Florida Turnpike Trucker Fatalities Discussion

Florida Turnpike Trucker Fatality Discussion

In this episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, host Stacey Yearout dives deep into the tragic August 12 crash on Florida’s Turnpike that claimed the lives of three people. A semi‑truck, driven by Harjinder Singh, performed an illegal U‑turn through a restricted median near Fort Pierce—leading to a fatal collision with a minivan. The driver, later identified as an undocumented immigrant licensed in California, has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and faces deportation. We discuss the harrowing video footage, safety failures by the trucking company, immigration and licensing controversies, and the broader fallout—political, regulatory, and industry-wide. Join us as we break down what went wrong, what could’ve been done better, and how this tragedy impacts every driver on the road. Florida Turnpike crash, trucker fatality podcast, illegal U-turn semi-truck, vehicular homicide truck, in documented CDL holder, trucking industry regulation, driver safety failure Florida, Harjinder Singh crash, Florida Turnpike safety, CDL licensing issues

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Transcript

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Welcome to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast powered by Sabren Group LLC. This isn’t just another podcast—it’s a movement for the men and women who keep America moving. Your host, Stacey Yearout, brings over 30 years of hands-on experience in the trucking and logistics industry. He’s been behind the wheel, he’s built companies from the ground up, and he’s helped countless drivers and families navigate life on and off the road. Each episode dives into the real-life struggles and triumphs of truckers—mental health, family, career growth, relationships, and the truth about what life is really like behind the wheel. Stacey isn’t just a veteran of the highway—he’s also a certified mental health and trauma recovery coach, and the founder of Sabren Group LLC, where drivers and their families get real support that actually works. So whether you’re out on the open road or parked for the night—this podcast is for you. Welcome to the Truckers Radio podcast. Today we're gonna take a deep dive into the Florida massacre. Right now we got Daniel from Florida on the phone. We're going to go into a deep dive here. He knows a lot about this. We're gonna bring up all the points of what's going on in our trucking industry An illegal U-turn on Florida Turnpike leaves three lives lost truckers with no remorse, arrested in California facing extradition. Actually, as of today, I think they actually extradited him back to State of Florida. So what's your take on it, Daniel? First off, Stacy, thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's been a wild ride down here in Florida. A lot of people are tore up for this truck drivers, regular citizens as well. In fact it's affected Florida politics so much as I just saw a little while ago from Senator Marco Rubio. Effective immediately they are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers. Increasing the number of foreign drivers they say operates operating large tractor trailers on our roads is endangering American lives and basically undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers, which I think we all have felt that over the last 10 years with the rates being cut down and and my god's safety as of all. But yeah, it was a tragic incident. And unfortunately, I foresee more, more coming, so maybe this is a good idea that Florida's doing here. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking too. There's been this big myth of truck driver shortage over the last 10 years. That's, I think they were a big spike. We needed it around COVID, but after that, everybody's falling off. Everybody's stumbling over everybody's feet, just trying to survive Right now with the low rates and high cost of, especially on our operators, the cost of fuel, cost of maintenance, time down, deadhead, you name it, taxes. That's another big thing under the Joe Biden administration. They, they jack the taxes up so high that it really, went against the truck driver. But back to the episode here in Florida, this guy, you could see him in the dash camera watching the dash camera right now. This guy shows absolutely no remorse, no knee-jerk reaction. It was just like another Sunday drive in the park. He didn't give two shits whether that car ran under there. And in fact, he just took his time. You could see, he drug it. he actually drug it a little farther. I've watched that video countless times. you can't even go on any kind of social media without seeing this guy's face. he just looked like he was so inconvenienced. By the whole ordeal. Especially when they're trying to pull the bodies out from underneath. And he was standing there emotionless. I can't imagine, if it had been me that had done that I would've been in pieces. I would've probably been over there trying to help if I could even, do that or stomach it. But it just, I would've been tore up and this man standing there he did nothing wrong. Oh, without a doubt. I don't know that I could even look in the mirror knowing that I took someone's life out of negligence, and this guy's, first chance he got, authorities turned their head, him and his buddy that was there also in the front seat of the truck they made a mad dash for the airport and flew back to California. from my understanding, he was on attempting to purchase an airline ticket to flee the country. So he was not going to take any accountability whatsoever for his actions, nor did he show any kind of remorse. He just casually looks around, puts it in, neutral and sets the brakes and, okay, I guess we're gonna be here in a traffic jam for a little while. That was his whole outlook on the whole thing, which leads me into another thing. I'm a mental health professional and what's in this guy's body language there, there's definitely some underlying issues. I can't by no means am I trying to diagnose the guy, when you know what to look for with body language and demeanor and everything like that you know what you're looking at. You may not be able to call that out. But there are definitely some underlying psychopath traits, possible anti socialism personality. All right. Hey, man. We got Brian on here from Florida. What's your take on it? You down there in Florida? Hot down there, ain't it? Brian from Florida? What's your take on all this going on, going that way? Oh, man. Stuff's getting crazy. Stuff's getting real crazy down here. Besides the heat. Just some of these foreign drivers that they're finding