“THIS IS BULLSH*T” Truckers Boycott California as Governor Begs Them to Return
The Silence of the Rigs: California’s Economic Siege Began with a Key Turn
One driver turned off his key at the state line and said, “This is bullshit.” Then ten thousand others did the same. Imagine a highway where ten thousand massive diesel engines just stop. The silence is louder than the noise. There are no air brakes hissing, no diesel rumble, just the terrifying sound of commerce dying. This is happening right now at the California border, and what we are witnessing is not a protest; it is an economic siege. The people in Sacramento are just now realizing what they have done, but for the rest of us, the consequences are already arriving at the kitchen table.
This crisis was manufactured on January 1st of this year when California’s “Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation” went into full enforcement. This is the law that bans diesel trucks manufactured before 2010 from operating on California roads. The stated goal was to reduce emissions, protect the environment, and save the planet. Governor Gavin Newsom stood at his podium and told us this was about our children’s future, claiming California was “leading the nation in clean transportation.” But leading the nation apparently looks like twelve thousand independent truckers refusing to enter the state, sitting at truck stops in Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon, telling their dispatchers that they are simply not going in.
The economic reality that no politician wanted to talk about is brutal in its simplicity. The average independent trucker—the guy who owns his own rig—bought his truck for somewhere between sixty thousand and one hundred twenty thousand dollars. These are paid-off, well-maintained Peterbilts and Kenworths that run clean. Now, California says they are illegal. The state’s solution is for these drivers to simply “upgrade” to electric or hydrogen trucks, which cost between a quarter of a million and three hundred fifty thousand dollars. These independent operators are not corporations; they operate on margins so thin that a single repair bill can mean bankruptcy. California told them to upgrade or get out, so they got out.
The scale of this disaster is hard to overstate. The Port of Los Angeles, the largest port in North America handling forty percent of all containerized cargo entering the United States, is paralyzed. As of three days ago, there were eighty-four thousand containers sitting at the port waiting for pickup, up from a normal baseline of about twenty-two thousand. The Port Authority calls it congestion; anyone with a brain calls it paralysis. Inside those metal boxes, strawberries from Mexico are rotting, auto parts from Japan are baking in the heat, and medical supplies destined for hospitals are trapped because there are no trucks to move them.
The trucks that are willing to enter the state are charging premium rates that border on extortion. Short-haul rates to move a container just thirty miles have jumped from eight hundred dollars to twenty-three hundred dollars in two weeks. That is a one hundred eighty-eight percent increase, and every cent of that is being passed down to you, the consumer. The truckers aren’t just refusing new loads; they are cancelling existing contracts by the thousands, accepting penalty fees because it is cheaper to lose ten thousand dollars on a breach of contract than to buy a three hundred thousand dollar truck to comply with a law they never voted for.
We are already seeing the physical manifestation of this policy failure in grocery distribution centers across Fresno, Bakersfield, and Stockton, which are operating at sixty-two percent capacity. That means nearly forty percent of the food that should be on shelves just isn’t there. Governor Newsom, in a panic, held a closed-door meeting three days ago to consider a temporary waiver program, allowing non-compliant trucks to operate for another six months. But the trust is gone. Drivers who applied for grant programs months ago are still on waiting lists. They view this waiver as a trap, a temporary lure to get them back on the road before the state crushes them again. They aren’t taking the bait.
The human cost of this ideological crusade is devastating. It falls not on the bureaucrats in Sacramento, but on people like Carla Espinosa, a single mother and warehouse supervisor in Riverside whose hours were cut from forty to sixteen because there is nothing to unload. She told me she doesn’t care about emissions regulations; she cares about feeding her kids. Multiply her story by hundreds of thousands—dock workers, mechanics, retail employees—and you see the ripple effect of a policy written by people who have never had to choose between a truck payment and a mortgage.
According to a study by USC, this regulation was projected to cost the California economy over four billion dollars in its first year, assuming ninety percent compliance. We are sitting at forty-three percent compliance. The potential losses are now double that projection. The California Trucking Association warned the Air Resources Board eighteen months ago that this would happen, stating explicitly that a mass exodus was inevitable without financial support. The state’s arrogant response was that they were “confident the market will adapt.” The market is adapting by abandoning California entirely.
This is not just a California problem. When the supply chain breaks here, the entire country feels it. That smartphone you ordered, the car parts your mechanic needs, the Christmas toys for next year—they are all stuck in Long Beach. The Department of Transportation is “monitoring” the situation, which is code for doing absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, the Teamsters union—one of the most powerful labor organizations in the country—has sided with the non-union independent truckers. When the unions and the independents unite against the state government, you know the policy is a catastrophic failure.
We are watching a game of economic chicken play out in real time. The truckers turned off their keys and walked away. They have proven that without them, the “clean, green future” is just a starving population in the dark. The state government is now realizing that you cannot mandate an electric fleet into existence when the people who drive the trucks cannot afford to buy them. This is what happens when ideology meets economics and refuses to blink. The silence on the highway is the sound of reality crashing down on the Golden State, and unless you are prepared, that silence is coming for your pantry next.
