The Aug. 31 action required the affected providers to immediately stop operating as registered entry-level driver training providers. That includes administering FMCSA’s entry-level driver training curriculum, using facilities or vehicles for instruction, conducting behind-the-wheel training, enrolling students and submitting training certifications through the agency’s training provider registry.

The roster provides the most complete accounting to date of the schools swept into the emergency action. It contains 84 entries tied to physical locations in 20 states, 23 online entries and four inactive entries for which a state was not identified.

The count requires an important qualification: The list is organized by where training was conducted, rather than solely by a distinct corporate entity. 

Several providers appear in more than one category or state. American Trucking LLC, for example, is listed in Florida and online, while United CDL appears in Maryland and West Virginia. California Truck Driving School, KMT Logistics, OSSO Corp. and West Coast Truck School are listed in both California and Utah. Some names also appear in the online or inactive categories.

That structure helps explain why the reconstructed roster contains 111 entries even though Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy initially described the action as an emergency shutdown of 110 CDL schools and FMCSA’s formal announcement said more than 110 providers.

Texas and Pennsylvania had the most physical-location entries, with 13 apiece, followed by California with 11, Florida with 10 and Utah with nine. Those five states accounted for 56 of the 84 state-based entries, or two-thirds.

FMCSA said it identified the providers by comparing Training Provider Registry records with roadside inspection records for drivers cited for failing federal English-language proficiency requirements.

Each school selected for emergency removal had trained at least 10 drivers who were later cited for English proficiency violations, officials said. Collectively, the providers had certified more than 5,000 such drivers.

A list of the commercial trucking schools closed by the U.S. Department of Transportation on Aug. 31

Emergency removals are not proposed removals

The 111-entry roster should not be combined with a separate group of more than 160 providers that received notices of proposed removal.

Emergency removal takes effect immediately. Under FMCSA regulations, the agency may remove a provider from the registry without first issuing a proposed-removal notice when it determines the provider’s continued listing presents an imminent hazard or a substantial likelihood of death or serious injury. 

A provider may seek administrative review, but the emergency order remains effective unless stayed or reversed.

By contrast, a notice of proposed removal begins an administrative process. Providers in that category must notify current students and those scheduled for training about the notice, but the notice is not itself an immediate emergency shutdown. 

The provider may submit a corrective-action plan or request administrative review under the applicable TPR procedures.

FMCSA said the proposed-removal notices followed nearly 400 investigations conducted by 175 investigators across 40 states in July. The agency cited problems including instructors without the required licenses, ranges too small for required maneuvers, missing training and assessment records and questionable classroom facilities. 

Drivers certified by the 160-plus providers were linked to 239 commercial motor vehicle-related fatalities, according to FMCSA.

Large training networks reported among the proposed-removal group include 160 Driving Academy, Truck Driver Institute and Ancora. They are not part of the reconstructed 111-entry emergency-removal roster above unless a specific location also appears there under an independently issued emergency order.

The distinction matters for students and employers checking a school’s status. FMCSA maintains separate training provider registry pages for removed providers and providers under review, and those lists can change as proceedings are resolved.

Why it matters: The full roster clarifies which providers were ordered to immediately cease entry-level driver training operations and keeps them separate from 160-plus schools that only received proposed-removal notices.

The post FMCSA names CDL schools swept into nationwide emergency shutdown appeared first on FreightWaves.

Freight audit has long been one of the least glamorous corners of supply chain operations. It traditionally involves boxes of paper or a team hunched over spreadsheets reconciling invoices weeks after the shipments in question have already been delivered. Shipium wants to retire that model. The Seattle-based shipping platform recently launched Always On Audit, an AI-driven system built to replace month-old invoice reconciliation with continuous, real-time monitoring of every shipment a customer sends. 

Jason Murray, Shipium’s CEO and co-founder, and Penny Allen, the company’s SVP of AI Product and Engineering, joined FreightWaves Today to explain the product and why it marks, in their view, the next era of financial controllership for shippers.

Murray built Shipium around a premise drawn from nearly two decades in supply chain organizations, where he helped build technology stacks still in use today before founding Shipium in 2019. 

“We think of ourselves as the rails for shipping,” Murray said. “We handle everything from promise to payment when it comes to shipping. We’ve traditionally been focused on the parcel space, but we do all of the routing and decision-making through that whole chain.” 

Audit, Murray said, closes the loop: “Audit completes the final piece of this, where we’re tying the financial records to the shipment itself.”

Allen drew a distinction between the old model of auditing and the new model Shipium has introduced. 

“Monthly audit and continuous audit are not the same job at different speeds,” she said. “They audit different objects. Monthly audit is a batch job over one artifact: the invoice. It’s archaeology. Continuous audit’s object is the shipment itself from the moment it comes into existence to the moment it’s delivered and an invoice occurs. It’s forensics.” 

That shift meant rethinking the architecture from scratch. 

“What I need is a record that opens at the start and is continually updated when it’s created, rated, carrier selected, label printed,” Allen said. “Every step needs to write to the same record in real time. That’s the whole architectural bet.”

Getting there required compute power, heavy data engineering, and an AI layer trained on nuance, according to Allen. 

“It used to be years of hand-built mappings,” Allen said. “With AI, I can do it in the span of a heartbeat. It takes an intelligence layer that’s trained on nuance, knowing that this code on one carrier’s bill matches that code on a different one.” 

The result, she said, is a relentless, always-on system that is running every single decision Shipium makes against the gold standard and explaining what’s wrong in the moment.

The product is not designed to be fully hands-off. Murray said humans still handle the toughest exceptions, but every case feeds back into the model. “We do have humans to backstop some of this, right? You can think of them as being hyper-efficient, in terms of they’re only going to get the nastiest of exceptions,” he said. “Once the human does it one time or a couple times to make it all tie out, then the next time through, the system is going to know what to do with it.”

The “digital twin” is Shipium’s internal model of what a shipment’s cost and physical specifications should be, built at the moment it rates and routes a package. Murray traced the idea back to earlier parts of his career.

“When we’re rating and costing a shipment, we have effectively a digital twin of what we believe the carrier contract is, what we believe the physical dimensions of this item are, and all of the constraints around this,” Murray said.

Shipper-side errors, according to Allen, are what quietly drive many billing disputes. “This is the half that nobody wants to talk about,” she said. “Many of the problems are somewhere inside the shipper’s infrastructure: declared weight, a dimension problem, something that doesn’t match what was actually shipped.”

Because Always On Audit retains the full shipment record, not just the final invoice, the Shipium team can trace an error to its exact origin. 

“We can forensically recreate what actually happened,” Allen said. “Not just that it happened on Wednesday at 2:00, but we can say it happened on this lane, on this dimensioner, at this station, with this operator, or it came in on this data stream from your tenant.”

Allen described the combination of execution and audit data living in one system as the hardest part for competitors to replicate. 

“It comes down to this: one system, one record, one evidence chain, no integration seam, no emailing spreadsheets, no waiting for a report to run, and no trying to use archaeology to figure out what happened,” she said. 

Because findings can surface while a shipment is still on site, Shipium’s agents can act before a bad charge is ever generated.

“We can move an agent to act on that shipment before it leaves the facility to choose a different carrier or service method, or in extreme cases, stop the shipment and hold it until a human in the loop works out what’s wrong,” Allen said.

Early beta results back that up, according to Murray and Allen. 

“The instant we start building your digital twin, we start finding things,” Allen said. “For one customer, in a matter of moments, we discovered that their carrier was charging them base rates instead of contracted rates to the tune of many thousands of dollars, and we were able to intervene immediately and correct that.” 

In another case, she said, surcharge applicability was supposed to start on one date, but the carrier started it two days early. Shipium was able to catch that immediately. 

Shipium’s broader platform has typically delivered a 12% cost reduction for parcel customers, Murray said, while Always On Audit is still early.

Murray traced his conviction that audit should prevent problems instead of simply documenting them to a role he held overseeing vendor chargebacks in the early 2010s. 

“We started charging vendors based on shipping on the wrong day or wrong time, with the thought that it was going to lead to root cause resolution and structurally solve some of these problems,” Murray said. “But a lot of the time it wouldn’t, because they didn’t have the ability to go and change what needed to be changed.” 

Always On Audit, Murray said, closes that gap before a bad charge ever reaches a bill. 

“It’s much easier for the shipper to put the correct dimensions in, hand it off to the carrier at the correct time, and expect it to be delivered at the correct time, rather than the carrier having to check if what you said or the dimensions were correct to verify if it’s the right thing,” Murray said. 

Shipium plans to roll out Always On Audit aggressively across its existing customer base while pushing beyond parcel. 

“We started at parcel because I firmly believe it’s the hardest one,” Murray said. “As we expand this out, it will cover other modes, other countries, etc. This is going to be a total rocket ship to attack this space once and for all.”

Click here to learn more about Shipium.

The post Shipium Rethinks Freight Audit as Forensics, Not Archaeology appeared first on FreightWaves.

Speaking in recent public appearances and customer communications, Habben Jansen characterized the operating environment as increasingly unpredictable, with the situation in the Middle East remaining “very strained and fluid.” Hapag-Lloyd has suspended transits through the Strait of Hormuz, prioritizing the safety of crews and employees as regional security risks affect vessel deployments.

The disruption has supported volatile freight rates and added significant costs to carrier networks. Hapag-Lloyd said bunker fuel, insurance, container handling and inland transportation expenses have increased, while disruption-related costs were running at about $50 million to $60 million per week during the period covered by its June customer call.

Despite those pressures, Habben Jansen has struck a relatively constructive tone on demand. In an August CNBC interview, he said the container-shipping sector’s resilience had been “surprisingly strong,” even as carriers contended with Middle East turmoil and operational challenges including low water levels on the Rhine.

He has also argued that higher tariffs may redirect cargo flows but are unlikely to bring them to a halt. Tariffs in the 15% to 20% range are “not great” and hurt global commerce, Habben Jansen said in comments reported earlier this month, but “that doesn’t stop global trade.” He said market demand had performed better than expected after volatile conditions earlier in the year, while the pace of freight-rate declines had moderated.

At the same time, a large-scale return of container ships from the Cape of Good Hope route to the Red Sea and Suez Canal would reduce voyage distances and release effective vessel capacity back into the market. 

Gemini partners Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk (OTC: AMKBY) announced four more services have been switched to a Suez Canal routing from longer, diverted voyages around Africa. These cover a pair of Asia-Mediterranean services, as well as single Asia-North Europe and Indian subcontinent-Europe rotations. Gemini has now normalized three out of four Asia-Med services and one out of four Asia-N. Europe services, according to analyst Lars Jensen.

The change comes as carriers look to shore up weakening rates on Europe services as port congestion roils major hubs, and Houthi rebels in Yemen step up attacks on Saudi targets along the Red Sea.

Habben Jansen’s comments suggest Hapag-Lloyd expects cargo demand to remain broadly supportive, even as tariffs and shifting sourcing patterns alter trade lanes. The more immediate risk, however, remains whether regional security conditions allow shipping lines to restore Red Sea services safely, and how quickly ports and carrier networks can absorb the resulting change in vessel schedules and capacity.

Hapag-Lloyd is revising its proposed $4.2 billion acquisition of Zim top focus on restructuring the transaction to meet Israeli security concerns while preserving confidence that the deal can still close by year-end.

In the company’s Sept. 7 announcement, Habben Jansen said Hapag-Lloyd and its partners had listened to concerns raised by Israeli government agencies and were preparing an improved proposal.

“We have listened carefully to the needs raised during our discussions with the Israeli government and the relevant authorities. Together with our partners, we are now developing an improved proposal designed to further strengthen Israel’s maritime security and independence.”

In comments reported Sept. 15, Habben Jansen said Hapag-Lloyd sees annual synergies of $300 million to $500 million from combining with Zim. The combined operation would have more than 400 vessels, over 3 million TEUs of capacity and annual volumes exceeding 18 million TEUs. However, the deal would fail to boost Hapag-Lloyd past China’s Cosco (1919.HK) as the world’s fourth-largest container line.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

U.S. container imports climb 3.8% to 2.6 million TEUs, 3rd highest monthly level

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

Almost 1 million TEUs in new record for this U.S. container gateway

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

BNSF, CPKC, and CSX to request broad access to a combined UP-NS network

The post Hapag-Lloyd CEO cites resilient demand, but sees shipping market exposed to Middle East disruption appeared first on FreightWaves.

The coverage is designed to address a growing category of freight fraud involving double brokering, carrier identity theft and fictitious pickups. Under the partnership, brokers using Verified Carrier can purchase MiKargo247 spot cargo insurance and have the strategic theft exclusion removed when the load is hauled by an eligible verified carrier. The companies announced the partnership Sept. 1.

Strategic cargo theft accounted for about 30% of reported U.S. cargo theft incidents in 2025, according to a June report from Munich Re Specialty and BSI Consulting. The report found that criminals are increasingly using deception, impersonation and other fraud-based methods to obtain freight rather than relying solely on physically stealing cargo from trucks or facilities.

The shift creates a challenge for brokers and insurers because fraudulent actors can make it difficult to determine who is actually hauling a load.

The FBI warned in April that cyber-enabled strategic cargo theft is increasing, with criminals using compromised accounts, fictitious companies and double-brokering schemes to divert legitimate freight. The agency recommended that transportation companies independently verify shipment requests and pickups before releasing loads.

MiKargo247’s and Verified Carrier’s new partnership aims to address that risk.

“The strategic theft exclusion has always been a risk management decision, not a permanent limitation,” Michele McGinnis, CEO of MiKargo247, said in the announcement. “If we know a carrier has been vetted, the fraud scenario the typical exclusion was written to address is already off the table.”

MiKargo247 has been building its spot cargo insurance since entering the market in 2022. The company launched as an insurtech (insurance technology) platform offering brokers, 3PLs and motor carriers on-demand, single-trip cargo coverage, initially with limits of up to $1 million per load. The company has since expanded its reach through partnerships with freight technology platforms, including Loadlink Technologies and Trucker Path, giving their users access to coverage for individual loads.

Verified Carrier has taken a different approach to the same broader problem, focusing on establishing that the carrier involved in a freight transaction is legitimate before a shipment is picked up. Its platform is designed for brokers and shippers to verify carriers and drivers, with fraud prevention at the center of the service.

Verified Carrier is focused on reducing the likelihood that a fraudulent carrier obtains a shipment, while MiKargo247 is focused on providing financial protection for the cargo once it is moving. The partnership combines the two companies’ approaches to cargo theft.

When a broker uses Verified Carrier to verify a carrier and purchases MiKargo247 coverage for an eligible load, the strategic theft exclusion can be removed for that shipment. The companies said brokers can complete the process through the Verified Carrier platform. They can quote and bind MiKargo247 coverage and download a certificate without leaving the workflow.

Alex Panfilov, founder and CEO of Verified Carrier, said the company’s goal is to protect the parties involved in a freight transaction by making fraud more difficult throughout the supply chain.

“Verified Carrier exists because the freight industry needs a way to protect carriers, brokers, shippers, and their customers by making fraud structurally impossible at every link in the chain,” Panfilov said in the announcement. “Partnering with MiKargo247 is the natural next step.”

Panfilov said the insurance coverage gives verified carriers another reason to participate in the verification process.

“Verified carriers shouldn’t be penalized by exclusions that exist because of bad actors they’re nothing like,” Panfilov said. “This gives them a tangible benefit for doing things right.”

For MiKargo247, the partnership also represents another step in its effort to make spot cargo insurance easier to access through the systems freight companies already use. For Verified Carrier, it extends carrier verification beyond simply identifying potential fraud and into the insurance consequences of that verification.

The broader idea is that fraud prevention and cargo insurance do not have to operate as separate parts of the freight transaction. If a broker can establish who is actually hauling a load before pickup, an insurer may have more information to determine which risks it is willing to cover.

That is the gap the two companies are attempting to close with the new offering: using carrier verification to make a type of cargo theft that has traditionally been excluded from spot insurance eligible for coverage.

Why this matters: 

Strategic cargo theft has become a growing problem for brokers because criminals can use stolen identities, compromised accounts and fraudulent carrier information to obtain legitimate loads. The new offering connects carrier verification with cargo insurance, potentially giving brokers another layer of protection against losses that traditional spot cargo policies may exclude.

The post Mikargo247, Verified Carrier launch coverage for strategic cargo theft appeared first on FreightWaves.

Houston-based OXEA said Uber Freight will manage day-to-day transportation execution across truckload, rail and ocean freight, using technology, data and logistics services to provide greater visibility across the chemical manufacturer’s supply chain.

The agreement represents Uber Freight’s (NYSE: UBER) first managed transportation engagement designed from the outset to span the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe, according to the companies.

OXEA manufactures oxo intermediates and oxo performance chemicals used in products including coatings, lubricants, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, flavors and fragrances, printing inks and plastics. The company employs more than 1,200 people and sells chemicals in more than 60 countries.

The partnership is intended to replace a more regionally segmented approach to transportation management with an integrated operation connecting OXEA’s plants, carriers and customers.

“Everything starts with the customer,” Scott Farmer, OXEA’s chief supply chain officer, said in a news release. “We want to anticipate issues sooner, respond faster and deliver more consistently for the businesses that depend on us.”

For Uber Freight, the deal expands the scope of its managed transportation business beyond individual regions by tying together freight movements across North America and Europe under one operating model.

The cross-border component includes transportation across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, adding another layer of complexity involving multiple modes, carriers and regulatory environments.

Farmer said OXEA selected Uber Freight because of its combination of technology and logistics expertise and its focus on continuously improving transportation operations.

Managing OXEA’s freight network requires specialized equipment and handling, extensive documentation, safety and regulatory compliance, as well as coordination among manufacturing plants, carriers and customers, according to Uber Freight.

Uber Freight will coordinate those requirements across transportation modes and geographic regions. The companies said having a more connected view of OXEA’s network should allow potential disruptions to be identified sooner while improving on-time performance and communication with customers.

The companies also said more efficient routing and transportation decisions could help OXEA reduce carbon dioxide emissions and advance its sustainability goals.

“OXEA wanted a partner that could do more than manage transportation,” D’Andrae Larry, chief commercial officer at Uber Freight, said in a statement. “We bring technology, data and logistics expertise together to run the operation, identify issues earlier and keep improving how the network performs.”

Why it matters: The agreement gives Uber Freight responsibility for a complex, multimodal chemical logistics network spanning two continents while OXEA moves away from region-by-region transportation management.

The post OXEA taps Uber Freight to manage North American, European logistics appeared first on FreightWaves.

Imports climbed 3.8% from July to 2.60 million TEUs as gains at East, Gulf and West Coast gateways coincided with a broad increase in sourcing-market volumes and rising port transit delays.

Import volume reached 2,603,709 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August, the third-highest monthly volume on record, as shippers moved more cargo through major gateways despite growing uncertainty over tariffs, Middle East shipping disruptions and new Panama Canal capacity constraints.

Imports rose 3.8% from July and 3.3% from August 2025, according to Descartes Datamyne data. Only May 2022, when imports totaled 2,622,465 TEUs, and July 2025, with 2,621,910 TEUs, produced larger monthly volumes.

The August total was also 21.5% above the pre-pandemic level recorded in August 2019. While cumulative imports through the first eight months of 2026 remained down 0.4% from the same period a year earlier, the August gain narrowed the year-to-date deficit and pointed to resilient late-summer import demand.

The month-over-month increase was notable because it reversed July-to-August declines recorded in both 2024 and 2025. It also came as importers face a more complicated operating environment, including expanded U.S. tariff exposure, disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, elevated Red Sea security risk and reduced Panama Canal transit availability.

Port volumes broaden

The nation’s 10 largest container gateways handled 84.6% of U.S. containerized imports in August and collectively increased volume by 80,661 TEUs, or 3.8%, from July. Eight of the 10 ports posted monthly gains.

New York/Newark recorded the largest increase, up 24,122 TEUs, or 7.2%, from July. Savannah followed with a gain of 22,761 TEUs, or 9.2%, while Long Beach increased by 12,945 TEUs, or 2.8%.

In the Gulf region, Houston posted an 8,569-TEU increase, up 4.7%. New York-New Jersey gained 8,548 TEUs, or 18.1%. Charleston rose 5,751 TEUs, Tacoma increased 4,829 TEUs and Norfolk added 511 TEUs.

Only Oakland and Los Angeles reported volume declines among the top 10 gateways. Oakland fell 5,628 TEUs, or 7.4%, and Los Angeles slipped 1,748 TEUs, or 0.4%.

The distribution of the gains helped East and Gulf Coast ports regain some share of total U.S. import volume. They accounted for 40.7% of imports in August, up from 39.8% in July. West Coast ports accounted for 43.9%, down from 45% a month earlier.