out that they're some of'em are legals and don't even have the right license to drive a commercial vehicle. I'm seeing a lot of that in a lot of CDL meals is basically just saying, Hey, pay us your money and you'll get your CDL. It doesn't matter, you don't have to really pass the test, just go through the motions and really doesn't matter. I was watching a video today, an undercover news person went in and discreetly videoed and recorded the conversation setting up the deal there where they could go in and get the school, get their CDL, and they were acting like they didn't speak English They were just telling'em right out. Hey, don't worry about it. We got you. You pay your money, you will get your CDL and we'll teach you the basics the best we can and you'll have a live CDL ready to roll. And that's what our country's right dealing with here right now with a loss of Malta. And here's the thing, we're all wrapped up into this massacre. I call it a massacre. What else can you call it down here on the Florida Turnpike? But this is just one of many across that we don't even always hear about that get swept under the rug in these sanctuary states. They don't even call it out. They fly under the radar. They walk away from it and keep right on rolling the next day. You don't hear a lot about these, right? This gets highly publicized just simply because it was in the state of Florida. You know where we're not a sanctuary state, or you guys ain't, I'm not in Florida. No, they don't take it lightly down here. They extradited the guy back today. I saw this morning he was on a plane coming back. He won't see a bond here. They're not gonna let him go. when he got back to California, they said he was trying to flee back to India, but the same country that he claimed he was too scared to go back to in 2000 18. Oh yeah. From the Trump administration found him, one of my big questions is if you look up the Florida statute officers may arrest at the scene with probable cause, okay? There was a fatality. You obviously got a guy here that cannot communicate sing, was not arrested at the scene, likely pending. Reconstruction of the accident and warrants and raising question, but they could have took him into custody and I really feel like that they turned their head and I think he just fled it. It's, I think they were waiting on the warrants and everything. Probably try not to cause isn't I mean he should have been drug tested. Exactly. He'd have had to have, according to federal motor carriers, he would've had to been alcohol tested within the first two hours with any fatality drug tested within 32 hours. They could have took him to a local hospital to a police station and tested him. Yeah. Don't quote me on this, but I almost think that they took the guy, the gunning breathalyzer probably on the scene. They took him to get him drug tested, and I'd say this guy caught their head turned and walked out the other door. Don't quote me on that, I don't know, but I just highly don't buy the fact that Florida Highway Patrol just let this guy walks Scott free when they had probable cause to at least detain him until they were able to get the proper warrants. I don't think they just willingly let this guy walk. I think they was a little more to it, but nobody's really saying factual information. Like I said, don't quote me on that, but I'm gonna throw that out there. Florida usually a very stick and by the book, and they don't play around when it comes to being able to arrest someone in their statute of law. What was very disturbing was this guy showed no remorse at all, at any time. Features. And then tried to flee. I was watching him put him on the plane today, his head way down. And he's all sulking. I guarantee you, he will put on a show when he goes to court. His lawyers, defense attorneys will probably prep him, tell him to cry and everything else. And you're gonna be surprised at the difference in his demeanor when he goes to court and his demeanor on that video. But the video's gonna bite him in his ass because that don't lie, body language and the mental right capacity of a human being that don't lie. People has reactions that they can't even control. So when an accident happens, you have a natural. Form of reaction on a mental state that you don't even know you're doing if you don't have underlying psychological problems. And that's where I feel like there's no denying that this guy had a mental disorder. I'm actually looking at a picture right now of this guy in custody. He's wearing different clothing. He's not, he does not have the turban on his head. It's a bandana. And side by side with that is pictures of him in the truck from the dash cam. And it is the exact same expression. This soullessness, this it's just this blank stare. you killed three people. You're not upset about that. He's here, he is in custody and he's not scared, nervous. It's just this, I don't care. I don't, this isn't real attitude of his like nothing that is actually going on. I know a lot of people stroll Facebook and it's probably all over. That's where I found it. it's just seeing it is disturbing, so to look at there and it's a tragedy. We got a family that's missing three members. All three members died at one time. I try to tell myself when I think about how horrible this is, and I hope no one takes it the wrong way, but maybe this is the silver lining. Maybe it took this right here. To show years and years of truck drivers complaining at the lunch counter there at the country, pride all over the cb. Guys talking about these immigrants, these Eastern European and drivers, the Middle Eastern drivers, their skills, their skill level, how they've been trained, poor, or not trained as of that. But this was bound to happen and I hate it for my state, but the attention that this is getting nationally. It is a good thing. And for all the people that were complaining about, Trump taking away the CDLs of people, because, just because they couldn't read or write and now it's going even farther with the flip-flops and the sandals and the crops. I see that they're starting to ticket drivers for that, which is any old school driver will tell you, I got no problem with a man wearing flip flops, but when they slide off your feet and you're trying to hit a brake pedal and an 80,000 pound cruise missile, that, that's probably not a smart idea. Yeah. That's, there's a lot of companies crack down on that, but once they leave orientation, when they come in, there's really not a lot these companies can do when out. They're outta sight, outta mind. You need to dress for the occasion. A lot of these customers won't even allow you. If anybody's ever picked up from a Caterpillar plant, if you