Despite their crucial contributions to our lives, truckers remain an overlooked section of the workforce. They transport $671 billion worth of products each year and carry the economy on their backs, yet they face exploitation at every fork in the road.

Thanks to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his 1980 Motor Carrier Act, truck drivers suffer many consequences. The Motor Carrier Act deregulated the trucking industry under the guise of lowering consumer costs. But in reality, it just opened up loopholes for worker exploitation and retail chain profits. Now, never-ending stressors follow truckers down each highway and into every loading dock, ranging from extreme under-compensation to fatal physical and mental demands.

Immigrants make up a substantial portion of U.S. truck drivers. Immigrants, such as those in my own community, enter the career because they lack other options. Even though truckers must pass many tests to obtain their licenses to drive complicated, heavy machinery, many people consider trucking a low-skilled job. Because of the job’s prominence in low-income and immigrant communities, the general public views it with disdain. They see the job as one that is beneath them — as one only “hicks” and immigrants should occupy.

Coupled with the deregulation of the industry, this disdain allows many issues to fly under the radar. As with all industries that employ this vulnerable population, higher-ups can get away with more. Employers happily take advantage of technicalities and deny their workers benefits like health insurance and sick days since many truckers are independent contractors.

Trucks can break down frequently, and some truckers must pay the cost themselves, rather than their employers. These truckers pay for insurance and gas too — quite a lot of it, for a vehicle that size. They even pay their own legal fees because their employers deny liability. These financial burdens and contracts trap workers in a rapidly deteriorating job.

To rub salt in the wound, employers pay low salaries by the mile, not by the hour. Considering the nature of the job, this poses many problems. Truckers spend hours waiting for people to load and unload their shipments. They lose time refilling giant gas tanks and waiting on complicated truck repairs. Cruelest of all, they spend entire nights sleeping on the road away from their families. All of this extra time on the job, and not a penny to show for it.

Understandably, this creates desperation to get home and finally see their loved ones, or to get another load so they can make ends meet. These work conditions push drivers to speed or drive long hours at night. This is unsafe for everyone on the road. However, this wouldn’t happen if bosses respected truckers and their time. Unsafe driving is often the fault of dispatchers who push their drivers harder for the sake of profit. They force truckers to drive at night when tired or ill. They also digitally monitor how drivers spend their time, which prevents breaks and anything else deemed “unnecessary.” The resulting exhaustion means deadly accidents and lawsuits waiting to happen.

In addition to this exhaustion, truckers face freeways and roads in the middle of nowhere all day, every day, alone with nothing but the heavy load dragging behind them. It stands to reason that the job threatens both their mental and physical health. Growing up as a child of an immigrant trucker, I watched my father leave for days or weeks at a time to provide for us. He regularly braved tornados, blizzards and other intense weather disasters alone on the road. I’ve watched him undergo disrespect, abuse and exploitation, all while helping keep the country running. Something needs to change and that starts with regulating the industry again.

But solving these injustices means reckoning with issues most other jobs don’t have to face. Unionizing, for example, presents many unique challenges in the trucking industry. Even when truckers do try to unionize, the deregulated industry makes it prone to union-busting. When truckers fight against increasing demands, plummeting wages and worsening work conditions, their employers are quick to illegally fire them. The large turnover rate and the independence of the job also make it difficult to establish a movement. Only 2% of all truck drivers are unionized, and even that’s a miracle under the current reality.

Luckily, truckers have begun to utilize social media to bridge communication gaps. This year, we have seen a spike in truckers combating their classification as independent contractors, the technicality that denies them many protections and benefits. But they can’t do it alone.

As consumers of the products they transport, we need to support truckers’ unionizing efforts. We need to push for higher wages, and for truckers to get paid by the hour versus by the mile. Employers cannot be allowed to force their workers into unsafe conditions to get jobs done quicker. We also have to combat union-busting propaganda. The trucking industry hides behind the allure of trucker independence, villainizing unions and promoting private employer-employee relationships. But “collaborative relationships,” as one trucking company’s representative calls them, mean nothing while power imbalances exist between employer and employee.

People are scared to support the truckers’ movement for fear of compromising the supply chain and raising consumer costs. But we can’t throw these workers under the bus — or truck, more appropriately — to preserve personal expenses. Without truckers, things like our food supply, healthcare system and the economy would utterly collapse within days. Their battle is everyone’s battle, and one that must be fought in conjunction with the rest of the working class. The faster we all realize that, the better.

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@angela_lezaic