to do because when you deviate, that is when the lawyers, my brothers and sisters-in-law, are happy to talk to you. And I will say the big winners for all of this are the lawyers, and we can take some solace in that. We need a win. We really do.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

And with that, I think too, like thinking about like what are your next steps, what are we doing to walk through all of those things? There is this uncertainty around the liability. So when we think about what action should we take over the next six to 12 months, I would love to know your perspective on that. And maybe like as a two-fold question from somebody who thinks they do have the best processes and they don't have to make a lot of changes, what should they be focusing on? And then the people that were like, this wasn't something that was required of me. So I'm starting from the ground and having to build this immediately, and you can't do everything in a day. So, like, what kind of steps do we take there?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Yeah, the main thing is to stay engaged with the industry. I mean, we're gonna see a lot of cases over the next few months and probably obviously next few years of when vetting processes failed or when vetting processes were successful. As a broker, you are not being asked to be a guarantor of the performance of the motor carrier. We are not saying if anything that happens, we're the ones that take the blame. That's not what the question is. The question is if that's an unsafe motor carrier and that question gets decided through a lot of different ways, but what is the process that let them in? Was it a reasonable process? You can reasonably get a motor carrier into your network who that particular driver had a really bad night's sleep, falls asleep, and hits somebody. That doesn't mean the broker is liable automatically. It's not that what that means. What it does mean though is if you have a process that you don't follow or you're inconsistent with it, or you just haven't updated it over a period of time, that is gonna open the door for liability. And just like we have with motor carriers, if you have a conditional safety rating, shut down your company, make a new motor carrier. No one's gonna catch you. That's the chameleon carrier. Will we see chameleon brokers? Who knows? Maybe, maybe. So there's a lot of uncertainty in all of this right now. But I would say not to panic. Obviously, there's no reason to panic for this kind of stuff, but it is important to be vigilant in how things are being decided and make sure that you're doing what's best for your company and positioning yourself that when the worst case scenario happens, you have some level of protection to keep your lights on, which I seemingly cannot do, Jennifer, because the lights continue to flicker. I am very excited. We're hanging on.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

We're hanging on, we're rounding towards the end of the

Automation Waivers And Industry Rule Changes

SPEAKER_00 26:02

interview. We're doing great. Um so looking ahead, so one thing I really wanted to talk to you about too is like this is a big case. People are talking about it, but it's definitely not the only legal precedent or conversation that's going on right now. There's other things that people should be paying attention to. And what I don't want people to do is be like, oh, they're talking about this one, so I should only be paying attention to this and nothing else that's going on. So, what other legal developments or industry trends could further shape this conversation? And should we be really kind of paying attention to as a full scope here?

