Poinsettias and the uncomfortable truth about Driver Inc.
As an investor and figurehead president of a freight brokerage, I don’t live in the weeds of the business. I’m too old and crusty to run the day-to-day at Rite Route.
But then I got a call from a pal I know from the golf course. He was frustrated with the service and extra charges he was getting from his regular carrier. Our team jumped in to help.
The legacy carrier was charging around $4,450 to move a weekly load. A Rite Route partner carrier quoted $3,400. We matched the rate, stuffed over a grand in our jeans every week, and the carrier has nailed the service ever since.
I was blown away. The carrier was Driver Inc. It was time to learn more.
Playing Santa
Every December, the team at Rite Route hands out poinsettias to the carriers who move our freight. It’s our little thank-you to partners we can count on to keep our promises.
This Christmas, I tagged along with one of our dispatchers, playing Santa.
I figured we’d be visiting my old buddies, the carriers who moved all my freight for decades. Instead, I didn’t recognize a single name.
The companies we visited were all Driver Inc. carriers. Owned and staffed by Serbian, Ukrainian, South Asian, and Russian entrepreneurs. All polite, professional, and proud of what they’d built. A lot like the guys I knew back when we were building MSM.
That’s when it hit me. The trucking industry I knew had changed, and I was late to the Christmas party.
My moment of hypocrisy
I’ve been one of the loudest critics of Driver Inc., yet here I was, benefiting from it. The fact is, if you run a freight brokerage today and claim you never use Driver Inc., you have a lot to learn about your own operation.
This was my wake-up call. I wasn’t part of the problem or the solution. I was part of the reality.
Three classes, one mess
Canadian trucking is no longer split into “good” and “bad” carriers. It’s divided into three classes.
The Old Guard are the “payroll” fleets. They’re the backbone of the industry and use a traditional trucking playbook. They’re exhausted competing against operators that skip source deductions, undercut rates by 25%, and don’t play by the rules.
The Hybrid Middle are the fleets I met handing out poinsettias. Not crooks, just survivors. They adopted a Driver Inc. model to stay alive when margins collapsed. Now, they’re professionalizing. Training drivers, maintaining equipment, and improving operations while gradually evolving away from a pure Driver Inc. model.
The Bottom Feeders are the rot. These outfits exploit new Canadians, run junk equipment, game safety, forge logbooks, short drivers on pay, and dodge insurance and taxes like it’s a sport.
These aren’t entrepreneurs having a bad year. They’re criminals running a racket that ruins reputations and kills people. Enforcement and public outrage should be focused on putting them out of business.
The industry’s uncomfortable truth
Here’s what few will admit: even the compliant carriers who loudly denounce Driver Inc. quietly rely on it through their brokerage divisions.
They aren’t hiring the shady operators. They’re using the up-and-coming Hybrid Middle fleets. Just like me, they benefit from the very segment they publicly criticize.
That’s not hypocrisy. It’s survival in a market that stopped caring about old definitions of compliance a long time ago.
Owning the grey
Making the rounds with Christmas poinsettias forced a bigger realization.
It’s 2026. Gig economy carriers are here to stay, despite the noise coming out of Ottawa. I’ve accepted that reality and moved on. Why should an outdated notion about Driver Inc. stop me from making money when everyone else already is, especially now that I know it can be done ethically and professionally?
Bottom line
Driver Inc. isn’t the disease. It’s the symptom.
The cure starts when the good operators stop fighting each other and start focusing on the real criminals: The Bottom Feeders.
If you still doubt me, grab your dispatcher, load up the Escalade with thank-you gifts, and visit the carriers moving your brokerage freight.
You may be surprised to see who’s really moving your freight. If you’re honest with yourself, they may remind you of you and your buddies from back in the day.
You may even walk away with a new respect for uncomfortable truths.
Have your say
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Well said the conversation though has to include why. Why are our taxes so high and what are we getting for the high taxes it’s a shame that we Canadians have to newcomers to our country have to show how complacent we’ve become
It nice that you have come to terms to justify using these Hybrid carriers that use Driver Inc. to move your freight. In the end they are breaking the law, its nice you can live with it, but it is sad that our own Federal Gov’t can not police there own rules, which i do not find it would be that hard to do.
Being one of The Old Guard Truckers it saddens me that our hard work, play by the rules, safety conscious, tax paying ways leaves us all at a 25% disadvantage.
But who does the gov’t come to when they need more money, when they need to show the public with more laws, rules and B.S. to justify there existence that they are doing something for the public good. Mean while, when it is all said and done they already have enough rules and taxes at the end of the day, just enforce them!
As a tax paying Canadian and a Old Guard Trucker this whole subject just disappoints me to no end on how it has bounced around for so many years and our gov’t just lets it happen!! AW
the thousands he was saving was the trucking company not paying the goverment the deductions they should have taken of the drivers pay cheque and sent to the goverment
every driver should be paid hourly with the proper deductions taken of their pay cheque like it was done before all these new driver were brought in this country
So I assume you took freight away from a legitimate trucking company and stuffed the difference from a Driver Inc in your pocket!!!! Something wrong with this picture!!
The MTO started down this path with deregulation in 1989. The modus operandi for freight brokerages has always been to move freight as cheaply as possible. The large payroll carriers have been lobbying the MTO and other government entities for soft enforcement of the Driver Inc carriers so that their brokerage divisions can be far more profitable.
It’s reached the point where payroll carriers won’t expand their fleets with more trucks and more lanes using their own payroll drivers, but rather save tens of thousands by brokering their freight to Driver Inc carriers.
Then there’s the South Asian carriers who benefit tremendously from the cheap labour of Temporary Foreign Workers, importing them and shirking their payroll and safety obligations. These carriers brought tens of millions in capital from their homelands and acquired or opened dozens of new carriers.
These Driver Inc drivers even hastily formed their own association, the Canadian Truck Operators Association to maintain the Driver Inc model, as the vast majority hate payroll deductions. Then the politicians kowtow to their community for votes ️ by being soft on enforcement of Driver Inc and the safety laws.
Shame on you trucknews.com for printing this article. The author may not understand what the Drivers Inc model does to the trucking industry and Canadians but you do. The author is only cheating a little bit…according to him…so that’s okay. What about the employees at these trucking companies? What about teaching these new citizens what Canada and good employers are all about?
How do you have hybrid law following?
Payroll fleets are not the old way, they are the only actual way you can do commercial trucking. Legally.
The entire rule set has been completely broken.
If every carrier/ commercial driver was forced to record ALL their work duties at the time of occurrence in the ELD, a payroll model is the only way this can happen.
It’s certainly not happening now, you won’t get it from Driver Inc, you absolutely won’t get it from an O/O.
Even in payroll fleets there are problems. Oh, I’ll just call my driver a load manager, and pay salary! That way I can get him to do all this other stuff without recording it.
Test that in court with the DOT. How you the trucking genius have magically circumvented putting work time in the ELD. All BS.
What’s left?
Paid by the hour off the ELD , all stat entitlements, OT after 60 hrs in 7 days, work on a holiday,:
Pretty simple stuff, yet so many think they get a turn on interpretation wheel. That gets expanded because the people receiving the pay do not know their basic rights.
Nice to know your Driver Inc savings never saw a shippers pocket. Isn’t that how it’s sold? Small fee for finding best in class? You say they did the jobs, just because they repositioned a load?
If that’s all you think trucking is then you should get out. Sooner than later.