don't have steel toe boots on blue jeans and a hard hat, you're not coming in and a safety vest. Safety vest. Correct. The problem with a lot of these companies like England, swift, Warner, they're big companies, a lot of money. They've been around a long time buying other smaller companies out. They're ethics of, and some of'em have schools, England and Warner, and I think Swift. So they're going right into the mix, but these people that are training'em, some of'em only have maybe two, three months experience themselves and they're making'em trainers and I've seen it hands on it, truck stops at warehouses all over where you'll see the trainer in the parking lot and the guy's all over the place backing up and he's on his phone texting, not even paying attention instead of, like back in the old day, when I started back in the nineties, the trainer, we didn't have all the technology and stuff, which was good and stuff was done the right way. They were out there and teaching you how you were supposed to be taught. And we didn't have all this mishaps going. Exactly right. I the problem is now with a lot of these sanctuary states, this guy was never trained, period. With the automatic trucks and all of that. Basically he, you walk in, you give him 1200 bucks, they hand you a CDL and you just became a truck driver. And you're talking about a country, a lot of these guys come from countries where they don't really have cars. It's just, I know when I used to train years ago, we would get a lot of drivers from Haiti or Puerto from islands, island countries don't have a lot of vehicles and here's a guy learning to drive for the first time in a truck. And having to teach them the how to read signs. And from what I'm hearing too, this guy failed a, I guess a literacy comp, some sort of competency test. Yeah, I think he only got two questions on whether, he could read or write or understand English. Yes. It was two questions out of 12 he got Right. And then on the road sign, I think he only got one. On all the questions on that. Yeah. it's amazing. Why is there only 12 questions? I would think there would be a lot more than 12 questions. It must be very basic if it's only 12 questions and it is to only get two. It's alarming. It's basically the equivalent, the cat and the hat, I mean it's, one of'em things that green eggs run out. Yeah. Yeah. They just tried to, Oklahoma was doing that at some of the way stations that they were. Pulling them over on the scales and giving them a cat in a hat book and asking them to read it. Yeah. Read a page or two and I'm pretty sure if you can't read Cat in a hat, you probably can't read a road sign. he was just pulled over in New Mexico and give a roadside inspection and ticketed for speeding. Obviously there, he couldn't read the speed limit sign. He was not checked not even attempted to be checked for English or, any of that and just walk scot free. If they'd have got him in New Mexico, pulled him out of the truck right then and there'cause he couldn't read and understand English these three people would still be alive. These states have about when he collapsed the bridge. Yeah. That was back, I think in 2019, right up in Pennsylvania. Maybe that's, no, it was Arkansas. It was six Ton Bridge. Arkansas. Was it Arkansas? Yeah, it was Arkansas. Yeah. Arkansas Bridge in they're saying that the guy that is in that picture, that exact same name they're saying now that may not even be the same guy. They're speculation that they're using certain names to register and so forth to get documentations in the country that, that possibly might not even been the same guy. That was something, a little clip I seen come up today. Now it's not been, qualified yet, but it is possible. I not too long ago, I think we had another incident, another bad wreck. I can't remember where, but turns out the driver was undocumented. the company that he drove for was traced back to an apartment complex in Dallas, Texas where there happened to be 12 other trucking companies traced back to that same apartment complex. And the funny thing was all these drivers have the same birthday and it's January 1st. It's always, one, one and then whatever year. I actually spoke to a DOT officer one night. I was coming down through South Georgia and asked him. About that. He said, I haven't noticed that yet. He said, I'm gonna start pulling guys over But that's what I'm hearing out west that a lot of the guys pulled in all have the same birthday. And even if you take a look at the carrier, they were in business before as white star and federal murder carriers put them completely out of bid. They expedited their shutdown. Then they turned around, the same guy owned the same that owned that company, turned right around and opened up White Hawk carriers and went right on with business as usual in the state of California. They got, they say they have 25 vehicles, 45 drivers, which tells me they're probably running a team operation, which is dangerous enough in itself. Did anybody even check the guy that was riding in the passenger seat? Does he even have a valid CDL? did they even check his citizenship, his valid CDL or did he purchase his from the same place that sing got his more likely they, he did, despite that he was not driving, he didn't do anything wrong. But I'm sure, yeah, I hope they check into him as well because they could, actually that guy's probably gonna be all right. he learned valuable lesson about the illegal U-turn, I know the guy driving was 100% at fault, but the guy in the passenger seat didn't do a good job of telling him, maybe they were talking Middle Eastern to each other. Maybe the guy should have said, Hey, no, don't you turn up here. Let's try to find an exit up the road. So there was no communication because he looked like in the video, he was just sitting there on his phone, while the other guy did the U-turn and then they showed no remorse or the driver at least did. Yeah, I never really took a lot of notice to the passenger. I'm gonna start kinda looking at that a little bit, see what kind of a reaction everybody has got all eyes on scene right now, but how did the passenger react? He he felt the jolt and he was shocked by the thing. It's wow, what was that? He was on his phone. I just thought about that. Listening to Brian there. I wonder what duty status he might have been on. Was he showing sleeper berth while sitting in the passenger seat of that truck? Was he on duty, off duty? They just keep showing the this other fellow of the driver, but I'm wondering if DOT will look at that video and question whether, what was this guy's duty status? Maybe they can get more on him, but I do see that they shut down the company, I believe. I