A talk here with the owner of and a contractor to Southern California-based Angus Transportation, a now three-truck business owned and operated by Jimmy Nevarez. Leased owner-operator Darril Lightburn is in a percentage-type comensation arrangement there as an independent contractor, and Overdrive spoke with he and Nevarez both given latter’s past experience hauling rail intermodal containers in the region where they're based, attendant to a feature you’ll see in the February issue of Overdrive about the independent contractor classification, challenges to it via West Coast courts and other areas, and its abuse by too many companies around trucking with, often, lease-purchase arrangements that make it impossible to succeed, much less be afforded any truly independent status with negotiating power. Union organizing and attendant litigation in the ports, and some high-profile examples of muckraking-type journalism over the past years, have exposed some of the most egregious examples. At the same time, the traditional percentage-pay method of small fleets with lease agreements with owner-operators survives. Yes, even in California, as Lightburn and Nevarez are evidence of.