Dietrich has 35 years of leadership experience in the logistics and air cargo industries. Dietrich served for nearly three years as FedEx’s (NYSE: FDX) chief financial officer, resigning on June 1 following the spin off of less-than-truckload unit FedEx Freight into an independent, public company.

Prior to that, Dietrich served as CEO of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, a publicly traded all-cargo carrier and freighter leasing company for more than three years. He helped steer the company’s sale to a consortium of private investors in 2023. In total, Dietrich spent 24 years at Atlas Air in a variety of leadership roles. He was appointed president of Atlas in 2019 and previously served as chief operating officer, with responsibility for all aspects of the company’s global operations. Earlier in his career, Dietrich served as general counsel for Atlas and spent more than a decade at United Airlines, the majority of the time as an attorney. 

He joined FedEx as it embarked on a massive transformation program that involved taking out more than $4 billion in structural costs over two years, combining the FedEx Express and FedEx Ground networks and, eventually, the divestiture of FedEx Freight. 

“His extensive experience — coupled with his reputation and success in managing complex, capital-intensive operations as well as his insights into financial discipline, risk management and governance — will significantly enhance the board’s capabilities as we prioritize long-term performance and shareholder value,” American Airlines Chairman Greg Smith said in an announcement.

Dietrich could also be a valuable asset for American Airlines’ cargo operation. American had cargo revenue of $839 million in 2025, up 4.3% from the prior year. American typically trails United Airlines and Delta Air Lines in cargo revenue.

Dietrich currently serves as chairman of the National Defense Transportation Association and on the boards of AAR Corp. and First Horizon Corp.

He is also a former member and chairman of the National Air Carrier Association and a former member of the International Air Transport Association board of governors.

Dietrich will serve on American Airlines’ audit and finance committees. American Airlines is scheduled to publish second quarter earnings results on July 23. 

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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Revenue of $3.5 billion was 19% higher year over year and outpaced analysts’ expectations for $3.26 billion. Earnings per share of $1.91 were 60 cents higher y/y and 18 cents ahead of consensus. (A lower tax rate and lower interest expense were each 4-cent tailwinds in the quarter.)

Operating income of $259 million (plus-32% y/y) was driven by higher revenue and recent cost reductions.

J.B. Hunt’s (NASDAQ: JBHT) intermodal revenue increased 22% y/y to $1.75 billion as loads were up 10% and revenue per load was 11% higher. Transcontinental volumes were up 5% y/y, with volumes in the East up 16% y/y. By comparison, total intermodal carloads were up 8% y/y on the U.S. Class I railroads in the quarter (North American containers were up 5% y/y).

The increase in revenue per load was largely due to higher fuel surcharges. Excluding fuel, yields were 1% higher y/y in the period. Yields are being weighed down by the mix shift to the East, where lengths of haul are shorter (length of haul was down 3% y/y).

The unit booked a 91.4% operating ratio (8.6% operating margin), 190 basis points better y/y.

Dedicated revenue increased 9% y/y to $921 million. The increase was entirely attributable to an increase in revenue per truck per week (due to higher fuel surcharges). Revenue per truck per week was 2% higher excluding fuel surcharges. An 88.9% OR was flat y/y.

The company’s brokerage business turned an operating profit for the first time in 14 quarters. Revenue was up 49% y/y as loads increased 19% and revenue per load increased 26%. A 12.5% gross margin was 300 bps lower y/y due to elevated purchased transportation costs (54% higher y/y).

The asset-light truckload business recorded a $1.3 million operating loss in the quarter due to elevated purchased transportation costs.

J.B. Hunt will host a call at 5 p.m. EDT on Wednesday to discuss second-quarter results.

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In a letter sent to Johnson on Wednesday, OOIDA President and CEO Todd Spencer said H.R. 5688 would permanently close what the association describes as dangerous loopholes in the commercial driver’s license system that have allowed unqualified or insufficiently vetted drivers to obtain CDLs. 

The organization said the legislation is particularly important following the July 1 death of Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr.

“As the nation’s largest association representing small-business truckers and professional drivers, OOIDA argues that Congress must codify the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent Final Rule on non-domiciled CDLs so it cannot be weakened or reversed by a future administration,” OOIDA said in the letter.

According to OOIDA, non-domiciled CDLs allow certain non-U.S. citizens and non-permanent residents to operate commercial motor vehicles in the U.S., but the licensing process has long contained significant safety and screening deficiencies. 

The association argues states have struggled to comply with federal requirements, including verifying up to 10 years of an applicant’s driving history when records are located outside the U.S.

OOIDA noted that it urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in August 2025 to suspend states’ authority to issue non-domiciled CDLs because of those concerns. The association also backed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s final rule, which took effect earlier this year and significantly restricts eligibility for non-domiciled CDLs.

However, Spencer wrote that administrative rulemaking alone is not enough.

“Only Congress can make these protections permanent,” Spencer wrote in the letter to Johnson.

Association cites fatal Pennsylvania crash

OOIDA linked its renewed push for Dalilah’s Law to the death of Trooper Pahira, who was struck and killed July 1 while conducting a commercial vehicle inspection along Interstate 81.

According to the association, the truck driver involved had continued operating in the U.S. after his immigration parole status had been terminated but still possessed a valid non-domiciled CDL issued by Massachusetts. OOIDA argues the driver would not have qualified for a CDL had the provisions contained in Dalilah’s Law already been in effect.

“Trooper Pahira’s death is a devastating reminder that our current CDL system lacks the safeguards needed to keep unqualified and unvetted drivers off the road,” Spencer wrote.

Bill awaits House floor action

The legislation cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in March by a 35-26 vote but has not yet received a vote before the full House.

OOIDA is asking Johnson to schedule floor consideration “without further delay,” saying that strengthening commercial driver licensing standards is a public safety issue affecting truck drivers, law enforcement officers and the traveling public.

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Maersk said it invested $100 million to outfit the facility with advanced conveyor and sortation technology, and other features,enabling it to process up to 330,000 parcels per day at peak capacity. The warehouse, located in Hopedale, Massachusetts, offers faster, more reliable fulfillment and delivery across the Northeast by positioning inventory closer to customers.  About 1,000 people will be hired to operate the Hopedale, Massachusetts, warehouse.

The investment underscores how Maersk has evolved over 15 years from a commoditized port-to-port container shipping business to an end-to-end provider of supply chain services, under the premise that serving all a customer’s freight transportation, warehousing and fulfillment needs under one umbrella translates into stronger, long-term relationships.

In 2021, Maersk acquired Salt Lake City-based Visible Supply Chain Management, a large e-commerce logistics company with fulfillment centers across the country. It uses a mix of national and regional carriers to make last-mile deliveries, augmented by its own trucks where it makes sense.

Across North America, Maersk manages more than 70 warehousing facilities, offering consolidation, deconsolidation, storage, distribution or omnichannel fulfillment. 

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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It also represented the third best month ever recorded and the third time the port has crossed the million-TEU threshold – a mark no other port in the Western Hemisphere has achieved even once.

Imports drove these remarkable numbers as volume totaled 530,000 twenty foot equivalent units in June, an increase of approximately 13% compared with a year ago and 18% above the five-year average, said Executive Director Gene Seroka, in a media briefing. This represented the third highest import month on record.

Behind the statistics lies a significant shift in business behavior.

“Importers aren’t simply moving more cargo – they’re moving it differently,” Seroka said. “Many companies have stepped away from traditional seasonal shipping patterns, advancing cargo whenever they see an opening rather than waiting for perfect conditions. Retailers are making strategic decisions about when and how much to ship, balancing back-to-school and holiday demand against tariffs, rising fuel costs, and global uncertainty.”

Exports remained essentially flat at 126,000 TEUs compared with the previous June, reflecting ongoing headwinds for American agricultural and business interests competing in overseas markets. Empty containers totaled approximately 345,000 units, up 17% year over year, as that equipment heads back across the Pacific to support continued import demand.

At the halfway mark of 2026, the port has moved 5.1 million TEUs, about 3% ahead of 2024’s pace and 4% above the five-year average. The fiscal year closed with 10.4 million TEUs, placing it among the best fiscal years in port history.

Impending tariff rolloffs and policy shifts

On July 24, the Section 122 temporary tariffs announced in February will expire, ushering in a new tariff regime with significant implications for importers.

The outgoing tariffs will be replaced by Section 301 tariffs in two tranches, said Seroka. The first tranche will impose a flat tariff of 10% to 12.5%, ostensibly targeting countries not complying with forced labor provisions in trade agreements. This represents a continuation of the existing tariff structure without dramatic changes.

Importantly, the same date brings the elimination of de minimis provisions in the U.S. tariff code. Small packages will now go through a special tariff process, creating new compliance requirements for importers who previously relied on easy shipment of lower-valued items by mail. 

“This change particularly affects small retailers and family-owned businesses that have relied on platforms like JD, Shein, and Alibaba, as well as consolidators bringing in smaller parcels,” Seroka said. “Beyond paying the import surcharge, these businesses face bureaucratic compliance burdens in shipping forms and documentation that will create friction until the new system is understood.”

What’s been less discussed is the uncertainty in a second tranche of Section 301 tariffs targeting “excess capacity” and alleged dumping of foreign goods. Unlike the flat forced-labor tariffs, these could replicate what was seen on “Liberation Day” in April 2025 – high rates with significant variance across countries, hitting certain trading partners hard while treating others more leniently. This variability means potential large-scale reshuffling of supply chains depending on the final tariff rates announced, Seroka said.

Additional questions remain about whether these tariffs represent initial bargaining positions or long-term policy, and whether rates will change month to month or remain fixed. The administration has articulated multiple objectives for tariffs – reducing the trade deficit, raising federal revenue, and reshoring manufacturing jobs – but these goals involve trade-offs that cannot all be achieved simultaneously.

And, the tariff impacts extend beyond imports, said Seroka, who just returned from a fact-finding trip to Germany. “American exporters face challenges not only from retaliatory tariffs but from quiet deal-making that sidelines U.S. producers. Trade agreements on soybeans with Brazil and Argentina, on almonds with Australia, and partnerships between Indonesia and the European Union represent collaborative arrangements that leave American farmers and manufacturers on the sidelines.”

Steel tariffs, for example, illustrate the economic trade-offs. While U.S. producers enjoy improved profitability and higher prices, downstream users like General Motors, Ford, Caterpillar, and John Deere face elevated costs that put them at a competitive disadvantage against foreign rivals who don’t pay those premiums in their home markets.

Global geopolitical headwinds

The conflict in the Middle East and its impact on the Strait of Hormuz have created ripple effects across global supply chains, most immediately felt through fuel prices.

In Southern California, gas prices have risen 18% to 20% from a year ago, Seroka noted, while diesel prices remain elevated at more than 25% higher. “These increases hit hard for the port’s trucking community, where the majority of operators are small to midsize businesses,” he said. “Fuel now accounts for approximately 30% of a vessel voyage’s overall cost for shipping lines.

“The next impact will come through fuel surcharges passed on to importers and exporters. Shipping lines typically require three months of data demonstrating increased fuel costs before assessing surcharges to cargo owners. Once implemented, these surcharges tend to lag when prices decrease, remaining elevated for some time before reflecting current market conditions.”

Despite these challenges, trans-Pacific cargo has continued moving largely unimpeded. Key Asian ports including Singapore, Shanghai, and Yokohama have effectively segmented Middle Eastern cargo from trans-Pacific trade, Seroka said, ensuring containers destined for Los Angeles move through without significant delays.

The region faces massive post-conflict rebuilding regardless of when hostilities cease. The situation proves particularly acute in other regions: Southeast Asia relies almost exclusively on Arabian Gulf nations for refined jet fuel, while 75% of the European Union’s supply comes from the same source.

Port performance and local infrastructure gains

Amid global uncertainty, the Port of Los Angeles has achieved significant operational improvements.

Average truck turn time has dropped by a third from 97 minutes during the height of the 2021 supply chain crisis to 62 minutes today, a reduction of more than one-third. This matters because two-thirds of port cargo moves in and out by truck daily, and benefits cargo owners and retailers through a more reliable supply chain, truck drivers through more productive runs and less idle time, and surrounding communities through cleaner air from reduced idling.

Rail operations show similar improvement though networks have been stressed by the recent intermodal surge. On-dock rail dwell times currently average about five days, Seroka said, slightly above the preferred two-to-four-day range but dramatically improved from crisis levels. In October 2021, the port had 89 ships at anchor, 97,000 import boxes on the ground, and 37,000 containers sitting nine days or longer. Of those aging containers, 22,000 were rail boxes awaiting on-dock loading. Today, approximately 1,300 boxes are sitting nine days or longer designated for rail.

Looking ahead, July cargo volume is expected to remain above 900,000 container units. Beyond that, the picture becomes harder to read as businesses adapt in real time to changing conditions. Trade policy developments, Section 301 tariff implementations, Middle East developments affecting transportation costs, and broader economic indicators will all shape the second half of 2026.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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GLS LeasCo and Central Transport alleged Navistar’s delayed truck deliveries caused millions in lost resale value and higher operating costs during one of the hottest used-truck markets in history.

The 10-person jury found on Monday that GLS LeasCo and Central Transport failed to prove their breach of contract and fraud claims after a multi-year dispute over the delivery of 1,100 International tractors ordered in 2022. 

Jurors concluded Navistar was not liable for damages and awarded the plaintiffs nothing.

The case centered on a 2022 agreement under which GLS agreed to purchase 1,100 model-year 2023 International tractors after waiving a lucrative trade-in arrangement covering its older fleet. 

GLS argued it made that concession because Navistar promised an accelerated production schedule that would allow it to capitalize on historically high used-truck prices before the market cooled.

Instead, GLS alleged Navistar delivered only 18 new tractors by the end of May 2022, with deliveries stretching into September 2023. According to the lawsuit, the delays caused the value of the company’s 2018 tractors to plunge more than 75%, resulting in approximately $15.7 million in lost resale value, plus more than $1 million in additional maintenance and repair costs.