got no problem with somebody coming to this country. The bright way, learning a career truck, driving is a career. It's not a job. It's a way of life. You wanna learn, you should have the right to be taught and learn properly, understand the laws, understand, the etiquette that's missing out here as well. And then make a living and support your family instead of making a, barely making a living and destroying another family. Oh, exactly. You look at all these wrecks. Especially down here in Florida 75 is a really bad area, especially down where the turnpike connects to it. There seems like there's a wreck almost every day. I hear about, with the merging there's a lot of fatalities, a lot because, it's a different nectar these days from, back when I started, especially with the telephones and stuff. But you get a lot of aggressive drivers and, a lot of these foreign guys, they don't, they have different roles to themselves. They love the tailgate, they, a lot of'em speed. So when they have a quick chain reaction where everybody's stopping, and then you hear about these fatalities and there's about five or six trucks that are, the. The guys die because they're, the front ends of the trucks are involved into the back of the trailer from the guy in front of'em because they were doing 80 miles an hour in tailgate. They don't know of any space cushion, dropping back two, three seconds or so, they're just all driving down the road. We already know a lot of these cars like to do 90 to a hundred miles an hour and, these trucks are trying to keep up. So when we have this big, everybody's slamming on the brakes, then it becomes something really bad. We've been dealing with a lot of that, and I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of these guys not, can't read signs, can't, talk and read English good. And they just don't. Learn, maybe they don't want to learn. you get some really good, big companies like Walmart out there that are, have a great safety record, but their drivers I'm sure that company, they tell their drivers, they, that's why their trucks are governed. they go slow and you don't ever see them guys tailgate other trucks they just need to get back in that aspect to where bringing the safety back into it again and start weeding all this stuff out. That's most definitely what needs to be happening. And if you look at companies like Prime, everybody knows you see Prime on the back of the truck, go ahead and turn that blinker on and get around him. they have an excellent training program and better than a lot of these other companies the CSTs and England's, two, three weeks, you've got a CDL and you're out on the road. I believe Prime makes'em, 40, 50,000 miles before they turn them loose. I think it should be that way for everybody. I had a buddy not long ago. He went back to get his class A CDL, he hadn't had one in many years and he went through a truck driving school down in Green Cove Springs, Florida, he went there and they had two groups of students. They had all of the American students, white, black, some Hispanic, and then off to the side, they had a separate group of Middle Eastern students. when they asked, why aren't those guys, doing what we're doing they got in trouble, they got snapped at, it was none of their business, worry about your own self. They went through rigorous training. They said they never saw any of the Middle Eastern guys do anything. Never saw'em do anything more than the parking lot, the area that, the little road course they had set up on the parking lot. Never saw'em take'em out on the roads or anything like that. And now looking back after this incident, I'm thinking about that It's even when they go to these schools, what's happening? Are they getting a kickback from the government for creating jobs? Is it something along those lines? Is it these schools just rushing them through as well to collect that money? From what I've been seeing, these companies like the double dip. I see, CRST, I think it is CR England. They'll send a student through the school. They get government funding for that. They get paid and then they turn around and they make the driver or the student work for subprime rates to pay back the school or, and if they quit, then they owe six, seven,$8,000 for probably a$1,500 worth of school. And they're just double dipping. They're just milking the system to, show big profit margins and everything else in their pocket. This is all going to have to come to an end, We had all these aircraft schools just taking cash, money and training these people from foreign countries to come in to learn how to fly planes. Nobody ask any questions, right? And look what we got into there. What's going to happen when some of these guys come over here and they get their CDL and they drive one of these trucks through, a building or school or something like that. We're making ourselves very vulnerable as a country, We our industry here is the most federal, federally regulated industry There is, the F-M-C-S-A, we, everything we do is under the federal government out here. Maybe what they should do is take over the training of these drivers the federal government, if they're gonna govern us as drivers, maybe they should govern these schools. And so that these guys, whether they, you come in to get a CDL, you gotta be a citizen or have a work permit something to be, documented prove who you are. I had to show a birth certificate. I had to show ID social security card. I had to prove who I was and, maybe, sure. These foreigners should have to do the same thing. And I mean with the amount of stuff going down the highway, whether it's explosives, fuel or batteries, anything, the truck itself can be used as a weapon. We've already seen planes flown in the buildings. There's a reason you can't drive a truck through dc it they did it for precautionary. They thought in advance of this, and maybe that's, they need to think a little farther in advance and start vetting everybody a little better or equally I should say equally. If a man comes to this country and he's here documented, he's here legally and got a work permit or trying to get citizenship, that's great. we're, we all came from somewhere else. But we should know who he is 100%. And we should know that he's trained. I just gotta imagine what could I do? So it's ridiculous that this even happened. I just can't, for the life of me, it, I, we can blame the driver all we want, but somewhere he got that license, whether it was California or Washington State, or Kentucky, that just got busted recently. A bunch of people selling CDOs. Yeah, it's gotta be stopped. And Daniel, I think down in Florida, down here, Daniel, I think this last year, I think one of