The shift was modest but reflected the outsized August gains at New York/Newark and Savannah, two of the country’s largest East Coast gateways.

Delays rise at every major gateway

Stronger throughput was accompanied by higher transit delays across all 10 major ports, according to the report.

Houston and Seattle registered the biggest increases. Houston’s average delay rose 1.5 days, from 4.3 days to 5.8 days, while Seattle increased by the same amount, from 6.1 days to 7.6 days. Savannah’s delay rose 1.3 days to 6.1 days.

Los Angeles, Norfolk, New York-New Jersey, Tacoma, Oakland, Charleston and Long Beach also posted more moderate delay  increases.

Descartes defines port transit delay as the difference between the estimated arrival date initially listed on a bill of lading and the date on which it receives U.S. Customs and Border Protection-processed bill-of-lading data.

The broad-based rise in delays suggests that operational pressure intensified as imports climbed during the late-summer shipping season.

Gulf Coast momentum continues

Gulf Coast ports continued to gain volume in August, handling 252,675 TEUs, a 4.2% increase from July.

The August total was 11.7% above the Gulf Coast’s rolling 12-month average of 226,120 TEUs and was only 1.9% below the region’s 2026 high of 257,564 TEUs set in May. August represented the second-highest total in the period covered by the report and extended a rebound that began in July.

The increase is significant because the region has become a larger part of importers’ routing and contingency planning as East and Gulf Coast gateways gained share.

China imports rise, but share slips

U.S. imports from China totaled 884,318 TEUs in August, up 1.3% from July and 1.7% from August 2025. Still, China-origin imports remained 13.5% below the record 1,022,913 TEUs handled in July 2024. China accounted for 34% of all U.S. containerized imports in August, down from 34.8% in July, indicating that imports from other sourcing locations expanded more quickly.

Plastics, and furniture and bedding remained the largest product categories in China-origin imports, representing 14% and 13.3% of the total, respectively. Machinery and electrical machinery combined for 17.6%, while toys and sporting goods accounted for 9.9%.

Apparel, made-up textiles and footwear collectively represented 10.7% of August China-origin import volume.

Among the China-origin commodity groups showing year-over-year growth, articles of iron or steel rose 30.5%, glass and glassware increased 29.1%, and plastics climbed 6.9%. Machinery imports declined 9.8% from August 2025, while furniture and bedding fell 5%.

Sourcing growth extends beyond China

The report found import growth was broadly distributed across leading supplier countries.

The top 10 countries of origin collectively increased U.S.-bound container volume by 61,735 TEUs, or 3.5%, from July. Vietnam recorded the largest month-over-month gain, rising 14,545 TEUs, or 5.2%. Thailand increased 11,633 TEUs, or 10.4%, while Indonesia rose 11,198 TEUs, or 19.5%.

China added 11,188 TEUs from July. Germany increased by 5,195 TEUs, South Korea by 4,303 TEUs and Hong Kong by 2,222 TEUs. Italy and Taiwan also posted smaller gains. India was the only top-10 sourcing country to decline, falling 926 TEUs, or 0.8%.

Compared with August 2025, the top 10 sourcing countries collectively added 41,482 TEUs, a 2.3% increase.

China produced the largest year-over-year volume gain, rising 14,795 TEUs. Thailand increased by 12,260 TEUs, Vietnam by 9,878 TEUs, Hong Kong by 8,493 TEUs, Indonesia by 5,375 TEUs, South Korea by 4,545 TEUs and Germany by 4,641 TEUs.

Those gains more than offset declines from India, where imports fell 16,034 TEUs, or 12.8%, and Taiwan, where volumes declined 2,572 TEUs, or 4.5%. Italy was essentially unchanged year over year.

Trade risks cloud outlook

The August import surge occurred against a backdrop of rising supply-chain uncertainty.

Operational conditions around the Strait of Hormuz remained volatile at the end of August. Booking suspensions and reduced operations in parts of the Upper Gulf have required some carriers and cargo interests to consider alternative land-bridge routings, temporary storage arrangements and specialized empty-container return procedures.

For U.S. importers, the direct exposure includes higher transportation costs, reduced schedule reliability and potential disruption to energy and industrial-input supply chains connected to the Persian Gulf region.

Tariff policy also remains a material landed-cost consideration. Section 301 tariffs introduced July 24 apply additional duties across numerous trading partners, generally ranging from 10% to 12.5%, although rates, exemptions and caps differ by country and product. Existing Section 232 duties and China-related Section 301 measures add to the need for importers to assess duty exposure at the individual Harmonized System code level.

Separately, Panama Canal transit capacity tightened in early September after below-expected precipitation in the area watershed. The Panama Canal Authority reduced daily Neopanamax availability to nine slots and Panamax availability to 25 slots beginning Sept. 3, with Panamax capacity scheduled to fall further to 23 slots on Sept. 15.

The changes could affect all-water Asia services moving to East and Gulf Coast ports, particularly for vessels that do not hold secured transit reservations and may face longer waiting times.

Security risks in the Red Sea also remain elevated following renewed Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi energy and economic facilities near Jazan on the Red Sea coast. At the same time, major carriers continue to push the return of scheduled services on the Suez Canal route and away from longer diversions around Africa.

Why it matters: August’s performance indicates that U.S. import demand has remained durable even as cargo owners confront a growing set of policy, routing and operating risks.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

Almost 1 million TEUs in new record for this U.S. container gateway

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

BNSF, CPKC, and CSX to request broad access to a combined UP-NS network

Summer wanes but railfreight stays hot

The post U.S. container imports climb 3.8% to 2.6 million TEUs, 3rd highest monthly level appeared first on FreightWaves.

“Safety has always been our top priority, whether in our own operations or when we’re working with partners. After the tragic incident last weekend, we’ve spent time supporting the investigation and reviewing some of the surrounding circumstances, and we’ve decided to pause our operations with 21 Air, the operator of Flight 7598. We’ll continue working to support the investigation and everyone affected,” said Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel in a statement. 

Although Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) indicated it has simply called timeout while authorities investigate the accident and it assesses 21 Air’s safety protocols, it’s possible that Amazon could eventually cut ties with 21 Air.

The decision to stop moving parcels and freight on aircraft operated by 21 Air will have little, if any, impact on customers, another person at the company, who asked not to be identified, said. The expectation suggests the pause could be short or that Amazon’s logistics arm will be able to rely on its existing staff to pick up the slack for 21 Air. 

The Greensboro, North Carolina- based carrier has been flying for Amazon since mid-2024 and operated seven 767-300s for the retailer. 

Two cargo airline executives contacted by FreightWaves said they expect Amazon to turn to ABX Air and Air Transport International, both of which are owned by Air Transport Services Group, and already operate large fleets of Boeing 767 cargo jets on Amazon’s behalf, to fill in any gaps in its network.

A former Amazon logistics executive said the retailer could have difficulty replacing the 21 Air lift by the peak shipping season, which starts in late October.

“This could just be a safety standdown while they evaluate the relationship and understand the safety programs at 21Air,” the person said. Pilots at cargo airlines are already flying more hours per day during the busy shipping period than earlier in the year, so even if carriers had extra aircraft they probably don’t have the pilots to fly them. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Sunday that Amazon had distanced itself from 21 Air for the time being. 

21 Air continues to operate four Boeing 757 narrowbody and five 767 medium widebody freighters for DHL Express. DHL did not respond to a query on Monday about whether DHL is reconsidering its relationship with 21 Air.

Amazon leases nearly all of its aircraft and supplies them to airlines that provide crew, maintenance and insurance to operate them. Severing ties with 21 Air would mean transferring the planes to another carrier, but the process of moving a group of aircraft from one airline’s operating license to another would likely take close to a year to complete, according to aviation experts. And any operator getting the aircraft would have to hire and train more pilots. 

Data released by the National Transportation Safety Board showed that Flight 7598 had a more aggressive descent than normal during its approach to Miami airport, but then flattened its approach and didn’t touch down fully until a half mile beyond the runway aiming markings at 158 knots. At 23 seconds before the last recorded flight data, the pilots applied the brakes at 146 knots at the the point where most planes are using exits to the taxiway. Four seconds later, at 134 knots, the pilots finally get the third landing gear on the ground, but they are running out of pavement. The pilots push the throttle in a failed attempt at a go-around, then return the throttle to idle and reapply the brakes with the plane still going 117 knots. The plane exited the runway at 96 knots, struck a vehicle, slammed through a fence, crossed a public road and came to rest in a grassy field.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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The post Amazon calls timeout on 21 Air cargo contract appeared first on FreightWaves.

“While these market trends are not fully reflected in our results for the June quarter, we view these developments as constructive for our domestic operations in general and our U.S. Brokerage operations, in particular,” said Bohn Crain, founder and CEO, in a news release. “If these trends continue, we believe they support a more broad-based and durable recovery for the domestic freight market.”

The report sent shares of RLGT 16% higher in early trading on Tuesday versus the S&P 500, which was down 0.2%.

The Renton, Washington-based company reported revenue of $261 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended June 30. The result was 19% higher year over year and $30 million ahead of the consensus estimate.

Adjusted earnings per share of 15 cents ($7.4 million) were 4 cents higher y/y and 6 cents ahead of consensus. Disaster relief shipments following typhoons in the Western Pacific drove international airfreight results higher in the period.

Radiant (NYSE: RLGT) reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $10.4 million, which was 31% higher y/y. The adjusted EBITDA margin improved 240 basis points to 15.5%.

The company ended the quarter with no net debt. It amended its $200 million revolving credit facility in August. The deal extended the maturity of the credit line by five years and increased the accordion feature to facilitate acquisitions from $75 million to $100 million.

Radiant recently rolled out a new independent agent program at its over-the-road and intermodal brokerage platform, Radiant Road & Rail. It’s an extension of its agent-based freight forwarding model. It gives freight brokers capacity purchasing power, access to better technology and backend support. The program also offers a pathway for owners to sell their operations to Radiant.

“We’re pleased with the early response to the program and see this as a meaningful new avenue for organic growth as we bring the Radiant model to an entirely new market,” Crain said.

Why it matters? Radiant Logistics is seeing strong international results amid a volatile trade landscape along with a meaningful tightening in both the domestic truckload and intermodal markets. The company’s enhanced debt agreement will allow it to further consolidate the 3PL space through agent acquisitions.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• FedEx Freight expands CTO’s role to cover commercial strategy following CCO ouster
• Cass: TL rates jump 11% in August, freight shipments turn positive
• Hub Group warns of Nasdaq delisting notice; flags H1 operating loss

The post Radiant Logistics sees double-digit growth in FQ4, shares up 16% appeared first on FreightWaves.

Dalilah Coleman was riding with her stepfather, Michael Krause, when their car stopped for road construction on a California highway. A tractor trailer struck them from behind, leaving the child and her stepfather with what a lawsuit describes as catastrophic and permanent injuries. (Second Amended Complaint, paragraphs 15 through 21 and 96 through 99.)

The lawsuit reaches beyond the driver and trucking companies. It also targets the shipper, C.H. Robinson and the warehouse where the freight originated, alleging they failed to verify that the carrier arriving to collect the shipment was authorized to take it.

The shipper is Conopco, d.b.a. Unilever. The plaintiffs allege that Conopco, C.H. Robinson and United States Cold Storage lacked safeguards that should have detected an unauthorized carrier substitution before the freight left the warehouse. (Complaint, paragraphs 39, 95 and 111.)

A family’s fight reaches Washington

Dalilah’s injuries have drawn attention far beyond the California courtroom. Her family has advocated for legislation known as Dalilah’s Law, seeking changes intended to prevent other families from experiencing similar crashes. “I’m fighting for the future Dalilahs out there,” her father, Marcus Coleman, told KERO.

President Donald Trump highlighted Dalilah’s story during his February 24, 2026, State of the Union address. With Dalilah and her father in attendance, Trump described her recovery and called on Congress to pass legislation bearing her name that would prohibit states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. On March 18, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a version of Dalilah’s Law addressing commercial driver licensing, English proficiency and driver training requirements.

For Dalilah’s family, the consequences remain immediate. In written congressional testimony dated September 1, Marcus Coleman said his daughter suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury and underwent another skull surgery on August 3, more than two years after the crash.

While the legislative debate has focused on driver qualifications and licensing, the civil lawsuit examines another part of the transportation process: how the truck and driver obtained the freight in the first place.

One carrier assigned, another name on the truck

According to the complaint, Conopco contracted with C.H. Robinson to carry or arrange transportation of refrigerated products. The shipment originated at a United States Cold Storage warehouse in Bakersfield and was headed to a Target distribution center in Rialto. The bill of lading allegedly identified C.H. Robinson as the motor carrier. C.H. Robinson then brokered the load to VVS Trans. (Complaint, paragraphs 24 through 29.)

But the truck that arrived to collect the freight allegedly displayed US Jet Trans’s placards and DOT number. The complaint alleges that US Jet’s motor carrier authority had been inactive for nearly a year at the time of the crash. (Complaint, paragraphs 36 and 37.) The plaintiffs accuse VVS of reassigning or double brokering the shipment to related companies and individuals. (Complaint, paragraphs 30, 31 and 38.) The truck, driven by Partap Singh, later struck Krause’s Toyota Corolla according to the complaint. Traffic had stopped for a construction zone. (Complaint, paragraphs 15 through 19.)

What allegedly failed at pickup

The plaintiffs’ allegations against the shipper and warehouse focus on the moment the freight changed hands. The complaint accuses C.H. Robinson, Conopco and United States Cold Storage of failing to maintain “reasonable gatekeeping or safety procedures” to ensure that the arriving carrier and driver were the ones authorized to collect the shipment. (Complaint, paragraph 39.) The plaintiffs allege there were no adequate procedures to confirm that the person arriving was the “properly authorized driver of the properly authorized and assigned motor carrier.” Without that check, the plaintiffs contend, the load could be released to an unauthorized party without the substitution being detected.

The complaint also alleges that C.H. Robinson and Conopco had contractual obligations to confirm that the assigned carrier and driver performed the transportation and to prohibit unauthorized reassignment. The plaintiffs claim breaches of those obligations contributed to the substitution and the collision. (Complaint, paragraph 110.)

The claim reaches the shipper

The plaintiffs bring a claim for negligent carrier selection and negligent brokerage system management against C.H. Robinson, Conopco and United States Cold Storage. They allege failures both in selecting transportation providers and in preventing unauthorized load reassignment. (Complaint, paragraphs 103 through 112.)

The allegation against the shipper is therefore not simply that its products were on the truck. The plaintiffs contend that Conopco shared responsibility for ensuring the freight was released to the authorized carrier and driver. That theory places warehouse procedures alongside brokerage decisions in the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that an opportunity to detect an unauthorized substitution existed at pickup, where the truck’s identifying information could have been checked against the carrier assigned to the load.

These allegations represent the plaintiffs’ account, not judicial findings of fault. The complaint alone does not establish the defendants’ duties, whether those duties were breached or whether the alleged failures caused the crash.

But it makes the loading dock central to the plaintiffs’ case: Who verified the carrier before the freight was allowed to leave?

The legal landscape and next steps for shippers

The Supreme Court’s decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II placed carrier selection under greater scrutiny by allowing the negligent hiring claim against C.H. Robinson to proceed despite its federal preemption defense.

With so much attention focused on how freight is assigned and transported, shippers are being brought into the spotlight as well. The allegations against Conopco illustrate that scrutiny: plaintiffs are examining the shipper’s own conduct, including the procedures used when freight leaves the warehouse. Gaines emphasizes that shippers also have responsibilities to protect public safety through reasonable practices within their transportation operations. The scope of those duties depends on their role, contractual commitments and applicable law.

To help shippers address these responsibilities, Gaines published the BAVRA Standard, a framework for assessing, selecting and monitoring freight brokers and other transportation intermediaries. It complements her CAVRA Standard for carrier selection.

Gaines recommends that shippers establish written broker selection and oversight policies, understand how their providers evaluate carriers, and assign clear responsibility for pickup verification. Warehouse personnel should know what to check, when to hold a shipment and how to escalate discrepancies. Exceptions should be investigated, approved and documented. Those practices give shippers a stronger foundation for explaining how their decisions protected both their freight and the people sharing the road.

About the author

Cassandra Gaines is a nationally recognized transportation attorney, expert witness and founder and CEO of Carrier Assure. She serves as an expert witness for plaintiffs and defendants in matters involving broker liability, negligent carrier selection, transportation industry standards and carrier vetting practices. Gaines is the author of the CAVRA Standard, a risk based framework for carrier assessment, verification and accountability. She has spoken at more than 100 transportation industry events and was named by Business Insider as one of the 100 People Transforming Business in North America.

Complaint source: Second Amended Complaint, Coleman v. State of California, Case No. CIVSB2505947, Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino.

The post C.H. Robinson and its Customer Unilever Sued Over Catastrophic Crash appeared first on FreightWaves.

With other key diesel prices having broken through several record numbers in the past week, it was time Tuesday for the benchmark number used for most fuel surcharges to do the same.

The Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price rose 31.8 cents/gallon to $6.285/g, effective Monday but announced Tuesday, the highest price in its history.

Beginning with the first price in July of $4.578/g, the DOE/EIA number is now up $1.707/cts/g.

A few hours after the DOE/EIA number was published, the settlement for the ultra low sulfur diesel contract on the CME commodity exchange came in at $5.262/g, the highest settlement in a history that dates back to 1978.

The DOE/EIA number lags such other indicators as the AAA daily retail diesel price and the SONAR DTS.USA data series on retail prices just because of its frequency. Both those prices had smashed through records since the prior DOE/EIA publication. 

The AAA all-time high price had been $5.82/gallon, set back in June 2022 a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That record was broken last week, with the price then setting a new all-time high Tuesday at $6.2694/g. 

The DTS.USA price Tuesday was $6.26, also an all-time high.

But all of these prices are following the lead of the ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) on the CME commodity exchange.

Prior to Thursday, ULSD had only settled above $5/g once, 4/28/2022, a day that was a complete aberration less than two months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine when numerous traders were caught short and needed to cover their position. The settlement that day was $5.1354. By the next day in June 2022, the price was far below the $5/g mark.

The earlier higher prices were given another upward kick Monday on news that there has been a shutdown after a power outage at the 264,000 barrel/da Joliet, Illinois refinery of ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM). While news reports said the power had been restored, it will take an undetermined amount of time to restart the facility.

The Joliet news was just one more development where somebody looking for a reason prices might drop would be hard pressed to find any evidence.

Another disruption to supply occurred late last week, when Houthi forces in Yemen loosely aligned with Iran knocked out the Saudi East-West pipeline. That pipeline, which prior to the war had been lightly used, brings as much as 7 million barrels/day of oil to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, away from the uncertain shipping lanes out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Chevron CEO’s warning

Last week, Mike Wirth, the CEO of Chevron, who weeks ago had made a similar prediction even when prices had been softening, was stark in his outlook on the market. 

“It’s harder to envision a scenario where prices soften quickly,” Wirth said, according to Reuters. Wirth made the remarks at a University of Texas at Austin energy conference. “I think the risks remain to the upside over the next few months.”    

While oil markets have been notable in recent weeks for the strength of diesel and to a lesser degree gasoline, with crude lagging, several analysts recently have commented that such a dynamic likely has been played out.

That does not mean that diesel is falling relative to crude. It just isn’t rising anymore.

Crude not a laggard anymore

Amrita Sen, the director of market intelligence at Energy Aspects, laid out that scenario in a recent CNBC interview for why crude is likely to follow the broader market trends rather than being somewhat on its own.

“Given just how quickly inventories have drawn down since August, and Hormuz flows remain disrupted, and it is very clear China is now back in the market buying, (and) crude isn’t going down anytime soon,” she said. 

Crude markets have lagged for several reasons, including the lack of Chinese buying and the fact that the market was trying to absorb a combination of renewed supplies out of the Persian Gulf following some easing of Strait of Hormuz flows, strategic stocks released by various countries and a hefty supply of oil on the water when the Iran war began.  

Crude’s relatively ample supplies have been able to help balance the market, Sen said. But with winter coming up, Sen said, “refineries need the crude, so crude isn’t going to go down anytime soon.” Sen said she foresees an “upward spiral” that will lift both crude and products.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, former Goldman Sachs commodity research head Jeffrey Currie made a similar observation. 

China’s renewed buying occurred in part because “you finally got to a point that the spread between products and crude was so large that the Chinese could not resist that profit margin and came back into the market.”

Currie, who has been one of the most vocal market bulls, was asked in the interview last week about demand destruction because of high prices. 

