The year 2026 might be the year that actual truckers, not just corporate thank-a-trucker messaging, finally broke through the mass media narrative and entered the public consciousness on its own terms.
The president now talks trucking. His Transportation Secretary now attends truck shows. There's a Congressional Trucking Caucus in the House. Trucking isn't just reported in industry news, but prime time across cable networks.
If you don't buy that, just watch former Overdrive Small Fleet Champ contender and small fleet owner Jamie Hagen tell CNN nefarious ELD cheats and foreign drivers have brought rates down. 
Harjinder Singh's deadly crash in August in Florida wasn't a trucking story, it was a national news story for weeks.
Just three months into his second term, the President issued an executive order mandating English, returning the out-of-service order for violations, and calling for an audit of CDL programs for non-citizens. Almost a year later, arguably the most famous man on earth hadn't forgotten the industry: Trucking came up loud and proud in the president's biggest annual speech, the State of The Union address.
DOT Secretary Sean Duffy, like Trump, has plenty to attend to besides trucking. On the same day the Senate confirmed Duffy, a deadly plane crash made headlines in Washington, D.C., the aftermath no doubt dominating much of his work.
Yet Duffy made time in March to visit the Mid-America Trucking Show, where he admitted he was shocked by just how unattended to trucking had been.
Was he surprised to find 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs and a widespread lack of English among drivers? We asked him.
“100 percent," he said. "When we started getting into trucking, [Duffy was surprised by] the rot that has been allowed to foment for decades and has created an industry that’s wrought with fraud. We're starting to peel those layers back and starting to improve the rules, the revenue, the safety for great performing truck drivers. It’s taken time, there’s a lot more to do, but I couldn’t be prouder of how far we’ve come, and the support we’ve had from the industry has been remarkable.
"Some of the insight, the ideas: the industry has been great as partners for us, and that’s what we need to be effective in government.“
In other words, messages from everyday truckers have broken through and are now dictating policy at the absolute highest levels of government.
Remember early 2025, as truck drivers started flagging the influx of foreign, non-English speaking drivers, and many of trucking's big talking heads had no idea what was going on.
[Related: 'Labor dumping' and trucking: Are foreign CDL drivers bringing down rates?]
That's all different now.
With trucking's "expert class" clueless or too bound by political correctness to speak on the real, observed issues truck drivers dealt with every day, it makes plenty of sense that truckers themselves had to send the message.
More recently, as soaring diesel prices (thanks to the Iran war) made headlines, it's no surprise the mainstream media came looking for a real trucker.
After an appearance on Overdrive Radio speaking directly to the same issues in mid-March, Jamie Hagen, owner of Hell Bent Xpress, went on something of a media blitz explaining how the jump in diesel cost impacts his 10-truck business.
When we first reached out to Hagen for this story, he indicated that he was too big-time now for us. (Of course, he was kidding.)
When you ask a trucker a question, be prepared to hear what they really think.
Jamie Hagen joined the morning news to talk trucking on CNN. He was also featured in this CNN story March 28.
"Nervous as hell," he said, and huddled in the corner of a hotel room speaking to a live audience of potentially millions, Hagen spoke his mind.
Setting up the live TV interview, CNN's people asked Hagen "what do you want to talk about other than fuel prices?" he said. "The fuel prices wouldn’t be killing us right now if not for these other issues -- the inflation from the previous three or four years, and all these illegal companies and drivers flooding the market causing rates to stay depressed. They agreed to let me talk about that."
Think about 2022. Truckers were still getting some honorific pats on the back as "essential workers," but mainstream outlets and professional pundits devoted a lot of time to denying that runaway inflation was taking place, and that then-President Joe Biden's border policies could have a negative impact on the working class.
This year, CNN had a trucker tell it like he saw it. No driver shortage, no politics, just realities of the road.
"Normally we would be able to absorb some of [the diesel price shock] easily, but the market has been so over capacity," said Hagen. "Everyone talks about a truck driver shortage, but there’s actually too many, and that’s kind of brought our rates down."
[Related: Small fleet 'gun-shy' about trucking biz investment amid extreme fuel volatility]
He didn't just talk in broad platitudes about macro forces on the market, either.
"There are a lot of people from out of country and non-licensed people right now in the trucking industry who are willing to do things the wrong way," said Hagen. "We’re all regulated by the hours we can drive, and these nefarious individuals are more than willing to drive past those hours, making our roads very unsafe. That’s why you see these huge truck accidents. You didn’t see those a few years back."
No fact checking, no rebutting him with some white paper from a major trade association, just Hagen saying his piece and the segment ending.
Hagen's rise from a figure well-known in industry media to a mainstream talking head mirrors how trucking has come into focus nationally.
"I grew up in an old farm house with a dirt floor in the basement," said Hagen. "We had an outhouse until I was 10, when we got indoor plumbing."
Hagen, who also recently spoke at the Mid-America Trucking Show as part of more than one panel discussion, marveled at his newfound visibility.
"I would have never guessed that some poor kid that lived off of welfare would have his own company," he said, or furthermore would be "talking on CNN and considered an industry expert."
What about meeting with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Derek Barrs at MATS?
"Wasn’t that cool? That caught me completely off guard," Hagen said of FMCSA's show of force at MATS. "I thought we were going to see a video, or maybe we were going to see [Barrs] for 10 seconds and then he'd disappear -- that’s happened before at MATS, maybe because the crowd was hostile." This year, Barrs was "shaking hands and kissing babies, I just thought it was amazing."
Barrs and Duffy walk hand-in-hand with Dalilah Coleman, the girl whose near-death experience with a non-domiciled CDL driver kicked off a national news story and major legislation.FMCSA
What does it all mean? Media narratives come and go. The curtain falls quickly after 15 minutes of fame. Yet for Hagen, recognition of his story has impacted his business.
"I was lucky that one shipper literally stood up and said 'I’m going to help you out,'" and not only offered a fuel surcharge in their contract, he said, but backdated it for the last three weeks after seeing Hagen's CNN appearance.
Hagen really appreciates the shipper, but he knows who else to thank, too.
"One thing I've been trying to push lately is faith," said Hagen. "It feels like faith has helped me more now than ever, almost like a damn miracle."
When Barrs spoke at MATS, he professed similar motivation for getting trucking right and "the cream rising to the top" of the industry. When Duffy spoke at MATS, he projected small-biz trucking would see rates going up soon.
Trucking is mainstream now. Driver voices have broken through. As uncertain as things are, at least truckers like Hagen have found reason for optimism.
