Before long-haul trucking became a vital artery in American commerce, it was a target—seen as a threat by the rail monopolies and the wealthy capitalists who backed them. Between 1920 and 1935, the modern trucking industry was born, but it was nearly strangled in its crib by those who saw freedom of movement, market access, and cost efficiency as a danger to entrenched interests.
This is not just as a historical footnote, but a critical turning point that shaped the unjust, unbalanced system we are now living in. The oppression of trucking wasn’t about public interest or infrastructure. It was about protecting profits at all costs.
Monopoly Building
It started with the Transportation Act of 1920, which effectively guaranteed profitability for railroad companies. The Act empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to protect the bottom lines of rail monopolies, even at the expense of efficiency or fairness.
At the same time, the early pioneers of the trucking industry were delivering faster, more flexible, and more affordable services. Their rise wasn’t just a market evolution. It was a direct threat to the railroad establishment.
Rather than adapting, the railroads lobbied for laws to limit where trucks could travel, how far they could go, and what they could charge. They proposed territorial restrictions and exclusive freight routes, designed not to serve the people, but to preserve the power of capital.
Capitalist Collusion in Plain Sight
Throughout the 1920s, the railroads worked hand-in-hand with wealthy financiers and politicians to consolidate their power. Lavish dinners, political favors, and backroom negotiations were common. Railroad executives were celebrated as heroes of American industry while they fought to absorb smaller lines, suppress new entrants, and manipulate the freight market in their favor.
By 1927, even high-profile gatherings, like the one hosted by Baltimore & Ohio Railroad president Daniel Willard, became strategic tools for securing government favor. Surrounded by governors, mayors, and financiers, Willard laid out a vision for consolidating railroads into four mega-regions—all designed to box out competition from trucking.
This wasn’t innovation. It was strategic suppression.
Blocking Progress, Lawsuit by Lawsuit
Where regulation failed to slow the trucking industry, the railroads turned to lawsuits often targeting infrastructure access. If a coal route could only be served by truck, lawsuits would be filed to force integration with the rail network. In other cases, roads were denied public funding, and trucking companies faced relentless legal and legislative pressure, despite offering better service to rural and underserved areas.
In one telling example, legal advisors argued that freight shifts toward trucking, especially in states like Arkansas, were “unfair” because they cut into rail revenue. Yet no one questioned why rail rates remained so high, or why trucking was outperforming in speed, reliability, and cost.
What mattered wasn’t serving the customer. What mattered was protecting the monopoly.
Public Money for Private Power
All the while, billions in government funding flowed toward railroads under the justification that “a strong rail system was vital to the national economy.” Between tax breaks, direct subsidies, and capital investments in new terminals, the state played an active role in ensuring the railroads never truly had to compete.
Even the profits earned during the Great Depression, when the government seized $10 million in emergency rail funds and turned them into a $4 million return through securities, were returned to the railroads as a gesture of goodwill. Losses were socialized. Profits were privatized.
The Tipping Point: The Motor Carrier Act of 1935
By the early 1930s, trucks had proven themselves indispensable. When railroads failed to serve remote or rural areas, trucking companies picked up the slack. They were faster, more versatile, and increasingly popular, especially as the Great Depression reshaped commerce across the country.
This could not be allowed to continue.
So in 1935, Congress passed the Motor Carrier Act, a law designed to regulate the very industry that was lifting communities left behind by the rails. Through this Act, trucking was placed under the regulatory thumb of the ICC, the same agency that had spent decades protecting railroads. It was a calculated move to stall trucking’s rise and hand control of freight rate-setting, licensing, and market access to the very forces that sought to destroy it.
What This Means and Why It Still Matters
What happened from 1920 to 1935 wasn’t just economic manipulation. It was a betrayal of working-class Americans who built a better system, only to have it stripped from them by centralized power.
Today, we still see the consequences:
- A fragmented, outdated freight network
- Rising costs, limited access, and rigid infrastructure
- Workers trapped in cycles of debt and burnout
- And a transportation economy that rewards consolidation, not contribution
The American Dream Rail Project was founded on the belief that the suppression of trucking and by extension, the suppression of American labor, mobility, and innovation, must end.
It’s Time to Finish What Truckers Started
Nearly 100 years ago, truckers dared to build something better and they were silenced. Not by failure, but by fear. The fear of what fair competition and real progress might mean to entrenched capital.
ADR honors their legacy by completing their mission. We are not just building a new transportation system. We are building a new economy, one that finally puts people, not monopolies, in the driver’s seat.
The Future We’re Building
We are not restoring the past. We are reinventing the future. Our Above-Ground™ all-electric rail system will deliver high-speed, clean, and cost-effective passenger and freight transportation that rivals anything seen in the last century. But more importantly, we’re building a new economic model around it, one rooted in cooperation, decentralization, and shared value. We are giving power back to the workers whose labor has been undervalued for far too long.
This isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about freedom. Economic freedom. Freedom to build, move, grow, and live the American Dream.
Join us. Let’s restore the American Dream.