the DMVs got trouble for selling CDLs. They did, I believe it was in Miami. Which, is a very democratic a sanctuary city. It's a city of immigrants. But yeah, that I think that the families, and I know a lot of Americans, from what I've been seeing from comments on social media, believe that the families should have a lawsuit against not only the state of California, but they're governor. And I agree with it. Anybody that doesn't imagine if this was your family. And what about this is where I see they're dropping the ball. If the third party testers needs to go away, they need to be road tested one at a time by a federal DOT officer. They need to have, if they need to hire more DOT officers or take some of the guys that's near in retirement and just put'em out there and that's all they do is test for CDLs. And if they can't speak the English and they can't read the road signs and they cannot pass the test, it would nip that in the butt. People being able to sell that license, the third party tester is where it's at. Those guys are able to administer the blank test and say, oh, this guy passed and here's a CDL, and he goes down to the DMV and hands him the paperwork. If you put a DOT officer in there to administer the test, the English test to start with when he went in to apply for the permit right there is where that should have been stopped right there. You know you gotta get a, for a learning permit to even get a CDL. He should have been administered the English test right there on the spot. And I think they said that was in the state of Washington is where he first obtained that. And they gave him a full CDL there. They was something a little restricted or some sort of a restriction in California. But he was still able to drive abroad and go wherever he wanted to go. The CDL that he just bought, he has no idea what he's doing. Tell me, you talk about the training, we were bringing up the training earlier. What's actually going on at these schools now? I started back in 1995, I had a class B, I drove a straight truck. It was through Pepsi, and they gave me the opportunity to get my Class A and I had a permit like where you were just talking about. And I trained until they thought I was, good enough. Hey, you feel comfortable, you wanna come, go down and take your test. And I don't even know what goes on at the test at the DMVs now for a tractor trailer. I know, I did a city test. I think I did a backing serpentine, a parallel park on the passenger side, an alley dock. And back when I was driving back then, it was an 18 speed that I took the test in and an old freight liner. And of course we ran loose sleep logs. We had to rely on map books, atlases. It's a lot easier now. You see these kids coming outta these schools and some of these people, wearing sandals, slip flops, jogging, sweatpants, they're just not, besides being a professional, they're just lazy in the occupation. And like I'm saying, I don't know what's going on with these schools. These instructors are hiring if the state's telling'em how to do it a certain way from the government. I just truly believe that it's not how, like back when I was taught and when I was driving, I think it's gotten a lot more lazier and that's why we're getting to this point where we're at too. Yeah, I think that it's different for every state. I got mine in Georgia. I actually started when it was just a chauffeur's license. I was 19 years old. I took a 50 question written test on roadside, just general knowledge. Was given a chauffeur's license and I started like a lot of guys with a beer company. They did not just let me get in a truck and drive. I had a seasoned driver, older fella that took me around and he would let me drive out in the country in the rural routes. He would let me every day a little bit here, a little bit there. Until, he felt comfortable that I could take the wheel and, every day was a little bit farther. And I had a guy that, he taught me mirror usage, lane control. Those were the first two things and the most important things that I was taught shifting, came along with it down the road, but it was, lane control, mirror usage, following distance, those things right there. And that's what, there was none of in this massacre here. And this guy just whipped it to the right on the shoulder and cut it straight back to the left without looking. It was just blatant. I don't think he did it on purpose. I just don't think he knew what he was doing or should have ever been behind the wheel of a truck. Absolutely not. They were plenty of opportunities to take this guy off the road. It's kinda like you have a rollover, you have a rear end collision, jack knives, there's what they call the deadly sins of accidents in the trucking industry that will take you out of the industry. And I feel like that we need to set up a system to where if you have an accident, to weighted to a certain degree that your CDL should be suspended and never be reinstated. The weight of the guy driving that tractor trailer through a hundred year old wooden bridge, six tons. A 10-year-old kid could look at that truck and look at that bridge and make that assumption, that's not gonna work. But this guy thought that was a great idea. We're just going to stroll right on through there. And we see how that added up. He could have been taken off the road right there. Not to mention how many other times he's been in accidents. We really don't even know.'cause companies like this sweep stuff under the rug. They have no idea. Whoever, who even knows if he was even listed how many hit and runs in the parking, lots of the truck stops. He has just hit things trucks and just kept right along going, who knows? So the, just like with the whole stopping him roadside inspection and speeding ticket in New Mexico, if they'd administrated the English test. He'd have been done right there. These people would still be alive. There's so many cases where they have dropped the ball here knowing that this is rules, this is laws, regulations. In fact, I think Trump had just administered the crackdown on the English law. And now that law's been in effect since the eighties. Mind you, Trump didn't just put it into office. He just demanded that it be enforced. These sanctuary states, they just think, nah, we're just not gonna do what we're gonna do it our way. And they're never held accountable. And I think this is something, Hey, I think everybody needs, held accountable in the state of California. I think we need to hold New Mexico because I, there was a perfect opportunity to take this man out of that truck and we didn't do it if they didn't do it If you look at, let's look at what he's facing. Right now we, we've got a loss of three lives, state