Voice Of GO(r)D

Voice Of GO(r)D has convened something of an emergency roundtable in the wake of this horrific tragedy in Florida last week, as much of the reporting on it that’s out there is weak, inconsistent, politically motivated, and lacking in substantive context and background.

This tragic incident, for those who follow this Substack, or pay close attention to the North American trucking industry, is but one of many in a long line of completely unnecessary and preventable crashes, and the causes of all of these crashes are many, but there are notable through-lines and hi...

Voice Of GO(r)D is back and in conversation with Atlanta based attorney Jeremy Citron of Long Haul Law and the Hurt Boss, where we discuss the perception of truckers by the public, and more specifically, members of juries, and how that comes into play when truckers get tangled up in trial. Jeremy also lays out some recommendations on how truckers can facilitate accountability and professionalism and thus more readily protect themselves in such situations. We also get into many issues facing trucking today, and why it is we have so many dodgy operators around.
Jeremy is a t...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is very happy to bring you a discussion with former MIT Data Scientist Dr. David Correll, whose work within MIT FreightLab, a project of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, examines the mother of all problems in trucking, and the one that begets so many others, DETENTION.

For non-truckers, detention is when trucks are held up for unreasonable amounts of time in the loading and unloading process at customer facilities. Some facility operators are notorious for this, and I have spent days trying to get certain things unloaded...

Voice Of GO(r)D is pleased to bring you a light conversation about a heavy topic centered on the question of why the country that is most dependent in the world on highway freight for its economy has such short and light trucks.

Professor Christopher Clarke is an economist at Washington State University, and is a presenter on a new social media channel called Business Explains The World. Their recent video on this question went viral, and as I have spent much of my trucking career outside of the USA pulling longer and heavier trucks...

Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring you a long overdue interview with Craig Fuller, founder and CEO of freight industry news website FreightWaves, as well as the freight data analytics tool SONAR and Firecrown Media empire.

FreightWaves has been of great service to the industry, and employed some of the finest journalists working on trucking, including former guests of this show Rachel Premack and Clarissa Hawes, as well as my pals Dooner and Supertrucker and so many other great people dedicated to Making Trucking Great Again.

Craig fills us in on h...

Voice Of GO(r)D is pleased to bring you a discussion with Dale Prax, founder of FreightValidate, a service and tool to help brokers and shippers deal with the scamming and parasitism epidemic in the North American trucking industry today.
From his website -

Trust FreightValidate to provide crucial insights into the reliability of carriers and brokers operating in the United States and Canada. Our platform uniquely combines advanced technology with deep industry knowledge, a thorough understanding of 49 CFR regulations, and Public Law 112-141 (MAP-21), along with years of industry experience. We use objective, im...

Voice Of GO(r)D is pleased to welcome back to the show returning guests Danielle Chaffin and Justin ‘Supertrucker’ Martin in discussion on the ease with which certain bad actors in trucking can be identified and avoided. If you are on FreightX, Danielle and Justin are revealing, on the daily, ‘Chameleon’ or ‘Ghost’ Carriers, and the shell games they play with layers of LLCs, the trade in Motor Carrier numbers, and other methods by which they avoid accountability for their unsafe and unprofessional operations. In doing so, they show us how easy it is for shippers and load broker to sc...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is very happy to bring you the self proclaimed ‘King of Content’, the Doer of The Work™️, lawyer, historian, marketing guru, prolific writer, and former co-host of the What’s Left? podcast, Mr Oliver Bateman.

Oliver encouraged me to start this Substack and is one of many who told me I should start a podcast - he has always been very encouraging of this project, and has served as a great inspiration and adviser to me over the years, and I am very happy to get him on the show and g...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy for the return of the finest investigative journalist in the world of trucking and freight, Clarissa Hawes. Over two decades of writing at both LandLine Magazine, the official media channel of OOIDA, and at FreightWaves, Clarissa has looked deeply into various issues and pathologies within trucking and has done a damn good job in reporting on them. Those who have been reading my Substack and articles for various publications will have read Clarissa’s work, as I have cited her often.

Clarissa fills us in on her career in...

Voice Of GO(r)D is pleased to welcome back to the show Mr Chace Barber, one of the founders and very public face of Edison Motors, the British Columbia based manufacturer of diesel electric hybrid trucks.

