The numbers on cross-border carrier intelligence say something that the political framing around this issue consistently obscures. The Mexican-domiciled carrier population, specifically the carriers domiciled in Tamaulipas, performs at a level that would not be tolerated in the domestic carrier population. And the financial consequences of tolerating it in the cross-border population are landing directly on American carriers, owner-operators, and drivers who compete against that labor market every day.

Start with the inspection data because it is the most straightforward measure. In the last 365 days, Mexican-domiciled carriers conducted 121,199 roadside inspections, resulting in 395,026 total violations. That is 3.26 violations per inspection. Over the same period, Canadian carriers conducted 51,703 inspections and issued 53,964 violations, for an average of 1.04 violations per inspection. The US domestic carrier baseline runs significantly below two per inspection. Mexican-domiciled carriers are running at more than three times the Canadian rate. That gap does not exist because of aggressive targeting. Enforcement personnel do not selectively target Mexican carriers with extra scrutiny at the roadside. The violations-per-inspection rate is what it is because of the actual condition of the equipment and the drivers being inspected.

Breaking it down further, of the 395,026 violations from Mexican carriers in the last year, 208,826 were vehicle violations and 36,383 produced vehicle out-of-service orders. Roughly one in six vehicle violations resulted in a truck being put out of service on the spot. Driver violations totaled 25,996, with 3,183 driver out-of-service orders. Hazmat violations totaled 1,853. Compare that to Canadian carriers, who generated 15,449 vehicle violations and 5,897 vehicle out-of-service orders from fewer total inspections, with 10,226 driver violations and 1,215 driver out-of-service orders.

Now look at where Mexican carrier risk is actually concentrated, because this is where the conventional narrative about border-crossing areas gets complicated.

The common assumption is that El Paso and Tijuana are the locus of cross-border trucking risk. That assumption is wrong according to the data. Tamaulipas-domiciled carriers, the corridor running from Nuevo Laredo through Reynosa to Matamoros along the Gulf Coast of Texas, represent 2,377 of the 5,901 Mexican carriers registered with FMCSA. For context, the second-highest Mexican state in the dataset is Sonora at 60.8, followed by Chihuahua at 52.6. The highest-scoring Canadian province in the dataset is Alberta, with a score of 37.2. The Tamaulipas average is nearly double Alberta’s and nearly double the US domestic baseline, which sits around 33 on the same model.

That is a structural difference and it has a geographic explanation that the data supports and that independent research confirms. States like Veracruz, Puebla, Nuevo Leon, Jalisco, and Tamaulipas together accumulated over 700 million Mexican pesos in damages linked specifically to heavy truck crashes in 2024. In states with heavy freight intensity like Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, the share of human-factor-related crashes, including distraction, fatigue, improper overtaking, and loss of control, rises above 85 percent, and in some corridors above 90 percent.

Tamaulipas is also cartel territory. The Gulf Cartel and Cartel del Noreste have contested control of the Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa corridors for years. Members of an organized crime group set at least four trucks on fire in Reynosa in 2022 to pressure truckers to end a blockade of the Pharr international bridge, a demonstration of the degree to which organized crime directly influences commercial trucking operations in the state. The carriers domiciled in that environment, operating under those conditions, bring that operating environment with them when they cross into Texas. 

The legal framework governing what these carriers are permitted to do on American roads is clear and has been since NAFTA. Cabotage refers to the transportation of property or passengers from point to point within a single country. Drivers may be admitted to deliver or pick up cargo traveling in the stream of international commerce, meaning the cargo is entering or leaving the United States. Movements not permitted include picking up a shipment at one US location and delivering that shipment to another US location. That prohibition is in the DHS guidelines published in 2012, in 49 CFR Section 365.501(b), and in 19 CFR Section 123.14(c). The law is not ambiguous. The enforcement is.

Using Mexican B-1 drivers to haul domestic loads is illegal and it is called cabotage, which is another reason the freight market has been under pressure. It’s happening a lot.

The economics driving cabotage violations are not subtle. A typical B-1 driver wage was about 27 cents per mile, roughly 35 cents adjusted for inflation in 2025. The American Transportation Research Institute estimated domestic carriers paid drivers 78 cents per mile on average in 2024. That is a 43-cent-per-mile labor arbitrage available to any carrier willing to violate federal cabotage law and dispatch a Mexican B-1 driver on domestic freight. A carrier running 10 trucks at 120,000 miles per year per unit captures approximately $5.1 million in labor cost savings annually relative to domestic wage rates. That is not a rounding error. That is a business model. 

Its a business model that puts domestic carriers at a structural competitive disadvantage in the spot market. When a shipper or broker sources capacity and finds a rate offer 15 to 20 percent below the domestic market rate, that gap often stems from this arithmetic. American carriers, American owner-operators, and American drivers are competing against a labor cost structure that federal law prohibits but federal enforcement has historically failed to police.

The Texas Department of Public Safety petitioned FMCSA in December 2024 to amend 49 CFR Section 383.23 to remove the reciprocal recognition of Mexican and Canadian CDLs for intrastate commerce outside a driver’s domicile, requiring foreign CDL holders to obtain a non-domiciled CDL with proper work authorization. Under the current reciprocal status, Mexican or Canadian CDL holders can operate in intrastate commerce in the United States for a US-based motor carrier without a non-domiciled CDL or work authorization. That loophole is how a carrier avoids the non-domiciled CDL process entirely. Hire a driver with a Mexican LFC under an employment model that technically classifies them as a domestic worker, and the work authorization question evaporates. 

The SAFER in Transport Act, with a companion bill introduced by Senator Todd Young in February 2026, calls for a memorandum of understanding between FMCSA and US Customs and Border Protection to improve enforcement of cabotage restrictions on foreign carriers. If that MOU gets executed, it would be the first formal coordination mechanism between the two agencies that currently operate in separate enforcement silos on this issue, one watching the border crossing and one watching the highway, with minimal information sharing between them on who went where after the initial crossing. 

The Canadian side of the cross-border picture is different in character if not entirely benign. Canadian carriers have 1.04 violations per inspection, versus 3.26 for Mexican carriers. Their out-of-service rate of 6.46 percent is above the US domestic baseline of 3.36 percent but well below the Mexican carrier OOS rate of 10.02 percent. Canadian carriers are revoked at 2.2 times the US baseline rate, the highest revocation rate in the cross-border dataset. The Ontario carrier population of 7,804 registered carriers is the single largest provincial concentration and warrants its own examination, given the volume of Canada-US freight moving through that corridor. The crash prediction picture puts 21.7 percent of Canadian carriers in Critical or High tier, which is 1.2 times the US baseline, not alarming in isolation, but above average.

The 77 percent of Canadian carriers and 78 percent of Mexican carriers that operate fleets of five trucks or fewer are also worth noting. Cross-border carrier risk is disproportionately a small-fleet problem. Smaller fleets amplify the impact of individual incidents on safety scores and crash prediction models. A single-truck operator with two crashes is statistically worse than a 100-truck fleet with ten crashes. That is partly why the Tamaulipas numbers look as extreme as they do and why they require interpretation alongside the absolute counts.

What the cross-border carrier intelligence data does not do is draw conclusions about individual carriers. A Tamaulipas-domiciled carrier scoring Critical on crash prediction is not automatically an unsafe operator. The data shows population-level patterns. For individual carrier analysis, the Carrier Lookup page is the right tool. What the population-level data does do is tell shippers, brokers, insurers, and enforcement personnel where to focus scrutiny and what baseline expectations are reasonable before a carrier is selected to touch American freight or American highways.

The trucks are out there. The regulations governing what they are permitted to do are documented. The enforcement gaps are documented. The financial consequences for domestic operators competing against illegal labor arbitrage are real and quantifiable. The data to examine it all is now on one page.

The post What 21,000 foreign trucks on American highways looks like appeared first on FreightWaves.

Maersk confirmed the Alliance Fairfax was one of two U.S.-flag ships to transit the strait on Monday. The other ship has not yet been identified.

The voyage comes at a fraught time in the Iran conflict as the U.S. and Iran exchanged threats of heightened violence amid a fragile ceasefire. The British-based Maritime Trade Operations security monitor since Sunday reported three suspected attacks on merchant vessels in the region.

The Alliance Fairfax ro-ro carrier is operated by Farrell Lines, a subsidiary of Maersk Line Limited, the U.S.-flag unit of A.P. Moeller-Maersk (OTC: AMKBY) of Denmark. It is one of approximately 60 ships that comprise the Maritime Administration’s Maritime Security Program, for U.S. government defense sealift requirements.

The ship has been enrolled in the MSP since 2012, and has made 170 port calls in that time.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Port Houston lands $48M federal grant for Bayport expansion 

Make it make sense: Low demand, rising rates on the trans-Pacific

Uncertainty the new baseline, as the Port of Virginia plans to meet the moment

Trump extends Jones Act waiver for 90 days

The post Maersk ro-ro first U.S.-flag ship to safely clear Strait of Hormuz appeared first on FreightWaves.

The proxy battle at payments company and fuel card provider WEX is over, with the company bringing on board members backed by investor activist Impactive Capital.

CEO Melissa Smith will stay in her role, according to a statement released by WEX (NYSE: WEX). But she will no longer be board chair. Smith also will stay on the board and also continue to be president.

While Impactful pushed for the addition of outside directors and a change in the role of chair, it did not specifically call for Smith to be ousted as CEO in its proxy material.

WEX’ position to push back against the Impactive slate of three directors had been undermined in recent weeks by recent recommendations of proxy advisory services that shareholders vote for the three directors backed by Impactive. 

In a proxy filing submitted to the SEC as recently as Thursday, Impactive quoted some of those proxy advisory companies and their recommendations. For example, Egan-Jones said the three Impactive nominees “bring skills, experience, and ownership alignment that would meaningfully strengthen the Board’s ability to evaluate strategic alternatives, including the potential spin-off of the Benefits segment, and to hold management accountable for operational performance.”

And in its recommendation, Glass, Lewis & Co. specifically argued that the chairman and CEO roles should be split, referring to “sustained underperformance” at WEX under Smith’s tenure as chair.

The trio going on the WEX board

The three persons recommended by Impactive who will be going on the board are Kurt Adams, Ellen Alemany and Lauren Taylor Wolfe. 

The three WEX nominees that were opposed by Impactive besides Melissa Smith were Stephen Smith (no relation) and independent director Nancy Altobello. Stephen Smith along with Melissa Smith will be on the newly-constituted 11-person board. But Altobello, a current board member, will not.

Adams is the CEO of IPC Systems, which WEX described as a “provider of network services and trading communications technology for financial institutions.” Alemany is a director at First Citizens BancShares, and is a former chairwoman and CEO at CIT Group, a financial services company. Taylor Wolfe is the co-founder and managing partner of Impactive.

As part of the agreement, the company’s annual meeting of shareholders, slated to be held Tuesday, will be held May 14, giving voters more time to cast their ballots on the new slate of director nominees.

The key argument made by Impactive in its proxy battle to put three new directors on the board was WEX’ stock market performance against its peers.

In one of its numerous proxy filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission in recent weeks, also sent to shareholders, Impactive described WEX and Corpay (NYSE: CPAY) as a “duopoly” with 40% market share in commercial fleet card issuance. 

But according to the proxy material submitted by Impactive, WEX’ stock has fallen more than 20% in the last five years while Corpay’s has risen 38%.

Smith’s compensation relative to the company’s stock performance also had been raised as an issue by Impactive. 

Three directors at WEX last year received more than 30% votes against their retention on the board, including Mellissa Smith. Other WEX nominees received single-digit “no” votes. 

That surge of negative votes against the three nominees in 2025 came after Impactive sent a letter to shareholders saying it would oppose the trio. That may have set the stage for this year’s successful proxy battle by Impactive.  

WEX’ stock reacted positively to the news, rising $3.04, or 2.01%, to $154.18. Its 52-week high was reached on April 22 at $186.85.

More articles by John Kingston

Motus steps up: what carriers need to know about new FMCSA system

After CBS report, C.H. Robinson seeks to deflect safety responsibility to FMCSA

At TIA meeting, freight brokers brace for Supreme Court decision

The post Card provider WEX reaches deal with activist investor; CEO Smith to stay appeared first on FreightWaves.

With the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last week publishing a concurrent press release and notice in the Federal Register, the next phase of Motus is here.

The name derives from the Latin for motion, FMCSA said in its prepared statement. And the system is already in place to a limited degree. 

The next phase is significant enough for a wider swath of the trucking community that it warranted not only the Federal Register notice but also an email blast from the Scopelitis trucking-focused law firm, with the headline “Motus is Almost Here: Are You Ready for It ?”

FMCSA has not announced a firm date for the start of Motus phase II, but it is expected to be before the end of the second quarter. It will be a replacement for the Unified Registration System (URS) that began its rollout in 2015. 

“Motus will replace URS as well as the FMCSA Portal which is a web-based system that acts as a single entry point to FMCSA systems for various services and information that is used by motor carriers, their associates, and other authorized account holders to manage registration, to update company information, to access data on crash and inspection history, and to interact with other FMCSA systems,” FMCSA said in its Federal Register announcement. 

Among those other systems: the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse.

“Motus will serve as the unified registration system required by statute,” according to the Federal Register notice.

First phase already in use

The first steps toward introducing Motus go back to December, FMCSA said. It was opened then to what the agency called “supporting companies,” which the Department of Transportation defines as “authorized by FMCSA to file process agents on behalf of motor carriers, freight forwarders, and property brokers.” That got those companies in position to be able to offer assistance when phase II opened.

But FMCSA is not pitching Motus as simply a better way to store data on carriers. It is also boasting that it should improve the use of FMCSA data for fighting fraud and taking other security measures.

“Motus will streamline the registration process and put fraud-resistant security features, such as individual identity and business verification, at the forefront,” the agency said in its Federal Register notice.

What to look for

The Scopelitis email spelled out what will be happening in Motus when Phase II launches, possibly as early as May 15, the law firm said. Similar recommendations are in the Federal Register notice.

• Companies that are registered with FMCSA already should log into the current FMCSA portal, confirm that it is active and check that its PIN is working as well. If it isn’t, a new one should be requested. Scopelitis said the PIN might come only by regular mail, so it isn’t an instantaneous process.

• A company’s portal account has a “portal company official” listed. That same person will need to be the registrant into Motus, so the correct email and name needs to be checked.

• There are other pieces of information on a registering company that will need to be updated.

There are identity-proofing features in Motus, FMCSA said, using a system called IDEMIA that is in use in other parts of the federal government.

FMCSA has partnered with IDEMIA in the last year, and the agency said in the Federal Register that it will “perform identity document capture and verification services to verify the legitimacy of an applicant’s identity, to reduce fraudulent activity, to enhance the security of FMCSA systems, and to protect sensitive data in URS.”

Big benefit on fraud fighting predicted

P. Sean Garney, the co-director of Scopelitis Transportation Consulting, which is based in the Washington D.C. area, said he believed the use of IDEMIA in Motus will prove to be “significantly” beneficial in identifying fraudulent players through their data in the FMCSA system.

The use of that system will provide photographic and biometric evidence, Garney said. “Just the realness of the photo to verify that’s a real person, I think that’s huge,” Garney said. 

Business verification tools will help identify companies that have a “legitimate physical business address.”

“Most of the low lying fruit that they have found in the system so far has been those types of things where you have one address and 700 DOT numbers,” Garney added.

FMCSA’s Federal Register notice said all new applicants will be required to meet the system’s “identity proofing and verification requirements.” 

“This will enhance the Agency’s digital resilience, promote user confidence, and ensure that only

verified entities can register with FMCSA and access their registration information,” FMCSA said in its Federal Register notice. “Based on FMCSA’s latest information, Motus will verify the identity of all new applicants, as well as the approximately 800,000 existing registrants when users access the new system for the first time.” 

The Scopelitis email said FMCSA has been studying a change in policy where it would no longer assign Motor Carrier (MC) numbers and instead just use a DOT number as the “sole identifier for FMCSA registrants.”

But the law firm added it is “just a proposal and is not being implemented as part of the initial Motus rollout.”

It said FMCSA has indicated “the change is still under consideration.”

More articles by John Kingston

After CBS report, C.H. Robinson seeks to deflect safety responsibility to FMCSA

SCOTUS grants review on broker liability case; fate of 2nd unclear

At TIA meeting, freight brokers brace for Supreme Court decision

The post Motus steps up: what carriers need to know about new FMCSA system appeared first on FreightWaves.

The announcement essentially declared that third-party logistics services is now a main business line, along with retail, cloud computing services and grocery.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) said it is extending its portfolio of freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping services to all businesses, effectively making available the excess capacity in its network to non-Amazon sellers. Companies across industries from automotive, to healthcare and retail will be able to ship anything from raw materials to finished goods.

Analysts said Amazon would need to invest in much more infrastructure to directly compete across the board with large ocean freight wholesalers, freight forwarders, trucking companies, and integrated logistics providers like FedEx and UPS.

“It’s a playbook Amazon has run for years. Build world-class capabilities to meet internal needs, productize and make it available commercially,” said Nate Skiver, founder of LPF Spend Management, on LinkedIn.

Amazon this decade has been evolving into an integrated freight and logistics provider, externalizing portions of its logistics operation and offering wholesale capacity to shippers.

Fulfillment by Amazon allows small merchants selling on Amazon’s platform to use Amazon for inventory management, fulfillment and last-mile delivery. In early 2023, Amazon opened eligibility for Buy with Prime to all e-commerce merchants, instead of by invite only. The program allows online sellers, including those that do not sell on the company’s website, to offer Prime fulfillment services through their own online stores. Also in 2023, Amazon rolled out a stand-alone shipping service under which the retail-tech giant uses its independent drivers to provide pickups at warehouses and handle the shipments to final delivery

In 2024, Amazon launched Amazon Air Cargo, allowing shippers to buy space on its private cargo airline. Supply Chain by Amazon, for example, leverages the company’s position as a bulk buyer of ocean freight capacity. As an ocean consolidator for cargo from Asia to the United States, Amazon is responsible for picking up inventory from manufacturing facilities worldwide, booking the shipment with an ocean carrier, handling customs clearance and ground transportation, managing inventory replenishment, and delivering to its warehouse.  

The final piece of the full logistics equation came in January when Amazon began offering less-than-truckload service through its Amazon Freight platform for inbound delivery to Amazon facilities, where the goods are stored and later shipped through the company’s regular package delivery.

“The launch of ASCS represents an incremental step forward in a risk that has existed for years (Amazon’s encroachment on logistics), but we must be cautious to not overstate this risk. The transportation and logistics industry has always been competitive, and Amazon does not have the scale or physical network to displace all competitors. Companies with hard assets, quality offerings, and entrenched customer relationships will remain competitive, with the biggest risk to asset-light logistics providers,” said Citibank equity analyst Ariel Rosa in a client note.

Amazon on Monday said the debut of Amazon Supply Chain Services builds on the momentum from transporting, storing and delivering hundreds of millions of packages for outside shippers over the past three years.

“Amazon is bringing the infrastructure, intelligence, and scale of its supply chain services — proven over decades — to businesses everywhere, much like Amazon Web Services did for cloud computing,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services. “Supply chain wasn’t just a function at Amazon — it was core to providing an exceptional shopping experience. Our differentiator. The reason we could offer fast, dependable delivery that nobody else could. And with the launch of ASCS, we’re confident we can give any other business access to the same cost efficiency, reliability, and speed that we’ve built for Amazon customers.”  

Early users of Amazon’s end-to-end-logistics operation include Procter & Gamble, 3M, Land’s End and American Eagle Outfitters.

“Amazon is one of our key e-commerce partners, and we’re excited to leverage Amazon Supply Chain Services to position inventory closer to customers so we can reach them even faster,” said Andrew McLean, CEO of Lands’ End, in the news release. “This consistency is central to our solutions-based approach, enabling us to serve customers with confidence and agility, especially during peak seasons.”  

Procter & Gamble is using Amazon’s freight services to transport raw materials to production facilities and move finished goods across its distribution network, Amazon said. 3M is leveraging Amazon’s freight services to move products from its manufacturing sites to distribution centers worldwide; Lands’ End is using a unified inventory pool within Amazon’s network to fulfill orders across multiple sales channels; and American Eagle Outfitters is using Amazon’s parcel shipping network to deliver online orders from its American Eagle and Aerie website directly to customers nationwide.   

Amazon’s freight network is supported by a fleet of more than 80,000 trailers, 24,000 intermodal containers and 100 freighter aircraft. Amazon said customers also benefit from Amazon’s AI forecasting models and vast supply chain data set, which help optimize inventory placement. 

Starting Monday, businesses can access a centralized console to search, select, and sign up for the various ASCS services, according to the news release. 

“Amazon has been offering logistics services for at least three years. This just draws new attention to those capabilities, which have been tested and proven to work with case studies” of large shippers, said Satish Jindel, a prominent supply chain analyst and president of ShipMatrix, in an interview.

Freight brokers and forwarders should take Amazon’s announcement seriously if they support small retail customers, he warned. Those operators will have to demonstrate how they can provide better personalized shipping support than a tech behemoth, which will be targeting their customers.

Meanwhile, FedEx and UPS, which have pivoted to focus on B2B and premium B2C packages, “need to realize that Amazon is not just a B2C parcel guy because 18% of deliveries from Amazon online orders are delivered to businesses. A lot of small businesses are buying things online from Amazon now,” Jindel said.

Wall Street is punishing freight transportation stocks in midday trading, with UPS down 9.5%, on concerns that Amazon news represents a major threat to their business, but several industry observers suggest the reaction is overblown because Amazon already competes in the logistics space.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

RELATED STORIES:

DHL Forwarding to expand Asia-US air cargo capacity in June

Amazon Air extends third-party cargo service to Dominican Republic

Amazon promises equal priority for third-party air cargo, own parcels

The post Amazon rebrands third-party logistics arms as unified supply chain service appeared first on FreightWaves.

A headline net loss of $8,000 included the benefit of a $12.7 million ($9.7 million after-tax) gain from the sale of a facility in Laredo, Texas. Non-operating income (the change in value of its stock portfolio) was $2.3 million higher year over year. Pamt booked a net loss of $8.1 million in the year-ago quarter.

The first quarter marked Pamt’s (NASDAQ: PAMT) sixth consecutive quarterly net loss. Approximately 35% of the company’s revenue is tied to the automobile industry, which is navigating a new trade landscape due to tariffs.

The TL unit reported an 8% y/y decline in average trucks in service and an 8% decline in revenue per truck per week. Loaded miles were flat with revenue per loaded mile down 8% to $2.06 (excluding fuel surcharges).

The segment reported a 103% adjusted operating ratio (excluding fuel). The OR was closer to 119%, excluding the impact of the real estate gain.

Salaries, wages and benefits expenses (as a percentage of revenue) increased 130 bps y/y even with a step down in trucks seated by company drivers. (All expense lines are reported on a consolidated basis.)

This quarter marked 10 straight operating losses for the TL unit.

Logistics revenue was up slightly y/y to $44 million. The OR improved 260 bps y/y to 95.4%. Pamt doesn’t provide gross profit margins for the unit, nor operating metrics like load counts and revenue per load.

The company used $2.7 million in operating cash flow in the first quarter. Liquidity (cash, equity holdings and availability on its line of credit) of $141 million was $3 million lower than at year-end 2025. Outstanding debt was reduced by $13 million to $321 million.

Pamt said “it intends to more actively implement share repurchases during the second quarter of 2026.”

