In 2024, truckers labored under threat of onerous regulations threatening steep fines, weak rates, nuclear verdicts in court, a freight crime wave and an increasingly paranoid freight brokerage scene, not to mention an actual maniac attacking truck tires with an ice pick in the dead of night.
But motor carriers, owner-ops and drivers of all sorts kept trucking, kept fighting, and though many owner-operators took hell this year, they certainly gave some back.
Here's a lookback, counting down the top 10 trucking stories this year, based on topics garnering the most attention from Overdrive newsletter subscribers.
10. DOL's rollback of Trump's independent contractor classification rule
Among threats to the leased owner-operator model itself, back in January the Biden Administration’s Department of Labor finalized a rule that rolled back a Trump-era rule offering guidance on determining employee or independent contractor classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Biden's rule laid out a six point test to determine the classification of a worker, codifying prior independent contractor tests that had risen out of overlapping court rulings over the years. Some owner-operators worried over the change, yet others Overdrive spoke to felt the rule wouldn't change much fundamentally for leasing models. At the same time, with President Biden out the door in just a few short weeks and President-elect Donald Trump returning to the helm of the federal government, we'll have to see what's left standing in the next year or so.
9. Broker bad behavior
With rates low and capacity loose, brokers in 2024 maybe felt a little unrestrained in their most annoying behaviors. "Carrier vetting" systems gone wild and bashing carriers over clerical errors? Check. Ignorant brokers agreeing to ship TNT for a paltry $1.69/mile? Check.
At least one had their most annoying impulses completely blow up in their face when frantically video-calling a driver on his 10-hour break in the sleeper berth led to a study of the nude male form. That's right, the restless broker called up a naked driver and got the kind of update she probably could have done without. That'll show 'em.
8. Roadcheck/Brake Safety Week
Trucking's front-and-center safety commitment and its close working relationship with law enforcement and DOT inspectors keeps Roadcheck and Brake Safety Week high on the list of top stories in any year, but 2024 brought an added significance. With brokers scrambling to fight freight fraud, roadside inspections became a sort of currency in the spot market. Of course, this was another mistaken idea from the spreadsheet set, as Overdrive investigations found that double brokers can and do get inspected.
But readers kept their eyes on the prize, studying up on the 2024 changes to the out-of-service criteria, which included some changes around drugs and alcohol. Speaking of which, authorities are in the process of downgrading 178,000 or so CDLs through the FMCSA's Clearinghouse for failed drug/alcohol tests, another story high on the list this year.
7. The Mystery of the Ice Pick Bandit
The story originally tracks back to 2023 with a bizarre string of overnight attacks on truck tires, and by early 2024 something had become apparent: We have an absolute maniac on our hands terrorizing dozens of trucks with an ice pick or similar implement. Overdrive alerted law enforcement around the country, cast a wide net and even established a timeline of attacks. At times, the bandit struck on a nightly basis. The attacks show an inside knowledge of trucking and how to make a driver's life miserable.
Just when we thought we'd maybe captured a glimpse of the bandit and his truck, the trail went cold after Halloween. Read the latest about the Ice Pick Bandit here.
6. The Supreme Court decisions that might serve to upend trucking regs
The year began with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announcing a regulatory agenda that included speed limiter and AEB mandates, and some movement on broker transparency, but halfway through the year something happened in the U.S. justice system that may fundamentally alter the agency's very ability to promulgate many such regulations -- not to mention to keep a variety of others on the books.
Two Supreme Court decisions in June dealt a significant blow to regulators. Previous legal precedent gave regulators wide discretion in how to interpret laws. The two decisions this summer took some of that leeway from regulators and put more emphasis back on how Congress wrote the laws to begin with. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said the decisions will have "significant ramifications on federal regulations that affect the trucking industry," but those changes will take some time to shake out.
Could the ELD mandate be in trouble? What about environmental regulations? Read more about the decisions and their potential impact here.
