America is a nation that is and has always been fueled by dreams. Shaped by the dreamers and overachievers, goal-setters, built from the ground up by grinders and the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap’ers.
So, if you question what is happening around non-domiciled CDLs, offshore trucking operations, or regulatory gaps, you are quickly pushed into one of two camps: anti-immigrant or anti-regulation. The reality is far more nuanced than that. Unsafe operations, fraud, and compliance manipulation exist across every corner of trucking, including among fully U.S.-based carriers. The issue is not nationality. The issue is a system that increasingly rewards operational structures built to exploit gaps faster than regulators can close them.
My great-grandparents came through Ellis Island from Ireland. I grew up hearing stories about signs in windows all over New York City that read: “Help Wanted - No Irish Need Apply.” I was given one of those at my college graduation as a reminder for my professional future. I was taught not to forget where we came from or how hard immigrant families fought to build a life here.
So let me be very clear: this is not an argument against immigrant truckers.
In fact, some of the hardest-working, most resilient people I have met in trucking came to this country looking for opportunity and built legitimate businesses from the ground up.
The Difference Between an Immigrant Carrier and an Offshore Operation
The issue is not immigration. The issue, in my opinion, is lack of regulations combined with lack of accountability in the regulations that do exist.
There is a major difference between an immigrant building a trucking company in America and a trucking company effectively being operated from another country while competing inside the U.S. freight market. Please read that again because that distinction matters.
What makes this conversation difficult is that outsourcing itself is not inherently wrong. Most modern American businesses outsource certain functions in some capacity. OTR Solutions does, as well. Technology support, operational support, and global talent can absolutely create efficiency and innovation when integrated responsibly into a U.S.-based business.
But there is a significant difference between leveraging global support within an American company and structurally operating an American trucking business almost entirely offshore while competing against companies carrying the full burden of U.S. operating costs.
The distinction matters because legitimate American businesses, including many immigrant-owned carriers, still operate within the framework of U.S. employment law, tax obligations, insurance systems, compliance standards, and domestic operational infrastructure. They pay American payroll taxes. They purchase American insurance policies. They use U.S.-based vendors, legal systems, compliance resources, and financial partners. Those costs are real, and they are substantial.
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Zoka and Sammy Built It the Hard Way
I recently spoke with someone I have known for nearly a decade, Zorica 'Zoka' Jovcic. She and her husband Sammy built a mid-sized fleet in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, after immigrating from Serbia. I met them years ago when they first became factoring clients of OTR Solutions. I still remember flying to New Jersey and sitting down for a beautiful Serbian meal with them. What started as business became a decade-long friendship.
I watched them build and scale a legitimate operation through one of the toughest industries in this country… trucking.
New Jersey is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Compliance is expensive. Payroll, taxes, workers’ protections, equipment financing, and operating overhead are expensive. The margin for error is incredibly small.
And yet they competed. They ran over a million dollars of freight a year. Until eventually, like many others, they reached a breaking point.
In late 2024, they sold the business and returned to Serbia.
When I asked Zoka this week about the current conversation around non-domiciled operations, she said something that perfectly captured the issue:
“Competing in New Jersey while other carriers operate administrative, dispatch, accounting, and recruiting teams outside of the U.S. creates a fundamental structural difference. When labor and back-office operations are handled overseas at a fraction of the cost, those carriers can tolerate lower rates and thinner margins. Operating fully within the United States is an entirely different structure.”
To someone outside trucking, this may sound minor. It is not.
A trucking company can technically appear American on paper while significant portions of dispatch, recruiting, accounting, safety monitoring, compliance administration, and operational management occur entirely outside the United States. In some cases, nearly every operational function except the truck and driver themselves may exist offshore.
That dramatically changes the economics of the business.
When the Market Rewards the Cheapest Operator
A U.S.-based carrier operating with American wages, benefits, insurance structures, employment taxes, and domestic overhead simply cannot compete on equal footing with a company operating under a completely different global cost structure while accessing the same freight market.
That does not automatically make those companies bad actors. Nor does it mean global operational support should be eliminated from trucking or from American business broadly.
But when an entire operational model is built around minimizing exposure to U.S. labor structures, compliance costs, and operational overhead while still competing inside the American freight economy, it creates a structural imbalance that legitimate U.S.-based carriers increasingly cannot absorb.
And that imbalance affects everyone... including immigrant-owned American trucking businesses trying to build legitimate operations the traditional way.
Then enforcement gaps exist alongside that imbalance, the consequences compound.
We all watched the 60 Minutes coverage surrounding Super Ego Holdings and the allegations involving manipulated ELD practices, driver pay issues, and regulatory loopholes. The point was not to state that every non-domiciled operator is unsafe.
Safety and compliance problems exist everywhere in trucking, across all shapes, colors, and sizes.
The larger issue is whether the current system incentivizes a race toward the lowest operational standard while legitimate carriers absorb the highest operational burden.
Because that is what many American-based trucking companies see happening in their communities.
This conversation also cannot begin and end with the FMCSA. Regulation alone does not determine market outcomes. Markets do.
The administration’s crackdown on non-domiciled CDLs is officially framed around restoring licensing integrity, improving vetting, and enhancing roadway safety. But underneath that is a broader market effect: reducing the structural imbalance created when portions of the trucking ecosystem operate under fundamentally different labor, compliance, and operational cost structures while competing in the same U.S. freight economy.
Brokers, shippers, insurers, and industry participants all influence what behaviors are rewarded. If freight consistently flows toward the cheapest possible capacity without scrutiny around operational structure, compliance integrity, or sustainability, then the market itself reinforces the imbalance.
That is not xenophobia. That is economics.
And the distinction is important because this conversation is often oversimplified into politics instead of operational reality.
Many trucking companies in America, including those founded by immigrants, are building businesses the same way generations of American entrepreneurs always have: hiring domestically, paying taxes domestically, carrying insurance domestically, complying domestically, and reinvesting into the U.S. economy.
Those companies are not asking for protectionism. They are asking for a marketplace where operational accountability and regulatory burden are distributed more evenly.
And frankly, it is possible to deeply respect immigrant contributions to this country while also acknowledging that parts of the trucking ecosystem have become structurally unhealthy.
Those two beliefs can coexist.
Survival Isn't the Same as Health
What worries me most is that this issue may fade as rates improve. As the freight markets tighten and carriers begin surviving again, the industry tends to stop asking difficult questions. Dysfunction becomes easier to tolerate when margins recover.
But survival does not mean the underlying system is healthy. Trucking has always rewarded grit. It should also reward legitimacy, operational accountability, and long-term sustainability.
Because if the only thing the market consistently rewards is the lowest-cost operator, we should not be surprised when good carriers, including immigrant-owned American trucking companies like Zoka and Sammy’s, eventually decide the fight is no longer worth it.
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