Shares of PAMT are off 39% over the past year while shares of other publicly traded carriers are up roughly 30% to 55%. Pamt had 473,000 shares remaining for repurchase under an open authorization at the end of the first quarter.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Schneider targeting significant rate recovery in bid season
• XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs
• Saia eyes margin turnaround amid improving demand

The post Losses continue at TL carrier Pamt Corp. appeared first on FreightWaves.

SONAR has launched a self-serve pricing tier that gives individual users direct access to its desktop rate intelligence tools — no sales call, no demo, and no contract required.

The new offering, called SONAR Quick Rates, is available starting at $24.99 per month and can be purchased immediately with a credit card at sonar.surf/signup. It is designed for individual users who want professional-grade rate data at a low price point, accessible directly from their desktop browser.

“Whether you use it as your primary rate source or as a second opinion on a lane, Quick Rates gives you the same TRAC Spot Rate data that freight professionals rely on — without the sales process,” the company said.

What’s Included

SONAR Quick Rates — available as the SONAR Rate Search plan — includes four core capabilities for desktop users:

• Unlimited Spot Rate Searches — TRAC Spot Rates by lane and equipment type (Van, Reefer, Flatbed), with confidence scores, low/high range, and 7-day and 28-day trend data.
• Capacity Conditions — Live market tightness indicators and outbound tender rejection rates, so users know whether capacity is tightening or loosening on a given lane.
• Spot Market Conditions Map — A geographic view of current freight market conditions across U.S. regions.
• Quick Rates Chrome Extension — A browser extension that surfaces lane rates directly in Chrome without leaving a TMS, email, or any other workflow.

A built-in margin calculator is also included, allowing users to input a target margin and total miles to instantly see RPM, flat rate, sell rate, and percent margin.

How SONAR Rate Access Works Across Products

Quick Rates is one of several ways freight professionals can access SONAR data, depending on their needs:

Quick Rates (Rate Search) — $24.99/mo or $249/yr — Desktop

Self-serve, low-price-point access for individual users. Use it as your go-to rate data source or as a second opinion on any lane. Sign up instantly at sonar.surf/signup. No demo, no contract.

SONAR Blue to Blue — $9.99/mo — iOS App

SONAR’s mobile rate app for on-the-go access. Blue to Blue delivers spot rate data on iPhone, designed for users who need rate intelligence away from their desk. Download from the Apple app store.

FreightWaves Freight Market Monitor — $199/mo

A broader market intelligence product powered by SONAR data, covering live indices across rates, volumes, LMI, and macro indicators. Includes AI market interpretations, shareable snapshots, and a personalized My Charts workspace — built for analysts and strategists tracking freight market trends. Access it via getfreightdata.com.

Full SONAR UI — Request a Demo at gosonar.com

For users who need the complete SONAR platform — including dashboards, freight context, SITREPs, multi-modal data, contract benchmarking, and more — the full UI is available by request. Visit gosonar.com to schedule a demo.

Availability

SONAR Quick Rates is available now on desktop. Monthly subscriptions are $24.99/month; annual subscriptions are $249/year, saving approximately 17%. Sign up at sonar.surf/signup.

About SONAR

SONAR is a freight market intelligence platform. It aggregates data from thousands of sources to provide real-time visibility into freight rates, capacity, volumes, and market conditions across every major mode of transportation. It provides more than just data, but also research and context to understand trends and potential disruptions to your supply chain.

The post SONAR Launches Self-Serve Quick Rates — Freight Intelligence Without the Sales Call appeared first on FreightWaves.

Operating costs hit $2.26 per mile in 2024 — the highest non-fuel cost ever recorded. And rates haven’t kept up.

Dispatch teams are making high-impact load decisions every day without clear insight into which freight actually protects margin — and which quietly erodes it. In today’s market, that gap is expensive.

“Busy But Not Profitable? A Fleet Owner’s Guide to Margin-first Operations” breaks down exactly where margin slips — and what top-performing mid-market fleets are doing differently.

Inside, you’ll learn:

• Why utilization is a motion metric, not a profitability metric — and what to measure instead
• How “busy but broke” happens and why mid-market fleets feel it first
• The 30-day margin review every fleet leader should run today
• What changes when dispatch starts making decisions with full cost visibility

Download the Guide

The post The Freight Is Moving. Find Out Where the Money Went. appeared first on FreightWaves.

This story was told most clearly by our freight patterns. For twenty years, goods flowed overwhelmingly from the coasts inward. Millions of containers arrived at our ports filled with products made by foreign labor, then trucked toward the center of the country to feed a consumption-heavy lifestyle. The Heartland was a destination for finished goods, rarely the source.

This year, that logic flipped.

SONAR, our high-frequency data platform that captures supply chain movements, shows how the economy is changing right before our eyes. By monitoring real-time order flows to trucking firms and rail carriers, we can see economic shifts months before they appear in government reports. What we are seeing today is a reversal of the historical norm: coastal activity remains quiet, while the middle of the country is experiencing a breakout in freight activity.

The catalyst is the voracious build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Contrary to the popular imagination, AI is not purely a digital phenomenon; in the physical world, it is the bedrock of a new heavy industry.

This industrial tail extends far beyond software providers to the energy, power, and construction services required to build massive “data factories.” The scale is staggering. During the construction of the Interstate Highway System, the United States spent approximately $20 billion per year (adjusted for inflation) over 35 years. Today, AI data center investment is hitting $20 billion every two weeks. And unlike the highway system, this infrastructure is being built with private capital.

These “Gigasites” represent a new economy dependent on three pillars: data centers, energy supply, and the AI models that optimize them both. This is where the digital becomes physical. According to SONAR analysts, a standard 500-megawatt data center requires roughly 30,000 truckloads of concrete, structural steel, and copper.

Beyond raw materials, these facilities house an array of heavy industrial equipment: massive turbines, redundant generators, and high-voltage transmission infrastructure. As projects scale into the gigawatt range, demand grows exponentially. While 500-megawatt centers were recently the gold standard, they are no longer the ceiling. Meta’s “Prometheus” project in Ohio is designed as a one-gigawatt campus, consuming as much electricity as the entire city of San Francisco. Even larger projects are coming online, such as the Delta Gigasite in Utah, which aims for 10 gigawatts over the next decade, a footprint that will eventually require more power than the entire state of Utah consumes today.

America does not currently have the capacity to power these mega-projects, but the market is responding. Utilities are expanding existing plants, and a new generation of power stations is being planned, often funded directly by the “hyperscalers” themselves.

The materials for this build-out are coming from the “Rust Belt” and the South, regions once hollowed out by globalization. This reindustrialization is not accidental. Federal tax incentives, specifically domestic content requirements, have encouraged companies to source equipment from American manufacturers. But if policy is the carrot, our unique energy position is the engine.

By steering procurement toward domestic sources, federal policy has tapped into a decisive competitive advantage: our staggering abundance of natural gas. While much of the world faces shortages, the American interior is practically swimming in fuel. Because natural gas is often a byproduct of oil production, the shale revolution has created a massive surplus. Today, oil companies often flare this gas or pay to have it removed; now, new pipelines are being planned to transport it directly to the heavy industry hubs of the Heartland.

This energy surplus fuels the very factories producing the steel and cement required for the AI era. These are energy-intensive processes: cement production alone requires temperatures exceeding 1,400°C. Having a cheap, local fuel source is a structural advantage no other nation possesses.

The evidence of this mobilization is appearing in the dirt. While consumer-related freight remains flat, SONAR data shows freight volumes are up roughly 11% this year. This surge is concentrated in industrial modes—flatbeds and railroads—moving raw materials from the Midwest and South outward.

In modern, automated manufacturing, energy is the decisive factor. In sectors like steel and plastics, energy can represent up to 38% of total production costs. In this new era, the price of a megawatt is more important than the price of a labor hour. We aren’t just reshoring because of policy; we are reshoring because the U.S. Heartland is the most efficient place on Earth to produce.

Other data points confirm the shift. The ISM Manufacturing PMI reached 52.7% in March, signaling expansion. Meanwhile, capital goods now account for a record 41% of all U.S. imports. Businesses are no longer just importing sneakers; they are importing the high-value tools required to build this new infrastructure here.

For years, the goods economy relied on foreign products arriving at coastal hubs. But as the center of the country begins to export freight again, the gravity is shifting. America is winning this race because we are the only nation that can pair world-leading software with the energy abundance and industrial landmass required to scale it.

The “hollowing out” of American manufacturing was real. But the data now tells a different story. Driven by technology and energy abundance, the economic winds are finally blowing inland. The Heartland is producing again, and for the first time in a generation, the center is holding.

The post The heartland’s revenge: how AI is reindustrializing the American interior appeared first on FreightWaves.

The launch follows a recent $95 million Series C funding round led by Valor Equity Partners and the Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from 8VC, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, and Tao Capital Partners.

“Automation and AI are only as powerful as the data foundation they operate on,” said Matt McKinney, CEO and co-founder of Loop. “With this launch, Loop fundamentally shifts from a platform that helps humans work faster to an autonomous system that executes complex logistics strategies on their behalf. We are delivering the pristine data foundation required to bring agentic AI to the supply chain.”

The Bad Data Problem That Plagues Supply Chains

For decades, logistics teams have grappled with fragmented, unstructured data trapped in emails, physical documents and disconnected systems. This caused a cascade of silo-related issues. Transportation struggles to optimize costs. Finance lacks visibility into true landed costs. Customer care operates reactively. Transformation teams watch AI pilots fail because the underlying data simply isn’t there.

McKinney traces the problem back to his days at Uber Freight.

“When we were on the freight product at Uber Freight, we found an industry-wide problem: invoice reconciliation,” McKinney said. “As we got into that and realized what was causing all the issues and exceptions, we discovered it was bad data.”

The breakthrough came faster than anyone expected. Large language models (LLMs) that McKinney anticipated reaching maturity in 2030 delivered in 2025, making Loop’s mission possible: unlocking value trapped in operations to power the physical economy.

DUX 2.0: The Data Engine Powering Agent-Ready Intelligence

At the platform’s core sits DUX 2.0, Loop’s next-generation domain-specific language model designed to extract and normalize data from PDFs, emails, spreadsheets and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The engine collects over 200 data points per shipment and expands into customs, tariff document review and purchase order matching.

The key part is tailoring the solution to speak the specific language of the supply chain, something that a general LLM may find difficult to understand the nuances. The other issue is that it’s costly to make mistakes.

“You can’t take an off-the-shelf general horizontal LLM and apply it to supply chain,” McKinney said. “Supply chain runs on its own language, and those things hallucinate. And guess what? If you lose trust with your vendor or your customer, you’re done.”

The Exception Agent: From Weeks to Minutes

Loop’s Exception Agent operates as an autonomous “AI teammate” that manages touchless exception handling — initiating disputes with carriers, resolving payment queries and ensuring accurate invoice payments.

McKinney described how “swarm agents” work together, with process validation agents checking each other’s work to maintain accuracy.

“The exception is the rule in supply chain,” McKinney said. “If you don’t have an exception agent that can autonomously resolve these exceptions and initiate disputes, you’re not gonna be able to unlock your team’s time.”

The results speak for themselves. One large retailer had 200 customer packages inadvertently delivered to pickup locations instead of residences.

“An agent detected this — literally the exception agent took this in hours and immediately notified the carrier that there was an issue and they should go pick up these packages,” McKinney said. “So the next day, the carrier was able to pick up those packages and get them to the customers’ homes on time.”

Previously, resolution would have required customer complaints filtering through care teams, manual investigation and weeks of back-and-forth.

Loop Intelligence and the Strategic Layer

The platform’s Loop Intelligence feature transforms company data into strategic power through an AI Assistant that accepts natural-language prompts for network optimization and financial clarity.

McKinney positioned the platform as a layer that orchestrates across existing execution systems.

“Think of those as execution systems that are really databases, and they are a tool that humans use,” McKinney said. “Agents actually do all the work. So those are the system of records. Agents are the system of action.”

Looking Ahead

The $95 million investment arrives as supply chains face volatile operating conditions — rising energy costs, tariffs and nearshoring pressures reversing 50 years of globalization trends.

“Supply chain is one of the largest contributors to GDP, and it’s one of the industries that hasn’t really been touched by technology in the same way because there just wasn’t the same level of investment other industries had,” McKinney said.

Loop plans to use the capital to hire AI engineers, expand into trade compliance, warehouse, procurement, and inbound logistics data, and scale customer impact across enterprises including Outset Medical, Clemens Food Group, Olipop, Kendra Scott, and Dot Foods.

“Loop went deep into one of the hardest parts of the supply chain and turned it into an advantage for their customers,” said Antonio Gracias, founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Valor. “That foundation extends into other operational and financial functions, which is why Loop is positioned to become the intelligence layer of the entire supply chain.”

The post Loop launches new platform as intelligence layer for entire supply chain appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Warren, Michigan-based logistics provider reported Q1 2026 revenue of $367.6 million, down from $382.4 million a year earlier, alongside a net loss of $3.5 million, or $(0.13) per share, compared to net income of $6 million, or $0.23 per share, in Q1 2025.

Universal’s (NASDAQ: ULH) operating income also fell sharply to $4.8 million, with operating margin compressing to 1.3%, down from 4.1% last year.

CEO Tim Phillips pointed to ongoing softness in intermodal markets as the primary driver behind the weak quarter.

“Our first-quarter performance reflects a slow start to the year driven primarily by continued weakness in our intermodal segment, including lower volumes and pricing pressure,” Phillips said in a news release.

Universal’s intermodal segment saw the steepest decline, with revenue falling 32.3% year over year to $47.9 million as both volumes and pricing deteriorated.

Load volumes dropped 23.3%, while revenue per load declined more than 10%, pushing the segment to an operating loss of $13.1 million and a negative margin of 27.4%.

The company said the recovery in intermodal is taking longer than expected, though it is implementing operational changes aimed at restoring profitability.

In contrast, Universal’s contract logistics segment continued to provide a buffer against broader market softness.

Revenue in the segment rose 5.3% year over year to $269.5 million, driven by dedicated transportation and value-added services.

However, profitability declined, with operating income falling to $17.5 million and margins narrowing to 6.5%, suggesting rising costs and lower efficiency across programs.

The trucking segment also posted declines, with revenue down 9.7% to $50.2 million amid lower volumes and pricing pressure.

Brokerage activity, embedded within trucking, generated $16.7 million in revenue, down from $20.3 million a year earlier.

Operating income in trucking fell to just $0.6 million, reflecting tighter margins across the segment.

Universal’s EBITDA declined to $40.7 million, down from $51.7 million last year, with EBITDA margin falling to 11.1%.

The company ended the quarter with $17.9 million in cash and $754.7 million in debt, while capital expenditures totaled $9.6 million.

Despite the weaker quarter, the company declared a quarterly dividend of 10.5 cents per share, signaling confidence in its longer-term outlook.

Q1 2026 Financial Snapshot (Universal Logistics)

The post Universal Logistics slips to Q1 loss as intermodal collapse deepens appeared first on FreightWaves.

The only exception: If the combined railroad is required to spin off one of its duplicative main lines between Kansas City and St. Louis. If the merger is approved, UP would have a pair of K.C.-St. Louis routes, including its former Missouri Pacific via Jefferson City, Mo., and NS’ former Wabash via Moberly, Mo.

The information from the railroads’ merger agreement was disclosed on Thursday in the revised merger application they filed with the Surface Transportation Board. The consolidation if approved would create a transcontinental rail colossus with more than 52,000 miles of track in 43 states.

UP (NYSE: UNP) would be willing to accept overhead trackage rights allowing a rival Class I railroad to serve shippers and short lines that would see their post-merger rail options drop from two carriers to one or three carriers to two.

The merger application identifies five 2-to-1 customer locations and four 3-to-2 customer sites, all in Illinois. Not all of the locations currently use rail service, however, and UP has offered affected customers the ability to receive service from another Class I railroad.

Otherwise UP will not grant other railroads wide access to its or NS’ (NYSE: NSC)  routes via line sales, trackage rights, or haulage rights. And aside from K.C.-St. Louis, any line sale required as part of regulatory approval of the deal is an automatic condition that would allow UP to scuttle the merger.

UP also won’t accept a general proportional rate obligation. It has agreed only to proportional revenue rate agreements, now dubbed its Committed Gateway Pricing program, for manifest carload traffic interchanged through Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans.

Under the merger agreement there is no freestanding right for UP to terminate the deal the moment the STB announces an unacceptable condition. UP has no obligation to close if such a condition is imposed, but it cannot immediately walk away, either.

UP could accept a minor reciprocal switching obligation or a small divestiture and still stay in the deal, as long as the total impact of board-imposed conditions stays under a $750 million threshold. Anything over that amount triggers a review.

If burdensome conditions prompt UP to walk away, it will have to pay NS a $2.5 billion breakup fee.

Either railroad can terminate the deal if it isn’t closed by Jan. 28, 2028 or if the Surface Transportation Board or a court issues a final decision blocking the merger. The end date automatically extends, however, if the STB adds time to its review clock.

Subscribe to FreightWaves’ Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox.

Related coverage:

STB chairman, industry leaders to headline Future of Rail Symposium

Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern file revised merger application

Anti-merger group launches as UP, NS prepare to refile applicatio

Canadian National’s first-quarter profit slips

The post Union Pacific would exit Norfolk Southern merger if STB orders widespread line sales or trackage rights appeared first on FreightWaves.

The new service from DHL’s freight management arm will operate Hanoi (Vietnam)-Taipei (Taiwan)-Anchorage (Alaska)-Chicago/Cincinnati-Seoul (South Korea)-Hanoi with Boeing 777 freighters flown by partner carrier Kalitta Air, a DHL spokesperson said in an email exchange. U.S. destinations will alternate between Chicago and Cincinnati.

DHL Express (XETRA: DHL) operates a global air network using multiple airlines, including its own fleet and third-party carriers, to move overnight packages for customers. Remaining capacity is sold to logistics companies with heavy B2B shipments. DHL Global Forwarding is the largest buyer of the excess capacity. DHL Aviation is a unit within Express that manages airline operations.

Providing self-controlled charter aircraft allows logistics companies to offer shippers more reliable capacity and service than tendering shipments through regular scheduled flights from passenger and all-cargo carriers.

DHL Global Forwarding’s decision to add exclusive capacity on the Asia-U.S. trade lane follows the recent expansion of charter flights between Asia and Europe.

On March 29, DHL Global Forwarding introduced weekly flights connecting Liège, Belgium, and Hong Kong to meet growing transport demand for general cargo. A service between Shanghai, China, and DHL’s hub in Leipzig, Germany, is scheduled to commence on June1, said the spokesperson.

DHL intends the services to be long-term operations that continue into the peak winter season, with market conditions determining any further extension, the spokesperson explained. 

Global Forwarding has secured one Boeing 777-300 converted freighter aircraft and a brand new factory-built 777 for the new Asia-Europe routes. The converted freighter is a former Emirates passenger jet that was reconfigured to freighter mode by Israel Aircraft Industries and delivered earlier this year to DHL, which placed it with Kalitta Air to operate on its behalf. 

DHL signed contracts with Boeing between 2018 and 2022 to purchase 28 777 aircraft for the upgrade of its intercontinental fleet, with the final units delivered this year.

“Expanding our controlled capacity on the Asia-Europe corridor reinforces our commitment to reliability, speed, and resilience for our customers,” said Henk Venema, global head of air freight DHL Global Forwarding, in a news release announcing the two new routes five weeks ago. “The demand on that trade lane continues to grow at an exceptional pace, and strengthening our network ensures that we stay ahead of customer needs.” 

The Liège-Hong Kong connection has a stopover in Tel Aviv, Israel, to support importers and exporters in the country. The return leg from Hong Kong to Liège feeds shipments directly into DHL’s European distribution network. The spokesperson said DHL has full flights on flights to Tel Aviv, with volumes from the European Union and Asia. 

Global Forwarding also charters full flights operated by other airlines shuttling between Shanghai and the EU. 

Earlier this year, Global Forwarding announced it was prioritizing use of DHL aircraft for pharmaceutical shipments on specially designated corridors. One of the new routes connects Brussels, Belgium, and Cincinnati, DHL’s primary North American air hub. The multi-weekly service is operated by Kalitta Air with a 777-300 passenger-to-freighter aircraft. The dedicated pharma network is expected to eventually include Germany, India, Singapore and Japan.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

RELATED STORIES:

DHL Group boosts profits despite lower shipment volumes, revenue

DHL prioritizes own cargo jets for pharmaceuticals transport 

The post DHL Forwarding to expand Asia-US air cargo capacity in June appeared first on FreightWaves.

While many shippers hesitate to outsource their transportation management due to fears of losing visibility, e2open’s Logistics as a Service (LaaS) is proving that companies don’t have to choose between execution capacity and strategic control.

A unique approach to LaaS

Unlike traditional managed transportation services that force shippers to hand over the keys to logistics operations entirely, e2open’s LaaS model is designed around flexibility.

The service allows shippers to outsource their day-to-day execution while retaining full ownership of their carrier strategy and pricing agreements. This collaborative approach expands access to capacity without compromising existing partnerships – all within the e2open transportation management system (TMS) ecosystem.

“So you can do it yourself, or we can take on that work for you, and you can pay us to do that work for you,” said Matthew Anderson, vice president of e2open’s specialty products, in an interview with FreightWaves. “There’s no competing priorities. So we’re not trying to hit certain brokerage numbers. We’re not trying to make money on a per load basis. … It is strictly geared around saying you’re capable of using the technology yourself using the TMS, but we can do it for you.”

By offering flexible engagement models that range from hybrid support to a full outsource, e2open helps companies reduce empty miles, manage inbound and outbound shipments.

The service currently manages over three billion dollars in freight and cuts clients’ transportation spend by up to 10%.

The team behind the technology

While e2open provides industry-leading Transportation Management System (TMS) software, the true engine of its LaaS offering is its people. The service employs over 300 logistics coordinators, analysts and supply chain engineers across locations worldwide in Holland, Michigan and Peru.

Molly Feller, vice president of e2open’s LaaS branch, explained how the team manages to scale such a massive operation while maintaining high service levels.

“One of the things that we’ve spent a lot of time on is working to create processes that can be easily repeatable – and so we have a lot of [standard operating procedures],” she said in an interview with FreightWaves. “We want people to come here and have a career here as well. We have a really great onboarding process [and] career advancement process.”

This strong foundation of standard operating procedures recently allowed the company’s LaaS team to expand rapidly into South America, growing its Peru team from zero to 80 employees in just a year and a half.

Real-world results: Aspire Bakeries

The value of this dedicated human expertise paired with advanced software is evident in e2open’s case study on its LaaS partnership with Aspire Bakeries.

The cross-category foodservice company – home to popular brands like Otis Spunkmeyer and La Brea Bakery – was initially a software-only user of e2open’s TMS. However, as Aspire Bakeries experienced a significant increase in business volume alongside severe winter weather disrupting the transport industry, the company realized it was only using the TMS to tender freight and wasn’t fully leveraging the data.

To capitalize on the system’s more complex capabilities, Aspire Bakeries transitioned to the LaaS model. Today, a dedicated e2open LaaS team – consisting of load planners, a systems admin, a carrier management specialist and a manager – runs the transportation technology on the bakery’s behalf. 

This dedicated group makes real-time decisions to mitigate costs and service risks, turning complex TMS data into actionable intelligence.

Through combining cutting-edge technology with a deep bench of supply chain experts, e2open helps ensure that companies like Aspire Bakeries can weather industry disruptions and focus on their core business, leaving the heavy lifting of logistics to the experts.

The post e2open Logistics as a Service gives shippers control while driving capacity appeared first on FreightWaves.