5. A $462M nuclear verdict goes against a trailer manufacturer
The nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II had the equivalent explosive power of about 10 or 15 kilotons of TNT. Today nuclear weapons pack anywhere between 300 and 1,200 kilotons. A St. Louis jury in September dropped the equivalent of one of those Cold War-era monsters on Wabash with a $462 million verdict in a case stemming from a May 2019 fatal crash in which a passenger vehicle hit the rear of a 2004 Wabash trailer.
Read more about the historic case here.
4. FMCSA's massive registration overhaul takes aim at fraud
FMCSA's Office of Registration Director Ken Riddle debuted agency plans to overhaul its entity registration system at MATS in March.
As Overdrive chronicled the insanity of the federal registration system for carrier and broker authorities, and the criminal elements lurking within it, the sleeping giant of government bureaucracy awoke and announced plans for a massive overhaul to fight fraud. The first story on the new registration system aired minutes after FMCSA announced it at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Since, we've explored the plans in various ways, including by following FMCSA's "stakeholder day" meetings where they invite public input from trucking, and reporting on the ongoing fraud epidemic that so many struggle with mightily.
With the MC number trade heating up among fraudsters, among other developments, ways to counteract bad actors' efforts to infiltrate brokered-freight networks continue to dominate discussion with regulators, truckers and others around the trucking business.
3. Marijuana legalization and trucking
In May, the Biden Administration announced plans to "reschedule" marijuana, basically a vague move towards legalization. A bill in the Senate around the same time sought to "deschedule" it, or legalize the drug completely.
What does that mean for professional CDL drivers? Long-term impacts notwithstanding, for the moment it means little, as we explained in this video from the Trucking Law series.
2. Owner-ops face steep fines from finance crimes agency -- or do they?
Reporting in February showed the United States Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had launched a system aimed at all manner of small businesses throughout the United States. Basically, any LLC, corporation, LLP and some other business types, including any owner-operator or small fleet who's filed with their Secretary of State to establish the business, had to report Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) to FinCEN or face civil fines of $500 per day.
Then, the following month of March, a federal judge ruled the system and the Corporate Transpareny Act legislation that required it unconstitutional. Just a month ago, another court enjoined implementation and enforcement of the reporting requirement, then another court reversed that decision. Then the very same court un-reversed it. To follow along the see-sawing regulation without getting whiplash, read here.
1. Broker transparency in freight transactions
The biggest trucking story of 2024 can be none other than FMCSA's recent rulemaking proposal that would strengthen carriers' access to the records of brokered transactions to which they're a party. Overdrive has conducted extensive polling and interviews with its owner-operator readers and found that large majorities support the boosted enforcement of 49 CFR 371.3 that the recent move would supply. Carriers, mostly, see this as their right, as spelled out in regulation, that so many brokers have forced them to waive away. With spot rates in dismal territory and drivers everywhere asking "Who is really hauling all this cheap freight?", the fight for broker transparency this year took on a new urgency.
Owner-operators and other readers got in the scrum to duke it out with freight experts and brokers, who often dismissed carrier advocacy for broker transparency as misguided. We charted the history of the issue, likewise the letter of the law, and continue to broadcast carrier voices on the hottest debate in freight.
So a round of thanks is due to all the truck drivers, owner-operators, and trucking industry participants who read, who wrote in and talked to us about it and so much else throughout 2024. We couldn't fulfill our mission of being the "Voice of the American Trucker" without your help. Let's keep it up, and expand the conversation by recruiting new voices. Send your peers an article or forward them a newsletter. Send in a picture of your truck through the Reader Rigs gallery. Tell us what you really think of brokers or speed limiters or any other thing that's on your mind.
We're here to serve you, so thanks for reading. And here's to a prosperous 2025. Keep on truckin'.
[Related: The top trucks of 2024: The 5 biggest custom-rigs hits of the year]
