Odd Lots · Thursday, August 13, 2026
Despite rising rates, trucker morale is reportedly at an all-time low, with many drivers expressing nostalgia for a perceived 'golden age' of trucking. The imposition of electronic logging devices (ELDs) and other technologies is seen as constricting their freedom and negatively impacting their quality of life and pay.
“And anecdotally, I can say that in my discussions with my driver friends, like it seems like morales at an all time low. That's just the anecdotal what I hear from people. But structurally, I mean, or what I see kind of in these surveys is like like there's a strong sense of nostalgia in trucking, Like it was much better then than it is now. Right.”
“So you know, technology for the driver is a bad word traditionally, Yeah, okay, because technology for the driver has meant surveillance. It's meant in cab cameras surveilling their every move for viability reasons. It's meant speed limitters, it's meant electronic logging devices, which severely limits their freedom to operate as they see fit on the road. So it's all of these things that have kind of like constrained them, right, And if you think about traditional trucking as freedom on the road, like this, these are all anti freedom things, right, And so if the traditional trucker is looking for a job that gives them freedom. They're not finding that as much anymore.”
“And so naturally, what that means is the driver's day is very rigid. You know, I was driving to work this morning on I seventy five in northern Georgia. There's a rest area I pass every day, and every day there's trucks lining the exit ramp of the rest area, like on the highway. And how those trucks end up there is they've got two hours left on their clock. It's five pm. Like they're rolling down the highway. They're trying to go as far as they can because they're paid by the mile right and they don't get that time back if they lose it, and they're trying to get as close to their destination as possible.”