End of the Road

“This may be the most enraging book you have ever read. It will certainly be one of the most illuminating.” —Matthew B. Crawford, author, Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

An inside-the-cab view of how an iconic American occupation is being destroyed by corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats.

For decades, the trucker was a symbol of independence, a knight-errant of the open road. Today, drivers are treated not like people at all, but merely as “inputs” necessary (for now) in moving things from place to place. They are slowly being replaced: first by poorly paid, untrained, exploited immigrants, and soon by driverless RoboTrucks. Truckers are spied on by corporations and governments, regulated into serfdom by politicians and bureaucrats, and considered an afterthought by managerial elites who despise those who do real work with their hands.

Gord Magill, a third-generation trucker who has driven the ice roads of the Great White North, the deserts of the Australian Outback, and everywhere in between, shows how surveillance technology makes today’s cab a virtual prison, demoralizing drivers and eradicating truck-stop culture. He reveals the immigration scams putting grossly unqualified drivers behind the wheel—and causing horrific accidents on our nation’s roads. And he gives an inside account of the trucker-led “Freedom Convoy” that provoked the most thorough persecution of political dissenters in Canadian history.

End of the Road describes the human and cultural consequences of a short-sighted quest for efficiency that assigns good jobs a value of zero. Fresh and authentic, this book is a workingman’s call to save the dignity and freedom not just of truckers, but of all blue-collar workers.