In this discussion, Chace updates us on Edison’s move to Golden BC and fills us in on why they won’t be making trucks for the American market anytime soon (Hint - the EPA and US DOT are mewling cabbages) which leads into some extended editorializing from Mr Barber you typically wouldn’t hear in Edison marketing videos. I’m ha...

Voice Of GO(r)D is proud to present a brief chat with Lewie Pugh, the Executive VP of one of America’s oldest and definitely largest driver advocacy organization in the country. I met up with Lewie at MATS 2025 and invited him on the show, and between all of the work and travel he has been up to, he very graciously squeezed me in. We discuss how he got into trucking, how and why he joined OOIDA, and what OOIDA is, is not, and various issues they are working on.

This was recorded a couple of m...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is very excited to bring you a deep dive discussion about the implementation of autonomous trucks on our highways, and the use of human truckers as teaching ‘Guinea Pigs’ in this enterprise.

Paulette Nobles is a trucker who just recently left Hirschbach Transportation and she joins the show with Mitchel Riesgraf, a driver with Long Haul Trucking and the Truckxedo TikTok channel. I met both through CDL - Drivers Unlimited, a driver advocacy organization that is … hibernating?

Paulette and Mitchel share their experiences and research with us, and some...

Voice Of GO(r)D is proud to present Mr Mike Williams, one of Australia’s most infamous truckers and political commentators, and host of the On The Road Aussie Trucking Podcast. Mike has spent a lifetime “On The Road” Down Under, and has also been podcasting about it for a number of years now. You may have seen Mike expounding online in his ‘Minute with Mick’ video segments, or having his advocacy read aloud in the Australian Senate. Maybe you passed him on your way to Port Hedland as he was towing four of the bastards loaded with Iron Ore.<...

Voice Of GO(r)D is honored to bring you Mr Kim Wylie, a veteran trucker from Humboldt, Saskatchewan (yes, that Humboldt) who, like myself, is doing what he can to raise alarm bells about the state of the industry, and offer policy solutions to improve life for all of us out on the road.

Working with friend and former guest of the show, Trent Lalonde, Kim is highlighting issues with training and licensure of truckers, and despite difficulty in getting policy makers in Saskatchewan to listen, seem to be making headway next door in Alberta, where di...

I want to express gratitude and appreciation to all of the listeners of the podcast and readers of this Substack who have stuck with me thus far, and those of you who have tolerated my gravely and monotonous voice for 100 episodes. Without you here, I have no reason to do this, and I thank you for your time and attention.

For episode 100 I bring you the man who brought me into this world (well, I guess my mom would deserve some credit, too, but she ain’t here anymore) and helped make me who I am, My...

Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring you a conversation with a manager at a Toronto area truck driving school who brings us many observations about what exactly is going on with several problems in the industry.

Our discussion ranges from the CBC Marketplace piece on scammy truck driving schools, to the now universally acknowledged ‘Brampton Truckers’ meme brought to us by the same guys the CBC wouldn’t name, as well as various issues involving the Provincial Government of Ontario. No surprises here - they throw money at people who shouldn’t be truck...

Regular listeners to the Voice Of GO(r)D podcast and readers of this Substack will know that the trucking industry is in a shambles and is likewise facing more pain when the effects of President Trump’s tariffs really take hold. What many of you don’t know is that some Banking Chickens are about to come home to roost, and these chickens also help us to explain why current market conditions have yet to clear the dead wood out of the industry. The echoes of policies undertaken by the Biden Administration in 2021, matched with the financial industry not...

In my time cruising around Substack, one of the more interesting personalities I’ve come across is a fellow named Wez, aka Obsidian Blackbird. who writes “Memories of a Post Grunge Drifter”, a sort of ongoing autobiographical project that winds its way across the end of Generation X and the turn of the new millennium through the eyes of a vagabond Kiwi. Along the way, Wez shows us how the adversity of his family situation was dealt with, or not, via running away from home and leading a life not unlike that lived by another friend and former guest of this...

Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring back to the show one of the highest energy maniacs in trucking, Mike Lombard of the Lombard Trucking Podcast, and so many other ventures. Mike has been diving deep into the history of the family trucking brand, and shares with us what he has found in a wide ranging discussion on the effects of the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 on the industry, and on the company his predecessors built over many decades.

We range over a number of topics including current issues facing the...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is very happy to bring you a lengthy and educational discussion with Mr Andy Roberts, the long time proprietor of one of Canada’s oldest and best truck driving schools - The Mountain Transport Institute, who specialize in teaching you how to navigate the Rocky Mountains while pulling Super B Trains at 140,000 pounds gross weight.