GLS LeasCo, which purchases trucks and leases them to Warren, Michigan-based carrier Central Transport, argued that Navistar knowingly promised an accelerated production schedule it could not meet in order to persuade GLS to give up contractual trade-in rights worth tens of millions of dollars.

Central Transport — which specializes in less-than-truckload shipping — operates a fleet of over 2,200 tractors and 8,500 trailers. The company maintains a network of equipment — which also includes over 1,700 additional support units — to service its 200+ terminal facilities across the U.S. and Canada.

The companies contended the earlier production schedule was the key consideration behind the revised agreement because it would allow them to retire and sell hundreds of used tractors while prices remained elevated during the pandemic-era supply crunch.

Navistar denied those allegations throughout the case, arguing the 2022 letter agreement established production slots rather than guaranteed delivery dates. The company also maintained there was an important distinction between when trucks were built and when they were ultimately delivered to customers.

The manufacturer further argued it had informed GLS that production would extend beyond the original timeline because of industrywide supply-chain disruptions, including shortages of Bendix Fusion collision mitigation components.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023 after U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith previously allowed the core breach-of-contract claims to proceed toward trial while narrowing portions of the plaintiffs’ fraud allegations. 

In a 2025 opinion, the court ruled factual disputes surrounding the parties’ agreements and production schedule were best resolved by a jury rather than through summary judgment.

The plaintiffs had sought approximately $16.5 million in damages tied primarily to lost used-truck resale values and increased operating expenses. As of the jury’s verdict, GLS and Central Transport had not publicly indicated whether they intended to appeal.

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The annual operating cost survey and analysis posted by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) for 2025 and the first months of 2026 show an industry that last year dealt with rising costs that outstripped consumer inflation. 

In a 65-page report full of numbers, the report produced by the research arm of the American Trucking Associations said the average operational costs of trucking companies of all shapes and sizes rose to $2.336/mile in 2025 from $2.260 per mile in 2024. That is a 3.4% increase.

But that number includes fuel, and many carriers can pass on rising fuel costs through a surcharge. The operational costs excluding fuel went to $1.854/g from $1.779/g, a 4.2% increase, according to ATRI. 

“This rate of increase was still 1.5 percentage points above inflation during the same period and 0.6 percentage points above last year’s increase, indicating an uptick in inflationary pressure in trucking,” ATRI said.

ATRI provided a hefty amount of data about the companies that provided data. Maybe the most important one is that while LTL companies make up 28% of the trucking industry, according to ATRI data, they were 47.8% of respondents. Truckload was 33.3% of the truckload respondents and is 57.3% of the industry. A category ATRI calls other/specialized had a ratio of 18.9% of respondents and is 14.7% of the industry, 

Among some of the key statistical findings in the ATRI report:

What was the revenue? The ATRI study does not go into the freight rates that trucking companies encountered in the market except to say that “trucking rates

and tonnage remained flat compared to 2024.”

Vehicle costs: A table of cost categories going back to 2016 did not reveal any particular area that surged far above the others. For example, truck/trailer lease or purchase payments went to 40.4 cts/mile in 2025 from 39 cents/mile a year earlier. Repair and maintenance rose to 21.5 cts/mile from 19.8 cts/mile. Insurance–which is frequently cited as a cost center that has been soaring–rose 10.6 cts/mile from 10.2 cents/mile a year earlier. Tires went to 5 cts/mile from 4.7 cts/mile, a gain that outpaced the broader trend of consumer inflation, which ATRI put at 2.7%.

Driver costs: The costs of compensating drivers rose at what ATRI called “a sub-inflationary rate.” Industry-wide driver wages rose 2.5% last year, ATRI said, adding that the ratio between driver wages and consumer inflation was similar to 2024 when the split was 2.4% for driver wages and 2.9% for inflation. 

Differences in size: ATRI’s research on driver wages found that wages for 26-truck fleets were just 4.5 cts/mile less than those of 1,000-truck fleets. The study also said average wages were the lowest in fleets that had less than 26 trucks, and were the highest for fleets that exceeded 1,000 trucks.

Specialized is the place to be: The ATRI report found that specialized fleets had higher average wages in every size category except those of more than 1,000 trucks. The biggest gap came in fleets of 101 to 250 trucks, where the specialized carriers had average wages of 95.3 cents/mile and truckload carriers were at 72.5 cents/mile.

Benefits rise more: The cost of driver benefits were up 6.6% between 2024 and 2025, according to ATRI. That is well above the national inflation rate the organization assumes. “This was the second year in a row in which the rate of growth in driver benefits costs outpaced driver wages as one of the fastest-rising line-items, following an increase of 4.8 percent from 2023 to 2024,” ATRI said.

The rate of growth did not vary much among fleet sizes, ATRI said, except for smaller fleets that as the agency notes, often do not offer significant benefits to begin with. 

Could be lagging information: The ATRI report does have data on the early part of 2026. Its forecast for driver wages appears to be somewhat out of date, given other indications of what is happening to driver pay. “Driver wages are currently on track for a third year of sub-inflationary increase, giving back some of the gains in real income experienced during the

three years of aggressive wage increases in the pandemic freight boom (2021-2023),” the report said. “In the first two months of 2026, carriers reported that driver wage costs were up 1.6% on average.”

Here’s a little extra: The ATRI report has data on bonuses paid out. Most notable: the average starting bonus fell to $1,733 from $2,122 in 2024. It reached a recent peak of $2,373 in 2022, right in the middle of the post-pandemic freight bull market. Retention bonuses also fell, declining to $1,474 from $1,832. Bonuses that increased between 2024 and 2025: safety, to $1,846 from $1,680; and fuel economy, up to $1,548 from $1,235.

Safer but higher: The ATRI report highlighted that FMCSA data on injury crash rates were 15.3% less in 2024 than the high level of 2019, and fatal crashes were down by 13.9%. But the cost of insurance rose by 3.9% between 2024 and 2025 to 10.6 cts mile, 1.2 percentage points more than consumer inflation.

Sticking around: Turnover was 44.2% in 2025, according to ATRI, down from 48% a year earlier, “as drivers were less inclined to switch jobs during a soft freight market with fewer open

positions,” the report said. But within that number are vast differences. For example, at truckload carriers with more than 1,000 trucks, turnover was 70.7%. At fleets with less than 26 trucks, the figure was 32%.

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Fuller opened by noting the volume of capital, both public and private, that has poured into AI. It has also created skepticism from parts of the venture capital world. 

Rempel didn’t dispute the hype. “I think if you just reference it as one of those Gartner hype cycle curves that Gartner plays out here, we’re on the way up to the Peak of Inflated Expectations, especially in supply chain, and we’re about to go into the Trough of Disillusionment,” he said.

The gap between demo and deployment is the problem, Rempel said. “There are a lot of AI demos better than anything I’ve ever seen in my entire life. You can put an AI demo together, you can build something wonderful, you can do it for the enterprise, you can do the show. It’s unbelievable.” Supply chain doesn’t run on clean demos, though. “Everything goes wrong all the time,” he said. “If our customers could do it themselves, they wouldn’t need us.”

AI Adoption in Supply Chain Needs People, Not Just Platforms

Getting value out of AI isn’t a technology problem anymore, Rempel said. It’s an organizational one. “What it takes is not just a technology lens to get it valuable within your organization, but a people and process lens,” he said.

That case is complicated by a labor market narrative Rempel pushed back on directly. Despite headlines about AI-driven layoffs, Redwood has gone the other direction. “We’ve only been hiring because of it,” he said. He argued that many of the layoffs making news trace back to pandemic-era overhiring rather than AI replacing workers. “A lot of organizations over-hired in COVID, there was a lot of bloat and waste, and they’ve done RIFs, but those RIFs are for things we just completely didn’t need,” Rempel said. “It’s a great way for a value sheet to say, ‘Hey, we’re producing results and look at what we can do as an organization.’ But I don’t think that’s the end-all, be-all.”

Spot Market Jobs, Spot Market Tokens

Fuller drew on a Bloomberg opinion piece to frame the labor shift in freight terms, comparing spot market to contract rates to AI and its pricing. Instead of supply and demand of assets, it’s the supply and demand of available compute and tokens.

Rempel sees the same pattern forming in AI pricing. Flat-rate subscriptions are giving way to usage-based costs as enterprises scale up. “The AI in the subsidized era was all contract market, bigger plans, $20 or $200 a month, you get all this compute,” Rempel said. “That’s very quickly going away, especially at the enterprise level. It’s becoming a spot market, and organizations are rethinking how they staff.”

That shift is colliding with organizations that move far slower than the technology. “Compute power and capability are shifting every three to six months in experiments, but people take longer to change,” Rempel said. “Instituting change management within organizations is a three-to-five-year journey.”

Change management and virtual helpers

Fuller shared a change management anecdote about a four hour long morning process to build a newsletter. The challenge was managing resistance to using AI to speed it up, even after seeing dramatically improved output. When the worker had tried the technology three years earlier, they found it lacking, and never went back despite the changes in capabilities. The early first impressions soured the willingness to adapt and revisit.

Rempel said the story maps onto adoption patterns he’s tracked for 20 years across TMS and WMS rollouts. “Substitute AI with any change and that’s the narrative,” he said. “There are always folks within the organization who say, ‘I’ve done it this way forever, it’s fine.’ Change is scary. This is why change takes three to five years in organizations.”

The keynote compared today’s AI tools to a familiar animated archetype. “AI is like the minions from the movie. They have really great intentions, but you need to harness them, structure them, and hold them accountable,” Rempel said. Dumping an open-ended task on a model without guardrails backfires, he added: “The mistake is trying to shotgun it without giving it context or memory.”

Legacy Systems, New Stakes

The conversation turned to whether AI helps or hurts companies built on legacy infrastructure. Fuller pointed to reports that Trimble is selling its transportation business, noting that 80% of the trucking industry still dispatches off green-screen AS400 based systems. Fuller argued AI makes those tangled, interdependent systems more valuable, not less: “AI makes it easier to have the spaghetti of all those interdependent systems talking to each other.”

Rempel agreed data, not the interface, is the real asset. “Their ability to flow data in these systems has always been involved,” he said. “I don’t think AI makes this any easier. I think it makes it more important.” He cautioned against applying AI indiscriminately at scale: “We’re talking about massive scale, billions of transactions per month. Using AI to do that is super costly and ineffective if you try to do everything with it.”

The two also weighed C.H. Robinson’s Wall Street-rewarded AI narrative. “Two things can be true,” Rempel said of the debate over whether it reflects real transformation or cost-cutting dressed up in AI language. “There could be reductions in force, there could be investment in AI, there could be change in process. It’s a journey, not a destination, and they’re well on their journey.”

Who’s Accountable When the Agent Screws Up?

Asked what the industry isn’t thinking about, Rempel turned to AI agents as coworkers, not tools. “HR is going to be a function of people and agents,” he said. “If you think about an agent just like an employee, who reviews what they say? Who thinks about customer feedback? Who realizes how they work and how they interact with other employees? What if you have to off-board one? What if you roll back?”

The deeper question, he said, is whether organizations are ready for knowledge to move horizontally instead of up and down a hierarchy. “Do you have a learning enterprise where this is managed, or are you just building things on top of each other and the whole thing can collapse?” Rempel said.

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Video shot by the unidentified crew from inside the cab shows a massive wall of flames surrounding the locomotive as they plead by radio with CN (NYSE: CNI) operations personnel to hurry a rescue.

“This could potentially overtake us here, this has gotten a little scary,” a crewman calmly observes, as a sweep of the camera shows a firestorm of burning trees around the train.

The crew were stopped for a red signal and a meet with another train. A longer version of the video shows the oncoming train appear out of the red smoke and flames, moving at high speed. 

“Y’all need to hurry up here, like, seriously, we’re encased in flames now,” says another crewman.

The fire seems to dissipate, then jumps the tracks and starts burning trees on the opposite side of the locomotive.

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According to a blog published by PTI, the move will further its sustainability strategy to help customers reduce transportation emissions without sacrificing performance, reliability or cost efficiency.

“PTI has been a leader in sustainable transportation solutions for over 15 years,” said PTI CEO Tyler Ellison, in Monday’s blog post. “We take a consultative approach to helping customers identify and implement the right transportation solution for their network. Our partnership with Tesla expands our portfolio alongside renewable natural gas and intermodal, giving customers more ways to reduce Scope 3 emissions without compromising service or economics.”

PTI is evaluating the Tesla Semi within its dedicated operating model, where predictable routes and consistent mileage provide an ideal environment for assessing battery-electric performance.

Tesla Semi buildout

The PTI pilot connects to Tesla’s broader production plans for the Class 8 electric truck. Tesla announced that its long-awaited Tesla Semi would begin volume production earlier this year, a milestone CEO Elon Musk framed as part of a broader manufacturing and AI investment cycle.

Speaking during Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, Musk cautioned that output would ramp slowly at first before accelerating later in the year and into 2027. He emphasized that new products like the Semi will follow a typical “S-curve” ramp, with early production limited by supply chain complexity before scaling rapidly.

The company has also highlighted deployment of Megachargers and heavy-duty charging infrastructure alongside the Semi rollout, signaling a broader push into commercial freight electrification.

Deeper sustainability goals

The partnership builds on PTI’s 15-year commitment to sustainable transportation solutions.

PTI has logged over 87 million miles using compressed and renewable natural gas. The company aims to help customers reduce Scope 3 emissions through renewable natural gas (RNG), intermodal and battery-electric transportation solutions.

Sustainability is a key differentiator for shippers aiming to meet a rising demand for environmentally responsible supply chains.

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The stop occurred Saturday on Loop 202 near Brown Road in Mesa, where Arizona Highway Patrol troopers assigned to the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit pulled over a truck and trailer transporting water hoses after observing equipment violations and the driver not wearing a seat belt.

During the inspection, troopers discovered the driver did not possess a CDL, despite operating a commercial vehicle requiring one.

