Voice Of GO(r)D

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring you another academic who has spent a great deal of his life studying the trucking industry, and who also started out behind the wheel. University of Minnesota-Morris Economics Professor Stephen Burks joins the show to share with us the findings of some of his studies, what undergirds many issues in the industry, and stories from his life on the road back in the 1970s. You can find Professor Burks online - https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/expert/stephen-burks https://www.iza.org/person/1883/stephen-v-burks His research project on driver turnover - https://morris.umn.edu/academics/truckers-turnover-research-project And a list of many of Professor Burks great research papers - https://morris.umn.edu/academics/truckers-turnover-research-project/results Professor Burks most recent paper we discussed on the pod - https://docs.iza.org/dp16477.pdf The American Compass piece I mentioned in the intro - https://americancompass.org/crash-and-churn/ Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and encouraged - [email protected] Subscribe to my substack and never miss any written content, or this podcast - https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/

The Voice of GO(r)D podcast is very happy to bring you a discussion with one of Canada’s finest investigative journalists, an endangered species if there ever was one, Mr Sam Cooper. His reporting at The Bureau often highlights the dark undersides of many issues which are dragging Canada down, including the penetration of Chinese Communist Party operations into many facets of the black market in Canada, and how the results of those operations are detrimental to the lives of Canadians. One of those operations is the trafficking of narcotics in, out, and through Canada, and on today’s show, Sam and I discuss this problem, and bad actors in the trucking industry who are moving all of that gear.We recorded this episode on July 1, and in the three weeks since, Sam has released a couple of excellent pieces on the subject over at The Bureau. Other media platforms in Canada are also finally catching up with the rest of us on this subject, and you can read a number of articles listed over at the home of this podcast on Substack.https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/p/on-punjabi-narcotrafficking-in-canadaSam can be found on Twitter - https://x.com/scoopercooperhttps://www.thebureau.news/As always, questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and strongly encouraged - [email protected]

The Voice Of GO(r)D is happy to bring you a new roundtable discussion on the ongoing project of replacing America’s truckers with robots, a subject my podcast has investigated frequently since it’s inception. This episode touches on many areas, including the narrative spin on safety failures of numerous types and models of this technology, the naivety (or complicity) of politicians in various proposed legislation which would remove public oversight of their deployment on our roads, opportunities within the interregnum between now and when the flip gets switched on human truckers, and the seeming thin skin of at least one major motor carrier who are not pleased about drivers criticizing them in public.My guests brought a great deal to bear for this information thick presentation.Returning guilty parties include James Year, who has now been on this podcast at least half a dozen times, is behind the ongoing research project Stealing Fire which he started while at Syracuse University, and was the host of this super viral mini-documentary from More Perfect Union last year - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQrQrOPmszEPaulette Nobles is a trucker and former employee of Hirschbach Transportation, and former because she refused to be treated as a guinea pig in training the autonomous systems built to replace her.You would have heard Paulette on a previous episode of the show, along with our other returning guest, Mitchell Riesgraf.https://open.spotify.com/episode/28Z0w2YHahINyB7Il4yGRL?si=365d3a34d6124442Mitchell has been very busy investigating as much as he can about the companies, politicians, and ideologies behind the push for these systems to be imposed on our highways, and is a co-founder of a new group dedicated to standing up for the American trucker, The American Transportation Co-Op, who you can find on Facebook.And new to the show is Mr Josiah Henry, aka Wild Beard, a YouTuber who has become a thorn in the side of the autonomous truck industry through his very incisive videos exposing the misinformation and misdirection of some of the actors involved, and also pointing out the losses and failures accruing to the folks at Hirschbach as they transition to this technology … poorly.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcUnky77K6chttps://www.truckinginfo.com/news/hirschbach-announces-plan-to-deploy-500-aurora-autonomous-trucksA fascinating study from Japan suggests working a manual gearbox gives the aging brain a daily workout automatics simply can’t.https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism/State of California Autonomous Vehicle Crash Dashboardhttps://experience.arcgis.com/experience/80957b812f8245538a883970ee31d103/page/AV-Crash-Dashboardhttps://techcrunch.com/2026/06/18/waymo-recalls-nearly-4000-robotaxis-to-stop-them-driving-into-highway-construction-zones/Vice President JD Vance mentions Autonomous Trucks in interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times podcast ‘Interesting Times’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z63oBGtmnWIhttps://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15948231/married-couple-killed-tesla-semi-truck.htmlhttps://techcrunch.com/2026/07/08/feds-demand-autonomous-vehicle-companies-stop-interfering-with-first-responders/https://aurora.tech/newsroom/inside-auroras-photonic-engine-engineering-lidar-for-automotive-scalehttps://everythingispolitical.com/readings/autonomous-trucks-american-middle-class-photo-essayWith the recent NHTSA letter, AV companies are asked to go beyond basic technology (measured in crash rates) and demonstrate tangible social and economic responsibility.Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are always welcome and strongly encouraged - [email protected] you haven’t yet, please avail yourself of a copy of my book, which features an entire chapter on autonomous truck technology -

