In 2023, the International Supply Chain Protection Organization (ISCPO) held a panel discussion about human trafficking in the supply chain at our annual convention in Dallas, Texas. The feedback that we received was extremely positive. We discovered that the subject matter was crucial to the supply chain industry and determined that we wanted to move forward in fighting against human trafficking.
Several questions caused us a delay in acting on this important and terrible issue: Where do we start? Who can assist us in our efforts? What will our vision be on this subject? The list of questions is long when you really do not know what you do not know. After a good amount of research, we found the perfect group to partner with in our efforts. We completed the background work on this group and decided that we wanted to team up with them and move forward to combat human trafficking together. I am honored to introduce you to Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT), the organization that the ISCPO has officially teamed up with to fight human trafficking.
About Truckers Against Trafficking
When working on a strategy to fight human trafficking, one of the first steps is determining which groups of people have the greatest opportunity to spot human trafficking as it is happening. In other words, who could serve as the primary surveillance?
With this crime, those frontline people include such groups as medical personnel, who treat victims in medical clinics; service personnel in local neighborhoods (such as postal workers and cable, electrical, and water providers), who come by homes on a regular basis and would notice if something unusual was going on; restaurant and hotel personnel, who might see trafficking taking place in their establishments; and members of all segments of the transportation industry, including airport employees, because traffickers are continually transporting victims to sell them in a variety of places.
In 2009, TAT began working with the trucking industry, both domestically and internationally, because they recognized truckers as critical frontline people.
Truckers are trained to be extremely observant. The trucking industry is composed of people already entrusted with caring for other people’s goods, which speaks to the character of the industry when it comes to caring for others—especially when the interests of others might be in trouble. Members of the trucking industry are everywhere, covering the roadways of entire countries. Last, research shows that traffickers wanting to make fast money often target truckers at truck stops and rest areas (because they’re everywhere and easy to reach right along highways) to sell their victims.
TAT believes that if the trucking industry were empowered with education and equipped with tools to fight human trafficking, they would be quick to mobilize against this crime. They could do their part to see victims recovered and perpetrators arrested. Members of the trucking industry could be everyday heroes in the course of their jobs and make a significant impact against the criminal activity of human trafficking. They might even have a greater impact than the average person because of their mobility and training.
Adhering to this strategy, TAT believes the shippers and manufacturers who employ or contract with trucking carriers to move their products also have a unique role to play in ensuring their fleets receive human trafficking training. In addition to furthering their sustainability goals and commitment to corporate social responsibility, companies can leverage their purchasing power to enhance awareness about human trafficking. By encouraging or requiring their carriers to receive TAT training, shippers and manufacturers are expanding their impact and becoming valuable contributors in the fight against this crime.
TAT’s Impact
Using tools such as an informational website (tatnonprofit.org), a trucking-industry-specific training DVD, wallet cards with signs to look for and questions to ask, and social media accounts, TAT began making contacts throughout the trucking industry to build relationships and state the case for trucking members to join the abolitionist movement. TAT also began having a presence at major trucking shows, and provides free presentations wherever requested by members of the trucking industry. The trucking industry responded positively, and TAT grew substantially.
These men and women, who had witnessed the prostitution of women and minors at various places throughout the United States for years but hadn’t known what it was—forced prostitution and modern-day slavery—began calling the National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) to report what they were seeing. Polaris Project, which runs the hotline, reported that calls from truckers rose substantially starting in 2009 when TAT began. Calls from truckers, both to the hotline and to 911, have resulted in thousands of recoveries of victims and hundreds of arrests of perpetrators.
In the past sixteen years, truckers and the trucking industry have been leaders throughout the transportation industry in fighting human trafficking. They have laid the foundation for TAT to scale its ability to raise up a defensive force of transportation professionals across North America to assist law enforcement in the recognition and reporting of human trafficking, helping to aid in the recovery of victims and the arrest of perpetrators. TAT now educates, equips, empowers, and mobilizes members of key industries and agencies, including trucking, bus, and energy, to combat human trafficking.
As of January 2025, TAT is working with 1,387 trucking companies and organizations to train their professional drivers, including over-the-road, local/final mile, and in-home delivery. TAT’s partners include many trucking industry leaders, including UPS, Bridgestone, FedEx, Day & Ross, XPO, Amazon, and Walmart. TAT partners with national trucking organizations, such as the American Trucking Associations and the Canadian Trucking Alliance, along with all fifty state trucking associations and six provincial organizations, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). To date, more than 2,220,150 drivers have been registered as TAT Trained.
To disrupt trafficker presumptions, TAT provides free, niche-specific, anti-trafficking resources and training for the members of the industries, agencies, and organizations it serves to create a model of bystander intervention. Resources include videos, wallet cards, an app for both iPhones and Androids, side window decals, testing, certification, and toolkits. TAT’s latest resource—You’ve Seen Us Before—is a corporate video to train office staff on how human trafficking intersects with our daily lives.
TAT’s Iowa Motor Vehicle Enforcement and Canadian Commercial Vehicle Enforcement models activate law enforcement and government agencies to spread human trafficking awareness and combat this crime. All fifty states and DC, as well as seven provinces and territories, have adopted the model in part or wholly. In addition, several states have adopted TAT training for CDL holders.
In 2014, TAT also launched its Freedom Drivers Project (FDP), a 48-foot mobile exhibit that travels the United States to raise awareness and teach the public about domestic sex trafficking, as well as what the trucking industry is doing to combat it. The FDP is in high demand across the nation by legislators, anti-trafficking groups, and trucking leaders, with over 73,126 people already walking through its doors at over 365 events in forty-two states, DC, and four provinces.
Why truckers? Watching the TAT training video readily answers that question. With one phone call, a trucker who saw some underage girls working a truck stop not only facilitated the recovery of those girls, but also that of seven other minors. Thirty-one offenders were arrested, and a thirteen-state child sex trafficking ring was broken.
Working with frontline responders in the United States in the fight against human trafficking is a strategy that can and does yield big results, and members of the trucking industry are some of the leading frontline responders. Interested in learning more? Reach out to info@tatnonprofit.org and a member of the TAT team will contact you to get started.