“You’ve got demand up here and supply down here,” he said, talking about the imbalance. “What happens? Prices spike, boom, it crushes the two down. Then the prices come off and guess what? Demand tries to come back and then the price spikes back up.” 

More articles by John Kingston

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The post Update: DOE/EIA diesel at record; so is futures price appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Iran-backed Houthis movement recently seized a strategic port and island directly on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the south end of the Red Sea, analyst and SONAR data provider Freightos (NASDAQ: CRGO) said in a research note. The territorial advance followed an attack last week on a key Saudi oil pipeline, adding to concerns that regional escalation could place additional pressure on oil and marine-fuel markets.

The Yemen-based terrorist militia had already demonstrated an ability to attack or deter merchant vessels in the Red Sea before gaining control of coastal territory. But the latest advance consolidates its position near one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints, linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and serving as the southern approach to the Suez Canal.

The development comes as some observers warn that measures used to blunt energy-price shocks earlier in the conflict — particularly releases from strategic reserves — may be losing effectiveness. Oil and bunker fuel prices have climbed back toward May levels, raising the prospect that a further disruption could translate into a more acute fuel-market crisis.

Red Sea capacity returns

Despite some shipper pushback and the heightened security threat, carriers are increasing transits through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, particularly on Asia-Mediterranean services.

Sea Intelligence estimates that more than one-quarter of Asia-Europe capacity will transit the Red Sea in September. The return is most pronounced on the Asia-Mediterranean trade, where roughly 35% of headhaul capacity and 50% to 60% of backhaul capacity are expected to move through Suez.

The restoration is proceeding more slowly on Asia-North Europe services. About 6% of headhaul capacity and 30% of backhaul capacity had returned to the route, according to the estimates.

The shift is significant because the Suez route shortens voyages relative to diversions around Africa. A faster transit improves effective vessel capacity, reduces the number of ships required to sustain a weekly network and can ease schedule pressure — provided the security situation holds.

Analysts have estimated 2 million container units’ worth of capacity could return to the Mideast trade lane.

Asia-Europe spot rates fall

The expanding use of the Red Sea route, combined with easing demand after the peak shipping season, appears to be weighing on Asia-Europe container prices.

Asia-North Europe spot prices fell 3% last week to about $4,300 per forty foot equivalent unit (FEU), while Asia-Mediterranean rates dropped 12% to roughly $4,200 per FEU. Daily pricing on both lanes had eased to approximately $3,800 per FEU so far this week.

The sharper decline on the Mediterranean trade may reflect its larger Red Sea capacity restoration. Asia-Mediterranean prices have fallen about $3,000 per FEU from their July peak, compared with a roughly $2,000-per-FEU decrease for Asia-North Europe rates.

Still, rate levels remain elevated. Asia-North Europe pricing is more than 20% above pre-peak-season levels from mid-May, while Asia-Mediterranean prices remain more than 50% higher, according to the data in the market update.

That resilience points to persistent operational constraints despite the return of some Suez routings. Higher war-related fuel costs and congestion at Far East load ports continue to strain schedules, while poor on-time performance and shipment backlogs could remain factors after China’s Golden Week holiday and into October.

Congestion at North European hubs may also be influencing carriers’ willingness to return to the Red Sea. The shorter routing can help lines regain schedule time and deploy their fleets more efficiently, even as terminals and inland networks remain under pressure.

Trans-Pacific rates remain firm

On the trans-Pacific, spot rates edged higher last week and remain near peak-season levels.

Strong import demand, coupled with congestion in Asia, is continuing to support pricing. But the latest National Retail Federation outlook projects U.S. ocean import arrivals will decline 9% in October from September, followed by another decrease in November, evidence that cargo demand may already be beginning to retreat.

Lower demand alone may not produce a rapid correction in freight rates. Continued port congestion and carrier blank sailings during the holiday period could constrain available capacity enough to keep pricing comparatively high even as volumes soften.

Most carriers do not appear to be preparing broad October general rate increases, though CMA CGM has announced significant peak-season surcharges, particularly on South Asia-to-U.S. trades.

Why it matters: Carriers are regaining the shorter Suez route at the same time that the route’s southern gateway is becoming more vulnerable.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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The post Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services appeared first on FreightWaves.

“Latest reports indicate that bad actors have started to impersonate the Motus website application,” FMCSA wrote. The legitimate service operates at motus.dot.gov. Fraudulent correspondence calls its destination the “New MOTUS Portal.” All-capital lettering provides another warning sign because officials write the name as Motus.

One real site and four fakes

Only one URL belongs to the federal government. It ends in dot.gov. Regulators connected every imitation below with the scheme. None carries an official domain.

REAL:

• motus.dot.gov

FAKE:

• dot.motusdatasboard.com
• dot.motusdatadesk.com
• dot.motuswebdeck.com
• dot.motusfunction.com

The campaign uses the subject line “Notice of Required Off-Cycle Update- Motus email.” Its content urges recipients to click a “New MOTUS Portal” button. That link routes targets toward an outside destination. Federal officials recommend checking every address before taking action.

FMCSA’s screenshot dates the example to August 2026. The rolling alert page records a September 11 update. That timestamp covers the entire webpage, not each item.

Scam follows system transition

FMCSA launched Motus May 19 as its new USDOT registration system. Carriers, brokers and other regulated entities use it for applications or company updates. The platform replaced several legacy processes during a wider modernization effort. Customers access the service through Login.gov.

On September 10, regulators temporarily suspended biennial-update enforcement to reduce transition disruptions. That decision also paused USDOT-number inactivation for missed filings due after June 1. Officials plan to release additional guidance while recovery work continues. Unsolicited correspondence does not override those instructions.

Potential targets should avoid clicking questionable links. Complaints can go through the Federal Trade Commission or FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Local police and state attorneys general also accept reports. FMCSA handles registration questions at 1-800-832-5660.

Questions remain

The agency has not disclosed when the campaign began or how many recipients encountered it. The warning provides no victim count, financial losses or confirmed account takeovers. Authorities have yet to connect these pages with unauthorized registration changes or cargo theft. FreightWaves requested additional information from FMCSA and will update this article if officials respond.

Why it matters

Carrier registration records help brokers and shippers confirm who controls a trucking company. A successful account takeover could weaken safeguards that depend on federal identity data.

CFCO

In my opinion, CFCO training gives freight teams practical habits for recognizing impersonation attempts before criminals capture valuable credentials. The program strengthens identity checks, access controls, domain review and escalation procedures across daily operations. Those skills help employees pause when urgent messages demand profile changes through unfamiliar websites. Better preparation can turn one suspicious link into a reported threat instead of causing costly damage.

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

Police recovered $586K stolen copper load within 8 hours after suspected carrier impersonation – FreightWaves

Police find $3.8M in cocaine in Indiana truck’s sleeper after ‘mystery’ Memphis pickup – FreightWaves

Feds: Truckers hauled hundreds of kilos of cartel cocaine on US-Canada freight lanes – FreightWaves

The post FMCSA warns trucking companies about 4 fake Motus registration sites appeared first on FreightWaves.

For years, the promise of autonomous trucking has been sold in the future tense. Someday, driverless trucks will free up capacity, someday they’ll smooth out the peaks and valleys of freight demand, someday shippers won’t have to plan around driver shortages and hours-of-service limits. On Sept. 29, FreightWaves and Waabi are asking what happens when “someday” starts showing up on the schedule.

That’s the premise behind The Autonomous Freight Blueprint: Unlocking Predictable Capacity and the Early Mover Advantage, a free webinar airing at 2 p.m. EDT that will dig into how AI-driven trucks are moving from pilot programs to the kind of dependable, scalable capacity that shippers and carriers can actually plan a network around. 

Waabi, the Toronto-based Physical AI company founded by longtime autonomous vehicle researcher Raquel Urtasun, has spent 2026 turning heads with an approach that looks different from the rest of the autonomous trucking field. Rather than layering machine learning on top of a traditional rules-based driving stack, Waabi built a verifiable end-to-end AI model capable of reasoning and generalization. This is paired with an industry-leading neural simulator used to train, test and validate the system, allowing the company to test rare and dangerous edge cases without putting a truck on the road to find them. 

“The beauty of this technology is it is end-to-end trainable, meaning it can learn to deal with the complexity of the real world,” Urtasun has said of the approach. She has argued it will change the world once proven at scale.

Investors are betting Waabi’s physical AI platform will drive both freight-hauling trucks and passenger robotaxis on the same underlying technology.

For the freight industry, that generalization speaks directly to the capacity question at the heart of the webinar. Waabi COO Lior Ron, who founded Uber Freight before joining Waabi last year, has been blunt about why the company isn’t chasing the highway-only, hub-to-hub model that much of the autonomous trucking industry defaulted to early on. Bolting expensive first- and last-mile human-driven legs onto either end of an autonomous highway run, he’s argued, just recreates the cost structure carriers are trying to escape, with hundreds of dollars in transfer costs that shippers won’t ultimately subsidize. 

Instead, Waabi enables door-to-door, facility-to-facility autonomy. The vast majority of freight will be moved door-to-door, Ron has said. The company is also partnered with Volvo Autonomous Solutions and together, they have integrated the Waabi Driver into the Volvo VNL Autonomous to deliver a safe, redundant autonomous solution designed for broad commercial deployment. That’s non-negotiable for anyone serious about pulling the driver out of the cab.

None of that is a hard sell to an industry that has spent the past several years absorbing capacity swings, driver shortages and rate volatility. It is, however, a case that has to be made in specifics, including how autonomous capacity actually gets planned into a network, what “early mover” gets a shipper or carrier who is willing to commit now versus waiting for the technology to fully mature, and where the realistic timeline sits between today’s pilots and tomorrow’s driverless freight lanes. 

The webinar is free to attend and includes audience Q&A. Anyone responsible for capacity planning, network design, or long-term freight strategy (whether shipper, carrier, or broker) will want the details before the seats fill up.

Register for “The Autonomous Freight Blueprint” here to save your spot for the Sept. 29 session at 2 p.m. EDT.

The post Autonomous Freight Needs to Solve the Predictability Problem appeared first on FreightWaves.

FedEx Freight (NYSE: FDXF) described the new role as an expansion of Rodgers’ duties as chief technology officer, a position he has held since joining the company in June 2025. Rodgers will now oversee technology, commercial strategy, customer experience and marketing. He has over 30 years of digital strategy experience, heading the tech efforts for Pilot Company and its network of truck stops and travel centers from 2015 to 2024.

Rodgers was integral in FedEx Freight’s information-technology separation from FedEx (NYSE: FDX) during the spinoff process. The effort also included creating a new LTL-specific freight pricing platform.

“Mike has a deep understanding of our customers and a strong track record of creating customer, business, employee, and shareholder value, which has been built over decades,” said John Smith, president and CEO. “His leadership, commitment to our culture, and strong relationships across the organization, combined with his broad commercial and operational experience, will help us accelerate and unlock further value as we continue to execute our strategy in the years to come.”

Why it matters? Leadership changes at North America’s largest LTL carrier influence sector-wide competitive and pricing dynamics. Combining the chief technology and commercial roles signals an effort to closely align digital strategy and customer experience to protect key business relationships.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Cass: TL rates jump 11% in August, freight shipments turn positive
• Hub Group warns of Nasdaq delisting notice; flags H1 operating loss
• ArcBest sees tonnage growth accelerate in August; raises Q3 asset-light guide

The post FedEx Freight expands CTO’s role to cover commercial strategy following CCO ouster appeared first on FreightWaves.

Cass’ TL linehaul index, which tracks rates excluding fuel and accessorial surcharges, jumped 11.3% year over year during the month. The index was up 70 basis points from July. August marked 20 consecutive y/y increases and the largest since June 2022.

The linehaul index includes for-hire spot rates but is historically heavily weighted to contract rates.

“The sequential increase is in line with expectations and as indicated by the spot market,” the Monday report said. “Even as spot rates slow with modest sequential declines, the much larger contract market is adjusting higher.”

Freight shipments recorded by Cass (NASDAQ: CASS) increased 2.1% y/y, which was the first y/y increase after 42 months of declines. Shipments were 5.6% higher sequentially in August (up 5% seasonally adjusted).

All domestic transportation modes are included in the index, but TL accounts for over 50% of shipments, with less-than-truckload representing approximately 25%. Road-to-rail conversion has weighed on the trucking-centric dataset in recent months as fuel prices have surged.

If normal seasonal shipping patterns hold through September, the index would increase approximately 1% y/y, the report said.

Cass’ expenditures index, which measures total freight spend including fuel, surged 18.7% y/y in August and was up 5.8% from July (plus-6% seasonally adjusted). The positive y/y inflection in shipments drove the dataset higher, along with higher diesel prices (up 46% y/y and 10% sequentially).

Citing elevated risks to consumer spending, the report calls for tepid freight demand moving forward.

“With economic growth strong even amid a soft job market, and a restock likely beginning with ocean volumes rising and tariff refunds happening, the bottom is probably in,” the report said. “While likely modest, freight growth should continue.”

Data used in the indexes comes from freight bills paid by Cass, a provider of payment management solutions. Cass processes $37 billion in freight payables annually on behalf of customers.

Why it matters? August data from Cass Information Systems highlights a continued escalation in TL contract rates even as demand remains cool. The dataset confirms the impact strict regulatory enforcement is having on non-compliant capacity.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Hub Group warns of Nasdaq delisting notice; flags H1 operating loss
• ArcBest sees tonnage growth accelerate in August; raises Q3 asset-light guide
• XPO’s August metrics align with Q3 guidance

The post Cass: TL rates jump 11% in August, freight shipments turn positive appeared first on FreightWaves.

Northern Air Cargo is a subsidiary of Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources, a diversified freight transportation, logistics and energy distribution conglomerate.

Lester spent the past 18 months as head of aerospace strategy at Merrick & Co., an engineering firm. He spent nearly three years as head of the Alaska Aerospace Corp., a spacesport, until mid-2021. He also was CEO of Doss Aviation, a flight training academy for nearly three years last decade. In between stints he has worked as a consultant.

Northern Air Cargo described Lester as a  seasoned executive in safety-critical, regulated operations,  who has successfully led complex organizations through periods of operational transformation and growth while maintaining service continuity. 

“Mark’s experience and commitment to Alaska will serve our communities well as Northern Air Cargo looks to grow and deepen its services, continuing to build on more than 70 years of dependable service to the state,” said Mike Thompson, president and CEO of Saltchuk Aviation, NAC’s parent company, in a news release.

Karp stepped in during a rocky period when the company was losing money and decided to exit long-haul flying to focus on intra-island Hawaii and Alaska service. Sister carrier Aloha Air Cargo now handles all flying in Hawaii. Last year, NAC returned a handful of Boeing 767-300 converted freighters to lessors and exited the Hawaii and Caribbean/Latin America markets, which it served out of Miami. 

NAC currently operates three freighters in Alaska: one Boeing 37-400 and two 737-800s, with one 737-300 leased to another carrier, according to aviation databases. The airline regularly serves Seattle, a large transfer point for Alaskan exports , like seafood, and source of supplies for communities in Alaska.

Karp will return to his role as senior vice president and managing director, Alaska, at Saltchuk Resources, according to NAC.

The company had net income of $9 million in the 12 months ended March 31, but operating profit improved 15% to $15 million, according to data on file with the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Revenue more than  tripled over that time to $144 million, but costs also shot up. The sharp rise in costs year over year likely was due to penalties paid for early termination of leases.

Why It Matters; Northern Air Cargo is a small carrier, but if a freight company changes leadership it’s important to customers and competitors. NAC competes with Alaska Airlines and Lynden Air Cargo, part of the Lynden family of companies, in the Alaska market. 

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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The post Northern Air Cargo names permanent CEO appeared first on FreightWaves.

Long Beach processed 919,992 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August, up 2% from the same month in 2025. The result also ranked as the fifth-busiest month in the port’s 115-year history.

Imports increased 3.6% year over year to 456,100 TEUs, while exports rose 4% to 99,754 TEUs. Empty-container moves, an indicator of future import traffic, slipped 0.39% to 364,138 TEUs.

“Our August numbers tell us that shippers continue to adapt to tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty and are confident in the Port of Long Beach’s ability to deliver,” port Chief Executive Noel Hacegaba said in a release.

Through the first eight months of 2026, Long Beach moved 6.68 million TEUs, a 1.3% increase from the same period a year earlier. The port handled 6,678,078 TEUs from January through August.

The August gain indicates that cargo owners continued to route freight through the Southern California gateway despite a trade environment shaped by shifting tariff policies and broader geopolitical risk. The stronger import and export volumes also helped offset the small decline in empty-container traffic.

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.

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The company said receipt of the letter doesn’t mean shares will immediately stop trading, and that the hearing request will automatically stay a delisting for 15 calendar days. It will also ask for shares not to be delisted during the hearing process, which can take approximately 30 to 45 days to commence following the request.

“While there can be no assurances, the Company expects that the Company’s Class A common stock will continue to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market during the hearing process,” a Monday news release stated. “In addition, the Company expects to present to the Nasdaq Hearings Panel a compelling plan to regain full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing requirements and to secure sufficient time to execute such plan.”

Hub Group (NASDAQ: HUBG) announced in February that it had identified a $77-million understatement of purchased transportation expenses during the first three quarters of 2025, and that it was delaying fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 financial reporting. It said in May that “prematurely or incorrectly recognized” transactions were also discovered during 2023 and 2024, and that those periods, along with the first three quarters of 2025, would need to be restated.

It plans to complete the restatement process and file results for the outstanding periods during the fourth quarter. Shares of HUBG were off 6.2% in early trading on Monday compared to the S&P 500, which was down 0.6%.

More leadership changes

A separate news release said Dave Yeager has returned as chairman and CEO. The CEO role was previously held by Phil Yeager, who will continue as president and vice chairman.

Patrick O’Donnell will become chief financial officer once the restatement process is complete and full-year 2025 results are filed. O’Donnell joined Hub Group as a special advisor last month. He has 20 years of experience in finance and accounting.

Interim CFO Todd Heeter will continue in his current role through the restatement process.

Hub Group announced the departure of its former CFO and chief operating officer in May.

2026 guidance lowered

The company lowered its full-year 2026 revenue guidance range to $3.6 billion to $3.8 billion, down 3% from its prior outlook of $3.65 billion to $3.95 billion. It also said it expects an operating loss for the 2026 first half before one-time charges.

It said first-half revenue was likely in a range of $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion, and that Intermodal and Transportation Solutions results were negatively impacted year over year by higher fuel, rail and drayage costs. Further, excess consolidation-and-fulfillment capacity has weighed on results in its logistics segment.

Hub Group has expanded its cost-reduction program to include “incremental initiatives focused on yield management across all services, consolidation of warehousing space, productivity enhancements with drivers and warehouse team members, targeted cost reductions and enhanced order to cash processes.” The intermodal unit implemented rate increases at the beginning of the third quarter.

“Hub Group was founded by the Yeager family more than 55 years ago with a commitment to service, integrity and innovation,” said Dave Yeager. “I am confident that this leadership team will help drive the business forward into its next phase of growth. I look forward to partnering with Phil and Pat to deliver excellent results for our shareholders, customers and team members.”

Why it matters? As one of North America’s largest intermodal marketing companies, Hub Group’s financial restatements, accounting crisis, possible Nasdaq delisting and executive departures introduce potential operational and partnership uncertainty for shippers and rail partners who rely on its network.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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Thao Duong and Lam Mai, a married couple from Garland, Texas, were sentenced Sept. 8 in federal court on charges stemming from the operation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Duong received three months in prison followed by two years of supervised release and was ordered to forfeit more than $1.5 million. Mai was sentenced to two years of probation.

The operation used a combination of cross-border smuggling, storage facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border, domestic shipping and online sales to move the products from Mexico to customers throughout the country, according to court filings and evidence cited by prosecutors.

Duong began selling animal-care products through various online platforms around 2011, primarily to customers involved in rooster fighting ventures, according to the DOJ. She was not a veterinarian and did not require customers to provide veterinary prescriptions when purchasing veterinary drugs.

Among the products sold were Cipio Vet, Baytril Max and Caterrol, which were manufactured in Mexico but were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the U.S.

Duong expanded the business in 2017 by adding Taktic and Bovitraz pesticides. Neither product was registered with the Environmental Protection Agency for sale or use in the U.S., meaning they could not legally be sold domestically.

Smuggled through Calexico, shipped to Texas

In 2018, Duong launched a website that became the primary sales and distribution channel for the operation.

Prosecutors said she then entered into agreements with several co-conspirators to acquire veterinary drugs and pesticides that she knew had been smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.

The merchandise crossed the border through the Calexico port of entry in California, according to the DOJ. After entering the U.S., the pesticides and veterinary drugs were placed in storage units near the border.

