Criticisms about the government moving at a snail’s pace are valid.
However, a provision included in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s highway bill is evidence that the wheels are turning, even if it’s not as quickly as we’d like.
When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law in 2021, a Truck Leasing Task Force was established to evaluate lease-purchase arrangements in the trucking industry.
Truckers, of course, knew that predatory lease-purchase schemes had been a problem in the industry for decades. So, creating a task force to gather data wasn’t exactly the immediate solution that truckers were seeking.
But once the task force got to work, they started exposing many of these programs’ evils. In these agreements, a carrier leases a truck to a driver but still largely holds control over the operation, including the driver’s ability to pay off the loan. Truckers relayed their horror stories about being coerced into signing the agreement and owing the motor carrier money at the end of some pay periods.
Although the purported goal of these programs is for the driver to own the truck at the end of the contract, in reality, truckers rarely make it to the finish line. The task force determined that the trucker doesn’t end up owning the truck 90% of the time. And despite the programs being referred to as lease-purchase, the drivers accrue no equity in the truck as they make payments.
The task force said it “conservatively estimated” that more than 200,000 truck drivers have been negatively affected by predatory lease-purchase deals.
So, when the task force concluded its work in December 2024, it recommended a ban on the lease-purchase model.
“(The Task Force) findings are clear,” the task force wrote in its report to Congress, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor. “It formed a consensus to recommend that such arrangements, whereby a motor carrier controls the work, compensation and debts of the driver, should be prohibited. Lease-purchase programs are regularly established to enrich motor carriers at the expense of drivers. These programs promote a race-to-the-bottom in driver compensation and treatment, pushing qualified drivers out of the profession.”
Pessimists surely thought that the recommendation wouldn’t go anywhere.
But fast-forward to 2026, and the House T&I Committee’s BUILD America 250 Act includes a provision to prohibit predatory lease-purchase agreements.
Specifically, HR8870 would require the Department of Transportation to issue, within two years, regulations prohibiting motor carriers from using predatory commercial motor vehicle lease-purchase programs.
The predatory lease-purchase provision is among the reasons the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is calling the BUILD America 250 Act “the most pro-trucker highway bill in recent memory.”
Other key provisions include $750 million in funding for truck parking and required restroom access for truckers, as well as many other measures that OOIDA actively lobbied for in 2025.
The good news is that all of these priorities have been included in the bill that will next go to the House floor for a vote. However, the work is not done.
OOIDA is asking truck drivers to go to its Fighting For Truckers website and send a message to their lawmakers in support of the BUILD America 250 Act and restroom access for truckers. LL
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