of Florida, mandatory sentencing in state of Florida. He's been charged with three counts of vehicle or homicide, felony. There's a mandatory sentence of 9.25 years up to 15 years per count. So at best, he's potentially going to be in prison up to 45 years, and they say basically they gotta serve 85% state of Florida mandatory. So that's 38 years at best, the time this guy gets released. He is 28 years old. He could be 66 years old or better before he is ever released from Florida State Prison. And at that point, with this ice detainer, the way this is going to work, they're gonna meet him at the prison gate and pick him up and he'll enter into deportation process and immigration enforcement. So he's never going to be, what you would say, a free man, most likely, Who knows, they may not even with these lack of empathy and emotion, when he goes before the parole board, he could be denied very easily. He'll learn to speak English. He'll be learning to speak and read English while he is in there during this time but they're still not gonna do him any good, he's at best going to be 66 years old and but I still don't bring back these three people, these three people that has families, probably children, wives, houses, lives, things that they've worked. The one guy was, what, 50 in his fifties, he's nearing, hopefully age of retirement. He's worked his whole life. Probably put himself up a little nest egg, looking forward to, I believe it was a husband and wife and their son. Okay. 57. The woman was 54 and I believe the the driver was 30, okay. 30. Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was a male or female that was the 30 or not. I think some of'em were saying it was a woman that was 30. I'm not sure, they just start slinging stuff, a lot of cases. So you have to decipher, what's true, what's not, DeSantis administration and Gavin Newsom has just absolutely been going at it over the licensing issue. Sanctuary policies. I think and I'm not always for big government by no means, but I think these states just doing what they want to do and dancing to the beat of their own drum. We're gonna have to get ahold of the rings here somewhere because this is really starting to cause a problem for the rest of the United States. and if California wants to issue CDLs, great, but they better not leave their state. They need to be confined to the state of California. That way they can deal with their own mess, not everyone else. Absolutely. The federal government and we drive, we under F-F-M-C-S-A rules and regulations, that's Federal motor carrier. If we're gonna leave it up to the states, then yeah, it needs to be intrastate only. Let'em kill the people over there instead of coming to my state or your state or someone else's state that might be listening to this. We should do it that way. But if you leave your state, if you cross state lines in the federal motor or the federal government should have control over that. Exactly. and I don't understand also where federal motor carrier rules, regulations, this is federal motor carrier. This is a big. Industry in this country. So how is it that we have states like Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, among other states that just take it upon theirself to say, ah, we're going to do it our way. I'm sorry, but federal regulation, elation Trumps state. If you lay down laws and says, we gotta administer the CDL test like this, and California decides, no, we're just not gonna do it that way. What good is that going to do? They're going to have to be some serious mandate here somewhere, because it's not going to stop the problem if you've got other states still doing it. All these people's just going to go to that state to get their CDL and they're gonna be running cross country just like everybody else, just like they're doing right now. And they're flooding the industry, also, running the rates down. They think a dollar 10 a mile is a great rate. They just simply think that's just, The best rate on the planet. Whole thing's a mess. They go out here and they think, oh, okay, dollar 10 a mile. That's more than I was making as a company driver. And they forget to add in, okay, now we gotta buy fuel. Now we gotta buy oil changes, maintenance, all the above. You don't see that. You see these guys going down the road watching TV on tablets. I seen a guy here all back, I was actually in my personal car. I look up in this truck, and mind you, this was a very well known, sought after company. This guy had a tablet on the dash the size of a laptop screen watching tv. If I was a DOT officer, that guy right there would be under the jail when I got done with him. You gotta understand this guy thinks that's okay. This wasn't a guy with flip flops on. This wasn't a guy that bought his license. This was an American driver, obtained his CDL legally, went through all the channels and still doing something like this. Where comes. The ethics here. We're not on vacation in the seat of this truck. Everybody thinks it's all fun and games until somebody loses their life. Yeah. It's a big mess for a while. It seems every year this gets worse and worse. Oh, it does. There's no respect. There's no respect for the CDL. There's no respect for the job, It is hard to tell a guy oh no, you don't need to do that. But when air government and these other states are just letting these other guys run wild, like telling your kid, no, you can't go outside the yard, but all the other kids are playing ball in the street, pretty soon everybody starts doing other things they're not supposed to do because they see other people do it. People don't, right. Consider what it takes out here to not run somebody over on a daily basis. There's so many people, it's just distracted. We're in the industry age of the distracted driver, and I'm not talking about just the truck driver. I'm talking about the car. The car that drives by you and just basically takes your bumper off because, oh, there's my exit. Or the guy that's entering the highway that says, you need to move over because you're in my way. he thinks he's justified to sideswipe your truck because you should have moved. I think he missed that part where he has to yield to the oncoming traffic. I think that's something also too, they need to put the yield signs back at the end of the exit ramps. What, who thought that was a good idea to take the yield sign down at the end? At one point we had the thing called common sense, and it worked great, but then it faded away because I've thought about that same thing right there. What a great idea. We need to bring them back or teach these people where the that little pedal down there on the right, what it can do. But fellas, I'm, I've