Located in Castlegar, BC, and in business since the 1980s, Andy’s school stands out as the most effective and high value truck driving school in the industry, where he has long term...

Lawyers are often the butt of many jokes, and in the case of the trucking industry, are thought to be a scourge, given that ‘Ambulance Chasing’ is now a cottage industry in America; you have all seen the billboards which pollute our interstates, and have been witness to the ever increasing phenomenon of ‘nuclear verdicts’.

I’ve been following an attorney for some time now who appears to be on our side of the street where it concerns the issue of truck safety for all motorists and travelers on our highways, and I had the very good fortu...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast was recently contacted by a representative of the American Communist Party, seeking more information about trucking and truckers, with a particular focus on truckers in Canada. As this podcast is happy to speak with (almost) anyone, I was happy to hear from someone on the opposite side of the bottom of the horseshoe to myself, and I thus invited Timmy onto the show in what is something of a two way interview - she asking me about trucking, and me asking her many questions about her communist ideological priors.

I...

Voice Of GO(r)D is pleased to bring you an in-depth discussion about a problem in North American trucking that gets very little attention, with a man trying to solve it.

Evan Shelley is the CEO of Truck Parking Club, a sort of app based ‘AirBnB’ for truckers to find parking.

Parking? Parking? What do you mean, parking?

Its not guaranteed that truckers can find somewhere to beach their rigs and go to sleep every night in many parts of the continent, and some of the busier routes along it...

Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring you a conversation with a great writer and thinker on Canada, Avetis Muradyan.

Mr Muradyan, originally from Montreal, is an entrepreneur who has worked in medical tech and logistics all across Asia, and is now back in Canada.

We discuss his writings on just what is going on with the ruling elite of the country, where exactly Canada is on its current trajectory, and his comparisons of Canada now to the later stages of the Soviet project. We also discuss his recent piece in IM1776...

Voice Of GO(r)D is proud to present a conversation with Guy Meister, a Nova Scotia trucker whose little daycab R Model Mack sat on Sussex Street in Downtown Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy.

Guys act of peaceful protest, of standing around in Ottawa drinking coffee with his fellow countrymen, has now earned him the bizarre pursuit of the Canadian government, who have engaged in a capricious and Kafka-esque case of Lawfare against Guy that has now run for over three years, and has seen Guy make the 2000 mile round trip from his home in Nova...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast is extremely honored to have had the opportunity to introduce to you Mr Shannon Everett, of a legitimate trucker advocacy organization called American Truckers United that has been crunching data on the flooding of America’s trucking market with foreign ‘drivers’, and how our political class is allowing and actively encouraging our replacement.

ATUs look into the issue of Commercial Drivers Licenses (CDLs) over the past decade has revealed some very questionable spikes with various states issuing them at 5 to 10 times the normal rate starting in 2020, and continuing into 2024. The Co...

Chace Barber of Edison Motors returns to Voice Of GO(r)D for his third appearance, and shares with us detailed updates from Canada’s one and only manufacturer of leading edge hybrid drive Big Rigs.

Chace discusses the brouhaha with a potential location in Terrace, BC, the new home they will be moving to instead in Golden, BC, why he’s staying in Canada despite all of the roadblocks both province and Feds have put in his way, which include some very peculiar investment regulations resulting in you probably missing the boat on Edison’s crowdf...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to introduce you to Donald Ward, one of those wonderful autodidacts that can only be bumped into on roads less traveled … or on Twitter. Mr Ward has made a name for himself as an astute political commentator online, though his personal work background is much more interesting - a seasonal salmon fisherman in Alaska, a grain hauler in Eastern Washington, firefighter, former small town newspaper guy, and one of the OG Tea Partiers, Donald leads a very interesting life and very graciously shares it all with us.

...

The Voice Of GO(r)D podcast did not start out with the intention of documenting the tyranny endured by every day working Canadians at the hands of their government, but here we are, and my latest guest reports from deep within the Saskatchewan portion of the mass Gulag Camp once known as Canada.

R.B. Ham is a fellow trucker and man of many talents, and has found himself on the wrong side of a government and judiciary that has run wild in punishing anyone who stood up for themselves during the darkest hours of...

Howdy, loyal readers and listeners to the Voice Of GO(r)D podcast.

Today I’m bringing you an interview I gave to Grant Martsolf of The Savage CollectiveSubstack back in November, where he peppered me with a few questions about the trucking business in general, and asked me why I think that truckers are able to overcome the odds in starting and maintaining families at higher rates than other blue collar workers.