Pre-tax income rose 13.5%, to $1.82 billion, as revenue increased 5%, to $5.92 billion, BNSF’s corporate parent, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B), reported on Saturday morning. The railroad’s operating ratio improved 2.3 points to 65.6% as improved fuel efficiency and labor productivity more than offset higher fuel prices and wages.

Overall volume increased 2.2% thanks largely to growth in grain shipments.

Consumer products volume including intermodal and automotive  increased 1.4% compared to a year ago, primarily due to growth in international intermodal traffic, Berkshire said.

Agricultural and energy volume increased 11.6% due to higher demand for grain, petroleum fuels, and oilseeds and meals.

Industrial products volume declined 0.6%, which Berkshire said was “due to lower shipments of plastics and building products, due to continued softness in the housing market.”

Coal volume declined 2.3%. “The volume decrease was primarily attributable to utility coal plant retirements, partially offset by increased demand from the impact of higher natural gas prices,” Berkshire said.

Subscribe to FreightWaves’ Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox.

Related coverage:

STB chairman, industry leaders to headline Future of Rail Symposium

Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern file revised merger application

Anti-merger group launches as UP, NS prepare to refile applicatio

Canadian National’s first-quarter profit slips

The post Grain, efficiency propel BNSF first-quarter earnings appeared first on FreightWaves.

It also makes this one of the more important moments to understand exactly how commercial truck financing works, what the advertised numbers actually mean, and where the terms that cost you the most tend to hide.

LendingTree published a commercial truck financing guide in early 2026 listing five lenders with starting rates from 7.9% to 8.5%, terms up to 84 months, and minimum credit scores ranging from 550 to 650. The information is broadly accurate as far as it goes. But a guide built for a general small business audience leaves out the trucking-specific context that changes what those numbers actually mean for a carrier — and the verification work that should happen before any of those options becomes a signed agreement.

Here is the complete picture.

What the Advertised Rates Actually Mean

The rate range for commercial truck financing in 2026 runs from roughly 6% to 35% APR depending on credit profile, lender type, time in business, and the condition and age of the truck being financed. The 7.9% starting rates cited by specialty lenders like Truck Lenders USA are real — for borrowers who qualify at the top of their credit requirements. A carrier with a 650 credit score, two years of clean business history, and a truck in solid condition can access rates in that range.

What moves the rate up from there is a specific and predictable list of factors. Credit score below 680 adds roughly 2 to 5 percentage points to starting rates at most specialty lenders. Time in business under two years — which applies to a significant portion of small carriers — either disqualifies you from lenders with that requirement or pushes you toward higher-rate products. Used truck age over seven years or mileage over 500,000 creates additional risk premium that lenders price into the rate or use as a disqualifier entirely.

As of early 2026, personal-credit semi-truck loans typically fall between 6% and 12% APR, while business-credit fleet loans commonly land between 5% and 9% APR — but those ranges assume a borrower who meets conventional lending criteria. The carrier who is three years into their authority with a 620 credit score buying a 2017 Peterbilt with 650,000 miles is looking at a different product at a materially different rate, possibly from a specialty lender charging 15% to 25% whose headline page shows 8.5%.

The verification point: always ask for the APR, not the interest rate. Several lenders in the commercial truck space advertise an interest rate rather than an APR. The difference is that APR includes origination fees, documentation fees, and other charges that are folded into the actual cost of borrowing. A loan with an 8% interest rate and a $2,500 origination fee on a $100,000 truck loan has an APR meaningfully above 8%. Comparing interest rates across lenders without converting to APR is comparing different measurements. Always ask for the APR and get it in writing before signing anything.

The Five Lender Categories and What Each One Is Actually For

The LendingTree guide covers five specific lenders. The broader market has five categories of lenders worth understanding, and each one serves a different need at a different cost.

Traditional banks offer the lowest rates — typically 4% to 8% APR for new or used semi-trucks as of January 2026 — but carry the highest qualification thresholds. A credit score above 700, two or more years of business history, documented annual revenue, and a truck that is new or in excellent condition are the baseline requirements. If your profile clears those bars, bank financing is the cheapest money available. If it does not, a bank is not where to spend your time.

Specialty truck lenders — Truck Lenders USA, CAG Truck Capital, Commercial Fleet Financing, and similar — exist specifically for the trucking market and carry industry knowledge that general business lenders do not. They understand operator-level risk differently than a bank credit committee does. Rates from specialty lenders typically run 7% to 12% for qualified borrowers, and their willingness to work with lower credit scores, specific truck makes and conditions, and non-standard situations is the value they provide relative to banks. CAG Truck Capital’s diesel technicians on staff reviewing vehicle history before underwriting is a genuine differentiator — a lender who understands the mechanical risk of the collateral is a meaningfully different counterparty than one who relies entirely on a credit score.

Online lenders and equipment finance companies like Taycor Financial offer the broadest credit access — minimum scores as low as 550, no time-in-business requirement, amounts up to $5 million — at higher rates. The 8% starting rate listed for Taycor is their best-case scenario. The actual rate for a carrier with a 560 credit score and no established business history will be higher, and the documentation fee mentioned in their terms is a real cost that needs to be factored into the APR calculation.

SBA lending — specifically the 7(a) and 504 programs — offers the lowest rates for qualifying borrowers with the longest terms and the most extensive documentation requirements. An SBA 504 loan, which is specifically designed for asset purchases like equipment, provides fixed rates well below conventional lending — currently in the range of 6% to 8% — with terms up to 10 years. The SBA guarantees a portion of the loan, which allows lenders to approve borrowers they would not otherwise touch. The trade-off is time: SBA loan approval runs four to eight weeks, which makes it unsuitable for time-sensitive purchases on the dealer lot but genuinely useful for planned equipment acquisition.

Dealer financing is the fifth category and the one that benefits from the most caution. When a dealer offers in-house financing or a financing partner, the convenience is real and the rate may or may not be competitive. Dealers earn a yield spread on financing — a portion of the rate margin goes to the dealer when they place you with a lending partner. That incentive is not necessarily against your interests, but it is a reason to have done your rate homework before sitting at the dealer’s desk. A carrier who walks in knowing their qualification profile and the current market rate range is in a fundamentally different negotiating position than one who starts the financing conversation at the dealership.

The Terms That Cost More Than the Rate

The interest rate is the most visible number in a commercial truck loan. It is not always the most expensive one.

Down payment requirements are where small carriers get stretched most painfully. The LendingTree guide correctly notes that down payments range from 0% to 35% depending on the lender and borrower profile. Most lenders require 10% to 20% for borrowers with good credit, but that range shifts upward for lower credit scores, older trucks, high mileage, and shorter business history. A carrier buying a $100,000 used truck with a 620 credit score and 18 months in business may face a 25% to 30% down payment requirement — $25,000 to $30,000 upfront before they write the first monthly payment. That is working capital that comes directly out of the cash reserve that the same carrier needs for fuel, insurance, maintenance, and the first 90 days of debt service while the new truck ramps up revenue. The down payment is not just a qualification hurdle. It is a cash flow event that needs to be planned for explicitly, not absorbed from operating funds.

Personal guarantees are the term that many small carriers sign without fully understanding the implication. A personal guarantee makes the business owner personally liable for the debt if the business defaults — meaning the lender can pursue personal assets, including personal bank accounts, home equity, and other personal property, to recover the balance. Most commercial truck loans from specialty and online lenders require a personal guarantee, and the SBA requires one for most loans. Understanding that you are signing a personal guarantee before you sign it — not discovering it in the fine print afterward — is the difference between an informed financial decision and an exposure you did not intend to take on.

Loan term length is the most commonly misunderstood trade-off in equipment financing. An 84-month term on a $150,000 truck loan lowers the monthly payment significantly compared to a 60-month term, which makes the near-term cash flow look better. It also means paying interest for an additional two years on a depreciating asset whose maintenance costs are rising as it ages. The total interest paid on an 84-month term at 8% is materially higher than on a 60-month term at the same rate. The right term depends on the monthly cash flow reality of the specific operation — but the decision should be made with the total interest cost calculated, not just the monthly payment.

Prepayment penalties are present in some commercial truck loan agreements and absent in others. A carrier who finances a truck for 72 months and wants to refinance or pay it off early in month 30 — because rates improved, because the business grew, because the freight market recovered — can face a prepayment penalty that makes early payoff expensive. Ask about prepayment terms before signing, especially on longer-term loans. Several specialty lenders specifically advertise no prepayment penalties; that is a genuine differentiator worth asking about.

The Used Truck Variable That Lenders Price Differently

The compliance exit equipment flooding dealer lots right now creates a specific financing dynamic worth understanding. Most lenders have explicit criteria for the trucks they will finance based on age and mileage — and those criteria vary enough across lenders that the truck you are trying to finance may qualify with one lender and not with another.

In general, purchasing a truck that is more than 10 years old with more than 700,000 miles will be difficult to finance because the truck serves as collateral and older trucks carry higher breakdown risk in a lender’s risk model. But that threshold is not universal. Some specialty lenders will finance trucks up to 15 years old in documented good condition. Others cap out at seven years regardless of condition. The pre-purchase diagnostic article published on this platform is directly relevant here: a clean JPRO and Cummins INSITE report that documents low fault codes, maintained aftertreatment, and a reasonable idle history is not just due diligence on the mechanical side. It is documentation that supports a financing conversation by demonstrating the truck’s condition in terms a lender’s underwriting model can use.

A carrier who walks into a financing conversation with a pre-purchase diagnostic showing a low-risk truck profile is presenting different collateral than one who presents the same truck with no diagnostic documentation. That difference can be the margin between approval and denial, or between a rate at the low end of a lender’s range and one at the top.

What to Have Ready Before You Apply

The carriers who move through commercial truck financing approvals fastest — and with the best terms — are the ones who have organized their documentation before the first conversation with a lender rather than scrambling for it after the fact.

The standard documentation package for a commercial truck loan includes three to six months of business bank statements, the most recent two years of business and personal tax returns, a bill of sale or purchase agreement for the truck, proof of active DOT and MC authority, a copy of the commercial driver’s license, and proof of insurance or an insurance commitment letter. If you are working toward an SBA loan, add a business plan or financial projection and a schedule of existing debts.

The business bank statements are the most important document in the package for a lender evaluating cash flow. Clean, consistent cash flow through a dedicated business account — revenue in, operating expenses out, a visible pattern — tells a story that a lender’s underwriter can underwrite against. Mixed personal and business banking, inconsistent deposits, and unexplained large withdrawals tell a different story. If your business banking is not currently clean and separate from personal accounts, address that before you start the financing process.

The Verification Checklist

Before signing any commercial truck financing agreement, run through this list:

Get the APR in writing, including all fees. Compare it against at least two other lenders. Know your credit score before any lender pulls it — multiple hard inquiries in a short window affect your score, though most scoring models treat multiple inquiries for the same loan type within a 45-day window as a single inquiry. Confirm the prepayment penalty terms. Understand whether the personal guarantee is limited or unlimited — some personal guarantees are capped at a specific dollar amount, others are open-ended. Verify the truck age and mileage requirements for the specific lender before you identify the specific truck, not after. And understand the total interest paid over the full term, not just the monthly payment — run the amortization calculation or ask the lender to produce it.

The financing market for commercial trucks in 2026 is legitimately more accessible than it has been. The rate environment, the available lender options, and the volume of equipment on the market create real opportunity for small carriers positioned to act on it. The operators who capture that opportunity profitably are the ones who understand what they are signing before they sign it.

The post The Commercial Truck Financing Market Has More Options Than Most Small Carriers Realize — and More Traps Than Most Lenders Will Tell You About appeared first on FreightWaves.

It is free. It is online. It is two days. Registration is required but takes two minutes at the SBA’s website. The sessions run from 11 AM to roughly 5:45 PM Eastern both days, which means a driver coming off a night run can catch the afternoon sessions. A dispatcher or fleet owner managing an office can drop into sessions between calls. This is not a $2,000 conference in Las Vegas. It is the federal government and a roster of major business partners putting substantive content in front of small business owners at no cost — and several sessions are directly relevant to the problems this platform covers every week.

Here is what is on the schedule and why specific sessions matter for trucking operations.

Tuesday, May 5

11:15 AM — Reclaim Your Time: Make AI Work for You (Google)

The AI conversation in trucking has been dominated by large carrier applications — autonomous vehicles, predictive routing systems that require enterprise software budgets. What this session is likely to cover is the practical layer underneath that: the AI tools available right now that a five-truck fleet owner or solo operator can actually use to reduce administrative burden. That means things like AI-assisted invoice drafting, automated follow-up on unpaid receivables, load description optimization for direct shipper outreach, and the kind of dispatch and scheduling assistance that previously required either a dedicated person or a subscription to a platform you could not afford.

The operators who are going to win the next phase of this freight market are not just the ones with the right equipment on the right lanes. They are the ones who free up enough of their own time to make better business decisions. If AI tools can reduce the time you spend on paperwork, invoice chasing, and administrative scheduling by even two hours per week, that is 100 hours per year redirected toward the revenue-generating and relationship-building activities that actually grow a trucking operation. Show up for this one with specific questions about your own administrative bottlenecks.

12:15 PM — Access to Capital: Closing the Small Business Gap (Visa)

This is the session that small carriers specifically need to hear right now. The capital access article published on this platform recently covered the foundational steps — business credit profiles, banking separation, loan product selection. This session is likely to expand on that from the perspective of practitioners who work with small businesses on capital applications every day.

The “small business gap” in the session title refers to the documented disparity between what small businesses need to operate and grow and what the lending market actually makes available to them. For trucking specifically, that gap shows up as equipment financing that requires perfect credit and two years of clean books, working capital products that cost 30% APR because the operation does not qualify for conventional lending, and a general absence of lenders who understand that a carrier with $400,000 in annual revenue and thin margins is not the same credit risk as a retail store with similar numbers. If this session covers what makes a trucking operation “bankable” — which the May 6 session on being a “Triple Threat” directly addresses — the combination of the two days builds toward a practical capital access strategy that most small carriers have never had laid out for them.

2:15 PM — Becoming Bankable: What Makes You a “Triple Threat” for Loans, Deposits, and Growth (Grasshopper Bank)

The Triple Threat framework — the combination of lending readiness, deposit relationship, and growth trajectory that makes a small business attractive to a bank rather than just tolerable — is exactly the framework missing from most small carrier financial planning. The operators who get the best loan terms are not just the ones with the best credit scores. They are the ones who have built a relationship with a financial institution that understands their business, sees consistent cash flow through a business deposit account, and can project a growth trajectory that makes the loan look like a managed risk rather than a speculative one.

Grasshopper Bank is a digital bank that has built specifically around small business relationships. Their perspective on what makes a borrower a triple threat will be more practically applicable to a three-truck carrier than advice from a large regional bank whose small business lending is an afterthought to their commercial portfolio.

3:30 PM — How to Win Your Next Contract: Write Stronger Proposals, Stand Out, and Win More Bids (Verizon)

The growth strategy article on this platform covered direct shipper development as the highest-return path for small carriers looking to move off the load board. This session addresses the mechanics of that transition — specifically how to write a proposal or capability statement that wins business rather than getting filed and forgotten.

Most small carriers who attempt direct shipper outreach make the same mistake: they send a rate sheet. A rate sheet tells a shipper what you charge. It does not tell them why you are more reliable than the carrier they are already using, what lanes you know, what your on-time performance looks like, or why adding you to their routing guide reduces their coverage risk. A compelling carrier capability statement — the trucking equivalent of a winning contract proposal — covers all of those things in a format a shipping manager can actually evaluate. This session should produce a practical framework for that document regardless of your industry.

4:00 PM — Hiring Secrets: Staff Up Smart and Fast (Paychex)

For small fleet owners managing two or more trucks, the driver management problem is the growth constraint that nobody talks about enough. Finding qualified drivers, vetting them efficiently, structuring compensation that retains them longer than three months, and managing the paperwork around employment compliance — all of it is time and money that most small carriers spend inefficiently because they have never been taught how to do it right.

The Paychex perspective on hiring is built around the small business context specifically. Their guidance on what works for fast, cost-effective hiring at small scale is more applicable to a five-truck operation than anything produced for a large fleet context.

Wednesday, May 6

11:25 AM — Built to Stay Open: The New Standard for Business Continuity (T-Mobile)

Business continuity planning in trucking typically means equipment backup and driver availability. This session likely expands that frame to include the digital and communication infrastructure that a modern small carrier depends on — dispatch systems, ELD connectivity, load board access, customer communication — and what happens to operations when any of those fail.

For small carriers who run their entire operation through a smartphone and a few cloud platforms, the vulnerability surface is real and underappreciated. A dispatch system that goes down during a critical load window, a communication failure that prevents proof of delivery from reaching the broker in time to avoid a disputed invoice, or a cybersecurity event that locks you out of your TMS are all business continuity problems that most small carriers have no plan for. The session framing around “the new standard” suggests it will address what a modern, practical continuity plan actually looks like for a small business — not a Fortune 500 disaster recovery program, but the decisions and backups that keep a small operation running when something breaks.

12:10 PM — Protecting Your Business from Risk and Fraud (Visa)

This is the session that has become more urgent in the freight market specifically over the past 24 months. Freight fraud — double brokering, load theft, identity fraud using hijacked carrier authorities, and the invoice manipulation schemes that have cost small carriers tens of thousands of dollars — has accelerated significantly as the compliance environment has become more complex.

The FMCSA crackdown on chameleon carriers has made carrier identity verification more important than ever, and the fraud protection conversation applies both ways: protecting your operation from being defrauded by bad actors in the freight market, and protecting your business identity from being used by others to commit fraud. A carrier whose DOT number gets used by a chameleon operation is not just a victim — they are exposed to liability and regulatory scrutiny that can threaten their own authority. Understanding how to protect your business identity, your payment systems, and your customer relationships from fraud is no longer optional operational knowledge.

1:05 PM — Getting Ahead with AI: Google Coaches Share Their Favorite Tips

The follow-up to Tuesday’s AI session with practical implementation guidance. Where the first session is likely to frame the opportunity, this one should get into specific tools and workflows. For a carrier or dispatcher, the question to bring is specific: what are the three tasks in my operation that consume the most time relative to their value, and is there an AI tool that addresses each one? Walking in with that question focused on your actual workflow will produce more usable output than attending as a general observer.

2:35 PM — Beyond the Storefront: Smart Strategies for Small Business Growth (Amazon)

The growth conversation from Amazon’s perspective will likely center on e-commerce supply chain dynamics and last-mile delivery opportunities — which intersects with trucking directly for carriers who serve distribution centers, fulfillment centers, or regional delivery networks. As e-commerce continues to drive corrugated demand and packaging freight volumes, the carriers who understand where the growth is happening in the goods economy are the ones positioned to develop the shipper relationships that capture it.

4:10 PM — Video 101 for Small Business: How to Capture Professional Content Using What You Already Have (America’s SBDC)

This session is for carriers who have been told they need to be on social media or who have been watching other operators build an audience online and wondered whether it is worth doing. The practical answer is yes — for a small carrier trying to develop direct shipper relationships, a professional online presence that demonstrates reliability, industry knowledge, and operational standards is now part of the vetting process that shippers run before awarding freight. A LinkedIn profile with documented loads delivered, a brief video demonstrating your operation, or a short-form video that shows how you handle cargo — none of that requires a production budget. It requires knowing what to do with the phone in your pocket. This session covers exactly that.

Why This Week Matters More Than Usual

National Small Business Week has run annually since 1963. Most years it is a recognition event — awards, ceremonies, speeches about the importance of small business to the economy. The 2026 Virtual Summit is different in its practical orientation. Every session on the schedule is educational rather than ceremonial, and several of them address problems that are acute in trucking right now: capital access in a tight lending environment, fraud protection in a market where identity theft has become a business risk, AI tools that reduce administrative burden for operations without support staff, and the contract development skills that move a carrier off spot freight dependency.

The format is the point. Two days, free, online, starting at 11 AM Eastern. A carrier who picks three sessions across the two days based on their current business challenges will leave with more actionable information than most trucking conferences deliver at ten times the cost.

Registration takes two minutes at sba.gov/national-small-business-week/virtual-summit. The summit is May 5 and 6. If you are running this business — one truck or twenty — there is something on this schedule that is worth two hours of your time this week.

The post The Federal Government Is Offering Two Days of Free Business Education This Week. Here Is Why Every Small Carrier Should Show Up. appeared first on FreightWaves.

That is not an accident. That is the FMCSA compliance crackdown of 2026 showing up in the used equipment market, and if you do not understand what is driving it, you are going to buy someone else’s problem and wonder for the next 18 months why the truck is costing you more than it should.

Why the Lots Are Full Right Now

The FMCSA has spent the first four months of 2026 executing what its own acting division administrator described as the largest regulatory enforcement action the agency has undertaken in years. Thousands of non-domiciled CDLs have been removed from the system. Nearly 3,000 CDL training providers were pulled from the Training Provider Registry. More than 80 electronic logging devices have been revoked from the approved list. And the agency has cracked down on chameleon carriers — operations that dissolved under one DOT number and reopened under another to escape their safety record — with new identity verification requirements that make that playbook far harder to run.

The cost difference between operating compliantly and operating non-compliantly has been estimated at $1,000 per month per truck on the low end. Carriers who were making that calculation in favor of cutting corners are now finding the margin has evaporated — and the enforcement environment has made the risk untenable. The result is predictable: exits. Fast ones. Carriers surrendering authority, parking trucks, and pushing equipment back to dealers before the next inspection, the next audit, or the next renewal cycle forces the issue.

Meanwhile, freight recession economics have been grinding on operations that were already thin. The operators who could absorb three years of compressed margins while staying fully compliant are the ones still running. The ones who could not — or who were never fully compliant to begin with — are the ones whose trucks are on those dealer lots right now.

This is where it gets important for a carrier considering a used truck purchase: you do not know which category a given truck came from. And the truck will not tell you unless you ask it the right way.

What the Odometer Does Not Know

A truck with 345,000 miles on the odometer sounds like a truck with 345,000 miles of story. But the odometer only counts distance. It does not count the hours the engine spent idling. It does not count how many times the driver overrode the idle shutdown system to keep the bunk air conditioner running through the night. It does not count the cumulative hours the coolant level ran low, or how many minutes the oil pressure dropped below the threshold where the lubrication film starts to break down. It does not count how many times a water-in-fuel fault fired and nobody fixed it.

The engine control module knows all of those things. It has been recording them since the day the truck left the factory. Every fault code, every abuse event, every protection trigger, every driver behavior pattern — it is all sitting in the ECM, available to anyone who knows how to pull it, and invisible to anyone who does not.

What a real pre-purchase diagnostic pull from a platform like JPRO or Cummins INSITE produces is a different kind of odometer. One that measures not just distance but how that distance was accumulated, and at what cost to the engine systems that generate the truck’s remaining value.

Take a 2022 International LT625 with a Cummins X15 and 345,000 miles. On paper, it is early in its lifecycle — the X15 is built for well over a million miles under proper care, and a 2022 model at under 350,000 miles should have enormous useful life remaining. That assessment holds up on this particular truck: one inactive fault code, all warning lamps off, DPF soot low, coolant normal. The diagnostic confirms what the odometer implied. The only flag is a 44.6% idle rate — nearly half the engine’s runtime spent idling rather than moving — which is above the industry benchmark of 25 to 35% and tells you something about how this truck was operated. Not a deal breaker on an engine this young and otherwise clean, but a legitimate negotiating lever and a flag to pull maintenance records and check oil change intervals.

That is what a clean unit looks like in the data. Not every unit on those lots right now looks like that.

