“This May Not Be the Right Time to Jump Into the Small Carrier Market.” Two Top Transportation Attorneys on Whether the Small Carrier Has a Future.

There is a question hanging over the small carrier world right now, and two of the most knowledgeable transportation attorneys in the country did not flinch from it when they sat down separately on The Long Haul. The question is whether the small carrier, the one-truck owner-operator and the five-truck fleet, still has a viable future as an independent business, or whether the forces set in motion by the Supreme Court’s Montgomery decision are quietly pushing that operator toward extinction as an independent and into the arms of a larger carrier. Neither attorney sugarcoated it. Brian Nelson, a partner at Taylor Nelson Slattery Bernard in St. Petersburg, Florida, who spent years as general counsel inside a broker, a motor carrier, and a 3PL under one roof, walked through the legal machinery now bearing down on carriers.