In an unusual twist, authorities said a passenger seated in the rear of the truck did hold a valid CDL but was not driving.

Instead, the commercial vehicle was being operated by an unlicensed driver, resulting in multiple citations, including operating without a CDL and failure to wear a seat belt.

“No commercial driver’s license = No commercial driving,” Arizona DPS said in a social media post announcing the enforcement action.

Officials noted that while driving any vehicle carries risk, operating a large truck hauling equipment without proper licensing significantly increases the danger to motorists.

Related: Arizona inspection blitz sidelines 5 truck drivers in July 1 enforcement push 

The stop follows another recent commercial vehicle enforcement operation in Arizona that removed multiple trucks and drivers from service.

On July 1, the Arizona Highway Patrol’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit joined officers in a four-hour “Arrive Alive Arizona” enforcement detail along State Route 85 in Buckeye.

During that operation, inspectors conducted 20 commercial vehicle inspections, identified 66 violations and placed five commercial drivers and two commercial vehicles out of service because of safety or regulatory violations. Officers also weighed 348 commercial vehicles, identified five overweight trucks and documented another 26 violations.

Authorities said the operation focused on identifying unsafe equipment and driver qualification issues before they contributed to crashes.

Across the Southwest, agencies have expanded roadside inspections targeting driver qualifications, licensing compliance, equipment defects and hours-of-service violations. Arizona’s recent enforcement actions mirror similar efforts in Texas and California aimed at improving highway safety and removing unsafe commercial vehicles from service.

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The self-driving company announced in a blog post that its Waabi Driver software, trained exclusively on a Peterbilt 579, took control of a Volvo VNL Autonomous truck and drove it safely on highways and complex surface streets from the very first mile. No new real-world data. No simulation data. No fine-tuning. No engineering work.

“This was a massive announcement, Thomas. It was massive for Waabi, but for the industry and Physical AI in general,” Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun said in an interview with FreightWaves.

The Peterbilt-to-Volvo Leap

To prove the Waabi Driver’s ability to generalize in this way, Waabi collaborated with partner Volvo Autonomous Solutions to integrate the Waabi Driver onto the Volvo VNL Autonomous. Before this, the Waabi Driver was used to driving a Peterbilt 579. The

two trucks couldn’t be more different. Sensor placement, vehicle shape, and control systems all vary between the Peterbilt 579 and the Volvo VNL Autonomous.

“The sensors are in very different locations. The shape of the truck is very different. The way you control the Volvo VNL is also very different, and it feels very different from driving a Peterbilt,” Urtasun said. “Yet we required zero changes. It was directly plug-and-play. Same stack. Same model. Same everything.”

The Volvo VNL Autonomous handled lane changes, traffic lights, right turns, three-way intersections, and U-turns on its first outing with the new software, according to Waabi.

Historically, that kind of platform switch has been one of the toughest problems in autonomous driving.

“Up to this point, whenever anyone in the industry wanted to move from one vehicle platform to another, it typically required more than a year of engineering work,” Urtasun said. “‘Quickly’ was actually zero. The system generalized without needing anything. You really break the physics of what everyone believed was possible.”

Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, called the road test “an important proof point of our partnership with Waabi” in a statement.

“It also demonstrates the scalability of Volvo’s autonomous truck platform, which is designed to integrate different vehicle models and virtual drivers to enable a wide range of use cases and applications,” Jaeger said. “Together with Waabi, we are advancing autonomous transport solutions toward commercial reality.”

Why Autonomous Truck Generalization Matters for Scaling

For carriers and OEMs, the practical upside is speed. Waabi describes two kinds of generalization that matter for scaling: across environments, meaning highways to dense urban streets, and across embodiments, meaning entirely different vehicles. The Volvo test proved the second.

Urtasun said the capability extends beyond trucking, to vehicle classes and to sensor hardware itself.

“The same applies across different vehicle classes. Today we do Class 8 trucks. Maybe tomorrow you want a solution that can do Class 5, Class 6, robotaxis, whatever it is,” Urtasun said. “If a new sensor comes to market that’s significantly more capable or much cheaper, you want to be able to take advantage of it immediately.”

AV providers have told FreightWaves that switching sensor suites is a persistent pain point, forcing them to retrain their systems, sometimes repeatedly, as new hardware arrives. Waabi argues that dependency disappears once a single model generalizes across platforms and sensor suites.

Reasoning Over Raw Compute

Urtasun credited the result to Waabi’s underlying architecture, which she contrasted with rivals betting on scale alone.

“If you look at previous generations of AI technology, version 1.0 was built around handcrafted programming. Those systems don’t generalize at all,” Urtasun said. “Then came this black-box architecture where the answer became more data, more chips, bigger data centers. You see some of the players investing billions into that approach.”

Waabi built something different, she said: a system that interprets what it perceives, reasons about it, evaluates possible actions and their consequences, then chooses a maneuver. It’s closer to how a human brain works.

“This type of architecture is the first one that’s able to demonstrate those capabilities,” Urtasun said. “Only Waabi has this technology.”

Waabi’s simulation platform, Waabi World, helped build the underlying Waabi Driver system, but Urtasun said the Volvo test itself required none of it.

“We didn’t even need simulation,” she said. “This announcement is really about this next generation, AV 2.0. It’s about the autonomy system itself.”

One Brain, Every Vehicle

Urtasun framed the embodiment breakthrough as a preview of Waabi’s robotaxi ambitions, which she described as the company’s “second embodiment.”

“It’s a shared brain that drives everything. Whether it’s the Peterbilt. Whether it’s the Volvo VNL. Whether it’s a robotaxi. It doesn’t matter,” Urtasun said. “Everything you do in one vertical improves every other vertical. The cost stays the same because it’s the same brain.”

She argued Waabi’s highway experience and more than a year and a half of door-to-door trucking operations give it an edge robotaxi developers lack.

“One thing competitors struggle with is highways,” Urtasun said. “We excel on highways. We drive trucks that have to see farther and plan much more proactively. Those capabilities are already there. We also already have the capabilities required for cities because we’re driving on surface streets today.”

Commercialization, not new capability development, is now the bottleneck, according to Urtasun.

“Out of the box, it’s super performant. It blew the minds of everybody, including our partners,” she said. “From there, it’s really up to the races in terms of commercialization and scale.”

Waabi has not compromised safety standards to get there, Urtasun said, noting the company’s driverless launch will run on a fully validated OEM platform.

“Driverless is almost here,” she said. “The future of self-driving is truly here.”

The post Waabi proves autonomous truck generalization with Volvo Autonomous Solutions appeared first on FreightWaves.

The delivery platform has been expanding for several years beyond its origin model of delivering restaurant meals into grocery and retail delivery. Last month, DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH)   announced a partnership with Autoparts.com for its gig drivers to deliver parts orders for the online retailer in under an hour. 

The Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP) integration targets small-and-medium sized local businesses as the next growth category. Retailers can add their products to the DoorDash marketplace by enabling a new sales channel within the Shopify app store, with no separate onboarding process, manual catalog uploads or disruption to existing operations, DoorDash said in a news release.

““Merchants want to sell wherever their customers are, and increasingly that means meeting them with speed and convenience,” said Atlee Clark, vice president of partnerships at Shopify. “This integration puts local retailers in front of millions of DoorDash shoppers and turns same-day demand into sales, all managed inside Shopify.” 

DoorDash said products and inventory are automatically aligned in the system so when a customer orders what’s on DoorDash always matches what’s on the shelf, without the retailer having to manually manage stock levels. 

DoorDash first migrated from restaurant and pharmacy deliveries four years ago in a deal with Sephora. In October, the company began offering fulfillment services for retailers such as CVS and Party City, using its network of DashMart neighborhood stores. 

The DashMart locations provide retailers with an additional sales channel and handle the entire process, from inventory management, picking, packing and delivery by drivers who use the company’s app to accept assignments. 

In the spring, DoorDash expanded its presence in the apparel sector through partnerships with Urban Outfitters, Dolce Vita, Rally House and Steve Madden. DoorDash began offering last-mile delivery for Dollar Tree at more than 9,000 stories in May. DoorDash now has tens of thousands of national retail stores connected to its marketplace.

More than 200,000 auto parts and accessories are now available for delivery on-demand through AutoParts.com on the DoorDash app, in partnership with a network of independent automotive parts distributors, under a deal between the companies in June. 

Auto parts are one of the most time-sensitive purchases because buyers often need a part to complete a repair that is in progress and quickly get back on the road. 

In April, Ace Hardware picked Uber Eats to handle last-mile delivery from its stores. 

DoorDash management said earlier this year that 30% of monthly active users order from categories beyond restaurants.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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Jashanpreet Singh, 21, of Yuba City, California, was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty in June to three felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in connection with the Oct. 21, 2025, crash on westbound I-10 near the Interstate 15 interchange in Ontario, California, according to the Los Angeles Times.

According to California Highway Patrol investigators, Singh failed to slow for stopped traffic, sending his semi-truck into the rear of another vehicle and triggering an eight-vehicle pileup involving four tractor-trailers and four passenger vehicles. 

Dashcam footage reviewed by investigators showed the truck traveling at a high rate of speed before plowing into stopped traffic. One vehicle burst into flames during the collision.

Three people died at the scene, while four others were injured.

Singh was initially arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence following the crash. However, prosecutors later dropped the DUI allegation after toxicology testing found no drugs or alcohol in his system. He ultimately pleaded guilty to the vehicular manslaughter charges.

During sentencing, the judge considered Singh’s eligibility for California’s youth offender provisions, along with his lack of prior criminal history and the finding that the crash was not intentional. Those factors contributed to the four-year, eight-month sentence.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said Singh entered the U.S. through the southern border in 2022 as an Indian national and was in the country without legal status. Immigration officials lodged a detainer request shortly after the crash seeking to hold him for possible deportation proceedings following his criminal case.

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The freight technology industry has a problem that has become more apparent as more organizations implement artificial intelligence. AI has become the dominant selling point across virtually every logistics software category, from transportation management to container visibility to customs compliance. Carriers, forwarders, and shippers are being pitched AI-powered dashboards, AI-driven ETAs, and AI-enabled workflow automation at a pace that has outrun the industry’s ability to evaluate what any of it actually means in practice.

Michael Rentz, Chief Revenue Officer of Gnosis Freight, has a clear diagnosis for why so many of those implementations disappoint.

“AI does not create accuracy, it amplifies whatever you feed it,” Rentz said. “If the underlying container data is incomplete, delayed, or conflicting, the AI does not just fail quietly. It confidently makes the wrong call, automates the wrong action, and scales the mistake across your entire operation.”

Austin McCombs founded Gnosis Freight in 2017 with a focus on building powerful container tracking software. Over time, the company arrived at a more foundational realization that has grown more consequential as AI has entered the logistics mainstream.

“We didn’t fully recognize the scale of this challenge until the platform itself demanded it,” Rentz said. “We started out focused on building great software. What we learned is that the data infrastructure surrounding the container lifecycle has to be solved first. Without that foundation, no downstream outcome, whether it’s operational efficiency, automation, or AI execution, can be fully realized.”

Gnosis Freight’s platform, built around its proprietary container tracking engine, was designed to establish a single, validated, real-time record of every container milestone from booking through empty return. According to Rentz that foundation is less a competitive differentiator than a prerequisite most of the industry has yet to build.

“Most companies are skipping the foundation and going straight to the model,” he said, “and that’s why so many AI pilots in supply chain look great in a demo and fall apart in production.”

The Data Readiness Gap

The gap between AI promise and AI reality in freight operations is, at its core, a data problem, according to Rentz. The industry is only beginning to address it.

“True data readiness is rare,” Rentz said. “What we see most often is organizations that have data, but it’s fragmented across carrier portals, spreadsheets, freight forwarder emails, and legacy TMS systems with no common structure or timestamp logic.”

Data readiness, as Rentz defines it, means a single, validated, real-time record of every container milestone that every team and every system works from simultaneously. By that standard, most shippers are still early in what he describes as a data sovereignty journey.

“A lot of shippers are just stitching together three sources and hoping they agree,” Rentz said. “The ones who’ve done the work to get there are the ones seeing real ROI from automation.”

When the underlying data isn’t ready, the consequences rarely show up as a dramatic system failure. More often, the team slowly loses trust in the imperfect technology.

“It looks like a demurrage bill nobody saw coming,” Rentz said. “It looks like an ETA prediction that was off by four days and nobody caught it because the system said everything was fine. It looks like an automated workflow that triggered the wrong drayage pickup because a terminal update never made it into the system cleanly.”

“The failure mode isn’t dramatic,” he continued. “It’s death by a thousand small errors that erode trust in the technology until the team stops using it and goes back to manual. That’s the graveyard most AI logistics pilots end up in, and bad data is almost always the cause.”

What Operational-Grade Data Actually Requires

Gnosis Freight’s answer to the data problem is the container tracking engine at the core of the platform. Rather than routing data through third-party aggregators, Gnosis establishes direct, first-party relationships with ocean carriers, ports, terminals, Class I railroads, AIS satellite feeds, and U.S. Customs.

That first-party access, Rentz said, is foundational to what separates Gnosis’s approach from much of the rest of the market.

“Unlike a lot of providers that lean on third-party aggregators, we go directly to the source,” he said. “That relationship-first approach gives you a stronger data infrastructure, but it also opens the door to workflows the industry hasn’t been able to build before.” 

He points to Gnosis’s partnership with PayCargo to build the Container Payment Portal as an example of what becomes possible when ecosystem partnerships go deep enough.

But sourcing the data directly is only part of the equation. Raw data, however well-sourced, isn’t the same thing as operational-grade infrastructure.

“Raw ingestion is only half of it,” Rentz said. “The validation layer is where the real work happens. When sources conflict, Gnosis uses a smart hierarchy and contextual logic to resolve those conflicts rather than just displaying whatever came in last. A carrier API telling you one thing and a terminal feed telling you another doesn’t surface as noise to the user. It gets resolved before it ever hits the platform.”