What a Problem Unit Looks Like

Now consider a different Cummins X15, similar platform, similar mileage on paper — 324,000 miles, 18,000 engine hours. Before you even open the fault codes, one number stops the conversation: 365 hours of cumulative low coolant level. Not a single bad fill. Not an air-bleed event after a service. Three hundred and sixty-five hours — more than two full work weeks of accumulated operating time — with the coolant level sensor reporting low.

To understand what 365 hours of low coolant means for an engine like the X15, you need to understand what the cooling system does. It is not just keeping the engine from overheating. It is protecting the EGR cooler, regulating oil temperature, managing combustion heat, and preserving the thermal stability that keeps the head gasket seated and the cylinder liners from cycling through stress ranges they were not designed for. An EGR cooler failure on a Cummins X15 — one of the most documented failure modes on this platform — is a near-certain outcome of repeated thermal stress from inadequate coolant. The parts and labor to replace it run $3,000 to $6,000. A compromised head gasket runs significantly more. Neither failure appears in the CARFAX. Neither shows up on the lot’s pricing sheet.

The same truck adds more to the story. Five hours of oil temperature above 235 degrees Fahrenheit — sustained, not momentary — at temperatures where the lubrication film begins to break down and bearing surfaces start doing real work without proper protection. Oil pressure dropping below 5 psi for cumulative seconds that add up beyond a startup blip. An engine protection event for exhaust gas pressure above normal operating range. And a fault code cluster where seven aftertreatment sensors all went offline at the exact same timestamp — not seven independent failures, but one electrical event that killed communication with the entire aftertreatment system simultaneously, pointing at a failing battery, a corroded ground, or an intermittent alternator that will produce chronic, unpredictable shop visits for whoever buys this truck.

That truck has 324,000 miles. On the lot, parked next to the clean LT625, it might carry a similar price. The odometer does not explain the difference. The ECM does.

The Water in Fuel Problem Nobody Can See

The worst finding in a recent series of pre-purchase diagnostics reviewed for this article was not a mechanical failure. It was a fault code that had been firing 3,524 times over 2,169 engine hours — meaning it had been active for approximately 15% of the engine’s total runtime — with the most recent occurrence 45 minutes before the diagnostic pull.

The fault was water in the fuel system.

There are two ways to read a water-in-fuel sensor firing 3,524 times. Either the sensor itself has failed and has been generating false alerts for years — in which case the operator ignored a maintenance code for 2,169 hours, which tells you something important about how they managed this truck. Or there has been actual water contamination in the fuel system for an extended period — in which case the injector tips have been exposed to a corrosive environment, the high-pressure fuel pump wear surfaces have been compromised, and microbial growth in the fuel tank is a real possibility.

You cannot see either of those outcomes by looking at the truck. You cannot see them in the DPF soot level or the regen history. You cannot see them in a test drive. The truck will start, run, and pull a load — right up until the moment an injector fails, at which point the repair bill on a Cummins X15 for a full injector set runs $8,000 to $15,000. Budget more if the high-pressure pump needs to come out with it.

The fault was in the ECM the whole time. It took a $300 diagnostic pull to find it.

The Audit Trail That Shows You What They Tried to Hide

A pre-purchase diagnostic from a tool like Cummins INSITE does something else that most buyers do not know is possible: it pulls an ECM audit trail. Every time a service tool has connected to this engine — every diagnostic session, every fault code reset, every parameter change — it leaves a timestamp and a record of what was done.

In one of the high-risk trucks reviewed here, the audit trail showed a comprehensive ECM reconfiguration at roughly the midpoint of the engine’s life: a single session that touched cruise control settings, road speed governor, transmission parameters, vehicle speed sensor, maximum vehicle speed, axle ratio, tire revolutions, fan clutch, engine brake, PTO setup, low idle, gear down protection, calibration download, starter lockout, remote throttle, and tire wear adjustment. That is not a routine service call. That is someone who rebuilt the operating parameters of this engine’s computer at 7,900 hours for reasons that are not documented anywhere in the records the seller provided.

Every truck in that same evaluation series also showed PowerSpec access — a dealer-level tool — within 48 hours of the diagnostic pull. The access sessions modified idle shutdown settings, cruise control, road speed governors, aftertreatment lamp setups, and fuel economy parameters. A pattern of pre-sale ECM adjustments across multiple units from the same dealer source is not coincidence. It is preparation — and the question it raises is what those adjustments were designed to affect.

None of that shows up on the sticker. The audit trail does.

What You Should Do Before You Sign Anything

The diagnostic tools exist. JPRO gives you the surface read — fault codes, live data, component communication status. Cummins INSITE gives you the engine’s full lifetime history: fault counts and durations, abuse event logs, driver behavior profiles, fuel economy data, regen history, ECM audit trail, duty cycle maps. A JPRO pull costs roughly $150 to $300. An INSITE pull through a Cummins dealer runs similarly. On a truck that costs $80,000 to $150,000, that is the cheapest insurance available and the only due diligence that actually reads what the engine has to say about itself.

Any dealer who will not allow a diagnostic pull before purchase is telling you something. A truck with a clean engine history does not become harder to sell because someone ran a diagnostic. It becomes easier. Resistance to a pre-purchase diagnostic is, at this point in a market flooded with compliance-exit equipment, itself a flag.

Beyond the diagnostic, pull Cummins Insite on any X15 or X12. Request maintenance records specifically for oil change intervals — a truck with a heavy idle history and inconsistent oil changes has been degrading the engine from two directions simultaneously. Check the transmission fluid condition on any Eaton Endurant — pull a sample for analysis, or at minimum inspect color and smell. Have a technician check for idle-related carbon buildup around the EGR system. And verify the DPF condition through Insite’s regen history, not just the current soot level reading — a DPF that reads low soot right now may have been stressed significantly over its life in ways the current reading does not reflect.

The deal flow that compliance exits are generating right now is real. There are trucks on lots that represent genuine value — clean units at reasonable prices from operators who are exiting for economic or regulatory reasons and whose equipment was well-maintained through their tenure. Those trucks are worth buying at the right price, and the diagnostic will confirm it.

The trucks that are not worth buying at any price are also out there. Same lots. Sometimes similar prices. The difference between them is in the ECM, not on the sticker — and the only way to know which one you are looking at is to read what the engine has been recording since the day it left the factory.

Pull the diagnostic. Read the data. Buy the truck or walk away with information. The alternative is buying the truck and finding out the information later, one repair bill at a time.

Commonly Asked Questions

Q: What does a pre-purchase diagnostic actually cost and where do I get one done?

A JPRO diagnostic — which reads fault codes, live data, and component communication across all major ECUs — runs approximately $150 to $300 at a commercial truck shop with the tool. A Cummins INSITE pull, which produces the full engine history including abuse logs, fault duration data, driver behavior profile, fuel economy breakdown, and ECM audit trail, is available through any authorized Cummins dealer. Budget roughly $200 to $400+ for a full INSITE session. Some dealers will do both in a combined pre-purchase inspection package.

Q: The dealer says the truck just went through a full service and is ready to go. Isn’t that enough?

A service addresses what the shop was asked to address. It does not produce a 14,000-hour history of oil temperature abuse, a 2,169-hour record of water-in-fuel faults, or a 365-hour log of low coolant operation. A fresh oil change and a new set of filters on a truck with a damaged engine is still a truck with a damaged engine — it just smells like fresh oil. The service receipt tells you what happened last week. The INSITE pull tells you what happened over the engine’s entire life. You need both.

Q: If a truck has high idle time, is it automatically a bad buy?

Not automatically — but it needs to be priced and inspected accordingly. High idle time accelerates oil degradation, increases ring and cylinder liner wear at low combustion pressure, and creates DPF soot loading from unloaded low-RPM operation. The impact depends on whether oil changes were kept current, whether the EGR system has been serviced, and whether the DPF has been maintained. A truck with 44% idle time and documented consistent maintenance at appropriate intervals is a different asset than one with 58% idle time and no service records. The idle rate is the flag that tells you what to inspect, not necessarily the reason to walk.

The post The Used Truck Market Just Got Flooded With Equipment You Need to Inspect Before You Touch appeared first on FreightWaves.

Nearshoring fuels 800K-square-foot industrial build in El Paso

A Dallas-based developer has broken ground on a major cross-border industrial project in El Paso, Texas, underscoring the region’s growing role as a key gateway for U.S.-Mexico trade and nearshoring activity.

Formation Interests announced it has begun construction on FORM375 at Paso Del Norte, an 800,000-square-foot industrial park located adjacent to the Zaragoza port of entry. 

The four-building project totals about 802,604 square feet and includes a 513,074-square-foot cross-dock facility designed to streamline freight movement across the border.

The development sits next to one of the busiest inland trade corridors in North America and is aimed at reducing “last-mile” friction for cross-border shipments by placing logistics and manufacturing operations directly at the port of entry.

“At a time when global supply chains are rapidly shifting, the opportunity to develop this site could not have occurred at a better time,” Formation Interests CEO Adam Herrin said in a news release, citing El Paso’s proximity to Ciudad Juárez and its expanding manufacturing base.

The project comes as trade volumes through El Paso continue to surge, reinforcing the city’s role as a critical node in North American supply chains.

According to WorldCity data, total trade at the El Paso Bridge of the Americas reached $3.19 billion in February, an 86.66% increase year over year. Exports totaled $1.67 billion, while imports hit $1.52 billion during the month.

Mexico dominates the port’s trade flows, accounting for the vast majority of cross-border activity. In February alone, trade with Mexico totaled $2.72 billion, representing the top trading partner by a wide margin.

Electronics and advanced manufacturing goods are a major driver of volume through the region. Top exports included computer parts ($463 million) and computer chips ($250 million), while imports were led by computer parts ($441 million), computers ($246 million), and passenger vehicles ($204 million).

Overall, the El Paso port ranked No. 10 among U.S. border crossings and No. 33 across all ports of entry by trade value, accounting for about 0.71% of total U.S. trade.

Formation Interests said the Paso Del Norte site is positioned to capitalize on nearshoring trends, with a 2.5 million-strong binational workforce supporting manufacturing activity on both sides of the border.

The project is being marketed as a “zero-distance” logistics solution, allowing companies to reduce transit times and costs tied to border congestion, where crossing delays can exceed two hours.

The campus will also feature infrastructure designed for high-power users, including semiconductor and AI-related manufacturing, reflecting the shift toward higher-value industrial production along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Hutchison Ports adds electric cranes at Port of Manzanillo

Hutchison Ports TIMSA is investing more than $17.5 million to upgrade operations at Mexico’s Port of Manzanillo, adding two electric mobile harbor cranes as part of a broader modernization push, according to a news release. 

The cranes, which arrived April 15 aboard the vessel BBC Aquamarine, can handle vessels up to 15,500 TEUs with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and reach across 22 container rows.

The additions bring the terminal’s total crane fleet to eight units, boosting berth productivity and capacity as trade volumes grow along Mexico’s Pacific coast. The equipment is also expected to improve energy efficiency and support Hutchison Ports’ net-zero strategy, which targets a 54.6% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2033.

Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports operates six terminals at four seaports and one inland port in Mexico, serving 20,000 customers. The company operates ports in 26 countries around the world.

Burlington breaks ground on 2M-square-foot distribution center near Phoenix

Burlington Stores (NYSE: BURL) has begun construction on a nearly 2 million-square-foot distribution center in Buckeye, Arizona, marking a major expansion of its logistics network in the Southwest. 

The facility, located in the Westpark 360 Industrial Park, is expected to open in 2028 and will be one of the retailer’s most advanced supply chain hubs, according to a news release.

The automated center will feature advanced sorting systems, custom software and upgraded workstations designed to improve speed, flexibility and efficiency across Burlington’s off-price retail operations.

At full capacity, the project is expected to create thousands of jobs in the Phoenix-area market, while supporting Burlington’s broader growth strategy, which includes adding more than 100 new stores nationwide by the end of 2026.

The post Borderlands Mexico: Nearshoring fuels 800K-square-foot industrial build in El Paso appeared first on FreightWaves.

Chart of the Week:  LTL Monthly Cost per Hundredweight, Van Contract Rate Per Mile Initial Report – USA SONAR: LTL.USA, VCRPM1.USA

After a fairly sluggish start to the year, less-than-truckload (LTL) rates are now showing the highest levels of upward pressure since the exit of Yellow in the summer of 2023.

The LTL monthly cost per hundredweight index measures pricing change momentum in the LTL market. This index tracks directional changes in the LTL pricing environment based on transactional data.

This does not necessarily mean that all contracts increased simultaneously, but that as new bids and general rate increases work through the market, they are being priced at roughly 12.5% higher levels than at this point last year — and 29% higher than in May 2021.

The dry van truckload contract rate index VCRPM1 showed upward pressure building on truckload rates in November, most likely in the form of route guide failures and tender waterfalling rather than permanent rate increases. The fact that this index continues moving higher reflects that truckload rates are increasing more sustainably.

The LTL market tends to follow the truckload environment by roughly three to six months and is almost entirely based on contracts or blanket pricing agreements lasting at least a year. The notable exception occurred in 2023, when the third-largest national LTL carrier, Yellow, exited the market.

LTL differs from the truckload market in several ways, but one of the most significant is that LTL carriers do not turn down loads due to lack of availability — instead, general service levels deteriorate as linehaul networks (the truckload moves between hubs) come under strain.

This close connection to the truckload market is what causes LTL rates to eventually follow truckload pricing trends, but at a much slower pace. This recent response is running roughly on schedule, but is stronger than expected.

The nuance here is that the truckload market turn began during the holiday peak season, which typically does not affect the LTL market, as LTL is less tied to retail shipping and replenishment.

December and January are typically the slowest months of the year for LTL, as manufacturing plants close and shipping and receiving dock hours are reduced. Winter weather also has a strong influence, as networks stall — though unlike in the truckload market, weather does not necessarily lead to rate increases.

There is no meaningful spot market for LTL, so urgency is never reflected in real time; shippers have no centralized venue to bid for capacity against one another. In many cases, shippers use the LTL market as a relief valve for truckload tightness by breaking up full truckloads and moving them through the LTL market for guaranteed capacity — though at lower service levels and higher prices. The average weight per shipment has increased approximately 11% since the start of the year, suggesting this is probably occurring.

This makes the current LTL pricing surge all the more notable, as it takes a significant market shift to produce sharp changes in this space. Some of this sharpness may be a correction for softness in the first two months of the year: rates showed a 1.7% year-over-year decline in January and a 1.2% decline in February. The March print more than corrected for those declines, posting a 7% year-over-year jump.

The LTL market is typically less volatile than the truckload market, as there are far fewer providers and, as noted, rates are almost entirely negotiated over long periods. This also means that increases are stickier and take longer to unwind.

About the Chart of the Week

The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR that provides an interesting data point to describe the state of the freight markets. A chart is chosen from thousands of potential charts on SONAR to help participants visualize the freight market in real time. Each week a Market Expert will post a chart, along with commentary, live on the front page. After that, the Chart of the Week will be archived on FreightWaves.com for future reference.

SONAR aggregates data from hundreds of sources, presenting the data in charts and maps and providing commentary on what freight market experts want to know about the industry in real time.

The post Less-than-truckload rates have sharp response to broader market turn appeared first on FreightWaves.

Schneider (NYSE: SNDR) reported adjusted earnings per share of 12 cents in the period, which was 2 cents above consensus but 4 cents lower year over year. Consolidated revenue of $1.4 billion was in line with the prior year and just below the $1.42 billion consensus estimate.

Truckload revenue increased 1% y/y to $618 million, excluding fuel surcharges. A 1% decline in average trucks in service was more than offset by a 3% increase in revenue per truck per week (productivity). The company noted productivity gains across both its network (one-way) and dedicated fleets.

Productivity increased 7.3% y/y at its one-way fleet. The increase was mostly driven by improved truck utilization, with better pricing helping to a lesser degree. The company said price renewals are currently at the highest levels since 2021, noting an expectation for mid- to high-single-digit one-way contract rate increases through bid season. It will also seek double-digit rate increases with transactional shippers, as pricing at those accounts fell the most during the downturn.

The company said that some dedicated customers are looking to grow truck counts, with a focus on carrier partners providing high tender acceptance. It sold dedicated service on 150 trucks in the quarter but noted some near-term churn.

The TL unit reported a 96.7% adjusted operating ratio (inverse of operating margin), which was 80 basis points worse y/y.

Intermodal revenue declined 3% y/y to $254 million (excluding fuel), as a slight increase in load count was offset by a 4% decline in revenue per load. A shorter length of haul led to the yield decline. Schneider is seeing incremental intermodal conversion opportunities and said it has enough containers to accommodate double-digit volume growth.

Intermodal reported a 95.7% OR, which was 100 bps worse y/y. Lower yields and higher maintenance costs were headwinds. Container turns improved 1% in the period.

Logistics revenue (excluding fuel) fell 6% y/y to $312 million, as lower volumes were only partially offset by higher revenue per load. Even with a net revenue margin squeeze due to surging spot rates (higher purchased transportation costs), OR was only 30 bps worse y/y at 97.9%.

2026 outlook reiterated

Schneider reiterated its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance range of 70 cents to $1, noting “macro uncertainty has grown” in recent weeks. The outlook bracketed an 85-cent consensus estimate at the time of the print. (The company reported full-year 2025 adjusted EPS of 63 cents.)

Net debt leverage ended the quarter at 0.3x, flat with year-end 2025. Schneider reiterated net capex guidance of $400 million to $450 million for the year. Net capex totaled $289 million in 2025. It plans to use free cash flow to fund share repurchases, dividends and M&A.

Schneider previously announced President and CEO Mark Rourke will become executive chairman of the board on July 1. At that time, Jim Filter, Schneider executive vice president and president of transportation and logistics, will succeed Rourke as the company’s president and CEO. Filter is also expected to be appointed to the board at a later date.

Shares of SNDR were up 4.9% at 11:07 a.m. EDT on Friday compared to the S&P 500, which was up 0.5%.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs
• Saia eyes margin turnaround amid improving demand
• Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2

The post Schneider targeting significant rate recovery in bid season appeared first on FreightWaves.

The funding, awarded through the U.S. Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program, will support construction of a new container yard and a new exit gate at Bayport. Port Houston will also contribute roughly $56 million in matching funds for the project.

Port officials said the improvements are designed to handle growing cargo volumes while improving truck flow and safety. The project is expected to increase capacity by about 440,000 TEUs and reduce congestion by cutting truck turn times, saving millions of hours over the life of the project.

Port Houston is continuing to handle strong cargo volumes and heavy truck traffic across its terminals, underscoring the scale of activity moving through the gateway.

Chief Port Operations Officer Ryan Mariacher said the port handled nearly 14 million tons of cargo through the first quarter, with container terminals rebounding to a monthly record of about 180,000 loaded containers and surpassing 1 million TEUs for the quarter. 

“We’re seeing about 10,000 trucks a day going through both terminals, and that is held pretty steady,” Mariacher said at the port’s commission meeting on Tuesday. He added that vessel calls are up 9% year to date, with 523 ships calls.

Related: Port Houston March rebound pushes Q1 volumes past 1M TEUs

70 years of containerization

The announcement also comes as Port Houston marked a major milestone in maritime history. Tuesday marked the 70th anniversary of containerization at the port, when the SS Ideal X arrived in 1956 carrying 58 converted containers from Port Newark, New Jersey.

That voyage, pioneered by trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean, is widely credited with launching modern container shipping. The ship’s arrival in Houston demonstrated how standardized containers could dramatically speed up cargo handling—cutting loading times from days to hours and laying the foundation for today’s global supply chains.

The post Port Houston lands $48M federal grant for Bayport expansion  appeared first on FreightWaves.

“Families have lost loved ones, communities have suffered overwhelming sadness, and the nation has witnessed yet another catastrophic disaster involving an aircraft with a long-documented history of mechanical problems,”Rep. Morgan McGarvey said in a letter to the FAA last Friday. “We have a collective responsibility to ensure that no additional lives are put at risk by an aircraft whose design and operational history have repeatedly demonstrated an unacceptable level of danger.”

UPS Flight 2976 crashed during take off from Louisville International Airport as the left engine and a structural pylon detached from the wing shortly after the front landing gear lifted, igniting a fire. The cargo jet never got higher than 30 feet off the ground before striking a warehouse just beyond the Louisville airport’s perimeter and slamming into a storage yard and other buildings. Fourteen people died in the crash, including the three pilots.

Within days, the FAA banned MD-11s from flying until the entire fleet is thoroughly inspected and any necessary repairs are completed. The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation found fatigue cracks in a structural section that held the engine to the left wing. 

The letter asserts the tragedy in Louisville was the result of a broader pattern of structural deficiencies, citing a long-documented history of mechanical problems as cause for the FAA to permanently ground the model of aircraft from service.

The MD-11 has experienced at least ten hull loss accidents since entering service in 1990 – the highest hull loss rate (per million departures) of any widebody commercial jet airliner still flying within the U.S. – according to Boeing. The manufacturer acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997 and is responsible for supporting airlines that fly the MD-11. 

“Investigators, pilots, and operators have continuously documented the aircraft’s tendencies toward instability on landing, center-of-gravity sensitivity, and structural stress around the engine pylons. Multiple cargo carriers have already decided that the aircraft poses unacceptable risk and have since retired the aircraft from their fleets voluntarily…. With a clear trend of users phasing out the MD-11, the FAA is one of the last major entities to have taken no action on removing this aircraft from commercial service,” wrote McGarvey, a Democrat. “Given the MD-11’s safety record, the NTSB’s preliminary report on the Louisville crash, and the FAA’s statutory obligations, I urge the FAA to take immediate steps to permanently ground the MD-11,” wrote McGarvey.

Only three U.S. airlines operate the aging MD-11. UPS (NYSE: UPS) in January decided to retire the 28 remaining MD-11s it owns. Western Global Airlines has not publicly commented on the MD-11’s future. FedEx (NYSE: FDX), however, is ramping up preparations to operate the plane again as soon as the FAA gives the okay. 

According to internal FedEx communiqués obtained by FreightWaves, FedEx is planning for the return to service of two MD-11s in May and the subsequent reactivation of all 27 freighters it owns. FedEx told air operations employees that Boeing has developed a part that will correct the MD-11’s structural problem and make the plane safe to operate. Pilots have been told to take refresher classes for the MD-11 and a town hall meeting is scheduled for next week to update airline personnel on how the planes will be reincorporated into the fleet and explain the Boeing fix.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

RELATED STORIES:

FedEx prepares to reactivate grounded MD-11 fleet in May

NTSB links fatigue cracks to fatal crash of UPS cargo jet

The post Kentucky congressman urges FAA to permanently shut down MD-11 aircraft appeared first on FreightWaves.

Traffix, the Ontario-based $1 billion gross revenue freight brokerage, paints a clear picture in its April 2026 report: demand is recovering while reduced capacity is driving a more reactive and volatile market. 

“It’s pretty clear we’re heading into a new cycle,” said Alex Fuller, Senior Director of Revenue Management and Solutions at Traffix, in an interview with FreightWaves. “People might have thought that January was a hangover from peak and February [volatility] was [caused by] weather. But in March and April, we’re clearly moving into a new cycle.”

The cycle Traffix describes is the classic freight-market rhythm, only this time the upswing arrives against a backdrop of structurally lower capacity. During the prolonged low-rate period of 2023-2025, a meaningful amount of truckload capacity left the industry. Regulatory enforcement, including English-language requirements for drivers and heightened scrutiny of non-domiciled CDLs, has further constrained the driver pool. Class 8 truck orders were strong in Q1 2026, but much of that activity reflects fleet replacement rather than net expansion.

