Truck drivers keep the American supply chain—and by extension, the American economy—functioning smoothly. However, a rule by the Biden administration is slamming the brakes on this integral industry and hurting the 3.6 million people who transport essential goods from coast to coast each day. 

According to Sheryl Myers, a former freight broker and “owner-operator” who owns the truck she drives, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) regulation on which workers do and do not qualify as independent contractors could put millions of drivers in the trucking industry out of work. 

Just 11% of truck drivers in the United States are independent contractors like Myers, but they are essential to the companies who hire them, she told IW Features. Owner-operators, who own their trucks and equipment, spare companies the expense of purchasing the quarter-million dollar trucks themselves. And on their end, owner-operators get to choose when and where they work, Myers said. This symbiotic relationship provides cost efficiency to the company and flexibility to the driver.

The Biden administration’s rule on independent contractors threatens that relationship. The rule, which went into effect last year, redefines who qualifies as an independent contractor, requiring companies to consider many contractors as employees instead. 

The rule is similar to California’s AB5, which also redefined millions of independent contractors as employees, including 70,000 owner-operators. The result was that independent contractors not brought on as full-time employees ended up out of work. That’s why many owner-operators, including Myers, have stopped driving in California altogether.

In addition to the AB5 law, Myers said the state charges exorbitant taxes and fees to access their highways. 

“With these new laws, it gave them a reason to charge you annual fees for the privilege of driving in California over and above everything else,” she said. “They have a right as an independent state to do as they choose, but those of us in business have a right to do business where we choose as well, and we’ve just simply chosen not to do business with California anymore.”

But the Biden administration’s nationwide implementation of its own independent contractor rule is impossible to escape. 

“This will cause prices to rise. It will cause huge supply chain issues, and it will cause a bottleneck in the workforce that could be an absolute detriment to our economy,” Myers said. 

Myers, who started her career in the trucking industry in 1995, has been both the person booking drivers as well as the one behind the wheel. 

“I was on the administrative side for a number of years, had my own brokerage office, and I contracted various carriers to carry freight for my customer base,” she said. “I had never even been inside a big truck until I met my now husband.”

Deciding to put their knowledge of the industry together, Myers went back to commercial driving school and started her new career as a driver by hauling general freight alongside her husband. 

“While I was in school, we were saving up money on the side, and we went and bought our first truck ourselves,” she said. “We were very determined and we never looked back. We’ve been owner-operators ever since.”

Over the years, the husband-and-wife team was sought out by prestigious companies such as Smithsonian-affiliated museums to transport priceless art. Often driving under cover of night, Myers said they were responsible for handling high-security cargo. Eventually, she and her husband became aligned with a carrier that does business with the Department of Defense. 

“It’s our job to get it from point A to point B safely and as quickly as possible. The least amount of time on the highway exposed to the general population the better,” she said.

According to Myers, the vast majority of driving teams that service the Department of Defense are husband-and-wife teams who own their own trucks. The DOL’s proposed law, therefore, will have an outsized impact on their fleet. 

“They can’t afford to buy all of our trucks—that’s why they contract independent owner-operators,” Myers said. “If legislators chose to impose these broad interpretations upon a fleet like ours, would they reimburse us for our investment? How do you force someone who owns the building and the business to be an employee?”

“It’s literally a matter of national security,” she concluded. 

Protecting independent contracting is also a matter of freedom and personal choice. Myers said their career has afforded her and her husband the lifestyle of their dreams, and she doesn’t want to lose that. 

“I have the great privilege of coming home for a month at a time, teaching my children and grandchildren how to hunt and kayak and fish and cook, and doing quality things with my family,” she said. “It has been a real blessing to lay out our business strategy the way we chose, and it’s worked well for us.”

Unless the incoming Trump administration works quickly to undo the Labor Department’s independent contracting rule, Myers’ life’s work, the jobs of millions of owner-operators across the country, and the American supply chain itself will be at risk.

“I would beg [leaders] to look at the long-term ramifications of this—the economic impact as well as the impact on our nation’s defense,” Myers said. “Nobody seems to have really thought far enough ahead of the domino effect this will create.”