Some of the loudest conversations in trucking right now aren’t coming from policy rooms, conference stages or trade group press releases. They come from drivers, fleet owners and industry veterans who feel something fundamental has changed, but no one warned them it was coming.
That’s why this episode long journey Deliberately different.
I sit down Harvey Beachco-founder Teamsters of Americanot to pick sides or swap slogans, but to break down decades of assumptions that have defined trucking and ask a harder question: Is this still a cycle – or have the rules changed underneath us?
Harvey isn’t the only social media celebrity to discover trucking during the pandemic. He is a third-generation industry lifelong man who grew up in terminals, built and operated fleets, watched the rise and fall of legacy airlines, and is now watching the industry he loves come under pressure under unfamiliar and permanent pressures.
Trucking was born, but not an introduction
Harvey’s story didn’t start in a CDL school brochure. The story begins in 1981, during the oil boom, with two trucks transporting air cargo in Arkansas. His parents built a business that grew with the economy—Target store delivery, GE Freight, a paper mill, retail distribution. He started washing trailers when he was 12, worked in the shop while in high school, and later helped operate a fleet that grew into the hundreds.
This is important because his frustration is not theoretical. This is not political theater. It’s life lessons — and long-term memories of trucking used play a role.
When I asked what was fundamentally different today compared to the late 1990s, Harvey didn’t say “harder.” “It doesn’t matter much,” he said.
From relationship to transaction
For decades, trucking has relied on trust. Relationships are important. Operators go to great lengths to serve their customers as long-term relationships pay off. Tow pools, driveway promises, handshake understandings—these are not favors, they are tactics.
Harvey’s career has been built on this mentality.
But after COVID-19, things have changed. Freight has become highly transactional. Technology floods the market with data about “what interest rates should be” while relationships give way to algorithms and short-term savings. Social distancing has changed not only the way people queue, but also the way businesses interact.
Once this behavior is trained, it doesn’t go away.
Pay, mileage, and the stress no one talks about honestly
One of the most consistent themes in the conversation was wages—not as a topic, but as a math problem.
Harvey makes a straightforward comparison: Wages in skilled trades such as electricians, HVAC technicians and mechanics have grown over the past decade. Despite increasing regulations, responsibilities and risks, long-haul drivers, especially dry van and refrigerated truck drivers, have largely failed to do so.
Low barriers to entry in trucking have always worked against experienced drivers. When interest rates rise, capacity pours in. When capacity floods in, wages stagnate or fall. This cycle is familiar.
What is unfamiliar is the scale of pressure that has increased over the past few years.
Miles have been taken away. Transport distances are shortened. There is no overhead yet. Drivers spread fixed costs over fewer miles, and the pressures are felt everywhere – turnover, morale, safety and pay.
“This is not a cycle”
Sometime in 2023, Harvey and his partner, Shannon, realized something disturbing: This didn’t feel like a self-correcting recession.
They did not observe the normal freight cycle. They are looking at structural changes.
As customers push their goods to the spot market, the networks they have built over decades are dismantled. The trailer promises to evaporate season after season. The average haul length plummeted from about 800 miles to less than 500 miles—a no-man’s land for drivers or carriers.
When long range becomes mid range without short range efficiency, no one wins.
Two standards, one industry
One of the most difficult parts of the conversation — and the one that drives Teamsters USA — is the perception of imbalanced enforcement.
One thing is clear to Harvey: This isn’t about blaming the person behind the wheel. It’s about the system.
The playing field is no longer competitive when some operators operate under strict audits, insurance reviews and enforcement, while others exploit the gap between multiple MC numbers, offshore offices, log manipulation and inconsistent licensing standards.
Check history is downplayed. Accident data became fragmented. The liability turned into a scam.
And operators who abide by the rules are the ones who bear the costs.
The birth of a grassroots movement
Teamsters America didn’t start out as a media brand or political operation. It started when both operators realized they were watching generations of businesses churn away, with no one upstream slowing down.
What changes everything is the realization that this is not alone. This is systemic.
From state-level CDL decisions to federal policy memos that drivers never see, from positions advocated by trade groups that many carriers don’t feel represent them, to enforcement gaps that reward scale rather than compliance — the pieces add up.
When their efforts were thwarted locally, the fighting shifted outward. Social media amplifies it. Then the state Legislature heard. Other states soon followed.
Suddenly, what started in Arkansas was shaping the national conversation.
The gear bubble no one wants to talk about
One of the most illuminating parts of the conversation had nothing to do with policy—it was about trucks.
Used equipment prices will not only increase between 2020 and 2022. They are out of touch with reality.
Harvey described OEMs and financial weapons selling trucks at inflated prices, financing them aggressively, and then quietly and collectively deferring payments when the math didn’t work. Unlike 2008, loan repossessions never occurred on a large scale—not because the loans were healthy, but because enforcing the loans would have exposed the scale of the bubble.
No one wants to be the first domino to fall when 80% of their portfolio is lagging.
This distortion not only hurts buyers, it also props up capacity that should be exiting, prolonging pressure on interest rates and wages.
A cruel fact for drivers
Toward the end of our conversation, Harvey shared something that surprised me.
For drivers, he said, there’s a belief that needs to be revisited: When something goes wrong, the responsibility isn’t always your dispatcher or your company.
Many operators are experiencing pressure from all sides – customers, brokers, lenders, insurance companies – and are doing their best to protect drivers from the stress. This does not excuse bad operators. But it does explain why frustration is widespread.
Trucking has always been tough. The difference now is how many stressors are coming at once.
What does this bring to the industry?
This conversation is not meant to make anyone feel comfortable. This is not meant to convince everyone. Its purpose is to slow down the noise long enough to examine the mechanism beneath it.
Whether or not you agree with every conclusion, one thing is hard to argue: The trucking industry operates differently than it did a decade ago.
If the industry wants to get back on its feet again, it’s going to need something the trucking industry hasn’t practiced well lately — listening before reacting.
The American Teamsters Union did not set out to be a movement. They respond to a vacuum.
The real question now is whether the industry explicitly fills this vacuum or allows it to expand through conflict.
The article Sitting down with the grassroots movement: Teamsters United and the battle for Project No One appeared first on FreightWaves.
