How Do You Think Private Equity Will Affect Trucking?

Will buyouts and mega-mergers create a few trucking behemoths that will force owner-operators and small family firms out of the trucking business for good? Trucker to Trucker wants to know how you guys and gals out there in the trenches feel about private equity firms sticking their fingers in our financial pie. (See our March 10 and 12 posts.)

With truck company ownership and financing moving from local owners and local banks to uninvolved and impersonal equity firms, what will happen to control of trucking companies and the industry itself? Will management wind up in the hands of a few impersonal mega-companies who only care about the bottom line? Will trucking follow agriculture and become a huge mega-conglomerate? Trucking could lose its heart and soul. Equity firms care about profits, not what's good for the industry, much less individual truckers. Saddled with huge debts to generate investment income, will trucking companies be able to survive? What will happen to our jobs?

I didn't like it when private equity firms started tinkering with my local Wendy's burger joint. I don't need some "suit" who never flipped a burger telling me what to eat. I'm for sure not going to like it if some glorified accountant tries to tell me how to drive my rig! Where do you stand? Click comment and give us your two cents.