The gig economy is happening, whether the left likes it or not. They don't like it; we've seen ample evidence of that. Maybe it's because the gig economy is a quintessentially American thing: Free people trading their skills, talents, and abilities to others, for payment. It's economic liberty at its finest, with both parties agreeing to the deal, with both parties realizing a perceived gain in value.
As a corporate consultant, I was part of the gig economy for 20 years. I have worked with startups, as well as huge global corporations, and businesses of all sizes. Millions of people do likewise, from Uber drivers and pizza delivery drivers to high-end financial consultants.
Truckers, too, can be part of the gig economy. Owner-operators and small trucking companies carry a vast amount of the freight that fuels the American economy. In California, there were - were - more than 70,000 independent truckers, the bloodstream of the once-Golden State.
California's notorious AB 5 is putting an end to that. The Pacific Research Institute's Kerry Jackson has the numbers.
If anyone thinks they’re seeing fewer trucks ripping up and down Interstate 5 or slogging through the perpetual 405 gridlock, it might not be their imagination. California law is strangling the freight-hauling business.
There has been “a wave of bankruptcies among California trucking companies,” reports Floor Covering News, a trade publication, partially the result of the economic decline of the freight shipping industry.
The wretched AB 5 that outlawed independent contracting, or gig work in California is also a major factor as many truck drivers are independent contractors.
California's legislature, and seemingly a majority of California voters, seem determined to destroy California's economy. AB 5 doesn't just impact truckers. It has a chilling effect on the economy at all levels. But the trucking trade, that's the lifeblood. Our highways are the arteries of our national economy, and truckers are the corpuscles that carry the oxygen of all manner of goods to businesses large and small, to consumers, to everyone. It's a good living for the truckers. It's a good deal for consumers. AB 5, not to mention California's diesel fuel prices, the highest in the nation, are squashing all that.
Before AB 5 was enacted in 2019, there were more than 70,000 independent truckers in California. The law has inflicted severe harm on them ever since. Through the California Truckers Association, they filed the first court challenge before the law went into effect. CTA’s Chris Shimoda told FreightWaves then that “we’re really doing this because we believe the owner-operators have the right to continue their businesses and want to continue to be independent truckers. They don’t want to be forced to become company drivers.”
These drivers have that right. They're Americans. It's too bad California doesn't see it that way.
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Read about just one of many cases of independent truckers fleeing California:
Owner-operator Dee Sova, who drives for Prime Inc., is one refugee who had to leave California after “proudly” building her “career as an independent contractor in the trucking industry” over three decades.
“Being my own boss allowed me to raise my four daughters, support my family, and chart my own path forward as a business owner,” she wrote in an August guest commentary. “But in 2020, that livelihood was thrown into chaos by a law from Sacramento, California, lawmakers who ignored how real truckers work and threatened to put thousands of us out of business.”
Sova said “thousands of independent truckers” – women, veterans, immigrants, first-generation business owners – “across the country watched what happened in California with fear.” Their “ability to choose when and how” they work, “isn’t just a perk,” she added, “it’s a lifeline.”
It's not too late to undo this.
If the California Republican Party wants a campaign issue for 2026, here it is. A series of campaign ads profiling people like Dee Sova could be very effective.
Talk to the people hurt by AB 5. Talk to the truckers. Talk to Uber drivers. Talk to pizza delivery people. Talk to people frozen out of consulting contracts. Talk to anyone, everyone who is hurt by AB 5 and its effects.
Talk to the businesses, small and large, who are having trouble getting goods delivered. Talk to the business people who can't get shipments reliably, whose bottom line is affected by the missing truckers. Bring the numbers.
There's nothing more American than the freedom to carve one's own living out of the wilds of the American economy. There's nothing more American, more free, more illustrative of the benefits of American liberty than people choosing how, when, and where to exchange their skills, talents, and abilities to others for personal gain.
California's AB 5 is fundamentally anti-liberty. It reduces, not enhances, employment and business opportunities. It's hurting California by hurting the truckers, who are an essential piece of the economy. And, as a consequence, it's hurting everybody in the once-Golden state.
This can't go on. California's economy will continue to decline as long as anti-liberty, anti-prosperity laws like AB 5 are still in place.