Duong’s co-conspirators subsequently shipped the merchandise from California to Texas, creating another leg in the illicit supply chain. From 2018 through 2022, Duong obtained approximately $2.4 million worth of smuggled merchandise from the co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

Mai served as shipping manager for the website.

Once customers placed orders, Mai packaged the pesticides and veterinary drugs and shipped them to buyers around the country using the U.S. Postal Service and other shipping companies, according to prosecutors.

The case was investigated by the EPA and FDA, with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Federal authorities said the pesticides presented potential environmental and public-health risks. Taktic and Bovitraz contain amitraz, which the EPA said is toxic to bees and can ultimately expose humans when it contaminates honey, honeycomb or beeswax.

Improper use of amitraz products in beehives can result in human exposure associated with neurological and potentially reproductive effects. Documented signs of neurotoxicity in animals include central nervous system depression, decreased pulse rate and hypothermia.

“No one should profit from bringing illegal chemicals into the United States and poisoning American communities,” Jeffrey A. Hall, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said in a statement.

Why it matters: The case provides a detailed look at how an illicit cross-border supply chain used border storage facilities, domestic shipping networks and e-commerce to distribute prohibited Mexican products throughout the United States.

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The oral arguments in the broker transparency case of Pink Cheetah vs. Total Quality Logistics last week were relatively rapid but took place against something that has dragged on a long time: a revised federal rule on broker transparency.

The rulemaking process for a proposal on broker transparency had its period for commentary through a proposed notice of federal rulemaking  close last year. The post-rulemaking process is said to be in the final stages, with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) having sent its latest update to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs late last month.

But while the proposal would more tightly govern what brokers are required to disclose to the carriers they hire and the shippers they serve, it isn’t law yet. But that did not stop the issue from coming up last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Laurence Socci, the outside counsel for Pink Cheetah, was in court to argue that the lower District of Columbia court had erred in issuing TQL summary judgment and tossing out the Pink Cheetah lawsuit over the broker’s failure to provide documentation to Pink Cheetah’s satisfaction. The oral arguments were short, lasting around 20 minutes (a stark contrast to the same panel having just heard lawyers opine in the case of California vs. the U.S. Department of Transportation, heard by the same panel as the Pink Cheetah case).  

Socci made clear what he thought of the proposed rulemaking on broker transparency and whether it should influence Pink Cheetah vs. TQL.

Before the rulemaking began

The dispute between Pink Cheetah and TQL involves developments that occurred as far back as 2023, Soucci said, “long before any rulemaking was going on. The rulemaking going on now has really nothing to do with the underlying case. All of this happened long before the rulemaking started.”

He added, “the issue is whether the district court prematurely dismissed the complaint, and we argue that it did.”

But Scott Carey, outside counsel for TQL with the firm of Baker Donelson, did want the proposed rule to be a factor.

“I would point out that there is a rulemaking going on right now,” Carey told the judges. “We’ve got six years of rulemaking over this particular agency regulation, and one of the issues is whether there can be waivers in a transportation contract between a broker and a motor carrier. That issue has not been settled.”

The reference to a waiver is the first building block in constructing the basis of the dispute between Pink Cheetah and TQL over a 2023 shipment of ice cream, some of which was ultimately rejected by the end customer.

TQL at that time had a clause in the standard contract between the broker and its carriers, according to the original lawsuit filed by Pink Cheetah, that the carrier would waive its rights to the broker records that are specified to be supplied on demand, per 49 C.F.R. § 371.3 of federal law.

What is the email’s clout? 

TQL’s argument is that a November 30, 2023 email sent by FMCSA after Pink Cheetah had reached out to the agency, requesting the company provided the documentation sought by Pink Cheetah, is not an “enforceable order of the Secretary,” according to its brief submitted to the appellate court. It cites the district court opinion that “the email, by its own terms, is merely ‘guidance’…and is not enforceable under the statute.”

In that November 30 email, according to the initial Pink Cheetah complaint, “FMCSA issued an order…directing (TQL) to remove the waiver language from its contracts” because it violated existing federal law. 

TQL’s also is arguing that it did provide records in response to that FMCSA email. But even after providing FMCSA with various data, Pink Cheetah wanted more. “TQL declined the request, relying on the waiver in…the parties’ pre-existing agreement,” it said in its brief. 

In answering a question from the bench, Socci addressed whether TQL under current law can have their carriers and shippers waive the federal disclosure laws. 

The attorney was asked whether there is federal authority for such a waiver. He replied that he did not have “that information off the top of my head.”

But he added that “if more of a record is required, then that’s more of a reason to remand this case back to the district court.”

The district court, Socci said, “was not entitled to disregard concrete directives while treating its informal features as dispositive.”

Payment raises some eyebrows

While what Pink Cheetah got paid is not part of the arguments before the court, their disclosure did create a stir. 

“The records revealed that (it) received from the broker only 56% of the payment for the load in question,” the Pink Cheetah brief for the appellate court said. “The broker extracted approximately 40% commission rather than the reasonable and customary amount of about 14% to 16%.

Pink Cheetah cited the Transportation Intermediaries Association for its data on the average size of a broker’s margin.   

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The larger facility allows Kenco to run warehouse automation testing on larger and more complex systems. It also allows more of those systems to run side by side. Testing takes place inside a building designed to mirror real-world warehouse conditions so results carry over to a live distribution center.

Ainsley Williams, vice president of automation and innovation at Kenco, described the expansion as benefiting both manufacturers and customers.

“The Innovation Lab has long stood as the convergence point for leading technologies and real-world applications, helping both manufacturers and customers identify and realize what’s possible,” Williams said. “By tripling our innovation footprint, we can further provide a space for OEMs to continue experimenting with their products in a real environment and for customers to explore product and value without having to invest in them.”

A Decade From 10,000 Square Feet to 30,000

The original lab was created to help the company understand how emerging technologies such as automation would affect its operations.

“In 2015 we kind of started this journey. We put together a 10,000-square-foot innovation center because we wanted to understand how emerging technology, automation technologies, would be applied in our operation and how that would affect operation as well as our customers,” said Denis Reilly, president and CEO of Kenco, at the lab’s Sept. 10 ribbon-cutting. “And back then a lot of things were in play — nothing as solid as it is today — but we were seeing all these emerging initiatives going on out there.”

Reilly credited Kristi Montgomery, vice president of strategic transformation, with starting that process roughly 10 years ago. As the technology grew, so did Kenco’s technology ambitions.

“As both the industry and Kenco’s automation ambitions continue to grow, that space no longer supported our breadth of technologies that we wanted to evaluate, demonstrate, and develop,” Reilly said.

Kenco operated 140 locations across North America and had more than 7,500 employees as of August 2025, roughly 800 of them at its Chattanooga headquarters.

The opening drew former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and Tennessee state Sen. Bo Watson, along with representatives from the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, Hamilton County Schools and the University of Tennessee campuses at Chattanooga and Knoxville. A large automation project with Thomas Goldsby, the Dee and Jimmy Haslam Chair in Logistics at UT Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business, is already underway, Reilly said.

Vendor Neutrality Shapes the Testing Environment

The lab is intentionally vendor-neutral by design. An OEM gets a working building to run equipment in, while a customer gets a look at that equipment with no purchase order attached. Kenco collects evaluation data on both. Neutrality is also the thing a 3PL can offer that a manufacturer’s own demonstration center cannot, because Kenco has no product line to defend when a system underperforms on its floor.

“This facility actually serves as more than a lab. It’s a working environment where we can validate technologies, we can develop solutions, and we can explore what is next for our customers and our operations,” Reilly said.

Warehouse Automation Testing and the Labor Question

Every automation rollout eventually has to answer the same question from the warehouse floor: How does it affect labor?

“Automation is not about replacing people. It’s about enabling them,” Reilly said. “These solutions help reduce excessive walking, eliminate tedious and repetitive work, minimize physically demanding tasks, and create safer, more sustainable work environments.”

This enablement via automation will continue to have a human in the loop. It will be a much more efficient associate, powered by these emerging technologies.

“Now, as you tour the facility today, we encourage you to view these technologies through the lens of a warehouse associate, because that’s where it’s geared towards,” Reilly told the room. “The senior warehousemen — you’re having to do picking and you’re having to do warehouse activities — try to take it from that perspective so you can understand how it’s going to impact their lives as well as the day-to-day operations out there.”

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Founded in 1977 and headquartered in South Korea, LX Pantos has grown into a global logistics provider spanning freight forwarding, contract logistics, e-commerce fulfillment, last-mile delivery and installation, and supply chain management consulting. The company now operates more than 380 locations worldwide with a workforce of approximately 8,500 employees, moving more than 1.6 million TEUs of ocean freight and over 120,000 tons of air freight annually. In 2025, LX Pantos recorded revenue of approximately $5.85 billion.

For President and CEO Lee Yong-ho, those figures mark a foundation rather than a destination.

“Since assuming the role of CEO, I have set a clear vision for LX Pantos: to build the company into a ‘Korea-born, global logistics company,’ and we have been pursuing that goal with unwavering commitment,” Lee said.

That vision marks a departure from the model that carried LX Pantos for decades on domestic corporate freight volumes.

“For many years, LX Pantos grew rapidly by leveraging freight volumes from domestic corporate customers. However, we have also recognized that growth driven primarily by the domestic market has its limitations,” Lee said. “It is now time for LX Pantos to evolve into a truly global logistics company — one that is not confined to any single country or customer segment, but is capable of delivering comprehensive logistics solutions to customers worldwide.”

Lee credited an internal shift as much as market conditions, pointing to recent wins with multinational customers.

“We have placed strong emphasis on organizational mindset transformation and disciplined execution. As a result, we are now achieving meaningful commercial wins with global MNC customers across China, Asia, and Europe,” Lee said.

Many providers see geopolitical volatility and shifting trade routes as headwinds. Lee frames it differently.

“Today, the supply chain environment is facing unprecedented volatility due to geopolitical risks and ongoing changes in the trade landscape,” Lee said. “While many view this as a time of crisis, we see it as a significant opportunity to accelerate LX Pantos’ transformation into a leading global logistics company.”

That transformation runs through four core business lines: freight forwarding across ocean, air and rail; contract logistics covering warehousing and inland transportation; e-commerce fulfillment; and last-mile delivery and installation. Lee described those units less as separate service lines than as components of a single connected system.

“These businesses do not operate independently. Rather, they are seamlessly integrated into a single value chain through digital solutions and a coordinated sales structure,” Lee said. “In other words, LX Pantos’ competitiveness lies not simply in providing individual logistics services, but in integrating transportation, storage, delivery, and tracking into a single end-to-end system that delivers a seamless supply chain experience for customers.”

Underpinning that integration is a network Lee has expanded deliberately, entering new markets ahead of demand rather than reacting to it.

“Whenever we identify a promising logistics opportunity, we have consistently pursued proactive and early expansion into regions across the globe,” Lee said. “This global network, combined with LX Pantos’ integrated logistics capabilities, has provided a strong foundation for delivering differentiated services.”

In a crowded field of providers making similar promises, Lee pointed past rate sheets and transit times to the relationship itself.

“Beyond transportation, LX Pantos plays the role of a strategic partner that works alongside customers to design and optimize their supply chains,” Lee said. “We believe that when these strengths are scaled across our global operations, LX Pantos is fully capable of competing at the highest level in the global market.”

That partnership model shows up most directly in contract logistics, where Lee said customer priorities have shifted markedly since the pandemic.

“While logistics cost reduction and operational efficiency were once the primary criteria in selecting logistics partners, customers have since the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened geopolitical uncertainty increasingly placed greater emphasis on resilience as a core competitive advantage of logistics providers — namely, the ability to respond flexibly to disruptions and maintain stable operations even when supply chain challenges arise,” Lee said.

Nowhere is that recalibration more visible than in the U.S., where LX Pantos’ acquisition of a large-scale logistics center in Georgia last year was part of a broader buildout of regional hubs across the Eastern, Western, and Southern U.S.

“The United States, as the world’s largest consumer market and a pivotal hub in the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, has emerged as an increasingly critical market in terms of customer proximity and supply chain resilience, driven by the rapid advancement of reshoring and manufacturing realignment,” Lee said.

“Through partnerships such as Boxlinks, its joint venture with ONE, LX Pantos is strengthening its inland transportation and empty container repositioning capabilities, while its collaboration with the Virginia Port Authority is enhancing cargo flow stability and operational efficiency across the U.S. East Coast,” Lee said.

Beyond North America, Lee named Southeast Asia, India and Eastern Europe as the regions with the most long-term growth potential as manufacturing bases relocate.

“We believe these regions hold significant long-term growth potential, as they are evolving beyond mere transit points into integrated hubs where global customers are establishing production, procurement, and distribution networks,” Lee said.

Installation is one of the more distinctive pieces of that global expansion. LX Pantos built its expertise domestically through a long-standing partnership with LG Electronics, and Lee said the company is now translating that experience into overseas markets, led by the U.S., where LX Pantos already operates 36 locations.

“With 36 operational locations already established across the country, the company has built an infrastructure capable of covering the entire U.S. market and is now accelerating its business expansion on this foundation. LX Pantos aims to bring the high-quality capabilities developed in Korea to the U.S. market,” Lee said.

Lee tied that expansion to shifting consumer habits, including online furniture and electronics sales, subscription purchasing, and DIY markets now turning to professional installation.

“As online sales of electronics and furniture, as well as subscription-based purchasing models, become increasingly mainstream, manufacturers are placing greater importance on securing logistics partners that can provide transportation hubs, robust delivery systems, and strong installation capabilities,” Lee said.

Digital tools sit alongside physical infrastructure in LX Pantos’ growth plan. The company’s Pantos Now forwarding platform and Pantos View risk-monitoring tool give customers real-time shipment visibility, while robotics, automation and, more recently, artificial intelligence are being layered into logistics centers.

“As a result, customers can benefit from a more convenient and seamless service experience spanning quotations, transportation, tracking, and risk management, while real-time visibility also enables more proactive decision-making,” Lee said.

Sustainability rounds out LX Pantos’ pitch to shippers weighing partners on more than price and speed. The company participates in EcoVadis, the Carbon Disclosure Project, the United Nations Global Compact and the Women’s Empowerment Principles, and has built a greenhouse gas measurement framework tied to a 2050 net-zero roadmap, with Scope 1 and 2 emissions data from domestic and key overseas sites now third-party verified.

“By establishing a carbon emissions measurement system aligned with global standards, LX Pantos has enhanced visibility into carbon data across the entire logistics value chain,” Lee said. “As a partner dedicated to helping customers achieve meaningful decarbonization, LX Pantos will continue to meet evolving ESG requirements, proactively respond to global environmental regulations, and further strengthen its role as a sustainable supply chain partner that helps customers mitigate risk.”

Click here to learn more about LX Pantos.

Follow LX Pantos on LinkedIn.

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Notably, CPKC and CSX are targeting the same corridor: They want access to the Kansas City-St. Louis trackage now controlled by UP or NS, arguing that the merger partners’ existing fix — trackage rights for Canadian National — doesn’t restore meaningful competition.

The railroads outlined their plans in Wednesday regulatory filings with the Surface Transportation Board. The filings tip their hands regarding so-called responsive applications the railroads expect to submit by a Nov. 18 deadline. Numerous short line railroads filed similar requests for trackage rights and, in some cases, access to local customers.

All three Class I railroads urged the STB to reject the UP-NS merger outright, saying it will harm competition, hurt the economy, and is not in the public interest. But if the board does approve the $85 billion deal, the railroads said regulators should impose numerous conditions to mitigate potential competitive harms.

“If the Board decides to go down the path of allowing this merger to fundamentally transform the industry, then it must also fundamentally transform the industry with commensurate conditions to lessen the blow to shippers and the American public,” BNSF told the STB. “To be clear, conditions can only mitigate some of the harm to competition caused by this merger.”

BNSF will seek 824 miles of trackage rights over Norfolk Southern’s Premier Corridor between Chicago and intermodal terminals in Eastern Pennsylvania. The trackage rights would extend from Chicago to Bethlehem, Pa., including the Chicago Line from Chicago to Cleveland; the Cleveland Line from Cleveland to Alliance, Ohio; the Fort Wayne Line from Alliance to West Pitt, Pa.; the Pittsburgh Line from West Pitt to Harrisburg, Pa.; and the Harrisburg Line to Wyomissing Jct., Pa.; plus segments of the Reading Line and the Lehigh Line east of Wyomissing.

The route is a major intermodal lane for BNSF and NS interline service today, particularly for shared customer J.B. Hunt.

“BNSF and NS are currently aligned on working together to provide this intermodal service to customers. If the Board approves the proposed merger, however, UP/NS would have the ability and incentive to ensure that BNSF is not a competitive option from a pricing and service perspective,” BNSF told the board. “Once BNSF is eliminated or limited from that market, UP/NS will be able to extract higher prices from its customers. To mitigate the loss of competition and degradation in service, BNSF anticipates submitting a responsive application seeking overhead trackage rights on certain NS lines between Chicago and eastern Pennsylvania.”

In the Gulf Coast — home to clusters of petrochemical plants and their lucrative carload traffic — BNSF will request that the STB require UP to create a neutral switching or terminal railroad that would directly serve all UP- and BNSF-rail-served facilities.

“Many Gulf Coast shippers are dependent on the UP network without competitive rail alternatives — a dependence that forces captive shippers to pay higher rates than shippers with access to multiple carriers — and the UP/NS merger would exacerbate these harms because Gulf customers ship significant volumes to eastern markets where CSX and NS compete today. Post-merger, UP would leverage its increased market power — and its practice of bundling rail service to customers with multiple facilities across its network — to impose still higher rates on these captive shippers,” BNSF told the board.

Thus BNSF proposes a neutral carrier that would provide BNSF, UP, and potentially other railroads equal access to rail-served customers in the region. If approved, this would have a major impact: UP has the industry’s largest chemical franchise and the railroad serves roughly 900 customers in Houston alone.

“The neutral terminal railroad would haul, switch, or interchange traffic to UP and BNSF at nearby hand-off points. The railroad could be jointly owned and managed by UP and BNSF (although other railroads could participate depending on the geographic territory involved) or be a third-party shortline operator or switching railroad,” BNSF said.

CPKC wants trackage rights improvements

CPKC said it will propose eight conditions that strengthen or protect its current trackage rights over UP in Texas and on NS between Detroit and Chicago. CPKC also intends to seek new operating rights over UP in Louisiana and Texas. And it will ask for trackage rights over NS in the Kansas City-St. Louis corridor and new or adjusted trackage rights over UP in Kansas City and Chicago.

CPKC’s cross-border corridor across Texas relies on trackage rights over UP between Beaumont and Rosenberg, and then again from Victoria to Robstown.

CPKC will ask the STB to remove various restrictions on commodities it can handle over the route, including access to local shippers and connecting short lines. It also will ask the board to impose conditions that would “reduce UP’s ability to impede or delay CPKC’s efforts to add capacity needed to support CPKC growth,” along with setting levels of service UP must provide over trackage-rights routes.

CPKC will seek new rights to operate on UP trackage in the Baton Rouge, La., area to reach local customers. It also will request new rights to operate over UP’s Lufkin Subdivision between Shreveport, La., and Houston. The route, CPKC says, could serve as a relief valve should merger-related traffic increases in the Houston terminal and between Houston and Livonia, La., create congestion on lines that CPKC and UP share east of Houston.

And, faced with the prospect of having NS acquire CPKC’s Dallas-area intermodal terminal in Wylie, Texas, CPKC will ask the STB to prohibit NS or UP from acquiring the terminal. NS has exercised its right, under the CPKC-NS Meridian Speedway agreement, to acquire the Wylie terminal. NS handles the lion’s share of traffic in and out of the terminal, mostly to serve the Atlanta-Dallas market.

“UP’s acquisition of NS would fundamentally alter the competitive consequences of NS’s proposed Wylie acquisition. Unlike NS, UP already operates two intermodal terminals in the Dallas area and UP competes directly against CPKC for traffic between Dallas and the U.S. Midwest. UP’s acquisition of the Wylie Intermodal Terminal would therefore place Wylie under the control of one of CPKC’s principal competitors,” CPKC said.

In the Midwest, CPKC will seek trackage rights on Norfolk Southern’s former Wabash main line from Mexico, Mo., to St. Louis along with related “close the gap” trackage rights on the Terminal Railroad Association between St. Louis and East St. Louis, Ill.

The NS Kansas City-St. Louis route is superior to CPKC’s own circuitous line via Roodhouse, Ill. “CPKC therefore anticipates asking the Board … to require Applicants to grant CPKC trackage rights over a portion of NS’s route in order to improve the competitiveness of CPKC’s Kansas City-St. Louis route both for St. Louis-area traffic moving to/from CPKC’s own network and as a bridge between BNSF and CSX,” CPKC said, noting that it also would like access to local customers on the NS route.