gotta get back to work and I really enjoyed the talk here and hope to do it again next week. Alright, We'll be having, we'll be following this with other episodes and everything as we go. Appreciate your time, Daniel. Alright, you guys stay safe out there and and anybody else that might be listening, keep it between the ditches. Good talking to you Daniel. Good talking to you Brian. Alright, bye. So Brian what's your input here on the enforcement policy of that? What do you think needs to be done? What's your take on it? You hit the hammer on the nail. They need to do a better job with like yield size and put more, I thought about this a long time ago. What if we did a better job in the educational part, by Governor DeSantis down here? What if, we could reach out to the, to the governor, to which, the capital is Tallahassee down here in Florida. And we can start teaching educational better, bringing the driver's ed and all the high schools and, having the parents involved with their kids. When they're training them to get their license, just even to drive a car, they need to be trained. Who has the right of way, why would the flow of traffic have to come to a stop when there's no stop sign on a major interstate and you're coming on the interstate, it's up to you to get your speed at a flow with the traffic and slide in if you have to back off. That's what you have to do. And then get behind some vehicles. But yeah, there's been a lot of fatalities, major wrecks, and there's gotta be a lot more things addressed and, better things out there. I know, I think in Georgia and some other places, they have railroad crossing things, like the arms. If the interstate gets real busy, they'll actually put those arms down until there's, openings where it's not so busy.'cause they don't want, major wrecks in those areas where it's more congestion. Yeah, I've seen that where a lot of times they'd have the red lights at the end of the ramp. A lot of people don't even pay no attention to'em. They just they just blow'em and go on. We're going to have to overhaul. Licensing industry of this country. Even cars, the cars has no respect whatsoever. They have no, guys out here all the time videos getting brake checked by, by a little four wheeler with an eight. These people in that four wheeler has no idea. You don't have a fender benter in an 18 wheeler. You kill people. You know when this guy. Comes out and decides, oh, you were in my way. I'm gonna brake check you and ends up getting ran over and killed. And next thing the trucking company's getting sued, the truck driver's getting sued, but hey, the guy brake checked. You can't just stop a truck. When somebody whips in front of you and slams on the brake deliberately there're definitely going have to be some roofing, right? All the way around. Whether it's cars, 16-year-old kids, how many 16, 17-year-old kids jump out, get their license, go out and have major wrecks, life altering wrecks kill a couple of their friends. I think they need to move the licensing age up to 18. There was no reason why a 16-year-old person. Needs a driver's license as far as I'm concerned. That's me. I'm old school, I raised five boys and pretty much none of my kids got their license until they were nearing the age of 18. And another thing I see parents, they run out, they buy their kid a sports cars. This, that, that's great. I'm glad they can afford to do but that does not teach that kid any respect whatsoever for the vehicle, the traffic whatsoever. You're going to get this cat out there, he's going to cut truck drivers off, he's going to cut other people off. our biggest thing is the CDL right now. We need to go where this is the biggest issue at hand. We have a lot of other issues in the licensing of vehicles, period. But we've just, they need to cut all third party schooling out. They can have all the schools they want. They can charge people all the money they want. But until they get past the gatekeeper, the DOT officer that sit in that seat and administers that test, they're not gonna hold a CDL. if that DOT officer is abiding by the law and he should be checked and they should be, multiple people have to sign off throughout the course. If they administered the English test when they did the permit, that would stop a lot of'em right there The biggest problem is just all the way around the fraudulent CDLs sanctuary cities, it just ain't going to get any better until somebody drops a hammer on it. That was a great point that you brought up about 18 especially with all these young kids. I'm seeing kids, my kids are, teenagers now, but my youngest ones I'm seeing a lot of kids get phones at seven, eight years old, so just imagine, 16 years old, we already see all the distractions out here with the telephones, like you just brought up earlier about some guy driving and American truck driver, with a big, almost like a big screen TV in his dash watching a movie. And, you got these kids that are 16 they're still way too immature and the telephones their wife at that point, so imagine them. And mostly the parents aren't any better. That's why I brought up, the educational part of at a school driver's ed, it needs to be, by the state. It needs to be taught a lot better. They need to start learning more regulations, rules, merging how to drive with, the trucks on the road and the respect of, not just with trucks but other cars and everybody pedestrians and everything. This was something that was very tragic and my heart goes out to the family of these three people that lost their lives, but this don't need to be just a total loss. I think if they can be. Some real action taken here to make things better, to where more people will not lose their lives to this. It's not a good situation no matter how you look at it. Three people did lose their lives, but all may not be lost. If something good comes out of this, and this brings the attention that's been needed, which tells me California's always going to be a problem because they're already going. The governor over there is already he's just arguing and trying to make excuses. The feds come in and make them change it. Period. That's why I think that the CDL needs to be administered by a federal DOT officer, not a police officer from that city or this, or it needs to be a federal DOT officer. And you know what? They need to train and hire some new ones. Hey, we've been needing some new ones anyway. These guys go out there and they're presenting such a problem to the industry, such a drain to the industry already. Not to mention the way they drive. You see these guys running down the highway, 70, 80 miles an hour. They will run right up on top of a car. I literally seen one, one time, I