Grant has been working with the Institute for Family Studies over and above his position as a professor at the Univers...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring you a great conversation with Kevin Rutherford, former trucker, owner operator, business consultant, web developer, fuel efficiency nerd, radio host, and renaissance man of all things trucking - of the profitable variety.

Kevin shares with us a little of his life story, his call to self improvement, business improvement, and teaching others how to run profitable operations, be you a single owner operator or a small family run fleet. Like myself, Kevin has spent his lifetime in the business, and he also has very strong presence...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to start off 2025 by bringing you an in depth conversation with fellow trucker and previous guest of the show, Lee Schmitt, along with his wife Lisa.

Lee has thrown his hat into the ring to become leader of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and we discuss why it would be only natural that someone with over 30 years of experience behind the wheel would be a better choice to head this extremely wasteful and ineffective agency.

It is revealed that the FMCSA is...

Friend of this Substack and FreightX maven Danielle Chaffin joins this, the last Voice Of GO(r)D episode of 2024, to discuss her family history in trucking, her own roles in the business which include an explainer on TMS software and being a regular conference goer, as well as the human element that seems to be slowly slipping away from us all.
A wholesome chungus way to wrap up 2024!

You can find Danielle on Twitter - https://x.com/maybedanielleee and over on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maybedanielleee/ as well as the...

Voice Of GO(r)D brings you a deep and dark conversation, hot on the heels of the UK Parliament passing an assisted dying law through second reading, between Canadian MAID critic Amanda Achtman, and Jeff Shafer, an American lawyer and scholar who has been investigating developments in legal language which have been used to justify the commercial expansion of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) beyond merely helping those who have trouble conceiving a child.

The conversation is a pretty serious examination of how The Machine applies its twisted logic to the beginning and...

Two weeks ago, Canada’s ‘public broadcaster’, on their formerly flagship investigative journalism TV program ‘The Fifth Estate’, released a real humdinger of propaganda and lies about the Coutts Four case. Given that the CBC and other regime media in Canada had lied so much about the men involved when they bothered to report on the case at all, they ended up in an uncomfortable situation when Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert were found ‘NOT GUILTY’ of conspiracy to murder police officers; a charge that the CBC had been heavily invested in using to whip up fear against anyone who dissented...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring an old friend to the show to tell you a little of his life story in forestry and trucking.
Nigel Frost is an owner operator based in Tauranga, New Zealand, who hauls logs in and around the Bay of Plenty area of NZ’s North Island. I first met Nigel when I went to work for the same company he contracts his truck to now, Rotorua Forest Haulage, way back in 2003. We have been friends ever since, and this phone chat was an overdue catch up, and a wa...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring you yet another thoughtful trucker who understands the human connection involved in moving your goods around … and your kids, too; Ryan started out as a school bus driver.

Ryan tells us how he got into trucking, his time driving our precious children to school, going through the ringer of being a Lease Operator, and his current gig working for an LTL carrier in Austin, Texas.
Along the way we explore our mutual frustrations with technology and how the industry is influenced by those wh...

Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring you the second of a two part series I recorded with the wonderful Oliver Bateman Does the Work of the now defunct What’s Left? podcast on the pathologies of the trucking industry, but this time with UPenn sociologist and author of ‘The Big Rig - Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream’ Steve Viscelli, whom you heard on this show a few months ago.

This conversation was recorded in 2021, and as with part one, Oliver graciously granted me the privilege of re-releasing this discu...

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring you Marilyn Burns, Tony Olienick’s lawyer, and Danielle Slettede, one of his oldest friends and longest serving member of the men’s support team.

Marilyn tells us about her history in Alberta, including her roles in politics, as she is one of the founding members of Alberta WildRose, her legal career, and how she came to represent Tony in her first ever criminal case. Marilyn and Danielle provide insight from having been in the courtroom, especially Danielle, as she has been there since day one.

Voice Of GO(r)D brings you an interview I gave to Oliver Bateman of 

Oliver Bateman Does the Work at his now defunct podcast project with Aimee Terese, What’s Left? That show had a great run, and along the way Oliver did a series of interviews on ‘Doing The Work’, where he would talk to regular people with regular jobs, and I was quite chuffed to be the first interview of that series.

This discussion was recorded in November of 2020, and was probably amongst the first half a dozen or so in...