Trucking Advocacy Groups Send Letter to FTC Alleging Price Fixing and Anticompetitive Behavior from Freight Brokers
Four trucking advocacy organizations sent a letter to the FTC, alleging that the behavior of freight brokers the middlemen connecting truckers, or carriers, with the shippers who want to hire them to transport a load is anticompetitive and contributing to unfair labor practices.
REAL Women in Trucking, the Truckers Movement for Justice, The National Owner Operators Association (TNOOA) and the North American Trucking Alliance (NATA) asked the FTC to investigate the business practices of C.H. Robinson (CHRW), private company Total Quality Logistics and Uber Freight, owned by Uber Technologies (UBER). The groups said in the letter that companies are running smaller carriers out of business.
The letter, which was shared with The Capitol Forum and sent to FTC Chair Lina Khan on October 19, alleged the freight brokers are fixing freight rates, inserting anticompetitive language into contracts and blacklisting small carriers who ask for transparency. Carriers are allowed to ask for contract transparency under federal statute.
While the trucking industry is regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the four organizations wrote they have seen no “clear path or plan” from the administration to “curb the tremendous fraud occurring within their system,” which is why they contacted the FTC, according to the letter.
Despite the number of advocacy groups backing this letter, the trucking industry has had very little collective power since the deregulation of the industry in the 1980s. Although some truckers are unionized or have the opportunity to unionize, many work for themselves as independent contractors. Additionally, long hours in isolation on the road make it difficult to organize.
As independent contractors continue to report deteriorating working conditions and impacts to their ability to compete in the industry, their appeal will reach an FTC that has been increasingly interested in protecting competition in labor markets. But with Donald Trump winning the presidential election, the agency continued focus on labor appears to be in jeopardy.
Desiree Wood, the founder of REAL Women in Trucking and the primary author of the letter, is no stranger to the FTC. The nonprofit works to address gender-based violence and harassment in the commercial motor vehicle industry.
Wood wrote a letter to the agency in April 2023 in support of the FTC’s proposed rule to end noncompete clauses. The rule, which the commission issued in April, has since been challenged by a district court.
After Wood sent the letter on non-compete clauses to the FTC, the advocate said she met Khan at an event in Washington, D.C. Wood introduced herself, and Khan told her that she was reading her letter, according to Wood. The advocate told the chair that she had another issue she might go to the FTC about: unfair labor practices in the trucking industry.
“She said, ‘Well, write it. I’ll read it,’” Wood told The Capitol Forum. “And so I’ve been working on it.”
But it hasn’t been easy. “For all of us amateur advocates, it's so hard to do anything else but drive and hope you can pay your bills and have enough money to eat on the road,” Wood said.
Many truckers aren’t connected with each other, Wood said, and while social media has helped bridge these gaps, it’s still difficult to reach out to fellow truckers if the only way to get in touch with someone is by phone while they’re driving.
Not to mention how the individualized nature of the job results in many differing opinions, Wood said.
“Just the fact that I was able to write that letter with those four logos on top was a feat in itself, because those four groups don't necessarily see eye to eye on lots of different things,” Wood said. “This one subject matter is where we could have a really great get-together and talk about this one issue and formulate a strategy.”
The FTC and the FMCSA didn’t respond to requests for comment. C.H. Robinson, Total Quality Logistics and Uber Freight didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment.
Groups allege a hostile and unsafe working environment. The crux of the trucking advocacy groups’ argument comes down to a lack of transparency in freight contracts, which they say can lead to unsafe working conditions.
“We contend that freight brokers are negotiating rates with shippers based on market conditions, and then offering these freight loads to smaller business carriers at rates far below market conditions,” the letter states.
Smaller carriers, who may need the work, could then take these lower rates, according to the letter. Under the FMCSA’s Broker Transparency Rule, carriers have the right to review the record of the transaction, meaning they have the right to see how much a freight broker is negotiating with a shipper.
However, when smaller carriers ask for this transparency, they are often denied, according to the letter, and often, there’s no path forward for them to get this transparency.
“They do have recourse,” said Jimmy Hart, assistant to the president of TNOOA, which has more than35,000membersacrossthecountry.“Therecourseisnottowork,whichisnorecourse,because then they lose their trucks.”
Truckers in these cases often end up taking the work anyway, and because the pay is so low, they may then have to “neglect vehicle safety maintenance to provide for their families,” resulting in unsafe driving conditions, the letter to the FTC said.
The letter includes an anonymous Facebook post from the owner of a trucking company who said she passed on delivering a load after the equipment her drivers would have been required to use didn’t pass a pre-trip inspection.
“When I explained to the broker the load was unsafe he laughed and said other drivers do it,” the post said. The trucking company owner explained that they didn’t end up taking the load because the equipment could have hurt or killed someone. The broker, hearing this, told her that she would never work with the company again if she refused to take the load. She continued to refuse.
In this case, this trucking company owner had the ability to say no, but other truckers might not.
“Carriers can’t make a fair living under unsafe working conditions,” said John Grosvenor, president of the NATA, a nonpartisan organization whose goal is to unite small trucking groups.
The alleged unsafe working conditions extend beyond just the equipment, the groups said.
Grosvenor said that truckers are more tired than ever while on jobs due to longer detention times and the pressure to deliver loads on time, which could result in unsafe driving. While truckers aren’t supposed to drive more than 14 uninterrupted hours within a day, detention the time a trucker spends waiting at a shipping facility to load or unload cargo can significantly increase the time a trucker is in their vehicle and on the road. jarbutus@thecapitolforum.com
Drivers who reach out about payment for the time they spent in detention may be told by a broker that, according to the contract they signed and weren’t allowed to read, the shipper elected to not offer payment for time spent in detention, according to the letter.
Additionally, city ordinances in recent years have prohibited trucks from parking overnight in lots, resulting in truckers having to park on the side of the highway to take a break or sleep.
“That’s why you see truckers parked on off-ramps or on-ramps of interstates, because they’ve got nowhere to go,” Grosvenor said.
In the oilfield, where Billy Randel, president of the Texas-based grassroots organization Truckers Movement for Justice, is organizing, truckers are faced with detention times that can reach up to 36 hours, meaning truckers are often sleeping in their trucks. They aren’t allowed to leave their spot in line to get food or use the bathroom either, regardless of when the facility they’re delivering to may or may not be able to unload their cargo, according to Randel.
Even if a portable toilet is available at an oilwell site, truckers can face extreme temperatures inside the toilets, so they often opt to go to the bathroom in their trucks, Randel said.
Randel said the threat of losing business keeps truckers from speaking out, especially in the oilfield, and that several of the Truckers Movement for Justice members have been blacklisted after participating in strikes or demonstrations for better working conditions.
“People have had to leave the oil patch because they haven't been able to find work, and they've been forced to uproot their families or separate within the family,” Randel said. “It’s very scary to these drivers.”