don't even think I could have walked between the front of his truck and the rear end of the car running 75 miles an hour down the interstate. What part of that makes you think that's okay? the following distance of an 18 wheeler needs to be at least six to eight seconds. Not, a foot, We see this a whole lot more nowadays. This total disrespect for anybody and everything. Get outta my way. Kick your teeth in, move, ride right up on somebody's rear end. I'm in a hurry. Their tire, their tires are bald. They don't do maintenance to their trucks. They run for a dollar,$10,$15, 20 a mile. It takes every dollar they make probably to buy fuel. And they think they're making money. They really think that, until the truck blows up or, the DPF system goes down or something to that degree. Yeah. Just like I brought up earlier with the, these truck crashes, these guys running up each other's rear rounds, like you said, a couple feet, whether it's a car or a truck. And then, when something happens, you don't have, 6, 7, 8 seconds, whatever, enough time to, to react. And you could be even watching a movie on your phone, distracted. Then you get that big chain reaction. Next thing you know, you hear about this big pile up and all these fatalities. Oh yeah. This guy's not the only problem. I can tell you that right now. The whole world's focused on seeing here, but he's one of many, this could have been any of those guys out there. This negligent going down the road, never been trained, bought their CDL. And not to mention how many we've gotta get rounded up, right? Because who knows who, who's really got a CDL and who don't, you're seeing all these posts on Facebook and everything else. You know what? I couldn't go down here to the hospital and just tell'em, Hey, you know what? I bought this certificate to be a doctor and go in and do surgery on multiple different people, and then they die. And then after a while they discovered that I was a fraud. I believe I'd be held accountable. Don't you think so? I do believe that, especially in the last 15 years out here I've seen it because I've been doing this about 30 years and, you get all these old timers, some of'em passed on, or they retired over the years. Then you get a bunch of guys that were just, a little bit above me, maybe 10 years or 12 years, a little older than me or whatever, maybe around my age. And they just got burned out. They got sick and tired of driving out here with, some of these. they don't how to drive. Just lot different going into a truck stop now than it was years ago. There's, you gotta worry about, hey, when I park my truck and go in and take a shower when I come out, is the hood still gonna be on the truck? There's a lot of guys and just like you were talking about the, the freight rates and stuff, these brokers, a lot of guys get pissed off. They it's rough out there. It's, they were owner operators and they're not gonna go out there and pull loads for a dollar 10. So they're just gonna say, heck with this, I. Maybe you go back to school or, Hey, I used to do AC or electrician, I'm gonna go ahead and, this industry is getting trashed, there's too much that needs to be fixed, so I'm gonna go ahead and walk away. Exactly. But, you can't necessarily even blame the broker. He's an opportun just like we are. If I called up about a load for one of my trucks or something, and the guy says man, where we're paying$4 a mile, I'm not gonna question that. I'm going to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take that load. Just like he, the guy calls up and says, Hey, I'll take that load for a dollar 10 a mile. He's not going to ask no questions. Most brokers, I built two brokerages, own two I, I've been on both sides of the fence. I've owned trucks, I've owned companies, ran companies. I've been all over this industry for over 30 years. There's not much in this industry. I haven't done or seen. So I know a little bit about where everybody comes from. The broker he's going to, he's gonna answer the phone. He is gonna say, Hey, what do you need to do this load? He's gonna let you tell him, Hey, this is what I need. He's gonna make money. He's gotta make money.'cause he works hard. A lot of people think, oh, a broker, you could sit there in his pajamas. But dude, that's hard work. It is not as easy as everybody thinks it is. You spend a lot of time, hours pouring over clients, flying to Houston, meeting clients and this and that, to get these. None of that's paid until you start moving loads. So it's really unfair to just trash the broker and say, Hey, he's just ripping from everybody off. He's gotta make his money too. Just like we have to make our money Also. And if we call up and we know what our operating expense is, let's say I've got a fairly new truck and trailer and it costs me X amount of dollars to run down the road, I know exactly what I need to move that load. And if I'm going to the East coast or I'm going to Florida or I'm going, depending on where I'm going, I gotta give or take a little bit.'cause if I'm going into a low dollar freight area, I'm gonna have to make my money going in that lane. So I'm going to make those adjustments. You could ask him, Hey man, what's it cost you to run that truck down the road? And they're gonna look at you like you got three eyes. They don't know, right? They just, they're just an owner operator. They don't have any clue how that happens. And that's something that we're also, with this podcast, we're going start offering owner-operator, lease driver consulting. I don't have the time to get into it on the basis to the degree that of Kevin Rutherford. Kevin, hey, we got a lot of love for Kevin. He's been around a long time. He does a great job. But he's only one person. He can only do so much. We're going to rub elbows a little bit with some of that. Not a lot, but we're going to offer it some. I've got a lot of knowledge in how to make money with these trucks and I can pass that on and help some people out. We're gonna offer some Classes on it, some sessions and call in, pay by the hour or pay by 30 minute session. We can look everything over and see what's going on with your truck. This is something we're just now getting off the ground and unfortunately this kind of popped up happened and you know what? I felt like we needed to do an episode on it. It just, I just couldn't pass this by. Brian, I think we're gonna wrap this up and appreciate you for your time. You try to stay cool down there in Florida for us and watch out for the U-turn. Yeah. Be safe out there on the road. Yeah. Great being on your show there. I appreciate it, ma'am. All right, maybe we'll see you back on here again. There again. we are On the Truckers Radio podcast