In the Kansas City area, CPKC will seek access to UP trackage in the terminal area to connect CPKC’s Knoche Yard with the Kansas City Terminal Railway. CPKC also will ask the board to protect its rights to use the Polo Line UP-CPKC paired track arrangement between Airline Junction and Polo, Mo.

CPKC relies on Norfolk Southern trackage rights to link Detroit and Chicago. CPKC will ask the STB to strengthen those rights, including stipulations regarding service levels. CPKC will request that the trackage rights for the first time would include traffic interchanged with Conrail in the Detroit area, traffic interchanged with the Ann Arbor in Milan, Mich., and any traffic to or from new facilities CPKC may build in the Detroit area.

In Chicago, CPKC will ask the board to grant access to enter and exit its Chicago-Michigan trackage rights at CP 502 and to operate between CP 502 and points on the Indiana Harbor Belt, including Gibson Yard. CPKC also will ask the STB to preserve its right to operate over UP’s Techy Line, which connects CPKC’s Bensenville Yard with its main line to the Twin Cities via Milwaukee.

CSX aims for intermodal and Midwest access

CSX will request three major concessions: Access to Kansas City via UP’s line between St. Louis and Kansas City; improved access to eastern Pennsylvania via trackage rights over Norfolk Southern; and access to a key dockside terminal at the Port of Virginia via trackage rights over NS and Norfolk & Portsmouth Belt Line.

“CSXT anticipates that it will seek conditions where CSXT is uniquely positioned to preserve part of the competition that a merged UP/NS would otherwise extinguish, and where UP/NS’s dominance would be most aggressively weaponized against competing carriers and the shippers that depend on them,” CSX told the STB.

CSX noted that UP has addressed network overlap with NS in the Kansas City-St. Louis-East St. Louis corridor by reaching an agreement with Canadian National, which would gain access to the UP route if the merger is approved.

“Yet having conceded the need for a structural remedy, Applicants have proposed to address this harm by granting rights to a carrier unlikely to meaningfully challenge the combined UP/NS’s competitive dominance, not the carrier best positioned to restore the competition in the KC-ESL [East St. Louis, Ill.] corridor that would be eliminated by their merger,” CSX told the board. “CSXT is the only railroad that can restore the east/west competition over this corridor that the merger would destroy.”

Today, CSX notes, shippers have “genuine choice” in the K.C.-St. Louis corridor, including UP-CSX and NS-BNSF and NS-CPKC options. “The merger eliminates that choice by placing both lines under common UP/NS control, extinguishing the independent eastern-railroad alternative that currently disciplines pricing and service across the corridor,” CSX said, noting that CN cannot replicate the eastern footprint of either the CSX or NS networks.

CSX said it would seek a 50% divestiture and dispatching control of UP’s line between East St. Louis, Ill., and Kansas City, along with Neff Yard in Kansas City. “With a direct ownership interest in the Kansas City Line, CSXT can build a complete business connecting Kansas City with its entire eastern network via the East St. Louis gateway, restoring precisely the alternative Kansas City service that the merger would eliminate,” CSX said.

In the East, CSX said the granting of trackage rights over Norfolk Southern would help it serve as a counterweight to the NS intermodal dominance in the area that’s within a one-day drive of a third of the U.S. population.

“To ensure that shippers west of the Mississippi continue to benefit from competitive options, CSXT anticipates that it will seek trackage rights on NS from Chambersburg through Harrisburg and Allentown to Manville, [N.J.]. These rights would enable CSXT to access an independent terminal in Bethlehem, Pa., to preserve interline optionality,” CSX told the board.

Specifically, CSX will request trackage rights over the NS Lurgan Branch between Chambersburg, Pa., and Harrisburg; the NS Harrisburg Line between Harrisburg and Wyomissing Junction; the NS Reading Line between Wyomissing Junction and Bethlehem; the NS Lehigh Line between Wyomissing Junction and Allentown Yard and Bethlehem; and the NS Lehigh Line from Bethlehem across New Jersey to Manville Yard.

In Virginia, NS is the only Class I railroad with access to the Port of Virginia’s Norfolk Intermodal Terminal. CSX has for years sought direct rail access to the terminal through federal courts and the STB.

“Today, NS moves traffic for interchange at gateways with UP, BNSF, and CPKC, whose transcontinental traffic moves through NIT. NS currently has no systematic incentive to foreclose any of them from efficient interline access. The merger would eliminate that neutrality entirely.” CSX told the board. “Post-transaction, a combined UP/NS would have both the ability and incentive to exploit NS’s exclusive on-dock rail access to NIT — and its control of the only line available to any competing carrier — to steer transcontinental traffic onto UP’s network and away from BNSF and CPKC.”

CSX said it likely would request trackage rights over NPBL and NS lines in the Norfolk area to reach the terminal.

CN, in its own filing, detailed the agreement with Union Pacific for access to the railroads’ route from the St. Louis area to Kansas City. CN asked the STB to make the deal a condition of its approval of the merger.

CN said it anticipates acquiring connecting trackage rights over the TRRA in a separating filing. And CN said it would seek access to energy customers on UP in Hillsboro and Carlinville, Ill., as well as Des Moines and Avon, Iowa, via haulage or trackage rights.

The related deals, CN said, are in the public interest and preserve competition.

NS defends merger

Trains has asked UP and NS to comment on the rival railroads’ filings.

“We will address the issues raised in the record,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement. “The facts are clear: this merger will deliver substantial, measurable benefits — shifting an estimated 2.1 million truckloads from road to rail annually, saving shippers $3.5 billion that can be passed on to consumers, and creating approximately 1,200 new union jobs. We have reinforced these benefits with unprecedented voluntary commitments that provide robust protections and guarantee significant public benefits.”

UP said that the filings show other railroads are afraid of competition. “Our opponents are afraid to compete; instead, they are exploiting the proceeding to advance their own commercial interests rather than invest their capital to enhance service. Their demands do not strengthen America’s supply chain nor help consumers,” the railroad said.

Filings are consistent with prior mergers

The Class I railroad filings are consistent with prior mergers, as railroads seek to protect themselves from potential competitive impacts from a new larger rival.

In the 1996 Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger, for example, Conrail sought to acquire SP’s eastern network, including trackage from the Gulf Coast to St. Louis. Regulators rejected Conrail’s bid.

In the Conrail split, CN sought to cobble together a Montreal-New Jersey route by proposing to acquire Conrail’s Montreal Secondary to Syracuse, N.Y., and short line New York, Susquehanna & Western from Syracuse to New Jersey. NS and CSX ultimately reached a haulage rights deal that satisfied CN’s concerns, and CN dropped its request to acquire the trackage.

More recently, as part of the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger review, CN sought a forced divestiture of the KCS route linking Springfield, Ill., with Kansas City, which would have given CN access to Kansas City. Regulators rejected that request as part of their 2023 approval of the CP-KCS merger.

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

Read more:

Summer wanes but railfreight stays hot

102 Dems to STB: Put labor first in UP-NS rail merger review

Rail freight gains ride steelmaking, energy sectors

DOT unveils plan to turn highways, rail lines into multi‑use utility arteries

Greenbrier tabs new CEO in leadership succession

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The video was recorded at Shell Rotella’s Recording Studio during the 2026 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Owner-operators, fleet drivers and trucking influencers participated in the recordings, according to Shell Rotella.

Nearly 100 drivers took part in the Recording Studio, discussing their careers, experiences on the road and what makes them proud to work in trucking. The conversations were unscripted, Shell Rotella said.

Trucking personalities including The Boston Trucker, Clarissa Rankin and Tarik Al-Amin were among those who participated in the recordings.

Truck Driver Appreciation Week

The project comes as trucking companies and other industry organizations prepare for National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, an annual observance recognizing professional drivers and their role in moving freight across the country. The 2026 observance runs Sept. 13-19.

The American Trucking Associations launched National Truck Driver Appreciation Week in 1988. The organization says about 3.6 million professional truck drivers work in the U.S., while more than 80% of U.S. communities rely exclusively on trucks to receive their freight. The week recognizes the work of drivers who transport goods across the country and highlights the role trucking plays in the U.S. economy. Professional drivers move everything from food and medical supplies to consumer products and industrial materials, making trucking a critical part of the nation’s supply chain.

Companies across the industry are marking the week in different ways, ranging from contests and free products to driver events, recognition programs and charitable efforts.

Pilot, for example, is celebrating Driver Appreciation Month throughout September with its annual Road Warrior contest and special offers for drivers. The company will award one professional driver a customized Kenworth W990 truck and $50,000 cash prize. Nominations for the contest are open through Sept. 18, with the winner scheduled to be announced in October.

Pilot is also offering professional drivers three free drinks and a snack each week during September through its app at participating Pilot, Flying J and One9 travel centers. The company is also hosting events at select locations with giveaways, free samples and other activities.

C.H. Robinson is also using the week to recognize drivers and carriers. The company said employees at locations across the country assembled carrier appreciation bags with handwritten thank-you notes and gifts for the road. The bags will be distributed to drivers at C.H. Robinson distribution centers during the week.

The company also plans to recognize 17 Carrier of the Year award winners at a Sept. 17 ceremony in Minneapolis. C.H. Robinson said the winners include executives, owners and drivers.

St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund 

Shell Rotella is combining driver recognition with a charitable component. The company pledged $25 to the St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund for each video recorded at the Mid-America Trucking Show.

The donations totaled more than $2,000. The relief fund provides financial assistance to professional drivers and their families who face financial hardship because of illness or injury. 

“Every driver has a story, and every story shared helps support truck drivers facing difficult circumstances,” said Diane Hutsell, director of philanthropy at the St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund.

That donation effort gives Shell Rotella’s project a second component beyond the videos themselves. Drivers who participated were able to share their experiences while the company used the recordings to generate donations for a nonprofit that provides assistance to drivers and their families.

“Truck drivers are at the heart of what we do, and National Truck Driver Appreciation Week gives us a chance to recognize the hard work and dedication they bring to the profession every day,” said Julie Wright, Shell Rotella brand manager. 

For the broader trucking industry, the week serves as a concentrated period for companies to recognize drivers in different ways. Some programs focus on direct benefits for drivers, such as Pilot’s free drinks and travel-center events, while others emphasize recognition through awards or personal stories.

The approaches vary, but the focus is the same: recognizing professional drivers whose work supports the movement of freight and the businesses and communities that depend on it.

Why This Matters: 

National Truck Driver Appreciation Week gives trucking companies and industry organizations an opportunity to recognize the professional drivers who keep freight moving across the country. Shell Rotella’s project also highlights how companies are using the week to recognize drivers through personal stories and charitable efforts.

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The service took effect Sept. 11 and is intended to give importers and exporters another rail option for moving containerized cargo between Charleston and inland southeast markets, according to SC Ports. The port said the lane will offer shippers greater flexibility, speed to market and cost-effective connectivity.

“The intermodal service between Charleston and Huntsville is a meaningful addition for our customers, as we work with our partners at Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) to give shippers greater flexibility and speed to market at the right cost,” SC Ports President and Chief Executive Micah Mallace said in a statement. “Strong intermodal connectivity and reliable port service are key to delivering the efficiency and consistency our customers need.”

The Huntsville service adds to Charleston’s existing rail network, which moves about 25% of SC Ports’ container volume by rail. The port already provides daily express intermodal services and connections to its Inland Ports Greer and Dillon, as well as intermodal hubs in Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, Charlotte and Louisville.

Norfolk Southern said the new lane strengthens its position in a fast-growing Southeastern freight market and gives cargo owners an additional alternative to truck transportation for port-related moves.

“The Port of Charleston is a critical gateway to one of the fastest-growing regions in the country,” said Shawn Tureman, Norfolk Southern’s vice president of intermodal automotive. “This service between Charleston and Huntsville gives shippers another reliable, cost-effective option for moving cargo throughout the Southeast.”

South Carolina exported $38 billion in goods in 2024, of which $37.2 billion was manufactured products. Transportation equipment, including vehicles and tires, accounted for $19.2 billion, while imported auto parts, engines and transmissions exceeded $3.5 billion. The Port of Charleston is especially exposed to two-way flows from China and Germany, the largest origins for imports entering through the port, according to the Richmond Federal Reserve. That matters for Huntsville-area factories that source components globally.

Huntsville and the wider Tennessee Valley are a high-value freight market shaped by aerospace and defense, automotive manufacturing, electronics, technology, pharmaceuticals, distribution and advanced manufacturing. The Port of Huntsville combines Huntsville International Airport, the International Intermodal Center, Foreign Trade Zone No. 83 and the Jetplex Industrial Park, giving shippers a rail-air-truck logistics platform.

The launch builds on SC Ports’ broader effort to improve inland rail connectivity. In 2025, the port completed a $55 million expansion of Inland Port Greer that increased its cargo-handling capacity by 50% and added 9,000 feet of track to accommodate longer trains. Norfolk Southern provides daily and overnight service to Greer, which is located along the Interstate 85 corridor between Atlanta and Charlotte.

For Charleston, the new Huntsville connection could help draw discretionary cargo from North Alabama and Middle Tennessee by giving shippers a direct rail route to the port’s container terminals and ocean-carrier network. The service also expands Norfolk Southern’s intermodal offerings tied to Charleston at a time when ports and railroads are emphasizing faster, more reliable inland distribution options across the Southeast.

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.

Read more:

BNSF, CPKC, and CSX to request broad access to a combined UP-NS network

Summer wanes but railfreight stays hot

102 Dems to STB: Put labor first in UP-NS rail merger review

Rail freight gains ride steelmaking, energy sectors

DOT unveils plan to turn highways, rail lines into multi‑use utility arteries

The post SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville appeared first on FreightWaves.

The company originally was incubated inside intermodal terminal operator ConGlobal and is live at more than 80 sites nationally. Its pitch revolves around reducing inventory counts. An example they gave was a 6,000 container yard. With automation, that yard can be covered in under an hour at 99% accuracy. If done by a person with a clipboard, it would take roughly four hours with a 75%. 

That thesis has taken Aviro360’s booked business past 120 sites by the end of the year, and Ilhan Kolko, the company’s president and managing director, told FreightWaves he projects to reach an estimated 200 sites in 2027.

ConGlobal has operated intermodal terminals and depots for more than half a century. It was missed moves, lost assets and yard congestion that inspired the technology behind the product. Aviro360 took the capability to market as a standalone brand in October 2025 and used Manifest as its debut.

Another use case was tackling dwell. For those unfamiliar, dwell time is another opaque yet endemic blight that feeds upon supply chain efficiency. In 2023, drivers were detained on 39.3% of all stops. That detention cost for-hire trucking firms $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. 

Additionally, getting paid for dwell is a feat in and of itself. Fleets bill for those events on 94.5% of occasions and collect on fewer than half the invoices. Aviro360 estimated the return at more than $650,000 per year, per site, during an appearance on the Let’s Talk Supply Chain podcast.

Ending Yard Blindness

Kolko likened the yard as the last unautomated link in a supply chain that got modernized around it.

“All this progress on the transport side, all this progress inside the warehouse through robotics, on the transport side all the track-and-trace related improvements, I think now it’s time to handle the yard,” Kolko said in an interview with FreightWaves. “And now it’s right in between there as well, causing all these challenges.”

He describes the failure as sitting upstream of the software used to measure it.

“Someone went out there to take inventory of the yard, didn’t come back for four hours, and when they came back with a pen and paper it’s 75% accurate,” Kolko said. “It’s almost always 75% accurate, by the way, when it’s done manually.”

That number is the ceiling on which sits every decision made downstream of it, because a spotter dispatched against a bad location burns a move and a driver’s clock at the same time. Aviro360 captures chassis and container numbers, license plates, and logos at the gate on both the inbound and the outbound side, then tracks each asset through the yard onto a single timeline. That includes which door it hit, which spot it parked in, and when each move happened. Outbound gets  as much engineering attention as inbound, because the gate is also where assets leave attached to trucks that do not own them.

Where Latency Turns Into Spoilage

Another example is in the reefer segment where data latency becomes loss. Aviro360 integrates with trailer telematics and flags units aging past their window before the load becomes scrap. It’s an area where detention is also more prevalent.  ATRI puts refrigerated drivers at the top of the detention table at 56.2% of stops. That capability is what recently won the company food and beverage customers, Kolko said.

“You can invest in a YMS, TMS, ERP, any kind of system of record, there is great software out there, we integrate with all of them,” Kolko said. “But if that critical data input from the yard, the actual physical site, is lacking, then your true physical workloads take the hit.”

Automated Yard Inventory in Two or Three Days

The hardware is proprietary and shrinking in size as technology because cheaper and more compact. Aviro360 cut its gate footprint by 40% over the past 18 months, meaning fewer cameras, fewer poles, and less steel in the ground. Gate installs run two or three days on a ready site, with a soft launch by day five. The mobile inventory units, which mount to yard hustlers or any other vehicle already touring the site, go in the same day.

Then comes a four-week calibration window while the machine learning models learn the property. Nothing on the ground has to be marked for it to work.

“For the mobile inventory unit, you don’t need to have your parking spots marked. We don’t even need to see the door,” Kolko said. “The moment we anchor ourselves to a particular geolocation, we can recognize any spot anywhere and show that within our digital twin.”

Accuracy reaches 99% at the end of the fourth week, Kolko said. The company also runs a competitive check against cameras a customer already owns and reuses what passes, along with gate arms and chain-link gates, which matters at sites where procurement just signed off on a security system and has no appetite for a second one.

Whoever Runs the Yard, the Integration Path Is the Same

Yard labor at large shippers splits unpredictably between in-house spotters and outsourced 3PL or carrier crews, and Kolko puts the mix at roughly 50/50 across the customer base. The split matters to anyone selling into the yard, because the buyer, the crew turning the wheels, and the system of record are frequently three different companies. One customer runs 24 distribution centers on its own systems. Another hands the same work entirely to third parties.

“To us, as long as the integration path is shown to us, we’re really agnostic to who is managing it or on what terms,” Kolko said. “We’re used to handling all these personas.”

Yard Inventory Automation Becomes Table Stakes

The concept has been in development for more than a decade, and both core products are in their third generation. What changed recently is the price. Yard-grade computer vision used to be a million-dollar custom build reserved for marine terminals, and productizing it moved the technology into reach of ordinary distribution centers.

Kolko expects gate automation and inventory reconciliation to become table stakes within five years, with yard intelligence as the layer that follows. The near-term driver is what the competition already installed.

“Everyone is coming to the realization that I can fix a lot of the problems that I have in the yard and it’s not going to cost me a fortune, and my competition is doing it,” Kolko said. “So I think within the next 18 months we’re going to see the first phase of modernization of these concepts.”

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Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department Commander Michael Ware provided FreightWaves with details about the suspected fictitious-pickup theft. The shipment originated in DeKalb, Illinois, with an intended destination of Rock Hill, South Carolina. According to his statement, individuals allegedly used a legitimate motor carrier’s identity and published contact information to obtain it. CargoNet Crime Intelligence Analyst Shannon Elliott alerted Ware, setting the multistate response in motion.

GPS leads to warehouse

The Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department opened a case and entered Schneider’s trailer as stolen. Investigators also added the tractor and identified driver through what Ware described as a “felony vehicle entry.” CargoNet recorded the incident under reference CN-26-09-00037. Schneider National supplied GPS data that helped authorities trace the missing cargo to Prestonsburg, Kentucky.

Kentucky authorities recovered all six copper pallets inside the warehouse. State police took three individuals into custody in connection with that shipment, according to Ware’s follow-up. Investigators later tracked Schneider’s chassis and container to Chillicothe, Ohio. Local officers secured the equipment while Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers stopped the tractor associated with the original pickup.

Troopers took one person into custody, bringing the total across both states to four. Ware confirmed that the theft and recovery happened Sept. 11. His account credited public agencies and industry partners with sharing information throughout the operation. “Cargo thieves operate across city, county, and state lines, so our response must be just as coordinated.”

Investigators examine another theft

Investigators are examining potential connections to a similar Schneider trailer theft. They are also assessing whether the individuals and carrier identities involved have ties to a broader organized cargo-theft network. Ware emphasized cooperation between law enforcement and freight businesses. “This recovery demonstrates exactly why real-time intelligence-sharing between law enforcement and the freight industry is essential.”

Ware credited Elliott and CargoNet with immediately bringing the incident to his attention. He also thanked DeKalb police, Schneider National and Coolmore Logistics. His acknowledgments included Kentucky State Police and local authorities who assisted with the cargo recovery. The commander additionally recognized Ohio troopers, Chillicothe officers and other participating investigators.

