For this week’s edition of Overdrive Radio, we’re picking up with longtime trucker-songwriter and performer Tony Justice after news of the Large Cars & Guitars truck show’s big 2026 $14K haul for the Susan G. Komen foundation.
That makes $200K-plus given by the show’s participating truckers and sponsors to the breast cancer awareness, support, and research advocacy group over Large Cars’ five-year history. The last two years it’s been held out at the iconic Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
Initially approached by attorneys, Justice didn’t immediately come to the decision to get out front in the fight, as you’ll hear. But watching his trucking-music income from streaming dwindle with the proliferation of AI-generated music flooding listening platforms, he’s clearly all-in now.
“We have tech and corporate America coming in and trampling on the little guy,” he said. “Anytime I’m in a position to use my voice to fight for the little guy, I feel like I need to do that.”
Listen along to Justice’s reasoning, and it’s not hard to let your mind wander to something closer to the very center of the trucking — just how good so-called “AI” gets, or can or will get, driving the trucks themselves. Companies like Kodiak and Aurora and so many others have trained self-driving models on the roads today, with drivers’ help, in hopes to bring full automation to the task — “AI” to your seat at the wheel.
[Related: When will owner-operators have to compete with truly driverless fleets?]
“This is how we live. This is how we support our families,” Justice said. “We’ve gotta fight for it. There’s too many times you hear” people complaining about this or that, but “when it comes time to do something about it, everybody goes quiet. … People need to put in an effort doing something about it, and standing up.”
Justice speaks to his own motivation in the suit there, but the conversation in the podcast dovetails with trucking, too.
How long before — whether, even — significant numbers of pro drivers get displaced by the tech is anybody’s guess. Yet we’ve seen recent cases of professionals voicing concerns on those and other safety grounds directly to the U.S. Department of Transportation and Congress, too.
Justice is clearly motivated to take up the cause of fellow independent artists like himself, on the road to protecting that talent he’s got. As his comments suggest, more truckers might soon be motivated to do the same with theirs. Take a listen:
[Related: DOT clearing the way for driverless trucks with wiper, mirror, steering exemptions]
As mentioned in the podcast:
[Related: Trucker to Congress: Keep drivers in autonomous trucks]
