It’s getting embarrassing to say you work in the Canadian trucking industry. I’m officially sick and tired of hearing about another carrier breaking the law.
This week, drivers weren’t paid. Last week, it was immigration fraud. Last month, a carrier was caught making money selling jobs through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). No one dreamed of this crap 15 years ago, let alone actually did it.
It started with the gig economy. At first, I figured gig work was just a new twist on self-employment. How bad could it be? Then Driver Inc. came along.
Worker misclassification, tax evasion, unfair competition, driver exploitation, trashed reputation, unsafe and unprofessional drivers — in our industry. I grossly underestimated the disaster it would become.
It’s pissing me off. Trucking is on a slippery slope, and things need to change.
Supplier angst
My M&A business lets me see this industry from the outside. And I have to tell you, there’s a lot of skepticism about our ability to do “good” business. Two C-suite executives I met golfing this summer told me unequivocally that their sectors no longer want anything to do with Canadian trucking. It was a real gut punch.
Think about the insane number of illegal truck yards on prime farmland west of Toronto. Joel Assaly, a municipal law specialist with the Town of Caledon, said carriers have “a blatant disregard for the rules.”
Complex paper trails make it almost impossible to get to the perpetrators. Just ask the landlords who had a tenant under lease at 5 p.m. and an empty building the next morning. Welcome to the trucking industry and the ever-popular ‘midnight move.’
Stunts like this hurt our brand and your company. On the highway, in the community, in front of a prospect, when you’re meeting a loan officer, when you’re hiring — our sleazy rep hurts your business.
Change the narrative
I know a lot of you are mad. We all see the same thing.
Too many industry leaders turn a blind eye to these shenanigans. Maybe they’re tired of fighting. It’s exhausting defending an industry you’re so friggin’ proud of despite the painful facts.
I should know. Don’t make the same mistake as me. Speak up. Tell the truth.
Talk to your customers who are ignorant of the illegal underbelly they support through freight brokers. More shippers than you think might reconsider routings if they knew the drivers hauling their freight were treated like indentured servants.
After a visit to Canada, Tomoya Obokata, a United Nations special rapporteur, called TFWP a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”
If that doesn’t get their attention, the customer isn’t worth having.
Culpable industry
By far, my biggest concern is untrained drivers. Canada’s current training model is an unenforced sham. Many drivers are coached to get licences, not to become professionals. They have no right to be behind the wheel.
As leaders, we have a fiduciary responsibility to keep our highways safe. Like it or not, we are all culpable. Personally, I’m speaking with leaders in my network. All kinds of leaders.
Our chats about untrained drivers have sparked some interesting narratives. By far and away the most common is a fear of driving the highway home from the restaurant.
That includes my longtime neighbor, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and fellow St. Mikes alum MPP Stephen Lecce. We recently talked about deficiencies in truck safety over breakfast. Good news is, I hit a single and a trip to Queen’s Park is in the works.
It’s on us
The current government is useless on this issue. A colossal waste of time. Time we don’t have. What do we do?
We need a pivot so massive and off-the-wall you’re going to think I’m nuts. I’m sure it won’t be the first time. It’s a strategy other industries use to ensure their workforce meets higher standards and the general public is protected.
It’s called self-policing. More on that next month.
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