The Hitchhiker's Guide to Trucking: How We Built, Broke, and Can Still Save American Trucking

Four million people hold commercial driver's licenses in the United States. The federal government cannot tell you how many of them are who they claim to be. For 25 years, a Peruvian national drove commercial vehicles under a stolen identity. The FBI believes 850 murders are linked to long-haul truckers. A CDL bribery ring in Illinois reached the governor's office and burned six children alive. An operator with an INTERPOL warrant and terrorism charges obtained a valid American CDL. And every year, the industry that moves 72 percent of the nation's freight runs on the same foundation it always has: self-attestation, paper forms, and the assumption that people tell the truth. Rob Carpenter has held nearly every job in trucking: CDL driver, freight broker, fleet owner, enterprise fleet executive, owner, compliance director, expert witness, and investigative journalist. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to Trucking, he draws on 45 years of lived experience and 12 years of original investigation to lay bare the entire system. From the stagecoach era to the modern era. From lot lizards to serial killers. From piss bottles to probate courts. From the ICC to chameleon carriers. This is the comprehensive, unvarnished, trucker-voiced account of how America built the most important industry in the world and then broke everything that made it work.INSIDE THIS BOOK: - The complete CDL fraud repository from medical examiner schemes, identity theft, ELDT mill diplomas, and the bribery rings that put unqualified drivers behind 80,000-pound vehicles, to the 30 Days of Why investigative series. A month inside the systemic failures killing Americans on the highway. The FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative and what 850 victims tell us about who's hauling our freight. The chameleon carrier playbook and the six-step anatomy of how dead trucking companies reincarnate to escape accountability. The insurance catastrophe, the $750,000 minimum that hasn't changed since 1980, the $5 billion guaranty fund gap, and why nuclear verdicts are inevitable. The ELDT swindle and how a federal training mandate created a fraud industry overnight. Crash investigations from Jay County, Pruitt, the Florida Turnpike, and the Willis family. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Trucking touches on every failure point in the system, naming and documenting them. The Duffy/Barrs era, what the FMCSA is actually doing right now, and what still has to change. This is the definitive account of the American trucking crisis, written by someone who has been the driver, the broker, the executive, the owner, and the witness. Featured on CBS 60 Minutes, Will Cain, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC, and over 150 podcasts and radio shows. Read by federal regulators, congressional staff, and the people who run the industry. This is the book the trucking industry needed. Read more