Gnosis Freight’s forward-deployed engineering model comes into play with that validation layer.  Rentz considers that piece of the operation just as important as the technology itself.

“A lot of people think we’re just extracting milestone data,” he said. “What we’re actually extracting is operational knowledge. The most valuable logistics data often lives in the heads of the people managing exceptions every day. By embedding with customers and ecosystem partners, our teams capture that tribal knowledge. There’s a lot of nuance in how a specific business interprets a milestone, handles an exception, or structures a workflow. No integration alone gets you that. It has to be built alongside the customer.”

A combination of first-party data access and embedded operational expertise is what sets Gnosis Freight’s accuracy claims apart.

“If anybody tells you they’re 98.7% accurate without telling you accurate compared to what, they’re not giving you the full picture,” he said. “Accuracy isn’t a static number. It’s a continuous journey. You should be improving completeness, latency, reliability, and operational context over time. That requires a strong data foundation, alignment across ecosystem partners, deep integrations, first-party access, embedded tribal knowledge, and continuous feedback loops on exceptions. That’s the infrastructure question. The percentage is the easy part to talk about and the hardest part to actually earn.”

That infrastructure is also what enables the platform’s predictive capabilities, he said.

“When you have that volume of clean, structured, real-time data flowing from that many sources, combined with the operational context our teams bring in, you can start generating predictive ETA milestones that aren’t based on what the carrier told you, but on what the data actually shows is happening across every touchpoint in that container’s journey,” Rentz said. “That’s not something you can buy off the shelf, and it’s not something you can fake with a single feed.”

Connecting Infrastructure to the P&L

According to Rentz, the value of operational-grade data shows up directly in landed cost, margin protection, and bottom-line outcomes that shippers are already accountable for.

“At the end of the day, AI isn’t the goal,” he said. “The goal is using operational-grade infrastructure to drive measurable business value. For us, that means connecting things like demurrage and detention mitigation, drayage scheduling and delivery order automation, automated invoice auditing, and our arrival notice AI agent directly to landed cost optimization. That’s the narrative that actually matters to a shipper’s P&L.”

Gnosis Freight’s customers have recorded incredible ROI. One top 50 U.S. importer reported more than $12 million in demurrage and detention savings in under 12 months using the Gnosis platform, with customers reporting an average of 81% reduction in demurrage charges and 64% reduction in detention charges in their first year. Rentz traces those results back to the same infrastructure question.

“Once the data foundation is there, the opportunities compound fast,” he said. “The use cases we’re seeing range from EIR email capture that automatically reads inbound terminal emails, extracts gate-in and gate-out details, and files them against the right container without anyone touching it, to real-time demurrage and detention recalculation that updates your free-time risk exposure every time a milestone changes so surprise charges stop happening.”

The list extends to automated delivery order creation, drayage scheduling triggers, arrival notice processing, and freight invoice auditing against actual operational events. All of this is tied back to margin protection and not treated as automation for its own sake.

“None of that is possible without the foundation that makes the underlying data trustworthy,” Rentz said. “AI isn’t the hard part. The hard part is building the infrastructure that makes AI trustworthy enough to act on. Once you have that, and once everything lives in one place, the possibilities for protecting margin compound quickly.”

When Rentz describes Gnosis Freight as an AI Global Freight Operating System, he’s referring to the fact that it’s one platform with one validated data source that allows all logistics partners to work from the same record.

“Our technology provides the accuracy and transparency today’s supply chains demand, ensuring every container and SKU is tracked and acted on from port to door,” he said. “By leveraging Gnosis’ container tracking engine and AI-powered workflows, leading shippers are taking the next step toward a fully connected supply chain that empowers both their teams and their customers with actionable, real-time intelligence.”

What Shippers Should Actually Be Asking

At this point, the question is not whether or not your technology vendor offers an AI solution. The question is whether the data infrastructure behind it is capable of making that AI reliable enough to act on.

That means asking vendors where, specifically, their data actually comes from: which carriers, which terminals, which rail partners, and through what mechanism. It means asking how conflicting data from different sources gets resolved, and what happens when two feeds disagree. It means asking what “accuracy” is being measured against, and whether completeness and latency are held to the same standard. It also means asking what happens after implementation, like whether the vendor embeds with your operation to learn how your business interprets a milestone or handles an exception, or whether they hand over a data feed and wish you luck.

“Every business operates differently,” Rentz said. “Not every organization structures exceptions or measures outcomes the same way. If a vendor isn’t building those nuances into the data layer continuously through feedback loops and exception management, the accuracy you’re sold at the time of purchase is the best it’s ever going to be. That’s simply not good enough for most shippers.”

The vendors that cannot answer those questions with specificity are selling the AI layer without the infrastructure to support it, and Rentz has seen enough of those implementations to know how they end.

Much of the broader industry recognizes that data matters, but recognizing it and building for it are different things.

“A lot of emerging AI logistics companies understand that data is important,” he said. “Far fewer are addressing the operational complexity underneath it. Logistics is nuanced and exception-driven, and that requires real operational expertise, not just a clean integration. That’s the gap between good data and what we’d call operational-grade data, and it’s still pretty wide across the market.”

Gnosis Freight received a strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners in September 2024 and was named to the FreightWaves FreightTech 100 for 2026. The Gnosis Freight platform is ranked No. 1 for Momentum Leader in both Supply Chain Visibility Software and Transportation Management System categories on G2.

AI outcomes are only as strong as the operational-grade infrastructure supporting them. The organizations that invest in that infrastructure now, Rentz believes, will be the ones positioned to realize AI’s full value later.

Learn more about Gnosis Freight at gnosisfreight.com.

The post Why Logistics Tech Is Failing the AI Test appeared first on FreightWaves.

DeShazor is a 21-year Norfolk Southern operations leader with broad experience across the railroad. Most recently, he served as assistant vice president network optimization, where he led teams responsible for network planning, commercial opportunity reviews, terminal standards, capacity modeling, and capital planning.

“Will is a safety-first, hands-on, collaborative leader who consistently demonstrates operational discipline, deep field experience, and a practical understanding of what it takes to run a fast, resilient network,” Barr said in release. “His expertise positions him to connect network planning with execution in the field to help us continue improving service, supporting growth, and delivering for our customers.”

Earlier in his career, DeShazor spent 17 years in transportation operations leadership, including six years as terminal superintendent at three hump yards. He also previously served as assistant vice president intermodal and automotive terminal operations, where he led major projects including managed stacking at Austell, Ga., and the conversion of Triple Crown RoadRailers to containers at Toledo and Kansas City.

DeShazor holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina and a bachelor’s degree in economics and business from Virginia Military Institute.

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Executives say the acquisition will unite two of the trucking industry’s longest-established freight communities while giving livestock haulers access to a broader suite of business services.

Springfield, Missouri-based BulkLoads announced Monday that it has acquired Livestock Network, an online load board and community serving the livestock transportation industry since 2000. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Livestock hauling is one of the most specialized, relationship-driven parts of the trucking industry, and Livestock Network has been at the center of it for more than 25 years,” Larry Hurt, CEO of BulkLoads, said in a news release. “We didn’t acquire it to change what works. We acquired it to give livestock haulers more.”

The acquisition builds on an existing partnership between the two companies and brings Livestock Network’s load board, truck board, company rating system, discussion forums, classifieds, trucking tools and business directories under the BulkLoads umbrella. 

BulkLoads said Livestock Network members will gain access to its broader ecosystem of products, including Smart Freight Funding for freight factoring, Bulk Insurance Group, BulkTMS transportation management software and Bulk Freight Insights market intelligence.

The company also plans to invest in technology upgrades for Livestock Network, including a redesigned website, improved navigation, new digital tools and a future mobile application that would allow drivers to manage loads from their trucks.

Matt Fredin, Livestock Network co-founder and now a partner at BulkLoads, said the combination strengthens the platform without changing the core experience for existing users.

“Our members keep everything they’ve come to rely on, and now they get the strength of the entire BulkLoads network and technology behind them,” Fredin said.

Founded in 2010, BulkLoads says it operates North America’s largest bulk freight marketplace, connecting more than 10,000 carriers, shippers and brokers handling commodities such as grain, hopper, tanker, pneumatic, walking floor and end-dump freight. 

BulkLoads has expanded into freight factoring, insurance, transportation management software and freight market analytics.

Livestock Network, founded in 2000, has evolved from a livestock load board into a broader online community serving livestock carriers and shippers, offering freight matching, equipment listings, company ratings, forums and industry directories. 

The post BulkLoads expands ag freight footprint with Livestock Network acquisition  appeared first on FreightWaves.

The strong performance marks the second consecutive month of year-over-year gains, bringing year-to-date volume to more than 4.8 million TEUs, nearly 2% ahead of the first half of 2025’s record-setting pace.

Dr. Noel Hacegaba, wrapping up the first half of his inaugural year as chief executive, in an online briefing framed the results as a testament to supply chain resilience amid tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty. 

Imports rose 11% to over 387,000 TEUs, while exports dipped 1% to more than 86,000 TEUs. Empty containers increased 14% to nearly 306,000 TEUs as ocean carriers work to clear docks and create terminal capacity for incoming cargo.

Sourcing shifts and peak season front-loading

The traditional peak shipping season has become obsolete. According to Hacegaba, what once characterized a concentrated holiday rush has been replaced by year-round waves of cargo arriving in different spurts. 

“Flexibility has become the supply chain’s greatest competitive advantage,” he said, “but it now signals peak season is no longer a season. It’s a year-round strategy.”

Shippers are front-loading goods to get ahead of the July 24 tariff deadline, when temporary 10% tariffs are set to automatically expire without clarity from the Trump administration on what policy may follow. Fall and holiday merchandise that typically arrives in October, November, and December began appearing at the port as early as spring. The National Retail Federation announced that import volumes are projected to hit an all-time record at major container ports.

Ocean carriers have responded by adding services and deploying extra loaders – unscheduled ships – to import more cargo and remove empty containers. 

“It may be July, but for the supply chain, the holiday shipping season has already started,” Hacegaba said. “Retailers are intent on restocking shelves while keeping prices as low as possible.”

Beyond seasonal consumer goods, the port is seeing strong imports of AI data center hardware and infrastructure materials, reflecting sustained year-round demand for technology investments.

Intermodal activity has surged, with approximately 28% of containers now leaving port terminals by train, requiring intensive daily coordination with Class I railroad partners. Data shows that the  increase has slowed intermodal transportation by rail.

Rail struggles with intermodal surge

Intermodal activity has surged, with approximately 28% of containers now leaving port terminals by train, requiring intensive daily coordination with Class I railroad partners. Data shows that the increase has slowed intermodal transportation by rail.

“We’re handling more cargo than ever before, but we’re not seeing anywhere close to the congestion, the delays, the backlogs that characterized the supply chain crisis just a few years ago,” Hacegaba said in response to a question from FreightWaves about rail flows. “That requires a lot of coordination and communication with our Class I [railroad] partners. We are in touch with them almost daily, making sure that we have adequate equipment, making sure that there’s coordination when it comes to pick-up and drop-offs, making sure that the terminals are communicating directly with the Class Is. Speed to market is a key to our success. Rail connectivity is a key to our future. And currently, it’s a key to our success even today.”

Geopolitical fractures and trade policy vulnerabilities

Multiple external pressures are testing supply chain resilience. The Trump administration announced earlier this month that it will not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in its current form – a pact valued at $2 trillion in annual trade, with U.S. exports to both countries exceeding $670 billion. Negotiations may continue through the summer or longer, with the possibility of separate bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada.

The end of the ceasefire affecting the Strait of Hormuz has added urgency to energy concerns, Hacegaba said. U.S. oil reserves remain low, and when inventories are tight, markets have less cushion to absorb disruption. This can put upward pressure on oil prices, increase fuel and transportation costs, and create ripple effects throughout the global supply chain.

“Businesses across the shipping and logistics industry continue planning for a range of scenarios as they work to build more resilient and diversified supply chains,” Hacegaba said. “Businesses are preparing for volatility, not certainty.”

Halftime Report: Digital and capital infrastructure victories

The first six months of 2026 have delivered significant infrastructure wins for the port. California’s $1.2 billion Port and Freight Infrastructure Program awarded Long Beach a record $383 million, funding that is supporting 22,000 jobs, reducing emissions, and modernizing operations.

Key achievements include the launch of CargoNAV, a digital platform offering real-time cargo visibility to supply chain partners. The port also opened its Cyber Defense Operations Center (SeaDOC) in partnership with the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, strengthening defenses against cyber threats targeting the digital systems powering $300 billion in annual trade.

Hacegaba said that construction continues on the Pier B on-dock rail support facility to enhance rail efficiency across San Pedro Bay. The port has prioritized green truck corridor initiatives, launching the world’s first port-powered corridor between the port and the state’s Central Valley agricultural center, followed by a corridor extending to Mexico. Commercial methanol bunkering has advanced alongside continued investments in cleaner equipment.

Outlook for the second half of the year

The port is preparing for decades of growth, Hacegaba said, with Total Terminals International’s proposal to redevelop its Pier T Marine Terminal using zero-emissions technologies and expanded on-dock rail capacity. The years-long environmental review process has begun, with public scoping meetings scheduled for July and August. The redevelopment aims to densify, electrify, and modernize operations as the port prepares to double throughput to 20 million container units annually by 2050.

Despite the front-loading activity in the first half, the port expects continued robust growth through year-end.

“Uncertainty has become the new normal,” Hacegaba acknowledged. “But what customers and our supply chain partners have come to expect from our port is steady, reliable, resilient operations, and we will continue to deliver on that.”

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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DP World plans UAE port, container terminal to bypass Strait of Hormuz: Report

Iran conflict drives up Asia-US container rate by 276% 

New chief at busy East Coast box gateway

Container ship attacked in Strait of Hormuz as Iran widens war

The post NEW: Trade turbulence turns to record volume for top U.S. port appeared first on FreightWaves.

The TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index for express parcels is projected to reach a record high of 15.8% above the 2018 baseline in the third quarter, although the per-package price will only tick up 0.3% from the April-June period.

Meanwhile, ground parcel rates are expected to increase 5.2% year over year, putting the sector on track to make 2026 the year with the highest cost per package on record. After hitting a record high of 42.4% above the baseline, the ground parcel rate per package index is projected to ease in line with seasonal trends, falling 2.6% quarter over quarter to 38.7%. 

Carriers have responded to rising diesel and jet fuel costs stemming from the Iran war, and its impact on crude oil prices, with escalating surcharges. Fuel surcharges in the second quarter rose 65.4% year over year, reflecting the rise in fuel prices and careers’ fuel surcharge adjustments, the report said.

Fuel surcharges remain a cornerstone of FedEx and UPS pricing strategy, with collections from surcharges exceeding expenditures and acting as a profit center. A major reason fuel surcharges continue to rise is that the big carriers continue rewriting the formula for calculating the fee, ensuring that fuel surcharge revenue holds firm even as actual diesel prices eventually fall, the TD Cowen/AFS Logistics report said.

If diesel falls to $4 per gallon, shippers will still pay more than a 24% fuel surcharge, compared to just 21% under last year’s tables. In the second quarter, spiking diesel prices translated into average net fuel surcharge per package increasing 40% year over year, according to TD Cowen/AFS Logistics.

Fuel prices, however, are on their way back up. The resurgence of hostilities between the United States and Iran over the weekend caused the retail diesel price to jump 22 cents to $4.79 per gallon on Monday after a nine-week decline, although prices are still lower than they were four weeks ago.

Discount levels also declined from the first to second quarter, with both FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and UPS (NYSE: UPS) tightening pricing, a reversal of the first-quarter dynamic of FedEx offering deeper discounts and UPS tightening pricing. In the express arena, FedEx employed deeper discounts while UPS kept pricing higher. 

Parcel shipping costs also increased during the quarter after FedEx and UPS adjusted pricing formulas to bill more parcels at a higher weight class and because of growth in more lucrative next-day services.

Both FedEx and UPS have pulled back from low-revenue, last-mile B2C deliveries to focus on high-margin, premium  B2B segments, such as healthcare, and specialized e-commerce delivery, as the cost of operating end-to-end delivery networks exceeds what many retailers are willing to pay. 

Shippers, weary from repeated rounds of fuel surcharges the past two years, including broad demand surcharges that don’t are routinely implemented even when demand growth is not surging, and accessorial charges, are increasingly switching to Amazon and smaller, alternative carriers that don’t impose surcharges to the same degree as major carriers like FedEx and UPS. Regional and last-mile carriers, such as OnTrac, GLS, Spee-Dee, Veho and UniUni, more than doubled their volumes from 2024 to 2025, according to the Pitney Bowes parcel shipping report in June. 

Alternative carriers now represent 7.2% of the market, up from 3.4%. Most of the share gain came at the expense of UPS, which saw its volume fall from 34% to 31.6%. Amazon,  the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx volumes had relatively flat volumes, year over year, Pitney Bowes said.

“This shifting carrier landscape is a welcome development for shippers who have long sought relief from two dominant players that seemingly moved in lockstep,” said Mingshu Bates, president of parcel and chief analytics officer, AFS Logistics, in a news release accompanying the report.. “But capitalizing on these savings opportunities requires managing significant complexity, both in terms of navigating a carrier landscape with highly variable service offerings and geographic reach.”

AFS Logistics helps businesses negotiate and manage parcel contracts, as well as providing freight payment auditing services.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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The San Francisco-based logistics technology company announced Tuesday the launch of Ellie Workforce, describing it as an operating system for autonomous freight execution that moves AI beyond workflow automation and decision-support tools into performing operational work at enterprise scale.

Rather than simply assisting dispatchers and brokers, Ellie Workforce is designed to autonomously source carriers, negotiate freight rates, verify compliance, collect shipping documents, coordinate communications and monitor shipments. 

The Ellie platform escalates exceptions requiring human judgment while allowing employees to maintain oversight of operations.

“Every generation of business creates a new leadership discipline,” Robert Nathan, CEO and co-founder of Envoy AI, said in a news release. “The next one is learning how to lead machines. Ellie Workforce is built for that shift. It performs the work, and your best operators direct it. The teams that learn this first won’t just be more efficient. They’ll be running operations their competitors can’t match.”

Built into existing freight workflows

Envoy AI said Ellie Workforce operates directly inside a web browser and integrates with transportation management systems, email, load boards, carrier networks and compliance platforms, allowing logistics teams to continue using their existing software.

The platform is powered by the company’s Transportation Observability and Action System (TOAS), which continuously gathers operational context and coordinates actions across connected systems. 

According to Envoy AI, that enables autonomous digital workers to complete routine freight execution tasks while keeping human operators in control of strategic decisions and exception handling.

The launch builds on several AI capabilities Envoy AI introduced over the past year, including Ellie Verified for carrier verification and fraud prevention, Carrier Match for AI-powered carrier outreach and scoring, Adaptive Rate Negotiation Intelligence, Ellie TrustFlow for governance controls, Ellie Pulse for shipment tracking and Browser-Native Operational Intelligence that offers operational insights within existing workflows. 

The platform also includes virtual teammate capabilities for carrier communications, document collection and shipment follow-through.

Michael Cherney, co-founder and CEO of Cooler Logistics, said the company has already seen productivity gains using the technology.

“Since deploying Ellie, we’ve unlocked a new level of scale without increasing our headcount,” Cherney said. “Even as the market tightens, Ellie empowers our team to book loads faster by handling the heavy lifting of carrier sales. Our reps can stop managing the ‘busy work’ and start focusing on execution.”

AI adoption accelerates across logistics

The launch comes as freight brokerages and third-party logistics providers increasingly evaluate generative AI and autonomous agents to improve productivity amid ongoing labor constraints and operational complexity.

In June, logistics technology startup Chain launched its Autopilot Booking Agent, an artificial intelligence-powered assistant that automates carrier outreach, negotiates rates within broker-defined parameters, vets carriers and books routine freight while escalating exceptions to human employees.

Envoy AI said its long-term vision for the freight industry is to enable transportation professionals to oversee teams of autonomous digital workers that execute routine freight operations while humans remain responsible for strategy, customer relationships and critical decisions.

The post Envoy AI unveils autonomous digital workforce for logistics teams appeared first on FreightWaves.

Supply-side correction favors large TL carriers

Truckload rates hit a cycle high during the second quarter and are expected to step higher in the third quarter.

Capacity constraints and a surge in diesel fuel prices pushed the TL rate-per-mile component of the TD Cowen-AFS Freight Index to a 14-quarter high. The second-quarter rate-per-mile reading came in 16% above the January 2018 baseline. That was up 6.6 percentage points from the first quarter and 10.1 points higher year over year.

The index is expected to increase to a level that is 17.7% above the baseline in the third quarter. That would be 11.7 points higher y/y.

The report said more than 48,000 non-compliant drivers have been forced out of the industry over the past year. It also said small carriers may be sitting on the sidelines due to still-depressed economics and fuel price headwinds. (Most small carriers struggle to recoup rising fuel costs through surcharge programs.)

“Smaller truckload carriers working on tight margins may park trucks and wait for fuel prices to revert to more palatable levels before returning to operation, further restraining capacity amid a supply-side market correction,” said AFS Logistics CEO Andy Dyer.

Appearing at an investor conference last month, public carrier management teams said mini-bid activity has spiked as routing guides crumble. They said contractual rates set with shippers early in the 2026 bid season proved too low. The carriers are now eyeing double-digit contractual rate increases this year and next to restore margins.

The Tuesday data showed TL linehaul cost per shipment increased 3.1% sequentially in the second quarter even though miles per shipment fell 1.8%. The report noted an increase in shipments of 500 miles or less, as some longer-haul moves were lost to cheaper intermodal options.

Accelerated GRI schedule signals LTL carrier pricing power

A steady drumbeat of contractual rate increases along with higher fuel prices pushed the LTL rate-per-pound component of the index to an all-time high in the second quarter. Large public carriers are also taking general rate increases earlier in the year given favorable market fundamentals.

The index stood 76.5% above the 2018 baseline in the second quarter. That was 9.6 points higher sequentially and 13.3 points higher than the year-ago level. Fuel surcharges captured by the dataset were more than 60% above the June 2025 benchmark during the period, as retail diesel prices were 51% higher y/y. (Less-than-truckload fuel surcharge mechanisms include a step function as diesel prices rise, typically resulting in margin accretion.)

The index is expected to increase 30 basis points sequentially in the third quarter, which would be nearly 10 points higher y/y.

“Q2 showed that carriers’ pricing strategies include the ability to not only secure rate increases and strategically valuable volumes, but capture volatile fuel costs,” said Mich Fabriga, vice president of LTL pricing at AFS Logistics.

General rate increases (GRIs), which usually apply to one-quarter of carrier shipments, have again been pulled forward from a typical annual cadence.

ArcBest (NASDAQ: ARCB) implemented a 5.9% GRI on June 22. The increase was flat y/y but installed approximately six weeks ahead of the 2025 rate hike. Saia (NASDAQ: SAIA) implemented a 7.1% GRI on July 6. The increase was 120 bps higher and 3 months earlier than last year’s bump.

The report showed LTL cost per shipment was up 0.7% sequentially in the second quarter even though weight per shipment fell 4.8%. Elevated fuel prices were behind the increase in costs.

Public carriers reported y/y increases in weight per shipment during April and May. XPO (NYSE: XPO) was the outlier, but the company’s freight mix now includes more shipments from SMBs, which tend to have lower shipment weights but better margins.

The heavier shipment weights are due to weak prior-year comps and as some freight lost to a depressed TL market comes back. Also, industrial activity improved for a sixth consecutive month in June, according to manufacturing data released by the Institute for Supply Management. The data typically leads LTL volumes by a few months, as roughly two-thirds of carrier revenue is tied to industrial output.

(Two-year-stacked tonnage comparisons, which smooth out prior-year volatility, turned positive for public LTL carriers in May following a prolonged downturn.)

The report flagged FedEx Freight’s (NYSE: FDXF) narrowed commercial focus as a standalone entity and Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) full entry into LTL as potential headwinds for pricing.

The second-quarter earnings season begins Wednesday when J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ: JBHT) reports after the market closes.

AFS Logistics is a non-asset-based 3PL providing audit and cost management services, managed transportation, and freight brokerage. It has visibility into more than $39 billion in annual freight spend.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Knight-Swift opens 4 LTL terminals
• Analysts raise TL, LTL estimates ahead of Q2 earnings season
• STG Logistics exits Chapter 11 as intermodal market heats up

The post TL, LTL rates to hit new highs in Q3 appeared first on FreightWaves.

The benchmark price used for most fuel surcharges moved higher after nine consecutive increases with the prospect of even higher prices increasingly likely.

The Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price rose 21.8 cents/gallon to $4.796/g, effective Monday and published Tuesday. 

The increase retraces only a relatively small part of the nine-week decline; it is still less than where the price was just four weeks ago. It is also 84.3 cts/g less than where it was in the final week before the consecutive declines.

But this week’s increase is starting to look like only the tip of the iceberg, given how markets have reacted to the latest eruption in military activity in the Persian Gulf and what can easily be described as chaos in knowing whether the Strait of Hormuz is open to traffic and how much it might cost to move a ship through there.

Increase in futures

In the futures market, the price of ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) has soared in recent days. 

After a recent cyclical low settlement of $3.1822/g on July 2, the deteriorating situation in the Gulf and the fact that Strait of Hormuz traffic has slowed drastically has seen ULSD climb to a settlement Monday of $3.8236/g, an increase of just over 20% in six trading days. The Monday settlement is closer to the post-war high settlement of $4.6084/g set on March 20 than it is to the final settlement of $2.596/g before the war started over the weekend of February 28-March 1.

The increase in prices continued Tuesday. At approximately 11:15 a.m. EDT, ULSD was up 9.54 cts/g to $3.9190/g, an increase of 2.5%. But that marked a pullback from the intraday high which crossed the $4 mark, reaching as much as $4.0242/g.

Russia’s impact

While the oil market focus is inevitably on what is going on in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the impact from Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure is a growing threat to the supplies of oil products, diesel in particular. 

According to press reports, the analytics firm of Kpler reported Tuesday that Russia’s volumes coming out of its refining sector had fallen to 21-year lows. Russia already had a ban on exports in place, but losing capacity means the country might need to import supplies and is even further away from lifting that ban. 

Russian refinery runs are down to about 3.8 million b/d, the Kpler report said, with about 4.3 million b/d of capacity on the shelf due to the Ukrainian attacks.

Kpler reported that at least 25 Russian refineries had been the targets of drone strikes. 

In an interview last week with CNBC, Amrita Sen of Energy  Aspects said Russian diesel exports historically had been in excess of 1 million b/d. “Last week it was only 270,000 barrels per day and now it is going to go down to a negligible level,” she said. 

Spread widening

Diesel is moving higher at a faster pace than crude. A comparison of the front month settlements between Brent crude, the world benchmark, and ULSD on CME produced a spread of about $1.84/g Monday. That is one of the highest levels since the war began. 

On the last day of trading before the war commenced, that spread was about 87 cts/g. 

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The post Russia, Strait of Hormuz combining to drive diesel higher after declines appeared first on FreightWaves.

According to CBS News, the crash happened shortly after 3:30 a.m. near the Donner Pass Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility, east of Truckee.

According to reporting from CBS News Sacramento, the crash happened shortly after 3:30 a.m. near the Donner Pass Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility, located east of Truckee, California. The enforcement facility, commonly known to drivers as the Donner Pass scales, sits along one of the steepest and most demanding stretches of interstate highway in the country, where eastbound trucks climb toward Donner Summit at an elevation of more than 7,200 feet before descending toward the Nevada state line.