The investigation remains active, according to Ware’s statement. He did not provide names or charges for the four people authorities took into custody. His account did not identify the legitimate carrier whose information the individuals allegedly used. Investigators have not confirmed a connection to the other Schneider theft.

Why It Matters

A legitimate carrier’s published information does not establish who actually controls a pickup. This case also shows how immediate reporting and tracking data can help authorities locate freight across state lines.

CFCO

CFCO teaches vetting and verification at a human level, beyond confirming a trucking company exists. In my view, slowing down before releasing freight could prevent a lengthy recovery or total loss. Business verification technology helps confirm ownership, while identity checks establish who controls the pickup. Encrypted portals reduce reliance on email, but verifying users remains essential to preventing impersonation. To become a Certified Fraud Compliance Officer, explore the CFCO course.

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

Feds: Cargo thief gets over 10 years in $1.5M theft ring that stole $230K in dimes – FreightWaves

Cartel logistics boss gets nearly 19 years for moving cocaine and cash through trucking network – FreightWaves

FMCSA suspends USDOT deactivations for missed biennial updates during MOTUS rollout – FreightWaves

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The crew operated from January through July 2023, according to federal prosecutors. Thieves approached unattended trailers overnight or struck while drivers slept. They broke into cargo areas using bolt cutters. Participants offered those goods for sale locally.

Robbery and stolen dimes

Palmer admitted joining an April 1, 2023, robbery involving commercial refrigerators. During that crime, participants “attacked and injured the driver,” DOJ wrote. Twelve days later, thieves stole more than $230,000 worth of dimes. His guilty plea covered both incidents.

FreightWaves previously reported that freshly minted coins left Philadelphia’s Mint bound for Florida. Crew members used large trash cans to transfer dimes into waiting vehicles. Thousands littered the parking lot afterward. Investigators later recovered more inside a box truck.

Phone records, group chats, surveillance footage and GPS information helped authorities reconstruct events. One conspirator wrote, “We made it!” after news coverage appeared. Another image showed someone lying among stolen dimes inside a pickup truck. Bank cameras recorded deposits involving thousands of coins.

The court outcome

Federal prosecutors announced Palmer’s sentence Sept. 10. Chief District Judge Wendy Beetlestone also ordered $1,080,786.44 in restitution. Her ruling includes three years of supervised release. Officials identified the 33-year-old Philadelphia resident by his alias, “Lew.”

Palmer pleaded guilty during March 2026 following a December 2024 superseding indictment. His convictions included conspiracy, Hobbs Act robbery, government money offenses, plus five counts involving theft from interstate shipments. He also admitted possessing stolen freight. FBI agents investigated alongside Philadelphia police. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander Bowerman and Christopher Diviny prosecuted the case.

FreightWaves covered the same ring June 25 after Salahudin Reddy received a 94-month prison sentence. His case included two crab leg thefts during April 2023. Another incident involved Samsung televisions worth over $360,000. Together, participants stole merchandise from more than 10 victims.

Why It Matters

These thefts show how parked semis can expose drivers to physical danger. For transportation professionals, cargo security must address personal safety alongside shipment protection.

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

DEA seizes over 2,000 pounds of meth in cabbage freight shipment in South Texas – FreightWaves

Cartel logistics boss gets nearly 19 years for moving cocaine and cash through trucking network – FreightWaves

FMCSA suspends USDOT deactivations for missed biennial updates during MOTUS rollout – FreightWaves

The post Feds: Cargo thief gets over 10 years in $1.5M theft ring that stole $230K in dimes appeared first on FreightWaves.

A tool the Teamsters and other unions have been attempting to use in their organizing efforts is likely to be under renewed pressure from the Trump administration, now that the National Labor Relations Board has a clear Republican majority and a quorum.

The tool is the Cemex precedent from the Biden administration. As the Benesch law firm wrote in a commentary about a recent memorandum written by Crystal Stowe Carey, the NLRB’s new  General Counsel, the Cemex precedent came from an NLRB decision that “when a union requests recognition on the basis that a majority of employees in a bargaining unit have designated the union as their representative, an employer must recognize and bargain with the union or promptly file a petition for an election.” That petition is known as an RM petition.

Card check has been a preferred strategy

Getting a work force organized through that process is known as card check. And the Teamsters recently said they had organized workers at the DRI1 facility of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in Providence, Rhode Island through card check, though the union did not use that term in its prepared statement. 

There is no recent record of a traditional unionization vote at DRI1 in the NLRB’s data base of actions.  There can be a lag in the NLRB’s publication of election results, but there is nothing in the Teamsters statement to suggest there was a traditional election. 

But regardless of what happens in Rhode Island, or at other work sites that unions have sought to organize through card check, the Cemex precedent has been the key to those efforts. And it is clearly threatened.

In the August 26 memo to regional directors and other NLRB officials, Carey spelled out the “further guidance (on) General Counsel priorities.” Weakening the Cemex precedent was on the list.

“To ensure transparency in relation to my priorities, I am issuing this memorandum to identify cases where I have requested or intend to request the Board to revisit certain Precedents,” Carey wrote. She added the memo doesn’t require that cases in the regions be submitted to the NLRB’s Division of Advice. But “regions have been, and continue to be, provided with guidance on best practices to use in the settlement, and prosecution, of the cases and issues discussed in the memo.”

Cleaning up the NLRB backlog

Carey, who took over her role in January, said overturning precedents is not her top priority. Rather, it is clearing a lengthy backlog that grew as empty seats on the NLRB went unfilled. The NLRB went months with just two members, short of a quorum. 

The board now has four members, with three of them Republicans. With that, precedents can be overturned if a relevant case comes before it.

The list of precedents on Carey’s focus list is a long one. Cemex is just one of many.

Several of the precedents, including Cemex, have not been in front of the NLRB yet, and Carey said she has therefore not had an opportunity to make her case before the commissioners. 

But on the top of that list in the memo is Cemex. That decision, Carey said, “is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and sound labor policy.”

Back to the Gissel precedent

She added the precedent that Cemex overturned, NLRB vs. Gissel Packing from 1969, as well as other cases from 1971 and 1973, should be “reaffirmed.”

“Carey intends to seek reinstatement of Gissel Packing, under which the Board held that issuance of a bargaining order is appropriate where an employer who has rejected a card majority has committed unfair labor practices which have made the holding of a fair election unlikely, or which have undermined a union’s majority, caused an election to be set aside, and made the holding of a fair rerun election unlikely,” Benesch wrote in its commentary on Carey’s memo. 

The key there is the unfair labor practice charge, which Cemex no longer established as a prerequisite to ordering a successful card check effort be recognized.

One of the older cases cited by Carey in her memo is Linden Lumber. Benesch describes the core of that decision as “an employer does not commit an unfair labor practice for refusing to accept evidence of the union’s majority status other than the results of a Board election, such as authorization cards.”

The Teamsters are not just approaching unionization through card check. The union recently scoured a victory at a warehouse in the Oakland, California area, winning a traditional vote. 

Success at a casino

It also has organized workers through card check where the company recognized those efforts. 

For example, according to the Teamsters, 110 casino workers at the Black Hawk Casino in the town of that same name in Colorado organized through card check, according to a prepared statement by the union. 

That card check drive came with Bally’s, the casino owner, knowing what was going on, the union said. “In November 2025, (the union) and Bally’s reached a landmark neutrality agreement,” the union said. “Under the card check process, Bally’s workers were able to choose union representation with the Teamsters by signing authorization cards.”

An email sent to the Teamsters had not been responded to by publication time. 

The Cemex precedent already had been under pressure at the NLRB. Early in the Trump administration, the acting general counsel William Cowen rescinded guidance by his Biden-era predecessor supporting the Cemex standard.

But that is not the same as action taken by a permanent general counsel leading to a board decision to overturn a precedent, which is where the Cemex decision is now likely heading. 

A possible case that may give the NLRB the opening to overturn the Cemex precedent could be a unionization effort that so far has been successful for the Teamsters.

Possible test case

An NLRB administrative law judge earlier this year ruled that under the Cemex precedent, Amazon needed to bargain with a group of warehouse workers who had submitted a majority of authorization cards at a facility in San Francisco.

The docket for that case shows no activity before the NLRB since it was transferred to the full board after the ALJ decision. 

Michael Silverstein, the ALJ who handed down that ruling, said in his decision that the case was the first case after Cemex “alleging the commission of an unfair labor practice simply because the employer did not file an RM-petition and declined to recognize the union upon the presentation of a demand for recognition,” he wrote. 

An RM-Petition, according to the NLRB, may be filed by an employer “under certain circumstances to determine support for a new union or to determine whether there is continuing support for an incumbent union. A majority of votes decides the outcome.” One of those circumstances would be a successful card check drive.

The Cemex precedent also took a blow in the Sixth Circuit earlier this year. That court ruled, in a dispute between the Teamsters and Brown Forman (NYSE: BF-B), that the NLRB had overstepped its authority in creating the Cemex rule without a formal rulemaking. 

More articles by John Kingston

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Kirk Mann stayed in. As executive vice president and general manager of the transportation vendor solutions business at Mitsubishi HC Capital America, he financed trucks through the entire downturn and watched a great many of them come back.

“There are a lot of lenders, banks that left, and so we’ve had the benefit of being one of the lenders actually lending money in this space,” Mann said in an interview with FreightWaves. What competition remains is mostly OEM captive finance arms, a couple of large independents and a few bank-led groups, he said.

The carriers that did not survive were overwhelmingly the newest. On average, 85% of motor carriers with fewer than two years of operating experience and their own operating authority failed over a three-year stretch of the downturn, Mann said.

The asset bubble behind the failure rate

Back in January 2023, Mann sat in Mitsubishi HC Capital’s Chicago offices with Wayne Pass, the company’s chief credit officer for vendor solutions, since retired. He asked what a Freightliner Cascadia 13-speed with a tall sleeper and fewer than 500,000 miles was worth. Both men wrote down $45,000. Mann then asked what the company was financing those trucks at. About $110,000.

“I remember we were in a bubble. It was an asset bubble of enormous proportions,” Mann said.

A typical 4-year-old sleeper tractor sold at auction in a range of roughly $30,000 to $50,000 across the 11 years between the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to J.D. Power’s Commercial Truck Guidelines. That same truck peaked near $118,000 in early 2022, a 136% jump over the highest pre-COVID peak in the same dataset. Class 8 average retail prices have since settled at $60,986 as of September, according to ACT Research’s State of the Industry: U.S. Classes 3-8 Used Trucks report.

Mitsubishi HC Capital lent into that bubble knowing what it was.

“We made the decision to stay in that market even though we knew there was a tremendous asset bubble, because we wanted people to know we were there,” Mann said. “And if I could do it over again, I’m not sure I’d do it exactly like that. But we’d probably mitigate our risk exposure a little bit differently.”

The unwind arrived as repossessions. “The problem was when things kind of unwound those trucks were coming back because there were payments that people couldn’t sustain, and so those trucks came back like in droves,” Mann said. The lender has since improved recoveries on transportation assets by 15% by building out a dedicated asset management function, Equipment Finance News reported.

Fewer lenders in truck financing, weaker credit profiles

Carriers reading the market as a credit squeeze are half right. Mann said his underwriting did not change. It was the borrowers who did.

“We don’t really change our underwriting philosophy or process, but the credit profile of the customer definitely changes during these down cycles,” he said. “So it feels like lenders are squeezing up and we’re not. We’re just trying to do business with customers that have the right credit profile, and of course those deteriorate over a three-and-a-half-year cycle.”

Freight cycles normally run 12 to 18 months. This one ran nearly three times that, with the damage compounding along the way.

The price of capital is now segregating carriers by how much of that damage they absorbed. Financing runs from roughly 5.25% for investment-grade private fleets up to 12% or higher for lower-credit small operators, who are typically asked for a deposit as well, Mann noted in a  FreightWaves Today interview. Fleets of 50 to 200 units are increasingly approaching Mitsubishi HC Capital through dealer relationships, according to the same interview.

Where the replacement demand is coming from

For two years the industry pinned the coming equipment wave on EPA 2027 pre-buying. Mann does not.

“I don’t think it’s a lot of EPA pre-buy. I think it’s just simply replacement demand and people have released themselves to go ahead and replace their trucks,” he said.

Manufacturers have split on how to handle the 2027 rules, some building the compliant truck and others planning to run legacy models on banked credits or pay the penalty, which leaves 2027 pricing unsettled. His team polls dealers on it constantly and gets different answers depending on the make they carry. He is not expecting a spike large enough to drive purchasing behavior.

Volume through the dealer channel is up regardless. Over-the-road volume at Mitsubishi HC Capital has improved by roughly 30%, Mann said, driven mostly by medium and large fleets replacing equipment they held far past the normal trade cycle. Fleets buying new buy almost entirely new: Mann put it at 80% new, with late-model used taking the rest when the truck is still under warranty and spec’d to fleet standards. He called that estimate qualitative.

One thing that is not happening is expansion.

“I don’t think what you’re seeing today is fleet expansion for sure. The manufacturers can only produce so much, right? So those build slots go away quickly in this when you’re recovering,” Mann said. Combine a normal trade cycle with three years of deferred replacement, he said, and the number is bigger than the build slots available to absorb it.

Mann credits the rate improvement to supply leaving, not freight demand returning. Private fleets that lost volume on their own goods spent the downturn hauling for hire, which added capacity to a market that already had too much.

“So they use their trucks in the for-hire market which continually compressed, created more capacity, compressed price even more, and so it was a tough, tough situation to be in for three and a half years for any for-hire carrier,” Mann said.

Cost per mile decides the deal

For a carrier preparing to finance, one number supercedes the financial statements.

“For the larger customers, every lender out there that does the bigger fleet deals, they want to see that the fleet understands their cost per mile,” Mann said. “If you don’t understand your cost per mile, nothing else really matters.”

Statements coming out of the recession will not look like 2021, and lenders are adding more scrutiny when underwriting. Those who do not know their costs are at a disadvantage when convincing a lender to help them fund asset purchases.

“If someone cannot tell me their cost per mile for all of the categories that are included in their expense load, I really don’t have a desire to do anything with that customer. I mean, I just wouldn’t,” Mann said.

It’s not all bad news for carriers who may have made capital allocation mistakes, or bought at the wrong time. It just requires extra effort and due diligence.

“What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to tell a story and paint a picture of improvement,” he said. “Your driver pay, your maintenance, all the insurance, all the costs associated with that truck — what’s happening there. Because the revenue won’t cover up bad management on the expense side.”

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Exports of Mexican-made heavy-duty trucks to US roar back

Mexico’s heavy-duty vehicle industry posted a sharp rebound in August, with production doubling and exports more than doubling from a year earlier, while domestic wholesale sales continued to recover.

Heavy-duty manufacturers in Mexico produced 16,389 trucks and buses in August, a 100.2% increase from 8,187 units in August 2025, according to data released Wednesday by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

Exports jumped even faster, rising 116.7% year over year to 14,310 units, compared with 6,605 vehicles during the same month last year.

The August gains represent a significant turnaround from weakness earlier in the year, although year-to-date growth remains much more modest.

From January through August, manufacturers produced 101,940 heavy-duty vehicles, up 2.6% compared with 99,311 during the same period in 2025. Exports totaled 85,687 units, a 3.7% increase from 82,620 a year earlier.

Cargo vehicles accounted for 97.6% of Mexican heavy-duty vehicle production through August, totaling 99,526 units, while passenger buses represented the remaining 2,414 vehicles.

The U.S. remains overwhelmingly the industry’s largest export market. Through August, Mexico shipped 79,261 heavy-duty vehicles to the U.S., representing 92.5% of all exports. Canada ranked second with 3,809 units, or 4.4%, followed by Colombia with 1,697 units, or 2%.

Freightliner, International drive production surge

Freightliner led heavy-duty vehicle production in Mexico during August with 10,240 units, a 133.1% increase from 4,393 a year earlier. International produced 4,525 units, up 100.8%, while Kenworth produced 1,087, an 8.5% increase.

Freightliner also dominated exports, shipping 10,073 Mexico-built vehicles abroad during August, up 151.4% year over year. International exported 3,877 units, an 89.6% increase, while Kenworth exports fell 35.3% to 358 units.

Source: INEGI. August 2026 figures are preliminary.

Mexico’s truck fleet has an average age of 19.3 years, according to ANPACT. The organization called for expanded financing, tax incentives, scrappage programs and measures addressing imports of used heavy-duty vehicles from the United States.

About 26,000 used heavy-duty vehicles entered Mexico from the U.S. in 2025, compared with roughly 29,000 in 2024. Although those imports fell 29.2% year over year during the first seven months of 2026, ANPACT said roughly 53 used imported vehicles enter Mexico for every 100 new vehicles sold in the country.

USMCA review, tariffs loom over Mexico truck industry

ANPACT also highlighted trade policy as a growing concern for manufacturers ahead of the USMCA review and amid U.S. Section 232 tariffs.

The association called for preserving the trade agreement’s existing rules of origin while reducing tariff burdens on companies that have invested to comply with regional-content requirements.

“The industry needs certainty,” Arzate said, according to a translation of his remarks. “Automotive investments are planned for the long term and require clear rules to make decisions about new plants, suppliers and production capacity.”

ANPACT said it supports increasing regional content as agreed under USMCA to 70% in 2027, rather than loosening rules of origin, while seeking lower tariffs affecting the integrated North American heavy-duty vehicle supply chain.

Nexio secures 77-acre Texas campus for commercial truck production

Nexio Power has secured a 77-acre industrial campus in Anderson, Texas, that the company plans to use for commercial truck production, finishing, testing and warehousing, according to a news release.

The Texas-based manufacturer of propane-powered commercial vehicles said the property includes about 180,000 square feet of existing production capacity and is already equipped for heavy-duty vehicle manufacturing. 

The previous operator used the site for large-scale fabrication and assembly, leaving infrastructure that includes paint and blast facilities, 13 overhead cranes, a dedicated testing complex and racked warehousing.

Nexio said the Anderson operation will allow it to begin truck production while serving as a bridge to a larger campus the company plans to develop in Lufkin, Texas.

The Anderson property will eventually provide excess production capacity once the Lufkin operation comes online, according to the company.

Nexio said the facility will support complete vehicle assembly, beginning with chassis preparation and the installation of powertrains and cabs and continuing through superstructure assembly, wiring, plumbing, bodywork, painting and finishing.

The site will also have quality-control and chassis dynamometer capabilities before vehicles are shipped, as well as repair and refurbishment operations alongside new-vehicle production.

On-site propane Autogas fueling will support the company’s alternative-fuel vehicles.

Nexio describes itself as a Texas manufacturer of propane-powered commercial vehicles and alternative-fuel engines serving propane distribution and delivery operations as well as Class 5-8 commercial fleets.

The Anderson campus is located along Highway 30 in Grimes County between College Station and Huntsville, about 90 miles from the Port of Houston and 80 miles from George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Nexio did not disclose the purchase or lease terms for the Anderson property in its announcement, nor did it specify the number of employees expected at the campus or an annual production target.

Why it matters: The sharp August rebound highlights the scale of Mexico’s North American truck manufacturing base, with the U.S. absorbing more than 92% of Mexican heavy-duty vehicle exports so far this year.

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Chart of the Week: Import Ocean TEUs Volume Index – USA, Logistics Managers’ Index – Inventory Levels SONAR: IOTI.USA, LMI.INVL

Import bookings (IOTI) have been averaging lower than the previous two years, while inventory levels have been fairly stable according to the Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI). Bookings activity combined with inventory data points to a steady but tight inventory management environment — one of the tightest of the post-COVID era. This also means many companies may be exposed to missed revenue in the fourth quarter as they try to mitigate the rising costs of holding too much for too long.

The IOTI is an index that measures bookings of container imports with a 14-day moving average. Like most indexes, its use case is directional, and the current direction is flatter than in any of the previous four years.

The inventory level component of the LMI measures how quickly survey respondents are reporting expanding or contracting inventories. Readings above 50 indicate expansion, while values below 50 indicate contraction. This past year has been one of the most stable in recent history, peaking in June at 60.5 and hitting its 2026 low in August at 52.8.

Seasonal fluctuations are normal, as shippers go through restocking and destocking periods throughout the year. These peaks and valleys can tell us how successful they have been in forecasting demand. The relative flatness indicates they have been extremely efficient in optimizing inventory.

In late 2021, bookings were already relatively high, as shippers were facing significant supply chain challenges that eased rapidly in 2022, when demand fell and their over-ordering strategy caught up with them. The LMI inventory level reading went from 58.8 in November 2021 to 80.18 in February 2022.