On the demand side, freight volumes have snapped back into growth mode. March 2026 volumes were up approximately 8% year-over-year and reached multi-year highs, according to SONAR data cited in the report. Lean inventories, stronger manufacturing orders, and rising imports are all contributing. The ISM Manufacturing PMI has returned to expansion territory for multiple consecutive months, with new orders, production growth, and imports feeding increased freight demand. Meanwhile, the Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI) Transportation Price Index has surged to its highest level since 2022, while the capacity index has dropped below 40—signaling a widening gap that is shifting pricing power back to carriers.

Fuel is adding accelerant to the fire. Diesel prices have increased sharply, up roughly 50% since early Q1 2026. Those costs are flowing through to transportation rates with minimal lag, amplifying an already tightening market. Yet Traffix and Fuller emphasize that fuel is not the primary driver. Linehaul rates (excluding fuel) are up approximately 30% year-over-year, confirming a genuine supply-demand imbalance.

Tender rejection rates have remained above 10% for more than two months, a level that reinforces the structurally tight market. “Higher rates should attract new capacity,” the report notes, “but this process will take time.” Fuller echoed that timeline: “Moving into a year or two of a normal freight cycle…for the next 6-12 months rates will continue to stay high and potentially get higher. We expect at least 12 months of higher rates before capacity can catch up.”

Mode-specific outlooks in the Traffix report underscore the breadth of the tightening. Dry-van rates are expected to remain elevated through mid-2026, supported by strong demand and tight capacity; contract increases will continue as shippers adjust to spot-market pressure. Flatbed markets are tightening rapidly due to construction, infrastructure, and industrial demand. Reefer capacity is tightening ahead of produce season, with seasonal volatility and elevated rates expected through summer. Intermodal volumes are projected to grow 10% year-over-year as shippers seek cost and capacity relief. Cross-border lanes show nuanced dynamics: Canada-U.S. capacity remains available with rates tracking broader truckload trends, while U.S.-Mexico lanes face localized constraints, especially in high-demand corridors like Laredo-Bajio, pushing rates gradually higher.

For shippers, the implications are immediate and budgetary. Traffix outlines three planning scenarios for the remainder of 2026:

1. Base Case (Volumes Stabilize, Capacity Tightens): Spot rates stay well above 2025 levels and contract rates continue rising. Expect freight costs 10-15% higher than 2025, particularly for spot-exposed shipments.

2. Tightening Case (Demand + Fuel Accelerate): Manufacturing recovery broadens, inventories stay lean, and diesel remains elevated. Plan for 15-20% cost inflation, with spot-exposed and shorter-haul lanes under the greatest pressure.

3. Softer Case (Demand Moderates): Economic growth cools and volumes flatten, but reduced carrier capacity prevents a return to loose-market conditions. Rates stabilize rather than fall meaningfully; budget 7-12% inflation versus 2025.

“Current market levels should be treated as a new floor, not a temporary spike,” the report stresses. For most shippers, a practical budgeting range is low-double-digit transportation inflation versus 2025, with meaningful upside risk in truckload, spot-heavy networks, temperature-controlled freight, and shorter-haul lanes.

Fuller’s on-the-ground perspective aligns closely. He notes that shipper reactions have evolved quickly. “In January and February there was a lot of denial,” he said. “By March and April, transportation managers have convinced their CFO to give them a bigger budget. Fuel helped accelerate that process.” Large CPG and food-and-beverage companies with their own fleets have been slower to accept increases, leveraging purchasing power to resist. Industrial and machinery shippers, facing expensive customer orders, have been far more open. “In some lanes, we’re up 30%,” Fuller added. “Broadly, 20% is a good number to think about for 2026 and that’s been a big shock for some shippers.”

Broader economic and policy factors are also in play. Tariffs, though quieter in headlines, continue rippling through supply chains. Some companies that built inventory ahead of potential duties are now shifting toward just-in-time strategies or accelerating nearshoring to Mexico, trends that Fuller says are gaining momentum and could further influence domestic trucking demand. Consumer uncertainty and the possibility of rising unemployment remain watch items, but Fuller sees 2026 as “going to be great, with the asterisk that unemployment could jump and take it off the rails.”

Traffix’s recommendations for shippers are pragmatic. First, budget for a higher baseline and treat current rates as the new normal. Second, lock in capacity strategically: contract rates are still catching up to spot; use bid cycles and mini-bids to secure space in core lanes before further resets. Third, reduce spot-market exposure by shifting toward contracted and diversified carrier networks. Finally, take a total-cost view, which means balancing transportation, inventory, and import expenses, because low freight rates are no longer the default lever for controlling landed costs.

After years of carrier exits and regulatory friction, the market has entered the phase where even modest demand growth produces outsized rate increases. Spot rates have already surged, contract rates are resetting upward, and linehaul rates have reached multi-year highs independent of fuel. For carriers, the environment offers relief and pricing power not seen since the pandemic peak. For shippers, the message is clear: the soft-market era is over. Those who adapt quickly by securing capacity, updating budgets, and rethinking network strategy will be best positioned to navigate the tighter, more volatile freight market ahead.

The post Traffix expects double-digit rate increases to hold through 2026 appeared first on FreightWaves.

So..how did we get here? I want to highlight a few real cases that illustrate exactly what this administration has spent a year trying to prevent.

The first involves a load that was quadruple-brokered before it found a chameleon carrier and a Russian CDL-licensed driver. One of the oldest and most reputable manufacturers in American industrial history gave the load to a freight broker. That broker could not find a carrier. He passed it to someone else. That person passed it to a friend. That friend passed it to a foreign-operated carrier. By the time the load found a driver, it had passed through four sets of hands, and no one along the way appears to have asked the basic questions: whether the driver held a valid commercial license, whether the carrier had operating authority, or whether the equipment met federal safety standards. The driver ran out of fuel on a busy interstate at night. He stopped in a live center lane of travel. The flashlights he had mounted as truck lights did not comply with federal regulations designed precisely to prevent what happened next. A father of three died. He was a commercial driver himself, a working man heading home, who encountered flashlights mounted to the rear of a trailer on a dark highway, with no meaningful warning that the vehicle ahead of him was at a standstill.

The second case involves a Romanian national who built a trucking company in the Chicago suburbs. He employed foreign drivers, many of them non-domiciled, many holding temporary credentials. His fleet grew to hundreds of trucks. His crash record grew with it. By the time FMCSA placed him out of service, his operation had been connected to twelve deaths, hundreds of crashes, and federal civil penalties approaching $900,000. FMCSA issued two separate out-of-service orders. The carrier dissolved and restarted under successor entities with overlapping equipment and operational infrastructure and continued putting trucks on American highways. One of those trucks killed a man named Brandon Rogers in Beaumont, Texas, in April 2023 while hauling freight dispatched by a Moldovan broker. His family is in litigation. I have written extensively about this case on FreightWaves. It is not isolated. It is the operating model of a specific class of carrier that the regulatory environment before April 28, 2025, was entirely inadequate to prevent.

Both of these cases exist because of gaps this administration is focused on closing.

On April 28, 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced steps to rescind a dangerous Obama-era policy that had dismissed English language proficiency requirements for commercial motor vehicle drivers. At the direction of Secretary Duffy, FMCSA took immediate actions to strengthen English language enforcement, with Duffy stating that federal law is clear and that a driver who cannot sufficiently read or speak English and understand road signs is unqualified to drive a commercial motor vehicle in America and that this commonsense standard should never have been abandoned. 

Beginning June 25, 2025, ELP violations were once again included in the out-of-service criteria, ensuring consistent nationwide enforcement and reaffirming the Department’s commitment to roadway safety. That is the inspection standard that puts trucks out of service. It took less than two months from the date of the executive order to implement it operationally across all 50 states through the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. 

In June 2025, Secretary Duffy announced a nationwide audit of state non-domiciled CDL issuance alongside a pro-trucker package that included millions to expand truck parking, removal of one-size-fits-all mandates, and modernization of driver resources. The audit findings were wild. In California alone, more than 25 percent of non-domiciled CDLs reviewed were improperly issued. In one case, California issued a CDL to a driver from Brazil with endorsements to drive a passenger bus and a school bus, valid for months after his legal presence had expired. More than 30 states were found to have been systematically issuing non-domiciled CDLs improperly. Twenty-eight states and jurisdictions were placed under special enforcement orders.

On September 29, 2025, FMCSA issued an emergency interim final rule closing the Employment Authorization Document pathway that had allowed unverified foreign nationals to obtain commercial driver’s licenses without consular screening. At least 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths in 2025 alone were caused by non-domiciled drivers who will now be ineligible to get a license. The final rule was published in the Federal Register on February 13, 2026, and took effect on March 16, 2026. Non-domiciled CDL eligibility is now limited to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders who have undergone interagency vetting. SAVE database verification is now mandatory before any state can issue a non-domiciled credential. Credentials expire at the end of the driver’s authorized period of stay, rather than for four-year terms, regardless of immigration status. This week a State Department spokesperson confirmed on background that commercial truck driver visa processing has resumed under strict new standards including verified English language skills, a prior history of safe commercial truck operation, and a valid or obtainable United States commercial driver’s license. 

On October 7, 2025, the Senate confirmed Derek Barrs as FMCSA Administrator. Barrs brings nearly 35 years of experience in law enforcement and roadway safety, including more than 25 years focused on commercial motor vehicle safety, having served as a Deputy Sheriff in Madison County, Florida, a Florida State Trooper, Florida Highway Patrol Chief, and five years in the private sector at HNTB Corporation before returning to federal service. He arrived at FMCSA with a law enforcement chief’s mindset and has applied it without hesitation.

More than 7,000 entry-level driver training providers have been removed from the ELDT registry to crack down on CDL mills. Over 80 electronic logging devices have been removed from the approved list and more than 400 recent ELD applications were denied due to intensified internal vetting. Fifteen hundred training providers were audited over one week by 300 FMCSA inspectors, resulting in a failure rate of more than 30 percent. The mills that had been producing paper credentials instead of qualified drivers are being removed from the system at a pace this agency has never operated at before. 

Barrs has put himself on the road. Barrs recently joined Georgia enforcement officials during Operation SafeDRIVE, working alongside CVE officers during traffic stops, inspections, and a K-9 program demonstration at Monroe County Inspection Stations. That is the FMCSA administrator doing roadside inspections alongside state officers. That is not something that happens at agencies run by career administrators who measure tenure in press releases.

At the Truckload Carriers Association convention in February 2026, Barrs told carrier executives that the agency is going to bite off more than it can chew but the team is going to keep chewing, and that the work done over the prior few months is just the beginning of what is planned to clean up the mess inside this industry. Outgoing TCA President Jim Ward told Barrs on stage at the same convention that when he had asked Barrs during his confirmation process what he could do for the truckload industry, Barrs answered enforce regulations, and that he was doing a great job at it. 

The administration has been deliberate in recruiting private-sector tools into the enforcement effort. Three hundred fifty FMCSA investigators cannot cover 700,000 trucking companies without a robust commercial intelligence infrastructure. The FMCSA has made efforts to integrate commercial data tools into its federal enforcement workflows. Those kinds of partnerships recognize what the industry has long known. The data to identify dangerous carriers, chameleon operators, fraudulent process agents, and unqualified drivers exists in real time in commercial databases. Enforcement agencies that leave those tools on the table are choosing to be less effective than they could be. This administration is not making that choice.

Monday on FreightWaves, we are releasing our full interview with FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs discussing the year in review. The conversation covers what the administration built in twelve months, what he found when he stepped inside the agency after 35 years watching it from the outside, what implementing these reforms across 50 states and 700,000 carriers actually looked like on the ground, where the personnel and resource gaps still are, and where the agenda goes from here. If you operate in this industry, employ drivers, underwrite trucking risk, or litigate crashes, you should read it.

The cases still in litigation represent people who died before these reforms took effect. Their families deserve the accountability the system owes them and that work is proceeding in courtrooms across the country. The regulatory infrastructure that produced those deaths is being rebuilt in real time by the most active and aggressive administration in the history of American commercial motor vehicle safety policy.

Three days ago marked the one-year anniversary of the executive order that started it. On Monday, we hear from the man running the FMCSA about what year two looks like.

The post How an Executive Order reshaped highway safety appeared first on FreightWaves.

The change began around 2021. That is when fraud moved into the transaction itself. Loads were no longer being taken from yards or truck stops. They were being redirected before pickup ever happened. Identities were copied. Emails were manipulated. Legitimate companies were used as cover. The freight still moved, but control changed hands early.

This was not caused by a single tactic. It came from a system built for speed. Digital onboarding increased. Remote communication replaced in-person checks calls. Processes stayed the same while exposure increased. When the market slowed, the pressure to move quickly remained. That imbalance created an opening that continues to be exploited.

this started years ago, not weeks ago

What we are seeing now is not a new wave. It is the result of steady expansion. Early cases showed what was possible. Over time, those methods were repeated, tested, and refined. The activity spread across lanes, commodities, and regions without needing to change much at the surface level.

Groups behind these thefts are not relying on force. They are relying on consistency. The same patterns continue to work because they fit inside normal workflows. That is what makes them effective. They do not disrupt operations. They blend into them.

By the time attention reaches a national level, these methods are established. They have moved volume, created losses, and done most of the damage before they are formally recognized.

the risk is no longer physical

The supply chain was designed to keep freight moving with minimal friction. That design does not account for someone entering the process under false identity. Once access is gained, the rest of the system functions as expected. That is where control is lost.

This type of exposure does not show up the way traditional theft does. There is no immediate signal that something is wrong. The issue is only visible after the handoff has already taken place. At that point, options are limited and recovery becomes unlikely.

Parts of the industry have already adjusted to this reality. Verification is being applied at more than one point in the shipment. Identity is being confirmed closer to execution, not just at onboarding. The focus has shifted from appearance to proof.

The FBI raising concern brings attention, but it does not change the timeline. This has already been in motion. The gap is between when the problem began and when it became widely acknowledged.

Closing that gap is what matters now.

Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phillip Brink.

The post The FBI is late to cargo theft, the industry isn’t appeared first on FreightWaves.

A MOU and the path to 500 Autonomous Trucks

The first step involves a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The MOU outlines the path to autonomous scale. The final commercial terms and timing for a binding agreement are expected to close later this year. Once finalized, the deal will help Hirschbach scale a nationwide network estimated to create 500 million driverless miles. For Aurora, this establishes a multi-year revenue stream, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“When early adopters see the benefits the Aurora Driver delivers for their business and their drivers, they don’t just stay the course – they scale quickly,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora. “We’ve been lucky to have such a thoughtful and innovative partner since our early days and we look forward to growing with them. The industry is primed for this product, and our momentum toward meaningful commercial revenue is hitting a new gear.”

Driver as a Service Model Powers the Hybrid Network

Hirschbach is a leader in the refrigerated space and has 2,948 power units according to FMCSA SAFER data. The carrier will subscribe to Aurora’s Driver as a Service (DaaS) model, where Hirschbach owns the assets while Aurora supplies the virtual driver.

The release notes, “Customers have control and ownership over assets in DaaS, allowing them to maximize Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings while Aurora benefits from an expected high-margin and capital-efficient business.”

“The Aurora Driver will provide consistent 24/7 service to our customers, making it an important growth lever for our business,” said Richard Stocking, CEO of Hirschbach Motor Lines. “But autonomy isn’t just a business move – it’s a quality-of-life investment for our people. The Aurora Driver will handle the lengthier, less desirable routes, providing our drivers with greater flexibility. It’s a win-win.”

Hirschbach is an important customer for Aurora’s 1,000-mile route between Fort Worth and Phoenix. Aurora has delivered over 2,000 loads for Hirschbach totaling over 800,000 miles to date.

The expansion strategy is part of a hybrid network, with autonomous trucks handling long-haul Sun Belt routes, allowing Hirschbach drivers more focus on shorter routes and getting them home daily.

Hirschbach enlisted the help of its million-mile drivers in evaluating Aurora’s virtual driver performance before the launch of Aurora’s driverless operations along its inaugural Dallas-to-Houston route.

“We’re proud to deploy a hybrid network with our drivers and autonomous trucks as we move toward a safer, more efficient future for refrigerated freight,” added Stocking.

The post Aurora and Hirschbach expand partnership for 500 Aurora Driver-powered trucks appeared first on FreightWaves.

From geopolitical disruptions in the Middle East to upcoming enforcement events and summer demand patterns, the discussion highlighted a market transitioning from recovery into a more durable tightening cycle. Here are five key takeaways:

Iran conflict driving fuel volatility, but not derailing demand

Fuller said the ongoing conflict in Iran is having a clear impact on fuel markets, though the broader freight economy remains resilient.

“All of it is tied to Iran… high oil prices are a factor at Iran… but there’s nothing in any of the data that says that higher fuel costs… is sapping the U.S. economy,” Fuller said

Strickland noted that diesel volatility has been reactive to geopolitical developments, especially around the Strait of Hormuz.

“We saw this pretty significant spike in retail diesel… and then as we started to see the end of the military conflict… the price of diesel came down,” Strickland said.

Fuller, emphasizing that fuel costs alone are not dictating freight pricing power, said the “tightness in capacity enables motor carriers to have pricing power… not necessarily diesel.”

Strickland added that carriers are still recovering fuel costs through rates in a tightening environment. “If you look at what the rates are… you’ve been able to recover all of that and potentially more,” he said

April: inflection point or seasonal “speed bump”?

Both executives pushed back on the idea that April’s softer trends signal a reversal.

“April has been… just kind of a sideline,” Strickland said. “It’s not up and to the right the way we saw it in March.”

Fuller countered that the market remains far stronger than year-ago levels.

“We’re talking about rejection rates… at 12.7%… these are levels that we haven’t seen in years,” Fuller said.

He also pointed to stronger macro signals underpinning freight. “You’re starting to see broader economic data… indicating much stronger activity than most people expected.”

Strickland framed April as a typical seasonal trough rather than a turning point.

“April is historically a weak month… you end up in May with a massive acceleration,” Strickland said.

Roadcheck could tighten already constrained capacity

Looking ahead, both warned that the upcoming CVSA International Roadcheck could meaningfully disrupt capacity.

“We’re going to see capacity come off the roads… more than usual,” Fuller said.

He added that stricter enforcement and compliance scrutiny are already influencing driver behavior.

“Drivers know that the DOT is getting directives to really crack down… so I think we’re going to see more capacity taken off the road,” Fuller said.

Strickland said the impact could be amplified by an already tight market, adding “there is very little excess capacity… so the market is much more sensitive.”

Fuller expects rejection rates to spike during the enforcement period.

“We will get into the 16%–17% range for a week,” he said.

Summer demand signals point to stronger freight cycle

Both executives highlighted strong indicators heading into peak summer shipping.

“Demand has gotten stronger… and we’re seasonally about to go into a much stronger demand cycle,” Strickland said.

Fuller pointed to structural drivers beyond traditional retail.

“June is the biggest month of the year… you have produce, construction, industrial production—all coming together,” Fuller said.

He also emphasized that industrial activity—not consumer retail—is driving the current cycle. “What’s been driving this market is not consumer retail… it is largely industrial,” Fuller said.

Strickland added that volumes are already showing strength — “volumes are up 11% year over year… probably 12% to 13% now.”

Risks and opportunities shaping the road ahead

The webinar closed with a look at structural shifts that could reshape the freight market.

Fuller pointed to regulatory and legal risks, including broker liability and compliance crackdowns.

“This is going to be probably the biggest story of the summer… it will completely change the way brokers operate,” Fuller said.

He also highlighted capacity constraints tied to regulation, adding “you’re talking about the net impact… as much as 600,000 to 800,000 drivers.” 

Strickland noted that rate pressure is already building.

“We’re already at about a 10% increase… and we’re going to see that grow throughout the year,” Strickland said.

Fuller said the market has clearly moved past the downturn.

“There is no freight recession right now… we are clearly done with it,” he said.

The post State of Freight: Freight recession ‘over’ as demand builds into summer  appeared first on FreightWaves.

Schneider (NYSE: SNDR) reported adjusted earnings per share of 12 cents, 2 cents above the consensus estimate but 4 cents lower year over year. Consolidated revenue of $1.4 billion was flat y/y and just shy of the $1.42 billion consensus estimate.

Truckload revenue increased 1% y/y (excluding fuel surcharges) to $618 million as average trucks in service dipped 1% and revenue per truck per week increased 3%. The company noted utilization gains across both its network and dedicated fleets.

The TL unit reported a 96.7% adjusted operating ratio, which was 80 basis points worse y/y.

“In the first quarter, we saw the impact of structural supply rationalization which is driving the market toward more normal conditions,” said President and CEO Mark Rourke in a news release. “Strong execution on our cost and productivity actions, as well as the benefits of operating a diverse, nimble portfolio, allowed us to capitalize on opportunities and effectively navigate a quarter marked by disruptive weather and fuel volatility.”

Schneider reiterated 2026 adjusted EPS guidance of 70 cents to $1. The range bracketed an 85-cent consensus estimate at the time of the print. (The company reported full-year 2025 adjusted EPS of 63 cents.)

Shares of SNDR were up 1.8% in afterhours trading on Thursday.

The company will host a call to discuss first-quarter results at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs
• Saia eyes margin turnaround amid improving demand
• Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2

The post First look: Schneider National Q1 results appeared first on FreightWaves.

DHL Express (XETRA: DHL) revenues slumped 1.9% to 6 billion euros, equivalent to $7 billion, but earnings before taxes and interest jumped 20.6% due to aggressive capacity management, cost discipline and yield management, according to financial results released on Thursday. Adjusted revenue was up 2%. Express has recorded seven consecutive quarters of operating profit as it ramps up its Fit for Growth campaign, which aims to take out more than $1.2 billion in structural costs over three years.

The revenue and profit increase was achieved even as average daily shipment volume for the time-definite international air product fell 6%, thanks to increased weight per shipment. Weight is a core metric for assessing asset utilization and network profitability because sales are substantially based on weight and yield. TDI weight per shipment is up 4.4% since 2019 and 2.9% year over year, excluding U.S. destinations — a big improvement from recent quarters.  

“This higher profitability, despite lower shipments, is not a coincidence, but the result of how we steer sales, pricing, and network cost in close alignment,” said Chief Financial Officer Melanie Kreis during an earnings briefing with analysts.

DHL’s investment in more modern, fuel-efficient Boeing 777 freighter aircraft since 2019, including the addition of several new 777-300 converted freighters in recent months, also played a role in margin expansion, CEO Tobias Meyer added. And the company is using artificial intelligence to better judge which vehicles need ad hoc repairs, as well as regular maintenance and tire renewal, which reduces repair shop visits and costs.

The Iran war, which began on Feb. 28, had little impact on DHL’s overall earnings during the quarter, he said.

By rerouting freighter aircraft and making other network adjustments, the division was able to respond to Iran war impacts and maintain service for customers. DHL , for example, was forced to temporarily suspend operations at its regional hub in Bahrain, but shifted the dedicated fleet to airports in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Muscat, Oman, several days after the conflict started. Some long-range aircraft were relocated to Europe so they could be better utilized. The parcel and logistics titan also heavily leaned on its road network to move shipments from those airports to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. 

DHL made a similar pivot for container shipments managed by the Global Forwarding division. As ocean carriers diverted to ports in Oman and on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast to offload import traffic, DHL secured extra trucking capacity to distribute goods around the Gulf region. 

Weak jet-fuel availability, especially in Asia, is a growing concern as the war cuts off tanker shipments to many parts of the world. DHL has to buy fuel in the commercial market at Asian airports, unlike in Europe where it has direct supply contracts with energy providers. DHL has the option to fuel up planes at origin destinations so there is enough fuel for the outbound leg, but that is only possible for regional and short-haul flights, Meyer explained. Tankering doesn’t work for intercontinental flights because it would reduce too much payload.