Officials have not said what caused the crash. Early reports indicate the truck left the roadway, and images shared from the scene showed the rig had gone off the highway with recovery equipment staged nearby. Investigators from the California Highway Patrol are still working to determine exactly what happened in the moments before the truck departed the travel lanes.

At this time, it is not known whether anyone was injured. The CHP had not released information about the driver’s condition as of Tuesday morning, and no other vehicles have been publicly identified as being involved in the crash.

The California Highway Patrol said all eastbound traffic is being turned around at Overland Trail while crews respond to the crash and work to clear the scene. Overland Trail sits on the western side of the closure, meaning eastbound drivers, including commercial trucks bound for Reno, Sparks and points east, are being stopped before they reach the crash site and redirected back toward Truckee.

As of Tuesday morning, officials had not announced when the highway would reopen. Heavy truck recovery operations in the Sierra can take hours depending on where the vehicle came to rest, the terrain around it, and whether fuel or cargo spilled during the crash. Recoveries that involve a truck going down an embankment typically require heavy rotator wreckers and can extend a closure well beyond the initial response window.

A corridor with a long history of disruption

The Donner Pass stretch of I-80 is no stranger to closures. The corridor regularly shuts down in winter for chain controls, spinouts and multi-truck pileups, and it has seen significant crash-related closures in every season. The combination of sustained grades approaching 6 percent, high elevation, tight curves and heavy truck volume makes it one of the most operationally demanding segments any driver will encounter on the interstate system.

Tuesday’s crash occurred in mid-July, outside the winter weather window, which makes the cause worth watching. Summer closures on this stretch are more often tied to mechanical failures, brake issues on the grades, driver fatigue during overnight runs, or single-vehicle departures from the roadway. Investigators have not pointed to any of those factors yet, and FreightWaves will not speculate ahead of the CHP’s findings.

The location of the crash near the commercial vehicle enforcement facility is also notable from an operational standpoint. The Donner Pass scales are a mandatory stop for eastbound commercial traffic and serve as one of the primary inspection points for trucks crossing between California and Nevada. Any closure in the immediate vicinity of the facility disrupts not just through traffic but the inspection and enforcement flow that governs the corridor.

Freightwaves is monitoring this developing story and will provide updates as more information becomes available.

The post Big Rig Crash Closes Eastbound I-80 Near Donner Pass appeared first on FreightWaves.

The latest bankruptcy filings and layoff notices highlight continued financial stress across trucking, freight forwarding, warehousing, trailer manufacturing and supply chain services.

The largest announced workforce reduction involves Fusion Transport LLC, a New Jersey logistics provider that plans to lay off 79 employees at its Piscataway facility effective Oct. 1, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the state.

Fusion Transport provides freight management, warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment and retail consolidation services.

It was not immediately clear whether the Piscataway facility will close permanently after the layoffs.

More trucking bankruptcies emerge

Several additional trucking and logistics companies also entered bankruptcy proceedings over the past two weeks, underscoring the breadth of financial pressure facing smaller freight operators.

Jackson and Son Hauling LLC, an FMCSA-registered motor carrier based in Ruther Glen, Virginia, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on July 13 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. According to the filing, the carrier operated two trucks and employed two drivers at the time of the petition.

Victory Freight Corp., a San Bernardino, California-based trucking company, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on July 2 in the Central District of California. Court records indicate the carrier cited a multimillion-dollar legal claim as one of its primary liabilities as it moves to liquidate its assets.

IPS Express Logistics Inc., a transportation and supply chain company based in San Leandro, California, also filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.

Meanwhile, Talon Logistics Inc., a Woodland Hills, California-based drayage and intermodal carrier, filed for Chapter 11 protection on June 29. Bankruptcy records indicate the company operates approximately 40 to 50 power units and has invested heavily in zero-emission equipment, including electric and hydrogen-powered trucks serving the Los Angeles market.

The additional filings suggest that financial challenges continue to affect carriers across multiple segments of the freight economy, from small owner-operated trucking companies to regional intermodal fleets and specialized logistics providers.

Related: Warehouse cuts mount, trucking bankruptcies continue

Distribution facilities slated for closure

Frito-Lay will discontinue warehouse operations at its distribution center in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Sept. 6, resulting in the layoffs of approximately 68 employees.

The facility is located at 8924 Midway West Road. Frito-Lay said affected workers will receive information about other openings and that the company will attempt to place some employees at nearby locations.

D&H Distributing Co. is also closing a logistics warehouse in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and laying off all 68 warehouse and operations employees at the location, according to a state WARN notice.

D&H distributes technology products and provides supply chain services to retailers, resellers and other business customers.

DHL Supply Chain will eliminate another 33 positions at a facility in Fullerton, California. The layoffs at 701A Sally Place are scheduled to take effect Sept. 3.

The notices did not provide additional details about what prompted D&H’s facility closure or DHL Supply Chain’s decision to discontinue operations at the Fullerton location.

Logistics and fuel companies seek bankruptcy protection

Los Dorados Cargo Inc., an international freight forwarder and courier serving Latin American markets, filed for Chapter 11 protection July 9 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The Elmhurst, New York-based company listed assets of no more than $50,000 and liabilities ranging from $1 million to $10 million. It reported fewer than 50 creditors.

Los Dorados Cargo maintains shipping routes to more than 12 Latin American countries, including Panama, Peru and Venezuela, and operates a courier location in Jackson Heights, New York.

Fuel Group Trading LLC filed for Chapter 11 protection July 8 in the Western District of Texas. The Round Rock-based wholesaler of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products listed assets of $500,000 to $1 million and liabilities of $100,000 to $500,000.

The company has maintained operations in Texas and Puerto Rico and previously engaged EF Hutton as a financial adviser for strategic operations.

Trailer businesses enter Chapter 11

Two companies connected to the cargo trailer market filed for bankruptcy protection July 6.

Freedom Trailers LLC, an enclosed cargo trailer manufacturer based in Tifton, Georgia, filed in the Middle District of Georgia with assets and liabilities each estimated at between $1 million and $10 million.

The company operates a manufacturing facility in Willacoochee, Georgia, and reported a workforce of between 100 and 249 employees. Freedom Trailers also operates as a motor carrier, with 20 registered drivers and two power units as of June.

The company previously disclosed that the discovery of an alleged internal theft involving a former employee in 2024 caused a significant financial disruption.

Stryker Dealership Group LLC, a utility and cargo trailer wholesaler based in Piedmont, Alabama, filed for Chapter 11 protection in the Northern District of Alabama.

Stryker reported assets of $100,000 to $500,000 against liabilities ranging from $10 million to $50 million. The company reportedly operated six facilities and employed between 30 and 60 people before the filing.

The disparity between the company’s reported assets and liabilities suggests it faces a particularly steep restructuring challenge.

Diesel equipment repair company restructures

Diesel Power Technology Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection July 1 in the Eastern District of California.

The Turlock-based company repairs and maintains diesel engines and industrial power equipment. It listed assets of $100,000 to $500,000 and liabilities of $50,000 to $100,000.

The company continues to operate its Turlock facility while seeking to reorganize its financial obligations. The filing followed a period of customer disputes and legal challenges that reportedly contributed to deteriorating customer ratings and business conditions.

Freight-related layoffs

Recent Chapter 11 filings

The post Freight Distress Report: Carrier, logistics closures erase over 245 jobs appeared first on FreightWaves.

C.H. Robinson is having an AI moment. Its CEO, Dave Bozeman, has been publicly promoting the company’s Lean AI transformation, including AI agents, automation, productivity gains, appointment scheduling, quote responses, load tracking, and the broader message that C.H. Robinson is using technology to solve logistics problems at scale.

That may be impressive. It may be good business, and it may help C.H. Robinson move freight faster, improve margins, increase productivity, and serve customers more efficiently. But after Montgomery, the industry should be asking a harder question: is that same AI investment, data discipline, and human judgment being applied to carrier vetting?

Because if C.H. Robinson, or any digital broker, is building AI everywhere except the part of the business that decides which motor carriers are safe, legitimate, and suitable to put on the road, that is not innovation. That is exposure.

The timing is hard to ignore. C.H. Robinson just lost a unanimous Supreme Court case involving broker negligent selection. The claim was that C.H. Robinson negligently hired a motor carrier with a conditional safety rating and that the broker knew or should have known from that rating that selecting the carrier was reasonably likely to result in crashes that would injure others.

Now, almost immediately after that decision, C.H. Robinson is publicly emphasizing the sophistication of its AI transformation. That creates a fair question for the industry: if the company has the capital, data, systems, and technical discipline to automate and optimize so many parts of freight brokerage, why should carrier vetting remain the place where sophistication stops?

The Supreme Court did not say carrier vetting must be manual. It did not tell brokers to stop using technology, and it did not require brokers to become motor carriers, inspect trucks, audit driver qualification files, or supervise drivers. But the Court did make clear that negligent hiring claims against brokers are not categorically preempted when they involve motor vehicle safety, and the majority opinion framed the issue around ordinary care in selecting a carrier.

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence is especially important for digital brokers. He acknowledged that brokers may not always be in a position to objectively assess the relative safety of every motor carrier, but he also wrote that brokers may sometimes become aware that a particular carrier operates unsafe trucks or hires unfit drivers. He emphasized that brokers should be able to defend themselves when they act reasonably and arrange transportation with reputable carriers, and he quoted plaintiff’s counsel saying brokers should hire carriers with a reasonable policy and ask the hard questions of the carrier.

That language matters. It does not describe carrier vetting as a blind box checking exercise. It describes judgment, inquiry, escalation, and a reasonable response to information when the broker has it or should have had it. This is where AI alone can fall short. Carrier vetting has a human component because not every carrier with a risk indicator should be automatically rejected. If a broker tries to fully automate carrier vetting with rigid pass or fail rules, it may lose significant capacity and still miss the practical judgment required to understand whether a carrier is appropriate for a particular shipment.

The human element is not ignoring the data. The human element is asking the hard questions when the data shows something that matters. It is someone looking at the red flags, digging deeper, deciding whether the issue is disqualifying or manageable, documenting the reasoning, and applying appropriate controls if the carrier is still used.

Why does this carrier have no inspections despite its claimed operations? Why is the authority so new? Why does the contact information not match FMCSA records? Why is the carrier’s volume inconsistent with its apparent fleet size? Why are there related entities with concerning histories? Why is the payment information inconsistent? Why is there a carrier identity mismatch at pickup? Why does this carrier appear suitable for this shipment despite a risk indicator? Those are not questions an algorithm should hide. Those are questions technology should surface so the right person can make a documented and defensible decision.

I recently interviewed Michael Leizerman, the plaintiff attorney who won Montgomery at the Supreme Court. During that interview, I asked him directly about brokers using AI and large data sets to automate operations and assign carriers. His answer should concern every digital broker because he made a critical distinction between AI that improves safety and AI that merely increases speed.

Michael recognized that AI can be used to make the roads safer. It can help identify chameleon indicators, related entities, VIN associations, address overlaps, fraud patterns, and inconsistencies in carrier data. But he also warned about the opposite use case: AI that onboards carriers faster, expands capacity, and assigns freight without meaningful vetting.

That distinction should be the center of the post Montgomery AI conversation. The problem is not that C.H. Robinson is investing in AI. The problem is if C.H. Robinson, or any digital broker, is investing in AI to move freight faster, price freight smarter, automate operational tasks, increase productivity, and improve margins, while carrier vetting remains disconnected from that same data environment.

Digital brokers collect enormous amounts of information. They analyze lanes, rates, carrier behavior, shipment history, tracking performance, dwell time, acceptance patterns, fraud indicators, communication data, location data, payment data, and operational outcomes. If that data is used to optimize profit but not to identify carrier risk, that imbalance becomes difficult to defend.

The more data a company collects, the harder it becomes to argue that obvious risk indicators were unknowable. In litigation, the question will not sound technical. It will sound simple: you used AI to improve productivity, margin, tracking, appointments, and quoting, so why did you not use the same data and technology to identify whether the carrier was safe, legitimate, and suitable for the load?

The CAVRA Standard addresses this directly. It recognizes that technology has changed carrier vetting and that modern transportation providers now have access to safety data, fraud indicators, monitoring tools, onboarding platforms, tracking systems, and operational analytics that make carrier vetting faster, more consistent, more scalable, and easier to document. But CAVRA also states that automation is not the same as reasonableness, because technology can support a reasonable carrier vetting process but does not create one by itself.

That is the core point. A digital broker may have predictive carrier matching, AI assisted pricing, automated tenders, real time tracking, and operational AI agents. But if its carrier vetting process still reduces the inquiry to active authority, insurance, and not unsatisfactory, the technology does not solve the negligent selection problem. It may make the problem worse.

A modern broker should be able to explain whether its technology considers carrier safety data, flags conditional and unsatisfactory ratings, identifies new authority, recognizes limited or no inspection history, screens for chameleon indicators and related entities, detects identity inconsistencies, accounts for fraud and stolen authority risk, compares shipment risk to carrier suitability, triggers human review when elevated risk appears, prevents casual load by load overrides of adopted safety rules, and documents why the carrier was used.

If the answer is no, the company may not have a technology problem. It may have a standard of care problem. That distinction is especially important because carrier vetting is not limited to onboarding. CAVRA states that carrier vetting begins before onboarding but does not end there. Review should occur before first use, before tender when risk changes, during operations when red flags appear, and over time as the carrier profile changes. That principle matters for digital brokers because scale creates repeatable risk. If a weak carrier selection process is automated, the weakness does not disappear. It scales.

That is why we automated it will not be enough. The better answer is that the company automated a reasonable process. A reasonable process does not mean every carrier with a risk indicator is rejected. It means the system identifies the risk, routes the issue to the right person, requires the hard questions, records the mitigating facts, applies appropriate controls, and documents the decision.

That is where the human element belongs. Not manually reviewing every carrier for every shipment. Not turning brokers into motor carriers. Not paralyzing operations. But ensuring that when a carrier presents meaningful safety, fraud, identity, or suitability concerns, a trained person can look deeper before freight is tendered.