Importers did not shift their strategy until that summer, when the IOTI fell nearly 40% from June to October. The IOTI remained subdued into mid-2023 while inventory levels contracted. The great destocking waned in late 2023 and was replaced in 2024 by a period of rebuilding. The IOTI averaged nearly 15% higher in 2024, while the LMI closed the year averaging a healthy expansion reading.

Tariffs and erratic trade policy heavily influenced 2025, with the IOTI spiking to COVID-era highs in summer, then plummeting in fall, netting an expansionary inventory situation until the end of the year, when inventory levels contracted at the fastest pace in the index’s history.

This past year has been far less chaotic, but possibly no less nerve-racking, as shippers navigate rapidly expanding transportation and inventory costs in a very shaky consumer environment. Politics have become increasingly intertwined with economics, making many uneasy about the state of things despite the aggregate figures painting a fairly stable picture.

So far, taking a down-the-middle approach to ordering and expectations has worked well in aggregate. The IOTI and LMI figures have been historically consistent, indicating that businesses are selling about as much as they are ordering. This works well in a stable economy, but it is a fine line to walk. This year’s holiday season is one of the most challenging to predict — one that has left the nation’s top economic minds struggling amid all the moving parts.

Looking at the chart above, history would be a poor predictor of what happens next, as each of the past five years has looked nothing like the one before it. Shippers will have to decide whether simply doing more of the same makes sense, but it would be wise to monitor the situation closely and have contingencies ready so they can react quickly if they want to close out the year on the right foot.

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 FreightWaves data science and product teams are releasing new datasets each week and enhancing the client experience.

To request a SONAR demo, click here.

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The larger issue of federal moves to strip commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) away from a significant chunk of those who hold them under various rules was in the background of a Washington courtroom Friday, as California and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration battled it out over the federal stoppage of the state’s ability to grant non-domiciled CDLs and a cutoff of some transportation funding.

But arguments before a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia were focused on more narrow issues. The heart of the issue is whether California cooperated adequately with FMCSA in its audit of Golden State practices, and whether the federal agency acted legally in its “pause” of new non-domiciled CDLs being issued. Non-domiciled CDL recipients are overwhelmingly immigrants.

And while the issue of federal denial of some highway funding to California was not discussed extensively in the oral arguments, it too was in the background. That funding was withheld as a result of the dispute over California’s practices, the issues that FMCSA found in its audit of the state, and what FMCSA said was California’s lack of cooperation over some issues.

The case is California Department of Motor Vehicles vs. U.S. Department of Transportation.

Dates not lining up is the issue

More specifically, a key area of dispute is whether the expiration dates of certain California non-domiciled CDLs are in violation of the law because they come after an immigrant’s legal authorization to be in the U.S.

California’ argument is that the law has no such restriction. “FMCSA pointed to no federal rule requiring CDLs to expire on or before the date of the driver’s legal presence documents,” California said in its brief. “Rather, it merely asserted that ‘the requirement that States accept as valid only unexpired lawful presence documents also means that the State must make the period of validity of the nondomiciled CLP or CDL less than or equal to the period of validity of the driver’s lawful presence documents.’”

But Simon Jerome, the Justice Department attorney representing FMCSA, said in his presentation that “It seems rather absurd that a credential for years and years, five years, eight years, could be issued with a document that expires tomorrow,” the “tomorrow” document being whatever path to legal residence the CDL or Commercial Learner’s Permit has been issued. But Jerome said that is the core of California’s arguments.

The “pause” ordered by FMCSA after the failure of the agency and the state to resolve their differences only related to the issuance of new non-domiciled CDLs or the renewal of existing licenses. As California deputy attorney general Kristen Kido said in her appearance before the court, representing the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, “not to undermine the extreme consequences of the pause, but to decertify the state entirely would apply to all commercial licenses.”

That is not in place, as she noted. But Kido said it believes that FMCSA does not have the authority “to institute a pre-enforcement, never-ending pause, particularly one that not only prohibits the DMC from issuing new licenses, but also prohibits DMV from correcting or renewing valid, unexpired licenses.”

Getting granular

Much of the presentations by the two attorneys, and the questions from the appellate judges, focused on the minutiae of timing and cooperation. Did the state’s DMC respond in a timely manner to the recommendations and mandates handed down by FMCSA after the audit of its CDL program?

At one point, Jerome engaged in a discussion with Judge Cornelia Pillard about a letter sent by the DMV to FMCSA on Christmas Eve, and whether the state’s response could have been quicker except for the holiday. 

But the broader issues, Jerome said, are the questions of timing and responsiveness, which said were “the heart of this case.”

“Should FMCSA have given the DMV more time?” Jerome asked. 

California did cancel numerous CDLs

The calendar comes into question even where California did cancel some non-domiciled CDLs following the FMCSA audit. Kido argued that the cancellation could be described as “substantial compliance with all of the relevant components of federal law.” But if the timeline of that cancellation did not meet certain requirements, Kido said, “a violation of the corrective schedule on its own cannot be an independent basis for the finding of noncompliance.”

The arguments by Kido and Jerome paralleled what their legal teams submitted in pre-oral argument briefs. 

While there was agreement between the briefs and arguments on several points regarding federal law, the DMV brief argued that FMCSA’s reading of statutes was expansive.

But the federal view was summed up in its brief when it said “The resulting systemic violations of federal and California law are undisputed. Nearly one-third of the non-domiciled CDLs the DMV issued—roughly 20,000 out of 65,000—were improperly issued because the expiration date of the license exceeded the applicant’s period of lawful presence.”

Another case coming up

A similar argument is being fought out in the case of Lujan vs. FMCSA, where oral arguments will be made next week in the same court. While there are other issues in that case, the question of issuing a non-domiciled CDL with a duration beyond the expiration of a person’s legal ability to stay in the U.S. also is at issue in that battle as well. 

Separately, North Carolina has given the green light by the Department of Transportation to again issue non-domiciled CDLs following its completion of several changes, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. 

However, as the article notes, since then FMCSA has severely tightened the ability of a non-domiciled person to obtain a CDL. Those tighter restrictions are part of the Lujan case that will be argued Wednesday.

More articles by John Kingston

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2 key trucking groups in filing raise alarm on Penske decision fallout

At tech/AI confab, C.H. Robinson tackles insurance and liability

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DHL said the expansion was necessary to accommodate growing package volumes from businesses and individuals  in northwest Germany, where Cologne is a major economic and logistics hub and one of the most populous regions in the country. 

The additional space will allow DHL to hire 250 additional workers, bringing total employment at the facility to 750..

DHL’s Post & Parcel division is investing more than 1 billion euros per year over several years (equivalent to $1.16 billion) to restructure its network as letter volumes decline while e-commerce shipping continues to grow in popularity. The modernization has included rightsizing parcel and letter centers, automation and digitalization. 

“With the expansion of the Cologne-Eifeltor parcel center, we are making a targeted investment in the performance of our network. Online retail continues to grow, and our customers rightly expect fast and reliable delivery,” said Marc Hitschfeld, head of operations for Post & Parcel Germany at DHL Group, at an official opening ceremony. 

Post & Parcel Germany operates under the DHL and Deutsche Post brands.

The Cologne-Eifeltor parcel center has been in operation since 1994 and currently serves about 1.2 million households. Construction of the new extension, which began in 2024, was completed on schedule this summer. The new building is directly connected to the existing parcel center via a bridge.

The facility’s sorting capacity now matches that of the previous largest parcel center in North Rhine-Westphalia, located in Bochum.

Nationwide, only the DHL parcel center in Aschheim near Munich, with approximately 72,000 parcels per hour, has a higher sorting capacity.

The Cologne facility was built on the site of a since-demolished building. It was outfitted with modern energy-saving systems, including a solar array on the extension roof, underfloor heating in the main hall, automatic ventilation control to minimize the need for air conditioning, and demand-controlled LED lighting. A green roof improves thermal insulation, reducing energy consumption in the winter and protects against excessive heat in the summer.

Post & Parcel Germany is the largest postal service provider in Europe, dominates the letter and parcel market in Germany, and operates the largest parcel locker network in Germany.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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The feature, called “lock and leave,” is now available across the U.S. and Canada. Drivers can start an update during a break or while parked overnight and leave the truck while the software installs, Volvo announced.

“As software plays a greater role in improving uptime, updating the software should be as easy and convenient as possible. Now a driver can lock and leave their truck while the update runs during a break and return to a truck that is up to date and ready to go to work,” said Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America.

The rollout builds on Volvo’s existing Remote Programming system. In 2018, Volvo expanded the system to allow eligible North American trucks with factory-installed connectivity hardware to receive software and parameter updates remotely over a cellular connection. Volvo said the updates could be completed while a driver was on a break or at a depot, reducing the need for a service center visit.

Volvo expanded its Remote Programming system in 2023 to include six programmable vehicle modules. At the time, more than 40,000 software updates had been completed through the system, according to Volvo.   

That connectivity has become a bigger part of Volvo’s newer trucks. The VNL, introduced in 2024, was built with expanded connected services that allow over-the-air software updates and remote diagnostics.

Volvo has since increased the number of trucks receiving those updates. In March, the company said the share of its connected North American trucks running the latest software had risen from 25% to more than 80% in six months. It also reported a 24% reduction in unplanned stops among trucks with the latest software. 

Volvo said more than 7,500 updates were completed in August, and its connected systems can dispatch up to 20,000 software updates per day.

The software can update systems including engine performance, transmission and battery management, according to Volvo. For fleets, the appeal is less about the update itself than avoiding the downtime associated with keeping a truck out of service. Software updates that might otherwise require a service visit can now be completed while a truck is already stopped for a break or other scheduled downtime.

That trucking distinction is particularly important, where vehicles can operate eight to 11 hours a day, according to Volvo. The company has described over-the-air updates as a way to keep trucks “current” without taking them out of operation.

The move also reflects a broader change in how truck manufacturers maintain increasingly software-dependent vehicles. Rather than treating software as something that is installed when a truck is built or serviced, manufacturers are increasingly able to update vehicle systems throughout the truck’s operating life.

Volvo’s June announcement described the unattended update capability as an extension of its existing Remote Programming system. The company said the feature was made possible by its connected 24-volt platform in North America.

Why this matters: 

For fleets, the main benefit is reducing the amount of time a truck has to be taken out of service for software updates. Drivers can start an update during a scheduled break or overnight stop and leave the truck while it installs, allowing the update to happen without adding a separate service stop to the truck’s schedule. As more truck systems rely on software, the ability to update them remotely could also reduce the need for routine trips to a dealership for software-related work.

The post Volvo Trucks completes rollout of ‘lock and leave’ software update system appeared first on FreightWaves.

The battery pack uses an electrically insulating fluid that surrounds the battery cells, allowing heat to be transferred away from the cells more effectively during operation. Managing battery temperature is particularly important for commercial vehicles, which can place significant demands on their batteries during acceleration, heavy loads and charging.

By keeping the cells at more consistent temperatures, the companies said the technology can improve the truck’s energy efficiency and performance while potentially extending battery life.

Shell and FAW Trucks developed the system as part of their ongoing work regarding hybrid and electrified commercial vehicle technology. Both companies are continuing to validate the battery pack for potential use in future FAW hybrid trucks.

“As commercial vehicles continue to evolve, so do the technologies needed to support them. By working closely with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like FAW TRUCKS, we’re developing advanced fluid solutions designed to support evolving vehicle technologies, including electrification powertrains and thermal management systems,” Cara Tredget, vice president of Mobility & Lubricants Technology at Shell, said. “The Shell Starship Hybrid vehicle demonstrates what’s possible when collaboration and innovation come together.”

What the tests showed

Initial vehicle validation showed potential improvements in several areas, including an up to 98% increase in maximum gradability, a 0.8% improvement in vehicle-level energy efficiency and a potential battery life improvement of up to 32%, according to Shell. The results came from testing the battery pack under specific vehicle conditions, including sustained high-power charging and discharging.

The battery pack also underwent industry-standard testing and vehicle evaluations, with the results verified by the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, according to Shell. The company also said the reported data is based on joint testing conducted by Shell and FAW Trucks under specific test conditions, and final performance data will be released after the validation process is completed.

How immersion cooling works

Immersion cooling is designed to remove heat from battery cells by surrounding them with an electrically insulating fluid. Instead of transferring heat through a separate cooling plate or system, the fluid comes into direct contact with the cells, allowing heat to move away from a larger portion of the battery. This can help keep temperatures more consistent across the battery pack, which is important as batteries generate more heat during high-power charging and discharging.

Shell’s system uses this approach on the Starship 3.0 Hybrid. Shell said conventional battery cooling systems primarily cool the battery from the bottom, while its immersion fluid surrounds the cells and is designed to improve heat transfer and maintain more consistent temperatures across the pack.

From concept to commercial use

For commercial trucks, better thermal management could help manufacturers increase power output and charging capabilities without sacrificing battery durability. But the Shell and FAW testing has so far been conducted on a concept vehicle under specific test conditions, rather than across a production fleet.

The battery pack has not been announced as a production system. Shell and FAW Trucks said it is being evaluated for potential use in future FAW hybrid commercial vehicles, while Shell plans to continue developing immersion-cooling fluids for broader commercial vehicle applications.

The technology is part of the Shell Starship program, a technology demonstration platform focused on improving commercial vehicle efficiency and reducing emissions. The Starship 3.0 Hybrid was developed by Shell and FAW Trucks as a platform for testing technologies including hybrid powertrains and battery thermal management under commercial vehicle operating conditions.

FAW Trucks is a majority-owned subsidiary of China FAW Group and is headquartered in Changchun, China. Shell brings its work in lubricants and thermal-management fluids to the partnership, while FAW contributes commercial vehicle engineering and development expertise.

The companies will showcase the latest validation progress and the Shell Starship Hybrid equipped with the immersion-cooled battery pack at the FAW Trucks booth during IAA Transportation 2026 in Hannover, Germany, beginning Sept. 14.

For now, the technology remains in the validation stage. Whether the performance seen in the Starship concept truck can translate into a battery system suitable for production hybrid commercial vehicles remains to be determined.

Why this matters

Battery thermal management is becoming increasingly important as commercial vehicle manufacturers look to improve power, charging capability and battery life. Immersion cooling could give truck manufacturers another way to manage the heat generated by batteries under demanding operating conditions.

The post Shell, FAW test immersion-cooled batteries to improve truck performance appeared first on FreightWaves.

Financial terms of the transaction were not provided.

Spartan Logistics’ latest acquisition in Whitehouse, Ohio, gives it seven locations in the Northwest Ohio market and 11 total in the state. The warehousing and transportation provider’s footprint now includes 4.5 million square feet of space across nine states in the Midwest and the South. It has a large presence at South Carolina ports in Charleston and Savannah.

“Toledo has been a key market for Spartan for many years, and this acquisition represents another investment in our future here,” said Spartan Logistics CEO Steve Harmon.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company operates a fleet of approximately 50 tractors, providing local shuttle and regional freight transportation services, including just-in-time delivery. It offers cross-docking, fulfillment and warehouse management services. It also has a real estate construction and brokerage services arm.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to welcome a strong group of employees and customers to Spartan and build on the relationships and operations that have already been established,” Harmon said.

Why it matters? Spartan Logistics’ acquisition of Allen Logistics expands its network and strengthens its regional service density across 11 Ohio locations. Additionally, the integration of warehousing with its truck fleet enhances the company’s ability to provide streamlined freight transportation, delivery and fulfillment services.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• ArcBest sees tonnage growth accelerate in August; raises Q3 asset-light guide
• XPO’s August metrics align with Q3 guidance
• Saia’s tonnage growth steps higher in August as comps ease

The post Spartan Logistics expands warehouse footprint through acquisition appeared first on FreightWaves.

It is unclear if any of the product is damaged or if it can be salvaged.

During a media briefing Tuesday evening, National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homandy said Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 passenger-to-freighter conversion aircraft operated by 21 Air in support of Amazon’s logistics network, was carrying more than 32,000 pounds of contact lenses and that the eye-care products were the primary cargo onboard.

CooperVision acknowledged in a statement to FreightWaves that it was the Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) customer involved in the accident, which left five people dead and several others injured after the plane struck two vehicles.

“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the incident involving a flight at Miami International Airport. Among the aircraft’s cargo were contact lenses manufactured at CooperVision’s Juana Diaz facility in Puerto Rico. The company contracted with an independent third-party logistics provider that transports freight out of Puerto Rico on behalf of multiple organizations. CooperVision will support the National Transportation Safety Board and other relevant authorities as needed,” the company said.

CooperVision is a  division of San Ramon, California-based CooperCompanies (NASDAQ: COO).

The circumstances suggest that the flight primarily served Amazon Air Cargo, a two-year-old logistics unit that sells excess capacity on Amazon cargo jets to third-party shippers. Amazon Air was launched a decade ago to expedite package delivery for Amazon Prime members who ordered goods online, and now counts more than 100 aircraft in its fleet and more than 65 destinations in its air network.

Amazon Air Cargo is part of a broader company shift to commercialize a range of supply chain services developed to support internal inventory distribution and sales. After building a large, interconnected air network Amazon made capacity available to all shippers, regardless of whether they were sellers on Amazon’s marketplace and used Amazon’s fulfillment service. 

An analysis of data from FlightRadar24, which tracks commercial aircraft movements, shows that 21 Air continues to operate on behalf of Amazon and DHL Express as questions increase about 21 Air’s safety culture. Information extracted by the NTSB from the flight data and cockpit voice recorder shows Flight 7598 approached the airport too fast and that the pilots had trouble slowing the plane, overshot the runway’s touchdown zone, then had trouble getting all three landing gear on the runway, didn’t engage speed brakes or thrust reversers to slow the plane and hit the throttle in a a late attempt to take off before exiting the runway. The pilot received his type certification for the Boeing 767-300 cargo jet in May.

Since Sunday’s accident, 21 has operated seven Boeing 767-300s, primarily shuttling between Amazon’s superhub at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport and Miami, and also connecting those airports with San Juan, Puerto Rico; Quito, Ecuador; Bogota, Colombia and Lakeland, Florida, among other destinations.

Why It Matters: When shipments get delayed or lost they can disrupt supply chain operations. In CooperVision’s case, the affected shipment involves a very small amount of the company’s overall inventory and is not expected to impact operations or customer supply.

Meanwhile, the widow of one of five aircraft cleaning workers killed when their van was struck by the Amazon jet on Sunday is suing Amazon, Amazon Air Cargo, related companies, lessors and the pilots,  alleging pilot mistakes, safety failures and problems with the aircraft itself, according to a wrongful death complaint filed in Miami-Dade County Wednesday.

Yaraisi Santiso Morejon brought the lawsuit on behalf of her husband, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, who was 53. Two coworkers in the van remain hospitalized in critical condition. 

The lawsuit alleges Amazon Air Flight 7598 was traveling significantly faster than normal as it approached Runway 30 and that its pilots failed to abandon the landing despite a tailwind and an unstable approach. 

The lawsuit alleges Amazon exercised substantial control over 21 Air’s flying for its cargo network, including flight schedules, aircraft use, cargo procedures and safety requirements.

Amazon should be held responsible for allegedly failing to adequately select, monitor and oversee the carrier.

The complaint also cites previous safety complaints it says were raised by former 21 Air employees involving maintenance, training, supervision and flight operations.

It argues Amazon knew, or should have known, about reported safety deficiencies before the crash.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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Uber Freight released its Q3 Market Update & Outlook Report on Thursday, saying truckload conditions have begun to stabilize after two quarters of rate inflation, but capacity constraints continue to ripple through less-than-truckload, intermodal and cross-border transportation.

The report identifies three major forces shaping the market heading into the fourth quarter: constrained trucking capacity, volatile diesel prices and rapidly changing U.S. trade policy.

“Transportation decisions carry more weight than ever before. Conditions can change quickly, and the cost of reacting too late is often higher than expected,” Uber Freight CEO Rebecca Tinucci said in the report.

Uber Freight said shippers that continue sourcing transportation capacity week to week are particularly vulnerable if freight demand suddenly accelerates during the fourth-quarter peak.

September and October provide a relatively stable window for most markets to repair routing guides and secure capacity ahead of peak season, according to the report. 

Truckload and Mexico were rated as having “high” exposure heading into late October, while intermodal and Canada were rated at medium severity.

Truckload rates remain sharply above 2025

National average dry van contract linehaul rates reached $2.39 per mile in July, an 18% increase from July 2025, according to data cited by Uber Freight. The 13-cent increase from June was the largest June-to-July gain on record.

Dry van spot linehaul averaged $2.39 per mile in July, 47% higher year over year.