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Yeah, I mean, the FMCSA, and I I'm a huge fan of the FMCSA, huge fan of Jesse Ealison, the deputy administrator, and Derek Bar, as the administrator. And what they have been very clear about is they are really tackling driver qualification. So English language proficiency, non-domiciled CDLs, the entry-level driver training registry program, all of these things. But what they're working towards is this attack on self-certification. So ELD devices, these things have been self-certified by the manufacturers. That is likely going to slowly be phased out over time. And whether that means like we're gonna have a third party testing all the devices, that's too early to call. But that is certainly where this thing is gonna go. I would say that in terms of trends and forces that everyone should pay attention to, we are in a moment in time that is truly remarkable. What is happening right now is just as profound as we had with deregulation in 1980 and containerization in the 60s and 70s. And that is the age of automation. Just two examples I'll use for your listeners and viewers that I think are worth understanding. One of them is a new waiver that is being put in place on the intramodal side. Uh, CSX is the first one doing this right now. They start in July, and what they're going to be doing is using um autonomous scanning technologies to look at the tracks, to see if the tracks are safe, if there's deviations. And it's very interesting. But the company that asked for this uh has really asked for a five-year waiver of the human beings inspecting the tracks. That is automation coming for that part of the business. For our side, for the trucking side, just a couple of weeks ago, the FMCSA closed the comment period for this technology. When a truck that's autonomous breaks down, instead of putting out cones, which is what the legal requirement is, they're going to have a beacon. And the beacon waiver has not been granted yet, but they've ex it was an initial one-year period for the waiver. Now they're asking for five years. Jennifer, this age of automation, we'll look back in 10 or 15 years and we'll be like, oh my gosh, how much has changed? And what I want to emphasize to everybody is when these changes come, they are not these massive sweeping changes. They are incremental, like waivers of a safety inspection or a waiver of a of a cones in lieu of a beacon. If you're watching incremental changes, there's a moment for you, you specifically, to participate in this process, to comment on those rules. The the rule for the the way the waiver for the autonomous track inspection, when I looked at it, had four comments, four comments of people saying, I want to have this or I don't, like four people. On the beacon side, there's about 360, 370. So the future is being written now. Whether you participate or don't, it doesn't matter because it's going to happen. So you have the possibility and the potential to influence the future. And if you decide not to do that, man, you're giving up a lot of power that you ought not to.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Okay, got another question from Gary from the audience. He says, We see this as one of a series of events taking place that will structure change in our industry. How do you see Montgomery fitting in with non-domicile drivers, ELP, driving school crackdowns, then Querca, and then infrastructure bill, if they pass, is coming out of committee. So kind of where you I love this. This is my country.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Gary, I love this question. So what we have to look at, I'm gonna actually take a different subject and tie it into this thing. So the subject I'll start off with is vehicle maintenance. The national out of service rate for commercial vehicles in this country is 22%. 22% of all commercial vehicles on the road right now are unsafe at any speed. You stop them and you look at them, you go, wait a second, like that's not safe. Like those tires don't have enough tread depth, those lights aren't working, those airlines are afraid, they're they're rubbing together. How do we make it better? All of these initial changes, we'll start with non-domicile and ELP. This is part of the broader public goals that the Trump administration had when it comes to who's inside of our country, who's allowed to work in our country, and all of these things. ELP, the English language proficiency, has been the law since 1938. It is not a new law, but it's not been enforced the way that it has been today. But even as it's being enforced now, it's less than maybe around 20,000 violations for English language proficiency. And there's no criteria by which you can go back and drive a truck again. You could get back in that truck tomorrow and drive. And maybe you get another citation, maybe you don't. But there's no easy path to say, here's what ELP. Non-domiciled CDLs, according to the FMCSA itself, they believe it's about 220 some odd thousand people. Maybe it's more, maybe it's 400,000. Sure, maybe it's a lot more. Who knows? That capacity will slowly go away. But again, it doesn't solve the real problem, which is our equipment is not safe, and our insurance for our motor cares is too low. People hate me when I say this, Jennifer. They hate me when I say this. The insurance for motor carriers should be adjusted to inflation. That would be two or three million dollars of insurance. Most small motor carriers would go bankrupt. Is that a problem? Sure it is. But if you want truck drivers to make more money like they used to back in the pre-deregulation days, that is how this stuff goes. And even with ELP and non-domicile, if you don't give more resources to your federal regulator, you can't expect a different result. You cannot expect anything to change. So when you look at these issues, broader issues of driver qualification and driver training, all of these things, it shows the story of when you reduce the barriers to enter, you open the door for terrible things. The terrible things may be a catastrophic accident. Sure, it could be a catastrophic accident, but it could also be the theft of a $7 million load of nicotine pouches. And that is what Corca is trying to combat. So Corca, I love it, combating Organized Retail Crime Act. Fun to say, even more fun to explain. Corca has passed the House. It's in the Senate. It is one of the few bipartisan pieces of legislation we can all get behind. And what Corca would do is give a group within the Department of Homeland Security this kind of regular, this authority over all investigations, local, you know, municipal, federal, all this into one place. We can actually track the criminal cartels that are stealing all of our stuff because we need that stuff. We need it. And whether it's a $6 billion a year problem or a $35 billion year problem, it doesn't really matter. It is a problem that has opened the door because of how awful we are as an industry. We need stronger regulators with better resources. We need higher barriers to enter. And that is how you make things safer. But the problem, and this is the problem we've had since the very beginning, the safer things are, the more expensive it is. And how many people can afford more for what they're already buying? The vast majority of Americans are struggling to pay their credit cards off every month. Most of them don't. Credit card defaults are high, auto loan delinquencies and defaults are high, mortgage delinquencies, rent delinquencies are all getting worse. And so if you want things to be better, you have to be prepared for things to cost more. And do the American people, do they want to spend more on everything? I don't know. But from my perspective, we have the first time in a very long time where the federal government, as well as even like the people at that president, care about our industry. So this is the moment we can be loud and say, hey, there's things you should probably do. And maybe they'll do them.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

I think that's a great perspective. Like when the when the eyes are on us, it forces us to do things, or we can do things, or we can say things, and people are going to pay attention in a different way. I feel like that's been one of the most exciting parts about coming in a transportation logistics supply chain over like a post-COVID environment, is like people actually know a little bit about what it is. And so we just will continue to be in the eyeballs to figure out what comes up.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

What was fascinating is like what has happened with supply chain, and this could be from COVID, it could be from Amazon, but it is the product and how it gets to you, is the same experience. It's an experience that's tied together. So the supply chain and the thing you buy are the same, they're the same experience. And so people are getting more interested in how some of the stuff works. And with CBS doing the stuff like with English language proficiency, this is a great example. If you have this as a out-of-service issue since last year, and you have 20,000 people have been given a citation saying you can't speak English, you can't read the road signs, you are a danger on these highways. That makes you go, well, maybe we should change things. Maybe we should be a little bit more rigorous in our vetting processes or in our onboarding or our training processes. And then you peel back the onion and you say that 22% of commercial vehicles, trucks, and trailers are unsight. That is millions of assets on the road that are out there now. That if you just stopped them and looked at them, you would say that has to stop, and then we'll fix it, and then it can keep going. So our industry needs a radical transformation. And I don't know if we have the wherewithal to do it, but man, this is the moment to try. This is the moment to

Final Takeaways And Next Week

SPEAKER_01 36:07

try.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Well, thank you so much for being here. Thank you to Matthew's lights for hanging in there. Good luck with the storm with your dog and your kids because I think you're in for the rest of the day, but I'm glad you for this time. Thank you so much for your time and your advice. Um, always good to hear from you and chat with you. Thank you for coming on the show. And I will see everybody next week for our last episode of On the Move before we take our summer break. We'll be chatting with Sarah O'Hearn and we'll be talking about data and benchmarking and the importance of it. So catch you guys next week. Thank you again, Matthew. Bye-bye. We did it.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Oh my god, my heart is racing. Racing.