Borderlands Mexico: Texas truckers taking labor protest to the Big Apple

Truck drivers based in the Permian Basin in Texas will be protesting at BlackRock Inc. in New York over unpaid wages and lack of access to clean bathrooms. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)
Truck drivers based in the Permian Basin in Texas will be protesting at BlackRock Inc. in New York over unpaid wages and lack of access to clean bathrooms. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

In This Article:

Borderlands is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week: Texas truckers taking labor protest to the Big Apple; Exports of Mexico-built cargo trucks rise in August; Mexico’s largest bank opens office in Houston dedicated to nearshoring; and Stonepeak acquires 1.1 million -square-foot logistics property in Texas.

Texas truckers taking labor protest to the Big Apple

Texas-based members of the Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ) plan to hold a protest Wednesday outside the headquarters for BlackRock Inc. in New York.

The protest is aimed at bringing attention to wage theft and poor working conditions experienced by truck drivers in the Permian Basin, organizers said.

“We’re going up against Wall Street powerhouses like BlackRock or Vanguard or State Street, all of which are intermarried. We’ve got to find where the frac sand companies [in the Permian Basin] get their money from,” Billy Randel, founder of TMJ, told FreightWaves in an interview. “We’re really after the pay for driver detention time and to pay Mexican B1 drivers the same rate as American drivers again, so these companies don’t play us against each other. It’s a cesspool out there.”


Randel said they decided to protest in front of BlackRock headquarters because the company has investments in companies across the Permian Basin.

New York-based BlackRock is a multinational investment management company with over $10.6 trillion in assets, according to Bloomberg.

“BlackRock’s got a stake in just about everything; they’re heavily involved in fossil fuel and mining,” Randel said.

Officials for BlackRock did not return a request for comment.


The Permian Basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico is one of the largest oil- and gas-producing regions in the world, accounting for 40% of U.S. crude oil and 17% of natural gas production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Truck drivers like Randel and other TMJ members haul frac sand through the Permian’s oil fields. Frac sand is the key ingredient in the hydraulic fracturing process, in which oil and gas drillers pump frac sand and other materials into wells to break up shale rock, through which natural gas and petroleum will flow more easily.

In July, members of TMJ along with the Mexico-based United Mexican Carriers and the Binational Carriers Union led a protest convoy of 75 trucks along a 150-mile trek from Odessa, Texas, through Kermit and Monahans, Texas.

The majority of drivers who participated in the Texas protest were owner-operators or Mexico-based B1 visa drivers hauling goods into the U.S.