C.H. Robinson’s AI push may be impressive. But after Montgomery, carrier vetting cannot be the place where sophistication stops. If the company wants credit for being a technology leader, it should expect scrutiny over whether that leadership extends to the part of the business that selects the motor carriers actually hauling freight on public roads. This is not anti AI. It is pro responsible AI. The freight industry needs better technology, and AI can make carrier vetting faster, more consistent, more scalable, and easier to document. It can help detect patterns that human users may miss, and it can help brokers preserve capacity by sending elevated risk to human review instead of relying on crude automatic disqualification.

But the technology has to be pointed in the right direction. Digital brokers cannot collect operational intelligence for profit and ignore risk intelligence for safety. After Montgomery, the future of defensible freight brokerage will not belong to companies that merely move freight faster. It will belong to companies that can show their technology helped them move freight responsibly.

Cassandra Gaines is a nationally recognized transportation attorney, expert witness, and founder and CEO of Carrier Assure, an industry leading carrier vetting platform. She provides expert analysis and testimony in broker liability, negligent selection, carrier vetting, FMCSA safety data, transportation safety analytics, cargo theft prevention, and broker standard of care matters for both plaintiff and defense cases. Gaines previously held legal and leadership roles at large brokerages and trucking companies and has become a leading voice on transportation safety analytics and broker standard of care issues. She is also the author of the CAVRA Standard, a practical carrier vetting framework that has been downloaded and reviewed by nearly 1,500 industry professionals. She has spoken at more than 100 industry conferences nationwide and was named one of Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business in North America. She can be reached at cassandra@logisticsriskexpert.com.

Source notes: This opinion piece references Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, Michael Leizerman’s interview with Cassandra Gaines, the CAVRA Standard by Cassandra Gaines, and recent public reporting and company materials regarding C.H. Robinson’s Lean AI strategy and AI driven operational transformation.

The post Don’t Get in Trouble Again, C.H. Robinson: AI Everywhere Except Carrier Vetting Is a Problem appeared first on FreightWaves.

An index of driver pay levels has soared in recent months and is at an all-time high.

The joint index jointly calculated by AscendTMS and Superior Trucking Payroll Services has been calculated since 2020, but had not been widely publicized previously, according to Tim Higham, CEO of AscendTMS. Higham said he posted it occasionally to his LinkedIn page, and it is on Superior’s website as well. 

But the increase in recent months has been so stunning that Higham and Superior president Mike Ritzema decided to publicly promote the data.

The higher numbers in the Truck Driver Pay Index as it is called, also helps to confirm with hard data other evidence of driver pay increases, be they anecdotal or announcements of higher compensation.

The index was set with a January 2020 baseline of 100. The post-pandemic surge in freight markets and the concurrent increase in driver pay put the index at 141.9 in January 2023. It sunk to a post-pandemic low of 115.9 in January 2024 before starting to move higher. But nowhere in the history since then has it made a move like recent months and in particular the last two.  

In September 2024, it hit a recent cyclical low of 132.18. It began moving higher the next month, jumping to 144.18 from 130.42 between December and January of 2024. 

The joint AscendTMS/Superior index was 150.83 in April. In June–with the calculation coming right after the month’s end, as it always does–it was up to 170.04, a 13.5% increase in two months. Ritzema said that increase was easily the highest two-month gain in the history of the index.

Ritzema said that while Superior does service the payments of independent contractors who work for its clients, the index does not include those numbers. It is an index that is based strictly on employee drivers (though some so-called “1099” drivers are in the mix) and does not include back office or C-suite management. 

“It takes out the shop people and the office people and the president of the company who pays himself either $1 per year or $8 million per year,” Ritzema said.

Ritzema said paying trucking company employees is the company’s core business. “We pay thousands of drivers every week, or all different shapes and sizes, from companies with one truck to 500 trucks,” Ritzema said in an interview with FreightWaves. He described the drivers they pay as “flatbedders and reefer haulers and all in between.”

Higham, whose company is a major provider of TMS solutions primary to small to medium sized carriers, says his company’s system “does the payroll settlements for trucking companies, and then that goes electronically to Superior.” 

Superior processes the input from the AscendTMS system and makes the payment to the driver. What also comes out of that is a big fat database of what drivers are getting paid.

Discussing the decision to publicize the index this month for the first time, Higham said Ritzema called him and said “Have you seen what’s going on with the driver payroll?”

“He showed me the charts, and I was like, that’s crazy,” Higham said. Ritzema also commented that the increase was moving higher alongside the increase in spot freight rates.

Higham described movement in the index before the recent volatility as “goes up 2%, goes down 3%, went up 4%.”

“I have never seen it jump like it jumped from May to June,” Ritzema said. The index might fluctuate three points between those two months, he added, with June usually going up a small amount relative to May because of May’s slowdown around Memorial Day. In June, he added, “basically everybody’s running the whole month.”

More to come?

Ritzema said he has compared moves in drive pay to spot freight rates. A lag of four to six months between higher spot rates and driver pay is a rough correlation between the two, he said, suggesting more increases in driver pay are likely in the coming weeks and months.

It happens on the way down also, Ritzema said. “When things started going south in the spring of 2023, driver wages were still going up for a little while and started coming back down in the fall,” he said.

As far as the reasons for the surge, Higham recapped the general consensus in the market about the push behind higher spot rates and trucker pay alongside that. 

“There’s a bunch of trucking companies right now that are trying to find drivers, legally compliant drivers, because of the ones that have been pushed out,” he said. “There are cabs that are sitting empty.”

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project44 will continue serving enterprise shippers as a decision intelligence platform, offering TMS, visibility, yard management and last-mile solutions. Meanwhile, LSP44 launches as a dedicated, profitable, AI-native infrastructure business built for logistics service providers.

“Shippers and LSPs don’t buy the same thing, so we stopped pretending one business could serve both,” said Jett McCandless, founder and CEO of both project44 and LSP44, in a news release sent to FreightWaves. “But here’s what most people forget: project44 didn’t start with shippers. We started in 2014 serving the brokers, forwarders, and 3PLs who took the first bet on us. They built this network with us.”

“LSP44 is us coming home –handing the LSP industry more than a decade of network, data and trust, now in the form of AI agents that act, not just observe.”

The split creates two distinct go-to-market engines, two product roadmaps and two dedicated organizations. But they all run on the shared spine of the largest AI-native agent network, carrier API infrastructure and logistics data graph on Earth.

The journey to two

McCandless told FreightWaves in an interview that the decision to form two distinct businesses traces back to project44’s founding story.

 –And the realization that the company had strayed from its original customer base.

When project44 launched in 2014, the logistics industry still ran on phone calls, faxes and electronic data interchange (EDI). The company’s first product was real-time API connectivity across the entire logistics workflow: rate quote, dispatch, visibility and documentation for the less-than-truckload market. 

Its first customers weren’t shippers, they were logistics service providers. Brokers, forwarders and 3PLs like Worldwide Express, BlueGrace and DSV were the companies that took the initial bet, plugged in the first integrations.

That’s what helped build the infrastructure on which everything else now runs.

McCandless said that nine of the ten largest logistics service providers in the world now run on what will become LSP44 infrastructure. 

But as a venture-backed company seeking growth, project44 eventually expanded into the enterprise shipper market, building visibility applications and becoming the dominant player in that space. The 2020 pandemic assisted this momentum, as COVID-19 created massive tailwinds for supply chain visibility.

There was a problem, though: shippers and LSPs speak entirely different languages.

“Where a shipper says, ‘I want to improve my OTIF, I want to improve my working capital, I want to reduce my inventory’ –LSPs don’t talk like that,” McCandless explained. “They say, ‘I want to do more dispatches with fewer people. I want to find trucks at lower prices on transactional pricing.’”

The context-switching proved increasingly difficult for sales and customer success teams. As McCandless observed his teams in joint meetings, it became clear they weren’t well-equipped to serve both buyer personas simultaneously. 
“Rather than dilute the messaging to both, I said, why don’t we actually spin this out?” McCandless said.

Thus, LSP44 was born out of a desire to better serve both customer bases more efficiently.

Tech deep dive: ‘Context’ vs. ‘guessing faster’

At the heart of LSP44’s value proposition is a pointed critique of the current AI landscape in logistics: agents without context aren’t worthwhile.

“AI agents without context are just guessing faster,” McCandless told FreightWaves Today on Monday. “Shippers have found that there’s a lot of work to try to create context so that those agents can actually be effective.”

While a new generation of venture-funded startups has rushed into logistics AI and raised capital, what they don’t all have is context or distribution. McCandless identified that the real value of agents comes from when they already know the carrier, the lane, the shipment, the exception and the customer before taking a single action.

LSP44’s agents arrive pre-loaded with operational context from the largest logistics data graph in the world: over 280,000 carriers, 1.5 billion shipments and 706 million carrier events processed every day across North America, Europe, APAC and Latin America. 

That context is the product –the result of over a decade and approximately $1 billion invested in infrastructure.

But scale alone isn’t the differentiator. It’s the synchronous nature of the data.

“We have the world’s largest logistics data graph,” McCandless said. “More importantly than just being the largest logistics data graph, it’s actually the largest synchronous data graph also. Somebody out there would say, ‘Well, we have a really big data graph too.’ Yeah, it’s all in EDI, phone calls and email. By the time you get the signal or triggers, you don’t even know if they’re accurate.”

When one dispatches via API, however, they can see errors within a second. 

This synchronous advantage powers what LSP44 calls its “agent factory” –the capability to turn operational context into production-grade AI agents at unprecedented speed. 

“We built this thing behind the scenes called an agent factory, which allows us to add about an agent a day,” McCandless said. “We can go into these LSPs with our forward-deployed engineers and say, ‘What agent do you want?’ And because we have this context and this data, a day later, we can say, ‘Okay, that agent’s live now.’”

The platform also operates on “clicks, not code” with no prompt engineering required. Users can configure workflows visually, selecting from a growing library of pre-built agents covering everything from confirming ETAs and collecting reason codes to onboarding new carriers and collecting missing delivery milestones.

“I’m not a prompt engineer [and] I’m not an engineer,” McCandless said. “We’ve already done all that prompting and we have a team. Now the [client] just has to figure out what they want and it’s as easy as clicking a button.”

The agent portfolio spans the entire logistics workflow, including: carrier procurement (with 18% cost reduction outcomes), visibility (with 60%+ reduction in “where is my shipment” calls) and exception and disruption recovery (80%+ auto-resolution).

Restructuring and looking forward

The new businesses come as project44 has dramatically streamlined its operations through aggressive internal AI adoption.

At its high watermark, the company employed 1,200 people. Today, that number stands at 582 –and McCandless has drawn a hard line.

“I forbid the company to ever go over 600 people ever again,” he said. “We release more code faster. The NPS is the highest it’s ever been. We’re a high-growth company at the largest scale of any gen-two company in the world, and I’ve got slack internally.”

That internal efficiency has created the bandwidth to spin up the dedicated LSP organization without significant new hiring. LSP44 will operate with its own sales organization, engineering team and leadership. Jett McCandless will remain as CEO of both businesses.

Critically, LSP44 launches with day-one profitability. This is in stark contrast to the wave of venture-backed logistics AI startups who burn through capital in pursuit of product-market fit. 

For LSPs deciding whose infrastructure to embed at the core of their operations, that distinction matters.

“An entire field of venture-backed startups has raised billions of dollars between them to chase this opportunity,” project44 stated in its announcement Tuesday. “Not one of them is profitable. LSP44 launches with day-one profitability.”

Looking ahead, McCandless sees the combined entities as uniquely positioned for public markets.

“We are the largest gen-two logistics tech company in the world,” he said. “If a public investor wants access to invest in modern logistics tech, they really can’t get access. … As the IPO markets open up, we’re in a ready position. We make really great decisions every day to consider if it’s the right path for us.”

The post Project44 forms two new businesses, launches AI-native LSP44 appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Sapphire was the first vessel to call Jacksonville as part of the ZCP-Amberjack container service, a rotation linking major container gateways in Asia with expanded access via connections to Latin America, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

The service calls Jaxport’s Blount Island Marine Terminal weekly on the following rotation: Qingdao, Ningbo and Shanghai, China; Busan, South Korea; Manzanillo, Panama; Cartagena, Colombia; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Jacksonville; Kingston, Jamaica; and return to Busan.

Transit times are 28 to 32 days from North Asia, with connections through Zim’s transshipment hubs in Kingston and Cartagena to international markets, including the west coast of South America.

Transshipment also offers access to:

• Latin America, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Guyana
• The Caribbean, including first-time connectivity to Aruba, along with Curacao and Panama
• The Mediterranean, to ports in Italy, Greece, Israel and Egypt
• Asia, with strengthened connectivity to China, Vietnam and Singapore

“This new service provides our customers with reliable connections to key Asian markets and expanded access to international destinations through an established global network,” said Jaxport Chief Commercial Officer Robert Peek, in a release. “These enhanced capabilities help our customers move cargo more efficiently while strengthening Jacksonville’s role as a gateway for global trade.”

The vessels deployed in the service are powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), and can be bunkered in Jacksonville.

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The conductor, Scott Shoemaker, 57, of Toledo, was struck by a westbound train at around 3:52 a.m. in Whiting, Ind. Shoemaker, who was working an eastbound train, was trackside to inspect the westbound as it passed.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, The Toledo Blade reports.

“We mourn the loss of a valued member of our railroad family,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement. “Our heart goes out to family, friends, and coworkers as they navigate this profound loss. We have connected with the family and are providing support resources to our local employees.

“The safety of our employees and communities is priority number one at Norfolk Southern,” the railroad added.

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

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The project would be located near Fujairah and lessen dependence on the UAE’s Port of Jebel Ali, the busiest container gateway in the Persian Gulf, according to a report by the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the plans. DP World operates four terminals at Jebel Ali, with annual capacity of about 19 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs).

FreightWaves has reached out to DP World for comment. 