Spot pricing has subsequently eased as the seasonal July peak faded. Van spot linehaul averaged $2.21 per mile during the week of Aug. 26, but remained 35.6% above the same period last year and 23.8% above the nine-year seasonal average.

Carriers are also seeking double-digit contract increases this year and next, according to Uber Freight.

The company’s primary tender acceptance rate improved from 76% in July to 78% in August as repriced routing guides began to hold and spot conditions softened. That remains substantially below the 90% to 94% range seen during the previous three years.

Uber Freight said capacity is not rebuilding as quickly as typically expected during a tightening freight cycle. The report estimates more than 48,000 noncompliant drivers have exited the industry over the past year, while Class 8 truck backlogs represent roughly nine months of production.

As of Sept. 10, the SONAR Outbound Tender Rejection Index for the U.S. (STRI.USA) was at 13.45%, much higher than the same period in the previous three years.

Mexico capacity remains tight despite easing at Laredo

Cross-border transportation remains one of the more constrained portions of the freight market.

Uber Freight said about 20,000 Mexican truck drivers lost U.S. visas between April 2025 and April 2026, while the number of active Mexican-domiciled southern border carriers was 6.3% lower in late June compared with late December.

Capacity around Laredo has eased from extremely tight second-quarter conditions but remains significantly tighter than a year ago.

The Laredo dry van load-to-truck ratio stood between 8.0 and 8.5 in mid-August, down from roughly 10-to-1 during the second quarter but still 61.9% higher year over year.

Mexico-to-U.S. long-haul spot rates remained 8% to 15% above mid-February levels, with increases of as much as 30% on critical corridors. Produce exports through Laredo increased 8% year over year during the second quarter, according to the report.

Uber Freight said those constraints are prompting more companies to rethink how they move freight across the border.

Shippers that previously depended on direct-trailer capacity using B-1 drivers are increasingly incorporating transloading into their networks in Laredo — and are beginning to explore the strategy in El Paso.

“Transloading is moving from workaround to network design,” the report said.

Uber Freight cited one major beverage manufacturer that had relied solely on direct B-1 capacity but began missing delivery appointments in Nuevo Laredo. The company rerouted critical freight through a Laredo cross-dock and is now developing a hybrid network combining transloading for time-sensitive shipments with direct B-1 transportation for more flexible freight.

Diesel adds another layer of pressure

Fuel costs could further complicate freight pricing heading into bid season.

The national average diesel price reached $5.652 per gallon during the week of Aug. 24, the highest level of 2026 and 52.4% above the same week last year. Diesel had fallen as low as $4.58 per gallon in early July before rebounding.

Uber Freight warned that smaller truckload carriers operating on thin margins could park equipment rather than haul freight at a loss if fuel volatility persists.

At the same time, shippers face an increasingly complicated trade environment following changes to U.S. tariff policy and the shift of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement into annual reviews.

The combination leaves transportation networks with little margin for another unexpected disruption.

Uber Freight recommends that shippers use the relatively stable September-October period to secure baseline capacity, repair underperforming routing guides and establish backup carriers before the traditional late-October freight peak.

Why it matters: The prolonged freight downturn appears to be giving way to a more carrier-favorable pricing environment across multiple transportation modes.

The post Uber Freight warns tight capacity could fuel Q4 freight rate surge  appeared first on FreightWaves.

Federal agents seized more than 2,000 pounds of methamphetamine hidden inside a cabbage shipment in South Texas. DEA confirmed the drugs were concealed in a commercial tractor-trailer carrying the produce. The McAllen office seized the load Tuesday during an ongoing Homeland Security Task Force investigation. No arrests have been made.

Investigation brings multiple agencies together

The seizure involved several federal and state law enforcement agencies. Homeland Security Task Force investigators worked together on the case. Participating agencies included HSI, FBI, CBP, U.S. Border Patrol and Texas DPS. DEA called the discovery a “major seizure” while announcing the operation.

DEA provided FreightWaves with additional information about the seizure late Friday. The San Antonio Division oversees the agency’s McAllen District Office. Officials confirmed the investigation remains ongoing. Authorities have made no arrests.

DEA’s San Antonio Division frequently encounters methamphetamine hidden in produce shipments, according to Jonathan C. Pullen. He serves as associate chief of operations for DEA’s Southcentral Region. Pullen identified lettuce and blueberries as other produce used to conceal the drug. He described the practice as part of traffickers’ efforts to move methamphetamine into the United States.

Details about the tractor-trailer remain unknown

DEA has not identified the carrier, driver, origin or destination of the cabbage shipment. No border crossing or port of entry appeared in the agency’s response. Officials have not explained how investigators discovered the concealed drugs.

Why it matters

Traffickers continue using legitimate commercial freight to conceal massive quantities of narcotics. DEA says its San Antonio Division frequently encounters methamphetamine hidden in produce shipments.

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

Cartel logistics boss gets nearly 19 years for moving cocaine and cash through trucking network – FreightWaves

FMCSA suspends USDOT deactivations for missed biennial updates during MOTUS rollout – FreightWaves

Police find $3.8M in cocaine in Indiana truck’s sleeper after ‘mystery’ Memphis pickup – FreightWaves

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Descartes (NASDAQ: DSGX) reported consolidated revenue of $201 million for its fiscal quarter ended July 31, a 12% year-over-year increase and 1% ahead of the consensus estimate. Services revenue was up 13% y/y to $189 million (organic growth in services revenue was approximately 9%, excluding foreign exchange fluctuations).

Earnings per share of 57 cents for the quarter came in 14 cents higher y/y and a penny ahead of Seeking Alpha’s unadjusted EPS estimate.

Descartes reported adjusted EBITDA of $94.4 million in the period, which was 18% higher y/y. It recorded an adjusted EBITDA margin of 46.9%, which was up 230 basis points y/y.

“Today’s supply chains and logistics operations need to be agile in the face of an increasingly dynamic global trade environment,” said CEO Ed Ryan. “Having a broad scope of solutions on our Global Logistics Network is imperative to help isolate our customers from complexity, bringing together the data and domain expertise required to efficiently manage the lifecycle of shipments.”

The company generated $81 million in cash flow from operations in the period, a 28% y/y increase.

It ended the quarter with $401 million in cash, up $24 million from the prior quarter. It has no debt and an untapped $350 million line of credit. It has used approximately $220 million in cash to fund two acquisitions since the quarter closed.

Descartes acquired Extensiv, a warehouse management and fulfillment tech provider, for $120 million last week. It acquired Tai, a TMS provider to freight brokers, for $100 million at the end of August.

Descartes implemented a share repurchase plan at the end of 2025 to buy back up to 10% of its public float (8.6 million shares). It repurchased 651,800 shares for $45.1 million in the first half of its current fiscal year.

It will continue to use cash to fund future acquisitions. Management said on a Thursday evening call that it would take on leverage, up to 3 times annual EBITDA, to accomplish a larger deal.

Shares of DSGX were up 1.7% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

Why it matters? Descartes’ strong financial performance and strategic acquisitions of transportation tech providers highlight the industry’s shift toward unified, agile logistics ecosystems. Its expanded network capabilities help supply chain professionals navigate ongoing global trade complexity and operational volatility.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• ArcBest sees tonnage growth accelerate in August; raises Q3 asset-light guide
• XPO’s August metrics align with Q3 guidance
• Saia’s tonnage growth steps higher in August as comps ease

The post Descartes reports another record-breaking quarter appeared first on FreightWaves.

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While a dire view of what might happen to brokerages in a post-Montgomery world ripping through the logistics industry, one of the biggest 3PLs just won a victory in Colorado that relieved it of potential liability.

Total Quality Logistics (TQL) had its request to be dismissed from a case in a Colorado federal court granted on Tuesday by Judge Nina Wang. 

The facts of the case filed by Deann Miller are that her husband, Scott Miller, was driving on U.S. 285 in the Centennial State in June 2024 when steel beams fell off a truck and on to the pickup truck Miller was driving, killing him.

Judge Wang said it was “unclear” who Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza was driving for when the metal on his truck fell off his vehicle, but that he “may have been delivering the cargo on behalf of Monique Trucking.”

Lots of defendants

Deann Miller sued pretty much everybody in the supply chain. The original complaint from March 2025 only had the driver and Monique as defendants. But an amended complaint brought in TQL, Intsel Steel West LLC (which was the customer that was supposed to receive the shipment), and Triple-S Steel Holdings, which also was a customer for the steel. It also brought in a company called Searing Industries, which actually delivered the steel on to the truck involved in the fatal crash. 

Judge Wang granted the request of TQL, Intsel and Triple-S Steel to have them tossed out as defendants. However, the dismissals were without prejudice, so the plaintiff can refile with a different legal approach.

Not surprisingly, when the lawsuit was first filed, TQL in its response cited the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A) as shielding it from charges of liability or negligence. F4A held that states could not take action that might impact a “price, route or service.” TQL also argued that the so-called “safety exception” that did open the door to lawsuits against, for example, a carrier involved in a crash, could not be extended to a broker. 

That defense ended with the Supreme Court unanimous decision in the case of Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II. The judge’s decision in a footnote acknowledges that TQL withdrew the F4A defense after Montgomery.

Judge is not ambigous

The judge’s separate rulings for TQL and (jointly) Triple-S and Intsel left little doubt where she stood on the issue, at times calling the plaintiffs’ arguments “vague” and having “not adequately alleged facts” supporting her claims.

Judge Wang said Miller “clearly averred that the negligence, carelessness and/or recklessness of defendants, as being vicariously liable for the actions of (Cruz-Mendoza, the driver of the truck carrying the steel), consisted of various actions or omissions.”

But TQL argued that there was no legal basis to “establish…that TQL employed Mr. Cruz-Mendoza or that (they) otherwise had a principal-agent relationship.”

The plaintiff was seeking to establish vicarious liability that could be applied to TQL in her arguments. But having tossed out that argument against the steel customers, Judge Wang dismissed it against TQL as well.

Miller also alleged a negligent hiring claim against TQL. But Judge Wang said the plaintiff “does not allege any facts suggesting that TQL hired Mr. Cruz-Mendoza as an employee or independent contractor or had any sort of principal-agent relationship with Monique Trucking, instead relying exclusively on broad references to ‘defendants’ generally.”

Charges of a joint venture or joint enterprise among the defendants also were thrown out for TQL, Intsel and Triple-S, all without prejudice.

C.H. Robinson speaks again

The issue of broker liability post-Montgomery, along with the prospect of brokers facing nuclear verdicts without the possibility of F4A protection, came up twice this past week for C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) at investor conferences.

An email sent to TQL had not been responded to by publication time.

Transcripts of the remarks at those conferences–one at Citi and the other at Jefferies & Co.–reveal a consistent message: insurance costs are not a major budget item at C.H. Robinson, and even with the Lipe vs. Lupus Superior nuclear verdict in which C.H. Robinson on the surface faces a charge of  hundreds of millions of dollars, such cases are an “anomaly,” according to CFO Damon Lee at the Jefferies conference.

“We certainly don’t believe the earnings trajectory that we’ve been on, the outperformance that we’ve been on in any way is going to be derailed by insurance,” Lee said.

But he added “we believe the average small and medium-sized broker is going to have a very difficult time surviving in the post Montgomery, post Lipe world.”

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A federal lawsuit filed by Huntington National Bank provides one of the clearest pictures yet of the web of companies tied to R&R and the debt remaining after the Pittsburgh-based logistics operation unraveled.

Huntington sued 24 R&R-related companies June 8 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, alleging they owe more than $12 million under a shared lending arrangement.

The defendants include R&R Express, R&R Express Holdco, R&R Express Logistics, RFX, Refrigerated Food Express, GT Worldwide Transport, GT Worldwide Logistics, Load to Ride Transportation, RFX Tampa and New Taylor Transportation, among others.

Huntington alleges the defendants are jointly and severally liable for the outstanding obligations, meaning the bank contends it can seek repayment of the debt from any or all of the companies covered by the loan agreements.

The lawsuit is the latest legal action stemming from the financial collapse of R&R, whose operations began shutting down in January, leaving employees without jobs and carriers and other creditors pursuing unpaid bills.

Huntington says more than $12M remains outstanding

According to the complaint, Huntington and S&T Bank entered into a Second Amended and Restated Credit and Security Agreement with R&R companies and other borrowers on March 18, 2022.

The agreement included a revolving loan commitment of up to $85 million, along with a $3.675 million term loan.

Court documents show a Huntington revolving note was later amended to approximately $65.9 million, while a separate revolving note involving S&T Bank totaled approximately $19.1 million.

The borrowers pledged substantially all of their assets as collateral for the operating loans, according to the complaint.

Huntington alleges the 24 defendants are jointly and severally responsible for obligations under the credit agreement and describes them collectively as part of a broader group of freight forwarding, trucking and logistics companies known as “R&R Express Co.”

As of June 8, the outstanding balance of the operating loans exceeded $12 million, excluding legal fees, costs, default interest and other charges, according to Huntington.

The bank is seeking a money judgment for the outstanding balance, along with post-judgment interest, attorneys’ fees and costs.

The allegations have not been adjudicated.

Related:  R&R Family of Cos. faces uncertainty amid exec departure, payment concerns

Lawsuit maps R&R’s sprawling corporate structure

The complaint also provides a detailed look at how many of the companies were connected through R&R Express Holdco and RFX.

Among the relationships identified by Huntington:

The ownership structure is particularly significant because several of those companies operated under distinct names and in different segments of the freight market while remaining connected through R&R’s holding-company structure.

New Taylor Transportation is tied to Taylor Express, the North Carolina trucking operation whose employees were abruptly laid off in January. Load to Ride was another trucking operation acquired by R&R before the company’s financial problems intensified.

RFX operated as one of the organization’s freight brokerage businesses.

Related: Former employees detail turmoil before R&R Family of Companies collapsed

Bank says companies could no longer pay creditors

Huntington’s complaint traces R&R’s financial deterioration to the prolonged freight downturn that followed the pandemic-era trucking boom.

The bank alleges R&R’s financial condition declined during the freight recession and that the deterioration accelerated during 2025.

By late 2025, Huntington and S&T had notified R&R-related borrowers that they would no longer provide additional advances under the operating loans, according to the complaint.

Huntington alleges the defendants subsequently “ceased operating due to a lack of liquidity and access to financing.”

The bank lists several alleged events of default, including missed debt-service payments, defaults by other co-borrowers and a real estate transfer by one borrower.

More significantly for trucking companies still seeking payment, Huntington alleges that the borrowers acknowledged in writing that they were unable to pay creditors as debts came due.

The complaint also specifically alleges that the defendants failed to pay carriers in a timely manner, which Huntington contends constituted another default under the credit agreement.

Related: AGX sues R&R, Huntington over frozen credit line, unpaid carrier invoices

Unpaid freight claims continue to surface

The Huntington litigation comes as carriers and other freight companies continue attempting to recover money from R&R-related businesses.

In a separate case, Illinois-based motor carrier Amerixpress Inc. sued R&R Express Logistics in February, alleging it had transported 37 loads but had not received $152,050 in freight charges. The complaint said Amerixpress completed and delivered the shipments and invoiced R&R for the work.

Amerixpress ultimately obtained a default judgment against R&R Express Logistics. The court entered judgment May 14 awarding Amerixpress $152,050 plus costs.

Documents attached to the Amerixpress lawsuit also illustrate how R&R’s payment problems reached beyond individual carriers. Some Amerixpress invoices contained notices assigning the receivables to factoring company RTS Financial Services and directing payment to RTS.

FreightWaves has continued hearing from companies in recent months seeking information about unpaid R&R and RFX invoices and the status of efforts to recover those funds.

No bankruptcy proceeding involving the R&R companies is identified in the Huntington complaint. Instead, creditors and lenders have increasingly turned to individual lawsuits to pursue repayment.

Why it matters: Huntington National Bank’s lawsuit against R&R Family of Cos. sheds new light on the interconnected companies behind R&R, while unpaid carriers and other freight creditors continue trying to determine where they can turn for recovery. 

The post Huntington sues 24 R&R companies over more than $12M in debt appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Delaware Container Terminal (DCT), sited on 137 acres of former DuPont industrial land along the Delaware River in Edgemoor, began major construction in 2026 after years of permitting battles and a 2024 court ruling that temporarily revoked federal dredging and seawall permits. Those permits were reissued in April 2026, allowing work to proceed on the waterside elements that include dredging the channel to 45 feet, building a new seawall and high deck, and installing foundational infrastructure for a modern, all-electric container facility.

The terminal is being developed through a public-private partnership between the state-owned Diamond State Port Corp. (DSPC) and terminal operator Enstructure, which already manages facilities at the nearby Port of Wilmington. Once complete, DCT and the upgraded Wilmington facility will operate under a unified “Port Delaware” brand, with a combined annual box capacity of up to 1.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

A formal groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled by Sept. 14.

For Delaware, a state with a relatively small industrial base, the stakes are high: Supporters see DCT as a generational investment that could anchor a new logistics and distribution corridor along the I-95 spine, while critics warn of overcapacity and intensified competition in an already crowded mid-Atlantic port market.

DCT alone is designed to handle 1.2 million TEUs per year, served by 2,700 feet of quay, seven ship-to-shore gantry cranes, and 26 rubber-tired gantry cranes for yard operations. The 45-foot berth depth will allow calls by post-Panamax vessels of up to 16,000 TEUs, putting it among the top tier of East Coast terminals.

The project is one of several container terminal projects under development at locations stretching from the Gulf to the Eastern Seaboard. The $1.8-billion Louisiana International Terminal just received federal permits for an all-new box hub near New Orleans, and Mediterranean Shipping Co. is building a terminal on the site of a redeveloped steel mill in neighboring Baltimore. 

State and port officials have long pitched the project as an economic catalyst for Delaware, particularly for Wilmington and surrounding communities. Projections estimate the terminal will create nearly 6,000 new jobs once fully operational, including more than 3,100 direct positions for longshore workers, equipment operators, warehouse workers, and related roles.

Construction itself is expected to generate about 3,900–4,000 jobs and roughly $42 million in state and local tax revenue during the buildout. At full capacity, Port Delaware could support around 11,480 total jobs and generate about $76.2 million annually in state and local taxes, according to state and industry estimates.

Gov. Matt Meyer and supporters from both major political parties  have emphasized that many of the port’s direct jobs pay well above the regional median, with some longshoremen earning more than $100,000 a year.

DCT is being marketed as a “green port,” with all-electric terminal equipment, shore-power connections for vessels (“cold ironing”), and energy-efficient lighting and buildings intended to reduce emissions compared with conventional diesel-powered terminals. The design also includes a new truck gate complex, a 100,000-square-foot warehouse, expanded reefer plug capacity, and direct rail access to support intermodal freight movements.

The Port of Wilmington is served by Class I railroads Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) and CSX (NASDAQ: CSX). NS operates dedicated local turns into the port from its Edgemoor yard just east of Wilmington, and offers double‑stack intermodal service from the port to major Midwest markets. CSX also serves the port and provides connections to midwestern, southern, and southeastern U.S. destinations via its Philadelphia Subdivision and Wilsmere yard west of the city.

Highway access via I-495, I-95, I-295, and the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes is a key selling point for shippers looking to move containers into the Philadelphia, South Jersey, and Mid-Atlantic markets.

The project has faced stiff opposition from established port operators in New Jersey and Philadelphia, who argue that adding a major new container terminal so close to their facilities will fragment traffic and strain the river’s navigation channel.

In July 2026, port companies owned by the Holt family, which operate facilities in Camden and Philadelphia, filed a new lawsuit challenging the federal permits for DCT, raising maritime-safety and environmental concerns. That suit follows earlier litigation that succeeded in 2024 in having the permits vacated, delaying the project by nearly two years before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reissued them this spring.

Enstructure and state officials maintain that the terminal has undergone extensive environmental review and that the deeper channel and modern design will improve safety and efficiency on the Delaware River, in reporting by local media.

The terminal is being built in phases, with the first waterside phase targeted for completion by the end of 2028. At that point, DCT is expected to be operating at about 40% of its ultimate 1.2 million-TEU capacity, with additional cranes, yard equipment, and backland infrastructure added as cargo volumes ramp up.

If the project stays on schedule, the first containers could move through Edgemoor by late 2028, positioning the gateway to compete more directly with the Port of New York-New Jersey and other East Coast gateways for trans-Pacific and intra-East Coast services.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Port of Los Angeles posts record 2.9M TEUs, eyes strong finish to 2026

Colonial Terminals opens new Savannah breakbulk hub

World container volumes post record 17.3 million TEUs in July

Drinking water or warships? Panama Canal reverses ship restrictions

Sustainability goals: New analysis shows 31% emissions gap between ocean carriers on same trade

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