Voice Of GO(r)D welcomes back to the show Mr Grant Lawson, an award winning attorney who specializes in seeking justice for individuals and families who have endured a crash involving a commercial truck.In the immediate wake of the Montgomery V Caribe SCOTUS decision that came down in May, the spectre of billboard attorneys coming after load brokers and shippers was invoked for their negligence in hiring unsafe motor carriers. Well, why not speak with an attorney about this decision instead of invoking the usual clichés about lawyers and their reputations?Just like his first appearance on my show, Grant delivers incisive and informative commentary from his career in defending the innocent in courts of law. We discuss many aspects of the problems which lead to this decision, possible remedies and human strategies brokers and carriers can take, the role of insurance companies, and the general decrepit state of the trucking industry today.You can check out Grant’s first appearance on my show here -https://open.spotify.com/episode/33jqvS9heAzqNx727FLnQH?si=NqLEHmUuQpWazO54otx-OwGrant is a Managing Partner of the Wyoming and Colorado offices of the Law Firm for Truck Safety, who you can find here - https://truckaccidents.com/Before appearing on the show, Grant provided commentary on this decision to Cowboy State Daily, Wyoming’s premier online news outlet.https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/05/19/crackdown-on-sketchy-trucking-practices-continues-with-supreme-court-decision/Some broker companies looking to cut costs don’t research the companies they’re hiring or heed those companies’ dismal safety ratings, he said.“The system has become so gamed,” Lawson added.He said the past few years have seen an explosion in the number of trucking companies, which pairs dangerously with “an ungodly dearth of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration employees and inspection employees.”You can also find Grant on LinkedIn and Twitter.Thanks for listening!During the intro, I mentioned the most recent article I have written for my friends at American Compass, which you can read here -https://www.commonplace.org/p/the-trucking-crackdown-doesnt-goAs always, questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and strongly encouraged - [email protected] you haven’t yet checked out my book, you should! Available in hardcover, e-reader, and audiobook formats directly from my publishers at Creed and Culture.https://creedandculture.com/books/end-of-the-road-inside-the-war-on-truckers/

Voice Of GO(r)D is very happy to bring you an in depth discussion with Roleigh Martin, a lifelong data systems analyst and inventor, who has written an as yet unpublished book which will be of great interest to many of my listeners.”The Forgotten Half of The Patent Clause” advertises itself as a ‘constitutional law litigation strategy and a citizen’s playbook’ and Mr Martin joins the show to explain his thesis on how two words in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, ‘limited Times’, have been left out of the equation within the only monopoly the Constitution grants, patents for new products. With time limitations being abandoned in the understanding and execution of patent law, Roleigh explains that 58% of our economy are effectively protected from the free market competition that the founders had envisioned for America when they wrote the Constitution. Amongst that 58% includes the manufacture of cars, trucks, and other types of equipment, and a series of past judicial rulings has vaporized the market for remanufacture of patent expired equipment which should, constitutionally, pass into the public domain. This situation is, in part, why we see the prices of cars and trucks have become totally untethered from reality, and way out of the budgets for most people to purchase them, a problem that has created a drag on the economy and radically increased the cost of living for everyone. This problem with abandoning the time limitation on patents has combined with the wicked incursion of the regulatory state into every facet of life, and turned every new vehicle into an expensive surveillance liability that most people wouldn’t purchase - if they had a choice.Roleigh goes through the history of a number of cases that brought us to this problem, and then a number of more recent cases, which, when combined with the 2024 Chevron Deference ruling, have created an opportunity to correct this unconstitutional incursion into our economy, and give competing manufacturers access to expired patents as originally envisioned in the Constitution.I sure would like to buy an inexpensive brand new version of a 1983 Ford F-150 or a 1999 Peterbilt rather than a wildly overpriced and larded down with unnecessary surveillance and automation tech 2026 model, wouldn’t you?Roleigh’s book shows us how we might re-orient industry towards making these offerings a legal reality, and you will enjoy this conversation greatly.You can find Roleigh on Twitter, and read this summary of his idea and his book -https://x.com/RoleighMartin/status/2042726307931287738You can also read over 30 Twitter Articles he has published explaining various aspects of his proposal -https://x.com/RoleighMartin/articlesHow I initially found Roleigh was through this article he wrote connecting truckers to his larger idea -https://x.com/RoleighMartin/status/2039522355702100013I’ve been honored to be asked to write a foreword to Roleigh’s book, and as soon as he figures out a publisher and gets it out into the universe, the listeners of my podcast and readers of this Substack will be amongst the first to know.https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/I am always open to questions and comments, and especially look forward to any you might have regards this episode and Mr Martin’s ideas.Send them here - [email protected] if you enjoyed the show, tell a friend and send it to them! Word of mouth is the best advertising, and the only type I can afford.Roleigh quite liked my own book, End of The Road - Inside The War on Truckers and if you have yet to avail yourself of a copy, please visit my publishers website, where you can find options for a hardcover, e-reader, or audiobook narrated by me.https://creedandculture.com/books/end-of-the-road-inside-the-war-on-truckers/Thanks for listening!