Established pricing and surcharge mechanisms will allow DHL to pass on conflict-related costs to customers as recovery charges kick in over time, the company said. 

Global Forwarding revenue declined 5% due to lower freight rates. Capacity shortages, including at Middle East airlines, and higher oil prices resulting from the conflict in the Middle East caused freight rates to rise again significantly at the end of the quarter.  Airfreight volumes increased 3.8% to 438,000 metric tons, driven primarily by the Asia-Europe trade lane and exports from Latin America. Air freight revenues decreased 2.2%.

Ocean freight demand moved up 2% year over year to 804,000 standard shipping units, with growth particularly strong from Asia to Europe. Ocean freight revenue and gross profit decreased by 16.5% and 17.5%, respectively, during the quarter, reflecting the normalization of market freight rates underway since 2025. 

Supply Chain revenue grew 5.7% thanks to new customers, contract renewals and continued expansion of e-commerce activities, led by the Americas region, DHL said. 

DHL eCommerce, which provides parcel delivery, returns and international shipping customized for online merchants, generated 11% less revenue than in the prior year period due to negative currency effects and not including UK contributions so the Evri merger in September doesn’t skew comparisons. Absent those factors, revenue increased by 4.9%. 

Group adjusted revenue, excluding currency impacts, has gradually improved over the past year and was up 2% year over year during the first quarter. The company reaffirmed full-year guidance of $7.25 billion of operating profit.

Meyer said U.S group revenue could grow the remainder of the year as the effects of frontloaded shipments to avoid U.S. tariffs in 2025 subside.

DHL Group’s capital expenditure during the quarter totaled $605.75 million, up 12.4% y/y, with most of the investments directed to the Supply Chain and Post & Parcel Germany divisions. An ongoing modernization program in the mail and parcel operations in Germanyhelped Deutsche Post handle a spike in mail and parcel shipments during the Easter and spring season. The capex growth stands in contrast to rival integrators FedEx and UPS, which are reducing investment in assets to reduce costs and increase profitability. DHL continues to invest as part of its 2030 growth strategy in efficiency and fast-growth sectors and regions, such as  life science & healthcare, data centers and the Middle East. By the end of 2025, for example, the share of electric vehicles used for pickup and delivery in Germany reached nearly 60%.

European trucking

Earlier this month, DHL Freight rolled out a more differentiated trucking product to give customers better choice. Road Freight Standard is the default option for less-than-truckload shipments and covers the majority of routine transport needs with DHL’s European freight network. Road Freight Priority is a premium product for time-critical international LTL shipments that combines prioritized handling, enhanced pick-up and delivery options and defined transit time commitments. Road Freight Direct provides customized partial truckload and full truckload point-to-point service for dedicated shipments. 

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

RELATED STORIES:

How DHL tackled mail and parcel boom during peak Easter season

DHL prioritizes own cargo jets for pharmaceuticals transport 

The post DHL Group boosts profit despite lower shipment volumes, revenue appeared first on FreightWaves.

While global competitors in Europe and Asia are grappling with surging gas prices and heavy war-risk premiums, the United States is emerging as a structural winner in heavy manufacturing. 

The catalyst? The unique mechanics of “associated gas” – natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil drilling.

As elevated global crude oil (WTI) prices incentivize more domestic oil drilling, natural gas is flooding U.S. pipelines. With limited export relief valves, Henry Hub gas prices are actually dropping, giving American manufacturers a massive energy cost advantage over their global peers.

This industrial boom is already showing up in domestic freight market data. High-frequency SONAR indices confirm a sharp industrial mix shift favoring open-deck transport over consumer goods. 

Flatbed volumes (STVIF.USA) have skyrocketed 42% compared to their 6-month average, radically outpacing the 12% growth seen in dry van volumes (STVI.USA). This divergence is mirrored in pricing power: flatbed rates (FTI.USA) have surged 45% to an average of $3.97/mi, leaving van rate growth in the rearview mirror. 

The U.S. is rapidly capturing global market share in chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, metals and defense manufacturing – and flatbed carriers are reaping the immediate benefits. 

Want to understand how this geopolitical shift will reshape domestic supply chains and your routing guides? Read the full sitrep by signing up for SONAR or request a demo here.

The full report includes deeper dives into:

• The Associated Gas Feedback Loop: The physics and supply surge mechanics keeping U.S. energy costs suppressed while global benchmarks spike.
• Sector-by-Sector Cost Advantage Analysis: A breakdown of the specific manufacturing sectors positioned for the most explosive growth. 
• Shifting Manufacturing Postures: How the structural divergence in energy costs is permanently altering long-term industrial strategies.
• Actionable Freight Forecasting: Deeper analysis on the widening gap between flatbed and van metrics, and what it means for capacity planning in the coming quarters.

Sign up for SONAR today to access the full Freight Intelligence Report and keep your supply chain ahead of the curve.

The post SONAR Sitrep: US industrials, freight unexpected winners in Iran war appeared first on FreightWaves.

While there has been little diplomatic progress between Washington and Tehran toward ending the conflict, the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by United States forces has been fueling (pun intended) higher ocean prices during a traditional lull prior to the start of the peak shipping season. 

Asia-U.S. West Coast spot rates increased 1% to $2,675 per forty foot equivalent unit (FEU), according to the Freightos Baltic Index. Asia-U.S. East Coast prices rose 3% to $3,939 per FEU.

The SONAR Ocean Booking Index shows a gradual climb from the start of the war Feb. 28, just after the conclusion of Lunar New Year, from 16,166 to 22,951. 

“Increased fuel costs from the Strait of Hormuz closure continues to keep container rates elevated during the post-Lunar New Year, pre-peak season, low demand season for ocean freight when prices normally reach their floor for the year,” said Freightos (NASDAQ: CRGO) Research Head Judah Levine, in a note to clients. “Even with this pressure, however, rates are well below spikes caused by recent disruptions like the Red Sea crisis and trade war frontloading.” 

That contrasts with Asia-Europe rates that eased 3% to both North Europe and the Mediterranean. While prices on both lanes climbed by several hundred dollars in the first weeks of the war, North Europe rates of $2,668 per FEU are just 8% higher than before the war and Mediterranean prices at $3,527 per FEU are 3% lower than in late February, Levine said. 

He noted that Maersk (OTC: AMKBY) recently cancelled an upcoming general rate increase (GRI) for Asia-Europe, and carriers have started to announce more blanked sailings, to manage capacity. 

“War-related rate increase attempts have not succeeded in keeping prices on these lanes much above their pre-war baselines,” said Levine, “but upward pressure from the conflict is likely keeping rates higher than they otherwise would be.”

Asia-Europe rates are more than 15% higher year-on-year for both lanes, and more than 50% above October levels, the most recent low-demand period. 

Slowly improving demand has helped carriers steadily push up rates on the trans-Pacific and prevent backsliding since late February. The current West Coast price is 45% higher than at the start of the war, and almost 90% higher than post-peak season levels back in October. East Coast prices are 30% higher than pre-war, and 30% better than October.

“Nonetheless, even with these increases, the low demand and high capacity environment – and possibly the moderate easing of oil and bunker rates compared to earlier highs since the start of the war in Iran  – has not allowed rates to rise to the full announced GRI or various surcharge levels,” he said. 

At the same time, the Persian Gulf crisis this week sent oil prices to new record highs as Brent crude increased to $121 a barrel for June contracts. The volatile market has in turn pushed up prices at U.S. pumps, to well over $5 a gallon for diesel.

Levine said that the next significant rate increases across these lanes could come in June or July with the start of peak season. But, he added, war-related rising costs for consumers could damp shipper expectations and depress peak season volumes. 

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Uncertainty the new baseline, as the Port of Virginia plans to meet the moment

Trump extends Jones Act waiver for 90 days

The Iran conflict sent Asia-US shipping rates soaring thousands of miles away. Here’s why.

Why ‘grossly inefficient’ U.S. ports need automation, and the danger in a new Arctic sea route

The post Make it make sense: Low demand, rising rates on the trans-Pacific appeared first on FreightWaves.

Share gains in local accounts (SMBs), more customers using premium services and several AI-led efficiency initiatives are moving the needle for the Greenwich, Connecticut-based company. XPO is “hearing more positivity” from customers around capacity needs, which could propel operating ratios below 80%. 

XPO (NYSE: XPO) reported first-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.01, which was 13 cents ahead of the consensus estimate and 28 cents higher year over year. The adjusted EPS number excluded transaction and restructuring costs. A lower tax rate was roughly a 5-cent tailwind in the period.

Consolidated revenue of $2.1 billion was 7% higher y/y and better than the $2.04 billion consensus estimate.

XPO’s LTL revenue increased 5% y/y to $1.23 billion. Revenue was 6% higher on a per-day comparison. Tonnage came in flat y/y with revenue per hundredweight (yield) moving 5% higher. (Yield was up 4% y/y excluding fuel surcharges.) A 3% decline in weight per shipment and a 1% increase in length of haul were tailwinds to the yield metric.

Revenue per shipment (excluding fuel) increased 1% y/y, however, a mix shift to local accounts weighed on the calculation. These customers typically have smaller shipments sizes (lower revenue per bill), but pricing among the group is very accretive to margins. Further, management noted on a Thursday quarterly call that contract rate renewals were up by a mid- to high-single-digit percentage in the quarter.

The company is forecasting no y/y change to tonnage in the second quarter. April tonnage was down 1% y/y but tracked ahead of normal sequential patterns. Weight per shipment was up in the month and also ahead of normal seasonality.

Yield and revenue per shipment (excluding fuel) are expected to improve sequentially and y/y for the rest of the year. Management expects second-quarter yield to be “comfortably ahead” of the mid-single-digit increase seen in the first quarter. XPO’s improved service offering along with better freight selection are driving above-market pricing.

Something starting with a 7?

The LTL segment reported an 83.9% adjusted operating ratio (inverse of operating margin), which was 200 basis points better y/y and 50 bps better than the seasonally stronger fourth quarter. (The unit normally registers 50 bps of sequential margin deterioration in the first quarter.)

Revenue per shipment outpaced adjusted cost per shipment by 230 bps in the quarter. As a percentage of revenue, wages and benefits expenses declined 20 bps y/y, purchased transportation expenses moved 70 bps lower, and insurance and claims costs fell 60 bps.

Management noted a “clear line of sight” to an OR in the 70s.

It normally sees 250 to 300 bps of sequential margin improvement in the second quarter, but it expects “to comfortably outperform the high end of that range [80.9%]” this year. The outperformance would likely bring about a positive revision to its full-year margin outlook, which calls for only 100 to 150 bps of y/y improvement.

XPO’s European transportation segment reported an 11% y/y increase in revenue to $868 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $33 million was 3% higher y/y.

Shares of XPO were up 0.4% at 2:14 p.m. EDT on Thursday compared to the S&P 500, which was up 0.9%. The stock is up 57% year-to-date.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Saia eyes margin turnaround amid improving demand
• Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2
• Landstar says April yields ‘significantly’ outpacing seasonality

The post XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs appeared first on FreightWaves.

The closures and layoffs are tied to the sale of RNDC key assets to Reyes Beverage Group, according to WARN filings and company documents.

Texas-based RNDC, a major wine and spirits distributor, said the moves could impact thousands of workers nationwide, as it exits multiple markets and transfers operations to Reyes, one of the largest beverage distributors in the country.

RNDC has issued conditional Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices affecting employees across multiple states, with total job cuts expected to reach as high as 4,677 positions, according to documents reviewed by FreightWaves.

Asset sale reshapes national footprint

The transaction spans at least seven markets, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, significantly shrinking RNDC’s geographic footprint while expanding Reyes’ presence in wine and spirits distribution .

Company filings indicate that while some employees may receive job offers from Reyes, there is no guarantee of continued employment, prompting WARN notices across affected facilities.

In Texas alone, RNDC plans to cut 1,903 jobs across five cities, including:

• Grand Prairie: 689
• Houston: 588
• San Antonio: 372
• Austin: 164
• Corpus Christi: 90

In South Carolina, the company will permanently close its Lexington-area facility, affecting 451 employees.

Florida filings show potential layoffs across four major facilities, including Deerfield Beach, Jacksonville, Pensacola and Tampa, totaling more than 1,000 impacted workers.

In Virginia, RNDC plans to shut down its Ashland distribution facility, affecting 428 employees.

Data box: RNDC facility closures and layoffs

The post US alcohol distributor shutters major operations, cuts 4,600 jobs appeared first on FreightWaves.

Saia (NASDAQ: SAIA) reported first-quarter earnings per share of $1.86 on Thursday before the market opened. The result was flat year over year and 4 cents ahead of the consensus estimate. A lower tax rate was a 2-cent tailwind.

Revenue increased 2% y/y to $806 million, which was $18 million better than analysts’ expectations. Executives said on a quarterly call that customers are “getting more positive” and that many of its legacy service centers are again seeing growth given the optionality a national footprint provides.

Tonnage fell 2% y/y in the quarter as a 1% increase in shipments was offset by a 3% decline in weight per shipment. Revenue per hundredweight (yield) increased 4% (2% higher excluding fuel surcharges). The lower average shipment weight was a tailwind to the yield metric.

The first quarter contended with a tough prior-year tonnage comp (plus-12.8%). On a y/y comparison, tonnage fell by 7% in January and 2.7% in February. Tonnage was up 2.8% in March. Management said volume improvement in late-March helped offset some of the weather disruptions in January and February. Saia’s terminal network has a high concentration across the South, which was significantly impacted by the storms.

The March strength continued into April as tonnage increased 6.5% y/y. The prior-year comps eased in April (plus-4.4%) and turn negative in May. Weight per shipment improved throughout the quarter.

Contractual renewals averaged 6.7% in the quarter (up 12.8% on a two-year-stacked comp). Revenue per shipment (excluding fuel) was down 1% y/y, but improved sequentially through the quarter.

Q2 guide implies 87.5% OR

The company reported a 91.7% first-quarter operating ratio (inverse of operating margin), which was 60 basis points worse y/y and 40 bps worse than the adjusted fourth-quarter OR of 91.3% (excludes a one-time insurance item). The company previously said it hoped to outperform normal sequential OR deterioration of 30 to 50 bps.

The spread in cost per shipment and revenue per shipment was negative by 130 bps in the quarter. However, that was much smaller than the 560-bp negative spread booked in the fourth quarter.

Salaries, wages and benefits expenses (as a percentage of revenue) were 60 bps lower y/y even as health insurance costs and workers’ comp claims moved higher. Improved productivity (shipment touches down 2.5%) allowed for a 6.3% y/y reduction in headcount (7.9% lower excluding linehaul drivers). Salaries and wages costs moved 1.8% lower y/y due to the productivity improvements.

Depreciation and amortization expenses were 20 bps higher y/y given previous terminal and equipment additions. The company’s roughly 40 new facilities are operating at upper-90s ORs.

Saia normally sees 250 to 300 bps of sequential margin improvement in the second quarter. However, it’s calling for 400 to 450 bps of improvement this year (assuming normal seasonal demand trends). Firming volumes and a lower starting point are behind the outlook. The guide implies an 87.5% OR at the midpoint, which would be slightly better y/y.  

A full-year net capex range of $350 million to $400 million was reiterated. Net capex was $544 million in 2025 and $1.05 billion in 2024.

Shares of SAIA were up 5.7% at noon EDT on Thursday compared to the S&P 500, which was up 0.5%. The stock is up over 30% year-to-date.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2
• Landstar says April yields ‘significantly’ outpacing seasonality
• ArcBest seeing positive trends amid market inflection

The post Saia eyes margin turnaround amid improving demand appeared first on FreightWaves.

REGISTER NOW: Secure your seat for the Future of Rail Symposium

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – FreightWaves and TrainsPRO have announced the Future of Rail Symposium: The Decade Ahead, an exclusive one-day summit for rail industry executives, stakeholders, and regulators. The event will take place on July 28, 2026, at The Signal at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

As the North American rail industry reaches a critical inflection point driven by reshoring trends and rapid technological advancement, the symposium serves as a high-level forum to discuss the strategy, policy, and execution required for rail networks to compete and win over the next decade.

Keynote and Featured Sessions

The program will be headlined by Surface Transportation Board Chairman Patrick Fuchs, who will deliver the opening keynote on the federal regulatory outlook for rail.

The agenda features deep-dive sessions tailored for industry professionals, including:

• Merger Insights: A look at how the proposed Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern transcontinental merger aims to break structural barriers to growth.
• Manufacturing Renaissance: CSX will discuss the railroad’s industrial development pipeline and the impact of reshoring in the Southeast and elsewhere on its system.
• Regulatory Friction: A panel featuring Ian Jefferies (AAR) and Karl Alexy (FRA) on how modern technology—from autonomous vehicles to track inspection—clashes with legacy regulations.
• The Operating Ratio Debate: Trains Magazine Editor Bill Stephens and analyst Rick Paterson will explore how Wall Street’s focus on the operating ratio limits Class I railroad service. Cando Rail & Terminals will explain how its first- and last-mile business model is one way to solve the carload growth problem.

Why Attend?

Designed specifically for C-suite leadership, government officials, and rail shippers, the symposium offers a unique “working forum” environment. Attendees will gain access to SONAR market intelligence regarding intermodal trends and witness rapid-fire demos of the latest rail technologies.

Event Logistics

Registration includes the full one-day symposium program, access to all keynote sessions, and a concluding Networking Happy Hour with speakers, sponsors, and rail executives.

Click here for more information and to view the full agenda.

The post STB chairman, industry leaders to headline Future of Rail Symposium appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is now testing camera samples from Bosch. It has also completed early prototype integrations into its SensorPods. Those are the proprietary modules that house the company’s autonomous driving sensors. Kodiak is further evaluating vehicle actuation components from the supplier.

Hardware Work Accelerates

The partnership aims to create a production-ready autonomous platform. It will also support high-volume deployment of trucks running the Kodiak Driver. Two key factors needed for commercialization and scaling ambitions.

“The quick transition to tangible engineering progress underscores the velocity behind this collaboration,” said Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak AI. “By validating Bosch’s sensors and components, we are deep into the ‘how’ of high-volume production. Our rapid progress is proving we have the shared ability to execute on the roadmap to industrialize the Kodiak Driver at scale.”

Bosch ranks as the world’s largest automotive supplier. It brings a broad portfolio that includes automotive-grade sensors and other components. Such partnerships are critical for self-driving truck companies that need reliable hardware at commercial scale.

“Our progress highlights our readiness to move from strategic alignment to industrial execution as we work to bring scaled autonomous trucking to fruition,” said Peter Tadros, regional president of Power Solutions at Bosch North America. “This cooperation has accelerated and deepened our understanding of real-world autonomous vehicle requirements and helped us forge a path for scaling redundant autonomous driving technology for the entire ecosystem.”

Kodiak’s SensorPods now feature prototype sensor integrations developed with Bosch components. The platform combines specialized hardware, firmware and software interfaces needed to run the Kodiak Driver on trucks. The system can be installed on the assembly line or through an upfitter.

Public Markets and Permian Operations

Kodiak went public in September through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corp. II. The combined company was valued at about $2.5 billion. Kodiak currently operates a fleet of autonomous trucks in the Permian Basin under an agreement with Atlas Energy Solutions.

Kodiak’s SensorPod technology with Bosch hardware samples will be on display May 3-6 at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas.

The post Kodiak AI and Bosch begin hardware deliveries for autonomous trucks appeared first on FreightWaves.

XPO (NYSE: XPO) reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.01, 13 cents ahead of the consensus estimate and 28 cents higher year over year. The adjusted EPS result excluded transaction and restructuring costs. A lower tax rate was roughly a 5-cent tailwind in the quarter.

Consolidated revenue of $2.1 billion was 7% higher y/y and above the $2.04 billion consensus estimate.

Click for full story – “XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs”

The company’s LTL unit reported a 5% y/y revenue increase to $1.23 billion. Revenue was 6% higher on a per-day comparison. A slight tonnage increase coupled with a 5% increase in revenue per hundredweight (yield) drove the result. (Yield was up 4% y/y excluding fuel surcharges.)

The change in tonnage was driven by a 3% increase in daily shipments, which was mostly offset by a 2.7% decline in weight per shipment. Lower shipment weights and a 1% increase in length of haul positively impacted the yield metric. Revenue per shipment (excluding fuel) increased 1% y/y.

The company credited “profitable market share gains” and “above-market pricing growth” for the improvements.

Click for full story – “XPO could soon see sub-80% ORs”

The segment reported an 83.9% adjusted operating ratio (inverse of operating margin), which was 200 basis points better y/y and 50 bps better than the seasonally stronger fourth quarter. (The unit normally records 50 bps of sequential deterioration in the first quarter.)

Sequentially, revenue per day increased 3% from the fourth quarter as tonnage per day was up 5% and yield slid 2%. (The yield metric was negatively impacted by a sequential increase in shipment weights and a decline in length of haul.)

XPO’s European transportation segment reported an 11% y/y increase in revenue to $868 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $33 million was 3% higher y/y.

“We’re continuing to deliver robust incremental margins and industry-leading operating ratio improvement, with the greatest upside still ahead,” said Mario Harik, chairman and CEO, in a news release. “We have a clear path to compounding earnings growth and accelerating free cash flow generation, with returns amplified as freight demand recovers.”

Shares of XPO were up 1% in premarket trading on Thursday.

XPO will host a call at 8:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday to discuss first-quarter results.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2
• Landstar says April yields ‘significantly’ outpacing seasonality
• ArcBest seeing positive trends amid market inflection

The post First look: XPO cruises past Q1 expectations appeared first on FreightWaves.

You have known this was coming since February when CVSA announced the dates. You knew the focus areas at the same time. The driver focus for 2026 is ELD tampering, falsification, or manipulation. The vehicle focus is on cargo securement. Neither of those should require you to scramble right now. If they do, the scramble is the symptom and not the disease.

Since its inception in 1988, more than 1.4 million roadside inspections have been conducted during International Roadcheck. This is not a new event. It is not an ambush. It is a scheduled, publicly announced, annual enforcement initiative that has operated on the same basic model for nearly four decades. Fleets that treat it as a surprise every May have a compliance culture problem that three days of inspectors on the interstate are revealing.

The 2025 Roadcheck produced 56,178 inspections across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Inspectors discovered 13,553 vehicle out-of-service violations and 3,317 driver out-of-service violations. The vehicle out-of-service rate was 18.1 percent and the driver out-of-service rate was 5.9 percent. Nearly one in five vehicles inspected got parked on the shoulder. Brake systems topped the list of vehicle out-of-service violations, accounting for 24.4 percent of all vehicle OOS findings. When combined with the 20 percent defective brakes category, brake-related issues made up more than 40 percent of all vehicle out-of-service violations. 

Brakes. Again. Every year. The same defect category that has topped this list for longer than most people currently in the trucking industry have been alive. And this year, while the focus areas are ELD tampering and cargo securement, brake systems accounted for 3,304 out-of-service violations in 2025, with 20 percent of defective brakes ranking third among all vehicle out-of-service categories. Focus areas change. Brakes do not go away. That is the data telling you something consistent and important about where the real preventive maintenance gaps live in this industry. 

Now let me tell you about the $77,000 fine, because that story is more relevant to your operation than any Roadcheck statistic.

A carrier had a brake defect on a Driver Vehicle Inspection Report. The driver did the right thing, found the defect, documented it and submitted the DVIR. That is exactly what the system is supposed to do. The defect notation sat in that DVIR. Nobody fixed it. The vehicle kept rolling. The driver continued to note the defect on subsequent DVIRs. The vehicle kept getting dispatched. A month went by. The defect was finally repaired.

