Owner-ops' big role out West as AB 5 wound toward this week's Supreme Court filing

Overdrive Radio

The thumbnail image with today's podcast was the product of the 2019 groundswell of grassroots advocacy that rose leading into the ultimate passage of the AB 5 law in California, which codified a controversial court decision that applied the ABC contractor test in the state. That test, to say the least, is problematic for owner-operator lease arrangements with motor carriers as they've traditionally been drawn up -- and federally recognized now for decades in the Truth in Leasing regulations. In this week's edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re going to drop into the annual Symposium event hosted by Overdrive sister fleet publication CCJ. This past Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama, at the event, CTA CEO Shawn Yadon described what he saw with his own eyes on the ground in 2019 as that groundswell of advocacy rose. The result of that advocacy – a myriad of carveouts in the law by the legislature aimed at a laundry list of professions, but not for trucking, not for owner-operators. That set up the Supreme Court case Yadon and CTA filed Monday, and here we get more on potential outcomes from both Yadon and transportation attorney Greg Feary of the Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary law firm. Both men had much more to say about the history of how we got to this point, with owner-operators and their contracting motor carriers still playing the high-stakes waiting game on the outcome. Read more about the session in this report from the scene Wednesday: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15113768/the-california-conundrum-independent-contractor-state-of-play And more about the 2019 advocacy efforts here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897067/rumblings-of-protest-out-west-in-wake-of-california-contractor-law