FMCSA audited the carrier. The vehicle was pulled for review as part of the sample. The file review told the whole story: weeks of consecutive DVIR entries documenting an out-of-service level brake defect, the vehicle operating on public roads the entire time, dispatch records showing the truck was being assigned loads while the defect was known and documented and unresolved. FMCSA assessed a civil penalty for every day from the date of the initial defect report to the date of repair. The total came to $77,000.

That fine was not the result of a bad inspection. It was the result of a functional reporting system attached to a completely dysfunctional repair workflow. The DVIR did its job. The process around it did not.

Under 49 CFR 396.11, a driver is required to prepare a written report at the completion of each day’s work for each vehicle operated, identifying any defect or deficiency discovered or reported that would affect the vehicle’s safety in operation or result in a mechanical breakdown. Under 49 CFR 396.13, the next driver to operate that vehicle must review that report, sign it, and acknowledge awareness of any reported defects. Under 49 CFR 396.17, every commercial motor vehicle must be systematically inspected, repaired, and maintained, and parts and accessories must be in safe and proper operating condition at all times. The carrier in this case was compliant with the reporting requirement but completely noncompliant with the repair and maintenance obligation triggered by those reports.

This is the gap that exists in fleet maintenance programs across the industry and that is exposed during audits far more often than it is caught at a roadside inspection. The DVIR is a communication tool. It is the mechanism through which the driver, who has eyes on that vehicle every day, communicates the actual condition of the equipment to the people responsible for keeping it safe. When that communication flows into a system that reads it, acts on it, tracks the repair, closes the loop, and ensures the vehicle is not dispatched while an open defect remains unresolved, the system works. When the DVIR becomes a form that gets filed and not a trigger that gets actioned, you have documentation of your own liability and nothing else.

If you do not have a functioning DVIR workflow, you do not have a preventive maintenance program. If you do not have a preventive maintenance program, you certainly do not have a predictive maintenance program. That frontline visibility into your fleet that the daily pre-trip and post-trip inspection provides is the most valuable real-time data feed available to a fleet maintenance operation, and most of it is wasted because the system that captures it does not connect to the system that acts on it.

A solid DVIR program in 2026 does not mean paper forms in a filing cabinet. It means a digital inspection workflow where defect reports route automatically to maintenance queues, where each open defect has an owner and a timeline, where dispatch has visibility into open defects before assigning a vehicle to a load, where repairs close out in the same system that logged the defect, and where the entire history of that vehicle’s inspection and repair record is available in 30 seconds for an auditor or an attorney. Platforms like Fleetio, Samsara, Motive, and others have built exactly this workflow. It is not expensive relative to a $77,000 civil penalty and it is not complicated relative to the alternative.

For the 2026 Roadcheck driver inspection, inspectors will check the driver’s qualifications, license, record of duty status, medical examiner’s certificate, seat belt usage, skill performance evaluation certificate (if applicable), and status in the FMCSA Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse. Last year, falsification of the duty status record was the second-most-cited driver violation, with 58,382 nationwide. In 2025, 18,108 violations were issued for cargo not being secured to prevent leaking, spilling, blowing, or falling, and 16,054 violations were issued for vehicle components or dunnage not being secured. Those are the targets for this year. Those are also the issues that exist in your fleet 365 days a year, regardless of whether it is Roadcheck week. 

The safest fleets in this industry do not prepare for Roadcheck. They operate Roadcheck-ready all year and treat the three-day blitz as one more Tuesday rather than a compliance emergency. Those fleets have pre-trip and post-trip inspection programs that actually function. They have DVIR workflows that trigger repairs, not just documentation. They have dispatch processes that query vehicle status before assigning a load. They have maintenance teams that close out defect reports and create a documented repair record that survives an audit.

May 12 is 12 days away. You have time to tighten up the obvious stuff, walk your equipment with fresh eyes on cargo securement and brake condition, verify your drivers know what ELD tampering looks like and understand the consequences, and make sure your DVIR logs from the last 30 days do not tell a story you do not want told under a compliance review.

The DVIR program fix is not a 12-day project. It is a systems decision that protects you not from three days of Roadcheck inspections, but from the audit that can happen any day of any year, and from the discovery process in the litigation that follows a crash involving a truck whose defects were documented and ignored.

The $77,000 fine was paid. The vehicle eventually got fixed. The question for your operation is whether you have the workflow in place to ensure you never document your own liability one DVIR entry at a time.

The post CVSA Roadcheck in 12 days, is a $77,000 fine in your future? appeared first on FreightWaves.

The system will be showcased at the May 4-7 event in Las Vegas on a Volvo VNL 300 heavy-duty truck that produces 500 horsepower and 1,850 pound-feet of torque, with fuel efficiency closely comparable to that of diesel-powered models. The demonstration represents what Westport calls a critical step toward commercializing high-pressure direct injection (HPDI) technology for the North American market.

“Showcasing our next-generation high-pressure CNG system at ACT Expo marks a defining milestone for the future of clean transportation,” said Dan Sceli, chief executive of Westport. “By combining advanced high-pressure storage with Cespira’s proven HPDI fuel systems, we’re demonstrating that fleets can achieve diesel performance and efficiency using widely available natural gas.”

The Joint Venture Behind HPDI

The HPDI fuel system is managed through Cespira, a joint venture between Westport and Volvo Group launched about a year and a half ago. The technology is already commercially available in more than 30 countries, powering over 10,000 trucks worldwide using liquefied natural gas.

One defining feature of this technology is that it doesn’t replace a diesel engine. Rather, it’s modified to work with diesel engines.

“This is a diesel engine. It’s just running on natural gas,” Sceli said. “It’s not a new engine. There’s no new engine development. It’s a base diesel engine that is modified with our system — the injectors, the controls and whatnot — to run natural gas,” Sceli added.

The compression-ignition approach requires no spark plugs, no modifications to the transmission or cooling system, and no changes to engine maintenance schedules. This also helps when getting these trucks serviced.

“When this truck pulls into a service center, all those experienced diesel mechanics with all the diesel equipment — it’s a diesel engine coming in for service,” Sceli said.

Engineering for the North American Market

While HPDI has proven successful in Europe with LNG, North America’s infrastructure favors CNG because of its extensive pipeline network and stable pricing. Westport engineered a high-pressure (~700 bar) CNG platform specifically to address this market gap.

“North America is a compressed natural gas market. We have our pipelines, we have the infrastructure — lots of infrastructure,” Sceli said. “Natural gas is stable in price and there’s plenty of it.”

The abundance of natural gas in North America introduces additional fuel cost savings potential depending on the retail price of diesel. The release notes that Westport’s system on the demo truck offers a driving range of more than 600 miles and up to 10 miles per gallon equivalent.

The storage tanks used leverage technology originally developed for hydrogen applications. High-pressure tank valves, pressure relief devices and safety controls from Westport’s existing components business integrate with storage tanks originally engineered for hydrogen.

Sceli noted that one of the benefits of the original hydrogen use case is the high-pressure storage. Many companies invested in hydrogen storage capabilities, reducing the upfront research and development costs.

Additionally, the fact that CNG molecules are larger than hydrogen molecules also works in Westport’s favor, making them easier to contain and manage at high pressure.

A Bridge to Hydrogen

The HPDI system offers fuel versatility that extends beyond natural gas. With minimal hardware changes, the system can run on CNG, renewable natural gas or hydrogen.

Unlike fuel cells, HPDI-equipped engines do not require 99.999 percent pure hydrogen, eliminating the need for dedicated super-clean distribution systems and avoiding the costs of liquefying hydrogen for cryogenic transport.

“OEMs can integrate NG HPDI in the near term and subsequently leverage their existing HPDI engineering and manufacturing investments to extend the technology to other fuels as needed,” the company said.

Looking ahead, Westport currently has a demo truck gathering real-world data, with plans to launch demonstration projects with fleets in both the United States and Canada.

The next major milestone is Environmental Protection Agency certification, which Sceli identified as the primary step toward full commercialization.

The post Westport advances natural gas trucks with ACT Expo CNG system launch appeared first on FreightWaves.

“After completing the additional work requested by the STB, the facts remain clear: This merger enhances competition and delivers real public benefits that make America’s supply chain stronger,” said Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) Chief Executive Jim Vena, in a release. 

The STB in January rejected the railroads’ initial filing as incomplete, stating it failed to include market share forecast information, terms for UP’s withdrawal from the deal, and details of the sale of a switching railroad that handles critical interchange traffic between carriers.   

UP claimed that the new analysis in the updated application is the first in rail merger history to use traffic data provided by all six North American Class I railroads, rather than sample data from the STB, enabling “the most thorough assessment of market and operational impacts ever.” 

“This merger is fundamentally about growth,” said Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) President and CEO Mark George, in the release. “Shippers have been clear about what they value, and the data backs it up. When single-line rail service is available, they choose it. Our combined network will deliver seamless freight moves within and across the Mississippi watershed markets with one Class I railroad accountable from origin to destination.” 

An improving trucking market where rising rates historically lead shippers increasingly to use less expensive intermodal rail led the partners in the revised filing to bump up their projections for winning over highway freight from 2 million to 2.1 million truckloads annually. The shift will save shippers an estimated $3.5 billion a year, which the railroads say will flow through to consumer prices, making American goods more affordable.

Coast-to-coast route will cut transit times

The single-line route and accompanying reduction in freight handoffs, they say, means in-transit savings of 24-48 hours, although some industry executives expect even greater reductions. George in a recent presentation to a rail conference touted coast-to-coast service in just four days – the same as trucks. 

The amended application increases premium seven-day-a-week intermodal lanes from six to seven, including a new lane connecting northern California and the Southeast.

“The analysis also confirms the combined company will have sufficient equipment and infrastructure capacity available to support the projected growth,” the release stated.

The companies in the application also claim the merger will preserve customer access to competing railroads, “and will have no meaningful impact on geographic competition or on the availability of independent routes.”

Vena said projections show the combined railroad will move about the same number of ton-miles as BNSF (NYSE: BRK-B), its western competitor, currently handles. He said that emphasizes how the merger will enhance competition – a central requirement of the STB’s tougher requirements for mergers formulated in 2000 after a series of problematic rail takeovers.

A newly-consolidated carrier will require 1,200 net new union jobs by the third year of the merger to handle new business, up from 900 in the original application. That’s in addition to the “jobs-for-life” guarantee covering every union employee with a job at the time of the merger, even for members of unions such as the Teamsters, which oppose the deal.

The amended application includes more detailed market share projections that account for the growth the combined railroad expects to gain as shippers move traffic from trucks and other railroads.

It’s unclear whether a merger application has ever been rejected twice.

“The analysis confirms what we’ve been saying: Our merger will create strong growth by providing customers a superior service product, which in itself creates competition in the railroad industry,” George said. “The announcement of our merger alone has caused other railroads to respond with new offerings.” 

Under chairman Patrick Fuchs, who as a legislative aide to Sen. John Thune co-authored the most recent federal surface transportation funding legislation, the STB gathered more than 100 million separate pieces of data prior to the first application filing. Fuchs brought in specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help crunch the numbers, to ensure nothing is overlooked.

In the updated application, UP and NS say they will sell off their shares of the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. The carriers initially sought temporary controlling interest in TRRA, which handles interchange traffic among Class Is, in order to reduce their stakes over time.   

Subscribe to FreightWaves’ Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Anti-merger group launches as UP, NS prepare to refile application

Canadian National’s first-quarter profit slips

Corman’s Broyles new chair of short line rail trade group

Wabtec posts higher quarterly sales and earnings

The post Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern file revised merger application appeared first on FreightWaves.

The haul occurred the night before. A Bot Auto autonomous tractor hauled commercial freight 231 miles across Texas overnight without a safety driver, a remote operator or an in-cab observer.

Bot Auto completed the run from Riggy’s Truck Parking in northeast Houston to Safe Stop in Hutchins, just south of Dallas, departing at 1:16 a.m. CT on April 29, 2026, and arriving at 4:57 a.m. CT. The freight arrived on time to meet a shipper’s tight delivery window.

“People told me autonomous trucking commercialization still had a long way to go. This load is my answer,” said Dr. Xiaodi Hou, founder and CEO of Bot Auto. “We did not build a demonstration, we built a business: commercial freight, on public roads, with no human in the cab or remote driving, operating between third-party logistics hubs, and most importantly, making money on every mile.”

The Driverless Journey: From Houston to Dallas

The northbound Interstate 45 lane was booked through Ryan Transportation, a third-party logistics provider ranked No. 19 on the 2025 Transport Topics Top 100 Freight Brokerage list. 

The run addressed a shipper’s need for tight delivery windows and service consistency, including overnight transit. It is the kind of freight traditional capacity often struggles to cover reliably. Most human drivers prefer to drive during the day, making nighttime-only drivers a scarce commodity.

Autonomous trucks operate without fatigue, hours-of-service limits or the scheduling constraints that lead to missed pickup and delivery windows. The route covered 231 miles in under four hours.

“At Ryan Transportation, we’re constantly evaluating new solutions that enhance service, safety and reliability for our shipper partners,” said Jeff Henderson, senior vice president at Ryan Transportation. “Forming this partnership is a strategic decision based on Bot Auto’s proven technology and the role autonomous trucking will play long-term in logistics. It will strengthen our ability to provide dependable, high-frequency capacity on time-sensitive freight while maintaining the operational standards our customers expect.”

Bot Auto operates as a trucking carrier using its Transportation as a Service (TaaS) model rather than licensing hardware and software to outside fleets. The company runs its own tractors with a mix of owned and leased trailers.

Bot Auto also shared the economics behind its human-driven and humanless operations. The company’s humanless cost per mile is $1.89, compared with the industry’s estimated $2.26 per mile, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. Add a human driver to Bot Auto’s operation, and that figure jumps to $3.78.

Safety and External Validation

Autonomous vehicle analyst Grayson Brulte observed the operation firsthand from pickup through delivery, documenting the run on video for The Road to Autonomy.

“What I saw on the roads in Texas was not a test. It was an autonomous commercial operation designed to scale and reduce downtime,” Brulte said. “Bot Auto is not doing a pilot, they are building a commercial trucking business powered by autonomy, free from the inconsistencies that are all too common in traditional trucking.”

Bot Auto’s autonomous driving system incorporates multiple layers of safety with fallback protections for every potential failure point, meeting federal, state and local safety requirements. The company has also partnered with local and state law enforcement, briefing officers on interacting with autonomous vehicles and providing a First Responder Guide for emergency protocols.

Autonomous trucking is no longer a moonshot

The Houston-based company, founded in 2023, reached commercial humanless operation in less than three years with 80 employees, a fleet of 12 tractors, 25-plus contracted customers and $40 million in capital raised.

“The question is no longer whether autonomous trucking is achievable,” the company noted. “It is who can scale economically, and without hidden human layers.”

Bot Auto is expanding its operating network and deepening its partnership with Ryan Transportation, aiming to prove load by load that humanless trucking is a repeatable commercial service.

“That was my commercial vision for this revolutionary technology a decade ago,” Hou said. “Now we intend to set that as the standard in America, with no asterisks and no caveats. Houston to Dallas is mile one.”

The post Houston, We Have Liftoff: Bot Auto achieves first humanless commercial run appeared first on FreightWaves.

In May, leaders from across the freight industry, vetting platforms and fraud prevention, are meeting with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and members of Congress. The focus is not on responding after something goes wrong, but on understanding how bad actors get into the system in the first place.

As we got deeper into the discussion, Prax made it clear that the failure point is not the load. It is the entry point. The freight industry was built for speed, with low barriers to entry designed to keep freight moving. That structure worked when trust and long-standing relationships carried more weight. Today, it creates exposure at the onboarding level, where identity is not always deeply verified.

In practical terms, access can be obtained for a few hundred dollars, often within days. The barrier to entry can be lower than that of many regulated trades, including becoming a licensed barber in some states. On paper, everything may appear legitimate, but the system is validating documents rather than confirming the individual behind them.

where the gaps start

Once access is granted, the rest of the process assumes legitimacy. Freight is tendered, communication begins, and control changes hands. By the time inconsistencies appear, the load is already moving, which limits the available response. Fraud does not require bypassing the system. It operates within it.

The scale of the system makes consistent oversight difficult. There are roughly 327,000 motor carriers operating today, along with tens of thousands of brokers and freight forwarders. Oversight is handled by approximately 350 federal officers, making comprehensive review unrealistic. At the current pace, it would take decades to fully inspect and rate all companies, and about 94% do not have a safety rating.

Data inconsistencies add to the challenge. More than 177,000 companies show conflicting authority status depending on the system being used. In some cases, systems that should align do not communicate, creating uncertainty at critical decision points.

Regulatory frameworks exist, but enforcement cannot keep pace with the rate of entry and activity. The system often relies on assumptions where verification is needed, and accountability tends to come after the fact.

tools help, but they don’t fix the problem

The industry has responded by building tools to improve visibility. Vetting platforms, monitoring systems, and risk detection tools have helped identify issues more quickly and provide better insight into potential risk. These tools are valuable, but they do not address the core issue.

In our conversation, fraud was described as often being the result of process breakdowns rather than technology failures. Missed steps, incomplete verification, and decisions made without full context create openings. Technology can support stronger decisions, but it does not replace the need for consistent processes.

There is also a structural limitation. Many platforms operate independently and do not consistently share data. This creates gaps between systems. As Prax described, bad actors move between platforms and take advantage of these seams. If one system identifies an issue and another does not, the risk continues to move rather than being eliminated.

why the industry is going to Washington

When we discussed the trip to Washington, DC, Prax made an important distinction. This is not a general group of industry leaders meeting with government officials. It is a specific group of competitors made up of people from onboarding, vetting, and compliance, those working directly with identity, authority, and access on a daily basis.

That distinction matters because the focus is not on what happens after a problem occurs. It is on how companies get into the system in the first place. The issue sits at the foundation, and no single company can address it alone. The purpose of the meeting is not just alignment but understanding where responsibility sits across the system.

Both sides are working within real limitations. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration does not have the ability to verify identity in real time across every entry point, which is the reality of operating at this scale. At the same time, the industry has developed capabilities that allow for real-time identity checks, affiliation mapping, and early risk detection. The gap exists because neither side controls the full solution.

Another key issue is the lack of coordination between platforms. The gaps are not only between the industry and the government. They also exist between onboarding and vetting systems themselves. Without shared signals and consistent data flow, risk is not removed. It shifts from one platform to another.

The numbers help explain the urgency. Truck-related incidents account for roughly 5,000 deaths each year, which is comparable to dozens of planes crashing annually. At the same time, the agency responsible for trucking operates on a budget of around $1 billion, compared to roughly $25 billion for aviation. The size of the system and the resources behind it are not aligned, which makes it harder to address risk at the level the system now requires.

The focus of these discussions is entry into the system, identity verification, and the movement of information across platforms. The objective is to reduce exposure before a bad actor gains access.

what this means going forward

For brokers, carriers, and shippers, this is an operational issue. It affects how freight is covered, how partners are selected, and how risk is managed. It also adds cost through verification efforts, issue resolution, and ongoing monitoring.

Cargo theft and freight fraud are often viewed as isolated events. They reflect how the system functions. The industry was designed for speed, and that design created openings that can be exploited.

What we see today is only a portion of what is actually there. Cargo theft and freight fraud remain a multi-billion-dollar issue moving through a trillion-dollar system

Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phillip Brink.

The post Why the freight industry is going to Washington appeared first on FreightWaves.

(A first look at C.H. Robinson’s earnings can be found here.) 

With a Supreme Court decision looming on broker liability that could have a huge impact on the 3PL industry, the brokerage that led the charge at the nation’s highest court had its opportunity Wednesday to tell the world what it thinks might happen on the outcome of the case.

In an earnings call with analysts after the release of its first quarter earnings, C.H. Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman was immediately questioned by Tom Wadewitz of UBS when the discussion was opened up to analysts about what would happen if C.H. Robinson were to lose Montgomery vs. Caribe II. The case was argued before the court in early March, but C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) is effectively the defendant as it was the brokerage that hired Caribe Transport, whose truck in 2017 hit Montgomery, a truck driver, on the side of a road in Illinois. 

C.H. Robinson was tossed out as a defendant in a lower court. But if a decision before the Supreme Court finds that dismissal was improper due to the nine justices’ interpretation of federal law, the company could find itself back in if the case is sent back to the Seventh Circuit.

A decision on the case is expected before the end of June.

“I want to be really clear about this,” Bozeman said. “The Montgomery case is a case that we expect to win. We have argued a really good case to the Supreme Court.”

Safety is key concern: CEO

At issue is the interpretation of the so-called safety exception to the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A). While F4A in general blocks state action against companies engaged in transportation if it would affect what the law described as a “price, route or service,” the safety exception says such action can proceed if it is “with respect to motor vehicles.” The question before the court, and where circuit courts have failed to agree, is whether that definition pulls in brokerages, who are not mentioned in the safety exception. (There are other sections in F4A where brokerages are specifically referred to, and one of the brokerage industry’s arguments was that if Congress wanted 3PLs in the safety exception, it would have explicitly done so as it did in other parts of the law).

And although the issue has been described as one impacting broker liability, Bozeman pushed back against that definition.

“This case is not really about immunity for brokers,” he said. “This is about safety and not having 50 different state rules.” There are circuit courts with an interpretation of the safety exception that exclude brokers; there are circuits that have found differently. The Supreme Court is expected to clarify that inconsistency.

Regardless of whether the decision is favorable, Bozeman said C.H. Robinson “has a playbook.” If the case goes against the brokerage industry–which would be a finding by the Supreme Court that “with respect to motor vehicles” can mean the broker that booked the truck involved in a crash–”that would bring some headwinds to the industry.”

It’s on FMCSA

Bozeman came back briefly to an argument that was made in briefs and in the Court’s oral arguments: “FMCSA should really be the ones driving the safety of carriers.” The gist of the argument is that it is FMCSA’s job to see that carriers are qualified to be on the road, and brokers can not be expected to be responsible for a second layer of safety vetting. 

One acknowledged fact about regulatory or legal costs: bigger companies, regardless of the industry, are better suited to handle those burdens than smaller ones. In the case of 3PLs, there are none bigger than C.H. Robinson. 

Silver lining in a loss?

That led Wells Fargo’s Chris Wetherbee, a managing director and head of transportation and airline research, to ask whether there might not be an upside to a negative ruling. 

“How do you think about market share?” Wetherbee asked. “It strikes us that there’s a whole bunch in this industry that are essentially making no money as it stands right now.” If a ruling comes down unfavorable to the 3PL industry, Wetherbee said, “theoretically there should be some cost pressures for insurance coverage or other factors. What’s the opportunity for Robinson in that scenario from a share standpoint?

But Bozeman didn’t go all in on answering the question. 

“Obviously there’s going to be some insurance implications if you’re going to be in this business, and that’s going to impact different people in different ways, depending on your health and your size, and we’re prepared either way for that,” he said. 

Beyond that, Bozeman stayed on message. 

“It’s important that we win this case, because the Supreme Court really has an opportunity to resolve the disagreement in the lower courts,” he said.  “We’ve got to ensure consistency in the application of this preemption of these claims and it will reduce the uncertainty for brokers, shippers and carriers alike.”

Fewer people working at CHRW…again

C.H. Robinson’s quarterly earnings featured the latest installment of data showing a continuing reduction in headcount, which is down about 12% year-on-year. 

Ken Hoexter of the transportation research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch asked C.H. Robinson to “walk through that process, where we’re seeing that change, and where it’s coming out of.”

C.H. Robinson’s management has said in the past that much of headcount reduction is made possible by its aggressive adoption of AI, and a significant portion of the 60-minute call focused on further use of agentic AI at the company.

But specifically in response to Hoexter’s question, Bozeman said C.H. Robinson “pretty consistently looks at workflows and for us, it’s the order to cash process.” That term has been defined as “the entirety of the ordering process, from when a customer places an order, to order fulfillment, receipt of payment and the recording of data for the completed sale.” He said much of it at C.H. Robinson had a large manual process component to it.

“It’s a workflow where we’ve really kind of gone at it with our technology,” he said. 

But the reduction hasn’t all been layoffs, he added. Brokerage is an industry that has, according to Bozeman, a low double digit turnover rate. “And that’s really allowed us to drive efficiencies, while in some cases not backfilling some of those entry level kind of roles that we had in the order to cash process.”

It hasn’t all been reductions at C.H. Robinson, he added. “We’ve shifted some of our focus to more customer focus and that’s where we’ve actually invested in some roles in our small to medium business customer facing,” he said. 

More articles by John Kingston

After CBS report, C.H. Robinson seeks to deflect safety responsibility to FMCSA

SCOTUS grants review on broker liability case; fate of 2nd unclear

At TIA meeting, freight brokers brace for Supreme Court decision

The post Montgomery broker case before SCOTUS featured topic in Robinson’s earnings call appeared first on FreightWaves.

Seattle-based Amazon reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.78 on $181.5 billion in revenue, up 17% year over year and the fastest pace since the tail end of pandemic-era demand.

“Q1 was a strong quarter for Amazon,” CEO Andy Jassy said during the earnings call. “We continue to find new ways to speed up delivery for customers in both cities and rural areas.”

The e-commerce and cloud services giant beat Wall Street analysts forecasts of EPS of $1.65 on $177.2 billion in revenue.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) expects second-quarter revenue between $194 billion and $199 billion, with Prime Day shifting into Q2 — likely driving another surge in e-commerce volumes and transportation demand.

E-commerce growth driven by speed and selection

Amazon continues to double down on delivery speed and selection—two pillars tightly tied to freight demand and network utilization The company also crossed a major operational milestone:

“We’ve delivered more than one billion items same day or overnight so far this year,” Jassy said.

The company expanded:

The company expanded:

• Same-day delivery to thousands of cities
• 1-hour and 3-hour delivery on 90,000+ items
• Ultra-fast “Amazon Now” (sub-30-minute delivery) across nine countries

For freight markets, the shift toward ultra-fast delivery is increasing shipment frequency and tightening fulfillment cycles — key drivers for last-mile capacity.

Fulfillment network efficiency improving

Despite higher volumes, Amazon is gaining efficiency across its logistics network—an important signal for transportation cost discipline.

Outbound shipping costs rose 12% year over year, while fulfillment expenses increased 9%, both trailing 15% unit growth.

The company attributes the gains to better network execution, including inventory positioning and automation.

“We are pleased with the fulfillment and network performance in Q1,” CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the earnings call.

For carriers and shippers, that signals Amazon is moving more freight at lower incremental cost — continuing to pressure rates in dense networks.

Amazon is continuing to refine how inventory is placed across its network — reducing miles traveled per package and shifting freight toward regional lanes, according to Jassy.

“We continue to find new ways to speed up delivery for customers in both cities and rural areas,” Jassy said, highlighting ongoing network redesign efforts.

Grocery and same-day demand drive higher order density

Amazon’s grocery push is also influencing its logistics footprint.

“Our grocery business continues to grow quickly across both perishables and non-perishables,” Jassy said.

With more than $150 billion in grocery sales in 2025, the company is seeing strong adoption of same-day perishables, which drive larger basket sizes and more frequent deliveries.

That trend is increasing demand for temperature-controlled logistics, local fulfillment nodes and high-frequency delivery routes, company officials said.

“Whole Foods market also continues to accelerate with over 550 stores today and 100 more coming in the next few years,” Jassy said. “We remain committed to meeting or beating other retailers on price, and in Q1, the average prices of products offered on Amazon.com decreased compared to the same period last year.”

Amazon first quarter e-commerce & logistics metrics

E-commerce / Units

• Unit growth: +15% YoY (fastest since post-COVID surge)
• Same-day/overnight deliveries: 1B+ items YTD 2026

Revenue / Segment scale

• Total net sales: $181.5B (+17% YoY)
• North America segment: $104.1B (+12% YoY)
• International segment: $39.8B (+19% YoY reported)

Shipping & Fulfillment Costs

• Outbound shipping costs: $25.7B +12% YoY
• Fulfillment expenses: $27.2B +9% YoY
• Cost growth vs. unit growth: Costs lagging volume (+15%) → efficiency gains

Network & Delivery Speed

• 1-hour delivery: Available in hundreds of U.S. cities
• 3-hour delivery: Available in 2,000+ cities
• Same-day assortment: Millions of SKUs
• Ultra-fast delivery (“Amazon Now”): 30 minutes or less in 9 countries

Grocery / Same-day behavior

• Grocery sales: $150B+ (2025)
• Perishable growth: 40x YoY (same-day)
• Basket impact:
  • ~3x more items per order
  • 80% higher spend per order

Profitability & Investment signals

• Operating income: $23.9B (+30% YoY)
• Free cash flow (TTM): $1.2B (down sharply) due to CapEx

The post Amazon pushes delivery speed as Q1 revenue surges to $181B appeared first on FreightWaves.

The deal brings distribution industry veteran Alex Moazed to Augment as president of wholesale distribution, along with co-founders Nick Johnson and John Schumacher, former head of AI at Grainger.

One reason behind the acquisition? Customer demand. Freight brokers and carriers kept asking Augment CEO Harish Abbott whether the platform worked with distributors — their biggest customers.

“When we looked at what Alex had built, two things stood out immediately: distribution-specific domain expertise that would have taken us years to replicate, and a data philosophy we share completely — customer data stays isolated, period,” Abbott said. “It never trains models for anyone else.”

Moazed co-founded Merlin after running Applico Capital, the distribution industry’s first dedicated venture capital fund, where he evaluated over 700 supply chain technology companies. Applico participated in Augment’s seed round in January 2025.

“By the time acquisition conversations got serious, the cultural and technological fit was already obvious,” Moazed said.

The Case For A Purpose-Built Distribution AI

B2B distribution is extremely decentralized, even more so than freight. Enterprise distributors lose margin to operational complexity driven by fragmented systems. This fragmentation creates inconsistent product language and manual processes across multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

“Sales reps spend 30 minutes entering a purchase order that a customer already typed out,” Moazed said. “Counter reps get halfway through a quote, the ERP crashes, they start over. Branch managers call suppliers every two weeks just to check on open orders.”

A single enterprise might run six different ERPs. A quote can take two minutes per line across thousands of lines daily. Generic AI tools fail to handle unit conversions, customer-specific SKU language and exception-heavy workflows. Many also train shared models on proprietary distributor data without returning value to customers.

“Distributor data is a competitive moat — their resistance to shared-data AI models isn’t an objection to overcome, it’s a legitimate business concern,” Moazed said.

Augment’s platform, Augie, uses agentic AI to follow standard operating procedures written in natural language rather than custom code.

“Previously, light business rules and workflow customization was put into the ERP with a small army of engineers writing custom code,” Moazed said. “Now, the incremental cost of customizing workflow automation is headed towards zero because you are writing a process document in English and the AI agents are actioning the work alongside your human teammates.”

Acquisition Augments Existing Customers

Augie’s distribution offering is already operational with more than $20 billion in combined distributor revenue under management. 

Initial enterprise customers include Ewing Outdoor Supply, a $1 billion landscape distributor; Insco Distributing, a family-owned HVAC-R distributor; Brooks Safety Solutions, one of the nation’s largest fire and safety distributors; and Reece, a $3.5 billion leader in plumbing and waterworks distribution.

“Augie saves me 80% of the time spent on quoting,” said Mike Mackey, Commercial Services Manager at Ewing Outdoor Supply. “It’s as if I had my own personal assistant. It seamlessly integrates with workflows and automatically connects to my inbox and the ERP, with product search functionality that blows our ERP and website out of the water.”

Wholesale distributors operate some of the largest private fleets in the country. They are also among the biggest shippers of full truckload and less-than-truckload freight managed by the brokers and carriers Augment already serves.

“The more of the supply chain Augie manages, the better it understands every transaction on it — where freight is coming from, why it’s moving, and what happens on either end,” Abbott said. “We’re not building separate product infrastructure for separate industries. We’re building one AI platform. The more of the supply chain it touches, the more valuable it gets for everyone on it.”

The post Augment makes first move into $8 trillion distribution sector appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Stop the Rail Merger Coalition in a release late Wednesday warned the merger “would reduce competition, drive up costs for American manufacturers, farmers and consumers, and inject new vulnerabilities into the nation’s workforce and supply chain, at a moment when affordability and resilience matter most.”

The group is anchored by BNSF (NYSE: BRK-B) and CPKC (NYSE: CP), joined by major agriculture and chemical shippers groups, as well as the Teamsters labor union.

The merger, if approved, would reshape the American supply chain, a behemoth with 53,000 miles of track in 43 states. UP (NYSE: UNP) and NS (NYSE: NSC) claim a seamless coast-to-coast railroad will convert 2 million truckloads to rail annually, making the journey in as little as 4 days – competitive with motor carriers. They also say streamlined handling of freight will open up the Upper Mississippi watershed to expanded rail freight, and reduce delays through key hubs such as Chicago, Kansas City and New Orleans. 

But the coalition said a national poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found nearly 71% of Americans oppose the merger after learning about its impacts, while just 20% support it. A total 68% believe the merged company would keep promised cost savings for itself, rather than passing them on to businesses or consumers. 

The Surface Transportation Board in January rejected the initial merger application as incomplete. It asked the partners for more information on market share projections, terms that would permit UP’s withdrawal from the deal, and plans for divestment of a switching railroad that handles interchange traffic in St. Louis.

Chemical producers and other shippers who suffered service issues under previous mergers earlier coalesced under the Rail Customer Coalition banner; this is the first time Class I railroads have joined that branding. 

“It’s unfortunate these groups are distorting the facts,” an NS spokesperson said in an email to FreightWaves. “The benefits for our workforce, our customers and the American economy are clear – our amended, data-backed application, which we will file April 30 with the STB, clearly reinforces the case for a coast-to-coast railroad, making rail more competitive to other modes of transportation, reducing costs and delivering benefits that will make American goods more affordable.”

Union Pacific Chief Executive Jim Vena has forcefully lobbied for the deal, which some analysts say represents the first modernization of the national rail network since the mergers of the 1990s. President Donald Trump gave his approval after UP made a donation to his ballroom construction project; the railroad later put his name on a special locomotive commemorating the U.S.A. 250th anniversary.

Subscribe to FreightWaves’ Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Canadian National’s first-quarter profit slips

Corman’s Broyles new chair of short line rail trade group

Wabtec posts higher quarterly sales and earnings

Source: UP-BNSF short line recommended for LA port rail contract

The post Anti-merger group launches as UP, NS prepare to refile application appeared first on FreightWaves.

With a classic squeeze setup for a brokerage–higher spot rates to secure freight for contract business booked at a lower number–C.H. Robinson’s (NASDAQ: CHRW) first quarter 2026 earnings showed that struggle. But overall, it still came out mostly better than a year ago and in many areas sequentially as well. 

C.H. Robinson’s non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.35, compared to $1.17 a year ago. More importantly, according to SeekingAlpha, that number beat the consensus forecast by 12 cents per share. Its revenue of just over $4 billion was short of consensus by $40 million. 

The first reaction from investors was positive. Per Barchart, C.H. Robinson stock was up 4.6% in post-market trading, a gain of $8.54 to $194.97. It is up more than 111% in the last year, and his a 52-week high on February 6 at $203.34. 

One thing that didn’t change: the 3PL continues to slash bodies. The headcount in the North American Surface Transport division, which houses its traditional brokerage activities, was down to 4,752 from 4,970 in the fourth quarter of 2025. Total headcount of 11,705 was down from 12,085 from the prior quarter. 

The squeeze on the difference between revenues and the costs of transportation actually ended up mostly flat at C.H. Robinson, both down 2.1% from a year earlier. 

But the net result of the tighter market given other costs was a drop in the company’s gross profit of 1.6%, to $646.6 million from $657.4 million. Adjusted gross profit declined 1.9% from a year ago.

C.H. Robinson’s operating margin was flat at 4.4% from a year earlier. The adjusted operating margin of 26.6% was up just 30 basis points. That margin excluding some restructuring costs was 29.7% compared to 27.6% a year earlier. 

Sequentially, the company was mostly higher than in the fourth quarter of 2025. Revenues in the NAST group were up 4.9% from the final quarter of 2025; adjusted gross profits in NAST rose 4.7%. 

The Global Forwarding business struggled sequentially, with revenues down just over 9% and gross profits down 8.8%. 

Adjusted gross profits sequentially rose about 1.4% for truckload and 8.28% for LTL. Ocean was down 9.4%.  

In the prepared statement released in conjunction with the earnings, CEO Dave Bozeman discussed those market conditions that are normally tough for brokers. 

“As has been widely discussed in recent months, the North American trucking market has entered a period of supply-driven tightening,” he said. “As that has occurred, we’ve heard old tapes being replayed regarding which transportation providers benefit most during certain parts of the truckload cycle. But those storylines don’t fully appreciate the secular earnings growth that has consistently been generated at the new C.H. Robinson regardless of market conditions.”

More articles by John Kingston

Latest trucking nuclear verdict: $81 million, this time in Utah

Why truckers should care about DOL’s latest proposal on joint employers

TFI’s Bedard optimistic about U.S. LTL, but some of its issues persist

The post First look: C.H. Robinson mostly powers ahead in tough environment for brokers appeared first on FreightWaves.

Executives from the company touted recent business wins on a Wednesday quarterly call. Management also said that some less-than-truckload freight lost to a depressed truckload market is returning as TL capacity exits and spot rates surge. It reminded analysts that the carrier typically outgrows the market by 900 to 1,000 basis points during an upswing.

Old Dominion (NASDAQ: ODFL) reported earnings per share of $1.14 for the first quarter. The result was 9 cents better than the consensus estimate, but 5 cents lower year over year.

Revenue declined 3% y/y to $1.33 billion, but came in higher than analysts’ expectations and management’s guidance range of $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion.

Tonnage declined 8% y/y as a similar decline in shipments was only partially offset by a slight increase in weight per shipment. Revenue per hundredweight (yield) increased 6% y/y (4% higher excluding fuel surcharges). Revenue per shipment (excluding fuel) was up 5%.

Revenue per day increased 0.5% from the fourth quarter to the first quarter, bucking a normal sequential decline of 2.8%. Tonnage growth was 210 bps ahead of normal seasonality in the period, with the outperformance occurring in February. However, April volumes are running slightly below normal seasonal patterns, management said.

April revenue per day is approximately 7% higher y/y given higher fuel surcharge revenue. Tonnage in the month is down 6.5% y/y and yield (excluding fuel) is up 4% to 4.5% y/y.

Weight per shipment is up 1% y/y so far in April to roughly 1,490 pounds. Higher shipment weights—a sign of an improving market—drive revenue per shipment and margins higher. Weight per shipment likely troughed in the 2025 third quarter at 1,458 pounds. In stronger markets when manufacturing activity expands, shipment weights average approximately 1,600 pounds. Old Dominion’s last peak occurred in the 2020 second quarter at 1,636 pounds.

April tonnage is down 15.3% on a two-year-stacked comparison. Old Dominion’s tonnage appears to have troughed in October, which was down 20.8% on a two-year comp.

The company reported a 76.2% operating ratio (inverse of operating margin), which was 80 bps worse y/y but 50 bps better than the seasonally stronger fourth quarter. The result was also roughly 200 bps ahead of management’s implied 78.2% guide.

Salaries, wages and benefits (as a percentage of revenue) were approximately flat y/y even as head count was down 7% to 20,264 (2% lower sequentially). Shipments per employee (per day) were off 1% y/y.

Revenue per shipment (including fuel surcharges) was up 5.9% y/y with cost per shipment up 6.6%—a 70-bp negative spread. The company is targeting a positive spread of 100 to 150 bps in a better market.

Old Dominion normally sees 300 to 350 bps of sequential margin improvement in the second quarter. It expects to see a similar result this year. The guide implies a 73% OR at the midpoint (160 bps better y/y) and assumes a typical seasonal uptick in volumes. This would mark the first notable y/y improvement since 2022. (The company reported slight improvement in the 2024 second quarter.)

The company reiterated a $265 million capex budget for 2026, down from $415 million last year. It has invested roughly $2 billion in the network over the past three years. It said it has a little more than 35% excess terminal door capacity to accommodate a volume inflection. It estimates the industry as a whole is relatively capacity-constrained, holding just 5% to 10% excess slack.

The company’s commentary around April’s sub-seasonal volume trends weighed on shares and the sector on Wednesday. The stock was down 5.6% at 1:33 p.m. EDT compared to the S&P 500, which was off 0.2%. However, the LTLs were up more than 45% year-to-date heading into the print due to an improved manufacturing outlook.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Landstar says April yields ‘significantly’ outpacing seasonality
• ArcBest seeing positive trends amid market inflection
• STG Logistics announces deal with lenders, nears bankruptcy exit

The post Old Dominion eyeing y/y margin improvement in Q2 appeared first on FreightWaves.

The LTL industry has embraced precision. With dimensioners now standard on many carrier docks and the NMFTA’s shift to density-based classification for the majority of freight, the margin for error on shipment data is thinner than ever. Across all carriers, shippers that still rely on outdated measurement practices are still facing re-rates. This is happening on as many as one in four shipments, which leads to unpredictable invoices and weaker carrier relationships.

Accuracy and transparency have a significant impact on P&L. Shippers who invest in better data practices are seeing immediate returns: tighter cost forecasting, faster transit times, stronger carrier partnerships, and even the ability to offer all-in pricing to their own customers.

But that doesn’t mean shippers need to invest in expensive new infrastructure. Better training and a partnership with an effective carrier make a massive difference when it comes to avoiding unexpected invoices and re-rates.

The New Rules of LTL Classification

The catalyst behind much of this shift is the NMFTA’s overhaul of the National Motor Freight Classification system. When Docket 2025-1 took effect on July 19, 2025, roughly 2,000 commodity listings moved from traditional commodity-based classification to a standardized density scale. The updated system replaced the old 11-tier density model with a more granular 13-tier structure, and the NMFTA estimates that 70 to 80 percent of LTL freight are now classified by density alone.

That means that the precise weight and cubic dimensions of every pallet are now the primary drivers of freight class (and by extension, cost). Where the old system sometimes allowed vague commodity descriptions to stand in for exact measurements, the new framework demands specificity. That change rewards shippers who get their data right at the point of origin.

At the same time, the measurement technology on carrier docks has matured considerably. Commercial dimensioners have become much more widespread and affordable over the last five years. Many carriers now run every shipment through automated dimensioning systems and digital scales at the terminal. As a result, there’s a much higher likelihood that there could be discrepancies between a shipper’s bill of lading and the carrier’s measurements. 

The Cost of Inaccurate Classifications 

When a carrier’s measurements don’t match what a shipper declared, the shipment gets re-rated (typically re-weighed, re-dimensioned, or re-classified) and the invoice changes. Some shippers have reported that as many as 25 percent of their loads were coming back with re-weighs or re-classifications before they addressed the root cause.

The direct financial impact is obvious, but the indirect costs are often larger. Every re-rated invoice has to be flagged by accounting, investigated by logistics, and in many cases escalated to finance or senior leadership. The review time for a single disputed invoice can often take extra time that eventually adds up to a significant drain on staff productivity across multiple departments. Unpredictable shipping costs also erode the accuracy of financial projections and make it harder for logistics teams to negotiate effectively with carriers, since their own baseline data is unreliable.

There is also a service dimension that gets overlooked. Inaccurate data can cause loads to not fit on trailers as planned. When a piece of freight doesn’t match its declared dimensions, it may be the shipment that has to wait for the next truck, which means delays. 

These avoidable costs land at a time when LTL shipping is already getting more expensive. The Producer Price Index for long-distance LTL services rose 5.4 percent year-over-year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Carriers are holding firm on pricing even in a soft demand environment. The LTL rate-per-pound index climbed 280 basis points year-over-year as of 2025, marking six consecutive quarters of increases.

Shippers who are already absorbing general rate increases and rising fuel surcharges can’t afford to layer preventable re-rate charges on top. Getting shipment data right at the origin is one of the few levers shippers can pull to control costs that are otherwise moving in one direction.

Shippers Who Fixed Their Data Saw Immediate Results

The encouraging reality is that the problem is highly solvable, and the payoff is fast. Several companies that have invested in data accuracy have reported dramatic turnarounds.

Douglas Dynamics, a manufacturer of work truck attachments, discovered that roughly 25 percent of its shipments had incorrect weight, excessive length, or wrong classification once it implemented a transportation management system that gave the company visibility into re-rates for the first time. After trialing a dimensioner at one facility in the fall of 2024, re-rates based on weight and length dropped to just one percent. The company recouped the cost of the system within months.

Bestorq, an industrial equipment supplier, was seeing as many as 25 percent of shipments come back with re-weighs or re-classifications, consuming significant staff time every month. After addressing the issue, not only did re-classifications drop, but the company now has a reliable data baseline to use when discussing any discrepancies with carriers.

KaTom, a restaurant supply company, found a path to better outcomes without investing in dimensioning hardware at all. By consolidating its shipping data into a single view and analyzing where and how frequently items were moving, the company discovered it could pool West Coast-bound shipments into full drop trailers to a carrier distribution center, then break them down for final LTL delivery. The result was faster transit times and a 30 percent reduction in overall shipping cost for those lanes.

ULINE took the concept even further. By maintaining consistently accurate shipment data over time, the shipping supplies company was able to work with its carrier to build accessorial fees into an annualized flat rate, eliminating individual accessorial charges entirely and enabling simplified, all-in pricing for its customers. That kind of arrangement is only possible when both sides trust the underlying data.

Better Data Builds Better Partnerships

When carriers know exactly what they’re picking up, they can plan loads more confidently, allocate resources more efficiently, and deliver more predictable results. Accurate shippers become easier to work with, which opens the door to more collaborative rate negotiations, more direct routing, and long-term partnerships that benefit both sides.

Old Dominion Freight Line, named the number-one national LTL carrier for quality by Mastio & Company for a record 16th consecutive year, has built its approach around this principle. With a 99 percent on-time delivery rate and one of the lowest claims ratios in the industry, OD’s operational model depends on knowing what’s on every trailer. 

That gives shippers a simple opportunity to maximize value. The more accurate the data that shippers provide, the more OD can do in terms of load optimization, direct routing, and predictable service.

Improving data accuracy doesn’t have to be a massive capital project. For many shippers, the most effective first step is ensuring that dock staff are trained to measure the maximum length, width, and height of every shipment. Those measurements should flow into a bill of lading digitally rather than on paper. Understanding how to calculate density (weight divided by cubic volume) is now essential knowledge for anyone involved in the shipping process, given the NMFTA’s classification changes.

In the case of higher-volume operations, modern dimensioners can automate the measurement process entirely and integrate with TMS and ERP systems, but even a tape measure and a certified scale will provide better results than nothing at all.

OD’s Solutions Specialists work directly with shippers to identify data gaps, optimize packaging and classification, and build the kind of transparent, data-driven relationship that benefits both sides of the dock. Whether you’re just starting to digitize your BOLs or looking to fine-tune an advanced operation, the conversation starts with your carrier.

Click here to learn more about Old Dominion Freight Line. 

The post How Accurate Shipping Data Is Transforming LTL Outcomes appeared first on FreightWaves.