The report said DP World is in talks on both a brand-new multipurpose port and a terminal at the existing harbor at Fujairah, but project structure and financing were still unsettled.

Fujairah is about 70 nautical miles south of the Strait along the Gulf of Oman. It’s a major regional bunkering center for shipping. 

The move comes amid heightened Middle East tensions, with the east-coast location offering an alternate route outside the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump has suggested that the U.S. seize control of the strait from Iran, and charge vessels a toll for passage. The report suggests the port plan is still early-stage rather than a confirmed final investment decision.

Jebel Ali is a major hub for U.S. trade into the UAE and wider region, and a frequent liberty/logistics stop for the U.S. Navy. It’s also a gateway for American exporters to reach the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia through re-export and bonded warehousing channels.
U.S. exports to the UAE totaled $31.4 billion in 2025, according to the U.S. Trade Representative, up 16.2% from $27 billion in 2024.

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A lawsuit against Illinois-based carrier Risinger Brothers Transfer Inc. has been granted class action status, widening the number of drivers in the lawsuit who are ostensibly independent contractors but who claim to have been governed as employees.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois ruled Friday that the case brought by two drivers at Risinger could be converted into a class action under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

“In their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that, effectively, Risinger misclassified the plaintiffs as independent contractors rather than employees,” Judge Jonathan Hawley said in handing down his decision. The plaintiffs–with driver Michael Contreras as the lead named plaintiff–“allege their pay and wage deductions violated the minimum wage owed to them under the FLSA,” the judge added.

Judge: battle still to be fought

Judge Hawley’s decision, at several points, took pains to note that granting the class action request did not signify an acceptance of the drivers’ charges. He said in the request for the granting of a class action, defendants don’t have a large hill to climb.

Citing a legal precedent, Judge Hawley said the plaintiffs, to obtain a class action certification, “(do) not have to provide (their) case, foreclose disputes or satisfy an exceeding high burden. The test instead, Judge Hawley said, is that a plaintiff must produce “some evidence” (again citing the recent case of Richards vs. Eli Lilly) “that they and the members of the proposed collective are victims of an unlawful employment practice or policy.”

The allegations by the plaintiffs presented so far, the judge said, are enough to meet that “modest evidentiary burden at this early stage.”

The initial lawsuit said of drivers at Risinger that they all assigned an independent contractor agreement with Risinger; they operate under the company’s logo and DOT number; get their assignments from a Risinger dispatcher; are “required to make deliveries within set time windows”; and have a set per mile rate for payment.

Specific categories

The members of the proposed class fall into several categories, according to the lawsuit. Risinger’s response in an earlier filing provided what it sees as the specific categories of independent contractors at the carrier: lease-purchase drivers, owner-operator drivers, team drivers, third-party carrier drivers, one-way carrier

drivers, and brokerage carrier drivers. 

The classifications in the lawsuit are important because one of Risinger’s counter-arguments is that a class action is inappropriate because of the differences in what the various independent contractor categories do. As the subheading of a legal document Risinger filed in connection with the lawsuit says, “The proposed collective encompasses six different categories of drivers with fundamentally different operations,” the company’s brief said. 

That can be worked out later, Judge Hawley said. “Perhaps Risinger can later argue that certain drivers are subject to different measures of damages based on their specific deductions, hours worked, responsibilities, investment in equipment, control over their work schedule, or other factors,” he wrote. “But such arguments are not a barrier to permitting collective class notice.”

The original lawsuit filed by Contreras was not as specific about the number of categories, but said each of them has at least 40 individuals who could be part of the class action. 

The arguments in the original lawsuit filed in October are familiar to followers of other cases involving truck drivers and the question of independent classification. 

Been here before

The fundamental argument in the case is well-trod ground for trucking attorneys. It is that a driver signs on with a carrier on some sort of lease arrangement with theoretically the freedom to carry out his or her duties with some degree of freedom and grow a business on top of working with the carrier. But instead they are micro-managed as if they are employees while bearing costs in a lease-purchase or some other type of agreement, the numbers add up and the amount of money they get paid isn’t even equivalent to minimum wage.

If those drivers are found to be truly independent contractors, ICs aren’t entitled to the minimum wage.

The original lawsuit lays out the allegations of Contreras, describing a relationship with Risinger that permitted little flexibility in his ability to get the job done as he saw fit or pursue other business other than with Risinger. 

“Throughout the course of Plaintiff’s employment, Risinger made deductions from

his pay for items including truck payments, insurance payments, fuel, and a maintenance escrow account among others, which often came to hundreds of dollars per week,” the original lawsuit said. “(Contrerars) did not authorize these deductions.”

Once the number in the paycheck post-deduction was compared to the number of hours worked, according to the original lawsuit, “there were weeks in which Plaintiff and other drivers did not receive minimum wage for all hours worked, in violation of Illinois and federal law.”

The lawsuit cited a 20-hour week in November 2024 in which Contreras, following the deductions, received no pay. 

“Although Risinger classified Plaintiff and other delivery drivers as independent contractors, the behavior and financial control manifested over the drivers by Risinger demonstrates that they were employees of Risinger,” the lawsuit says.

Risinger’s SAFER data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shows it as having 327 power units. 

Emails sent to Risinger’s attorneys, as well as an email through the company’s portal had not been responded to by publication time.

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The announcement by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy covers competitive spending requests under the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program, which originated in 2009. 

The grants cover:

• Roads and bridges: $1.3 billion, or about 77% of total funding, including $24 million for North Dakota, to install modern pavement and address buckling, as well as 10 miles of high-tension cable guard rails to enhance safety along I-94.
• Truck parking: $62 million to address the truck parking shortage in  Kentucky, Wyoming, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Illinois. This includes $25 million to Kentucky to add new truck parking spots at seven rest areas on four major truck corridors.
• Port infrastructure: $136.8 million to expand capacity, reduce bottlenecks and help restore America’s maritime dominance. That includes $8.5 million for the Alaska Railroad to widen the Port of Seward’s freight dock by 300 feet so vessels can load, unload, and transfer cargo more quickly.
• Transit projects: $169.9 million, including $14.7 million to upgrade three Milwaukee County Transit System maintenance facilities.
• Aviation: More than $11 million to improve airport roadways at Arizona’s Coolidge Municipal Airport and Louisiana’s New Orleans International Airport.
• Freight and passenger rail: $87.7 million to modernize America’s railroads and move passengers and goods more efficiently. The grants include $24.3 million for Texas’ Port of Corpus Christi Authority to modernize and lengthen railways at the Port of Corpus Christi Inland Port.

The funding also includes $25 million for projects around the new Cleveland Browns football stadium in Brook Park, Ill., for “reconfigured freeway ramps and streamlined local roads [that] will lead to the stadium and the surrounding entertainment district,” according to local media.

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The price of a domestic postcard went up by 4 cents to 65 cents. International postcards cost $1.75, up 5 cents.

The Postal Service in early April notified the public of the planned price increase, which was approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission. 

The nation’s postal operator is $31 billion in debt and faces a liquidity crisis as soon as 2031 amid declining mail volumes in a digital world, rising costs and federal constraints while still required to deliver to every address. Postmaster General David Steiner said the agency has amassed $120 billion in net losses since 2007 and needs Congress’s help removing outdated restrictions that prevent it from restructuring. Management has staved off operating cuts for the time being by temporarily suspending employer retirement contributions and streamlining network operations.

Steiner has previously testified that he thinks Americans would be willing to pay up to 95 cents per letter, which would still be cheaper than in most industrialized countries. 

Keep US Posted, an advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines and catalogs, has criticized the postage increase, saying the Postal Service has a cost problem, not a revenue problem. It points out that stamp prices have gone up 44% over the past 15 years and rates for other mail products have risen even more. It wants Congress to limit USPS rate hikes to once per year and cap them to the rise of the Consumer Price Index.

The latest change raised stamp prices 4.8%.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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Those characterizations come as spot rates on the benchmark trans-Pacific moderated in the latest week’s data despite the now-inflamed conflict gripping the Middle East.

“It is still a very challenging market, but there is a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for shippers after spot rates remained essentially flat on major trades out of the Far East this week and carriers continue to increase offered capacity,” said Xeneta Chief Analyst Peter Sand, in an update to clients. But he warned, “This is by no means an end to the freight rate spike driven by the Strait of Hormuz crisis and further increases are expected mid-July, but these should be of a lower order of magnitude compared to the start of the month.”

Sand’s comments came before Iran and the U.S. stepped up military hostilities across the Persian Gulf.

Spot rates from the Far East to U.S. West Coast and U.S. East Coast ports still sit 276% and 232% higher since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran in late February.

Sand termed the soaring rates as “extraordinary,” with shippers still paying multiples of what they had budgeted at the start of the year.

Spot rates are quoted for services outside of contract terms, for instance, for shipments that have been rolled or delayed. They’re a closely watched indicator that helps guide contract pricing. 

Xeneta quoted Far East to U.S. West Coast rates of $7,069 per forty foot equivalent (FEU), essentially unchanged at 0.1% lower for the week ending July 10. Far East to U.S. East Coast came in at $8,808 per FEU, up a narrow 0.3%.

“What has changed is the supply side,” Sand said. “Carriers have continued to deploy more capacity into the market – Far East to U.S. West Coast is up 5.5% week on week, U.S. East Coast up 6.2% and North Europe up 3.1%. That sustained capacity injection appears to be having an effect, easing some of the pressure and helping shippers to move goods more reliably, even if it is not yet translating into lower rates.”

En toto, spot rate changes since pre-crisis end of February through July 10 are up 276% for Asia to U.S. West Coast, and 232% for Asia to U.S. East Coast.

The trans-Pacific is at the beginning of the traditional peak shipping season, said Sand, and that maritime stakeholders were taking a breather from months of pressures and spiraling costs from the follow-on effects of the conflict in the Mideast.

Sand’s pronouncement that “the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to container shipping” presaged similar statements by Iran over the weekend, after it attacked a merchant container ship for the first time since May. The flaring war has already pushed up oil prices, which are likely to pressure ocean rates.

President Donald Trump contradicted those assertions, saying Monday that the U.S. could seize control of the strait and charge a 20% toll on cargo for safe passage, although observers questioned what transportation law made that provision. 

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AI agents are only as good as the data they run on. That’s the case project44 CEO Jett McCandless made to FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller on a recent episode of FW Today. McCandless and Fuller discussed how the freight industry should approach AI: both as an internal efficiency lever and as a customer-facing product.

project44’s Agentic Workflow Manager and the AI orchestration engine underneath it are designed to solve the data quality and operational automation problems that shippers and logistics service providers are dealing with every day, without requiring customers to build anything themselves.

Context, says McCandless, is key.

The foundation of project44’s approach has been to build an engine that orchestrates both first party (via LunaPath acquisition) and third-party agent providers (including Happy Robot and Vooma) and layer them on top of the contextual data project44 already holds for its customers.

“AI agents without context are just guessing faster,” McCandless said. “Shippers have found that there’s a lot of work to try to create context so that those agents can actually be effective.” 

Shipment-level data, carrier relationships, dispatch history, historical lane and carrier analytics, and mode-specific workflows are the kinds of contextual information that McCandless sees as the competitive moat. project44 ran multiple agent vendors side by side inside the engine for over a year, benchmarking performance across task types, languages, and communication channels. The takeaway was that no single agent excelled at everything.

“Some agents performed better at other tasks than others. Language made an impact,” McCandless said. “And so we focused again on providing the context. We have the distribution and the trust with the customers. When a customer plugs into project44, what they’re really interested in is the outcomes that we drive for them.”

The practical implication for shippers and LSPs is that the AI layer is already embedded in the platform. There’s no integration project, no prompt engineering, and no custom database work required to get started.

“Because it’s already embedded in the platform and it’s clicks, not code, you don’t need prompt engineers,” McCandless said. “You don’t need to set up these databases because we already have the context. It’s really quite easy and adoption is quick.”

Dispatch reconciliation, according to McCandless, is one of the practical use cases for this model that has resonated with shippers and LSPs who run LTL freight.

When a company dispatches shipments to an LTL carrier, a portion of those shipments won’t return a pro number the following day. The reasons vary and include re-proes, capacity constraints, and pallet size changes at a prior stop, but someone always has to track down the missing information. For decades, that work has been handled by staff or by outsourced teams making manual calls to carriers.

project44’s agents now handle that workflow automatically, triggered by the company’s API-level dispatch visibility.

“We can simply dispatch agents to go and search for that pro number by calling the carrier,” McCandless said. “It’s a very easy solution, but it’s practical and useful quite often.”

The scale is significant. McCandless says that project44 processes roughly 75,000 LTL dispatches per day, an estimated 8% to 15% of the market on any given day. On the day before the interview, agents had matched over 2,000 dispatches that would have otherwise required manual intervention.

McCandless draws a clear distinction between what shippers and LSPs are each looking for from AI-driven intelligence tools. 

“When we look at the shippers, they’re not primarily interested in reducing the cost of the transportation team,” McCandless said. “That’s relatively small when you look at how much they spend on freight and the margins that they have overall. What they tend to be interested in is how they can reduce the inventory, and how they can reduce the stock outs.”

The concept McCandless finds most impactful is what he calls “infinite labor”: the idea that AI agents can absorb the repetitive, high-volume operational work that logistics teams have historically needed bodies to manage. For shippers, that means the ability to improve supply chain execution without scaling headcount, whether the goal is ensuring a flawless product launch, catching potential stock-outs before they materialize, or getting ahead of disruptions that affect parts availability.

“If they can just improve their supply chain with infinite labor, that’s impactful,” McCandless said.

LSPs whose product is the service itself have a more direct financial calculus. They operate on thin net margins, and the ability to automate carrier communication, data reconciliation, and exception management without adding staff has a direct bottom-line impact.

When asked what single problem AI can most meaningfully address in logistics right now, McCandless was unequivocal that the answer is data quality. There are, however, limitations of an agent-only approach.

“I think the industry is going to realize that it’s good to augment or subsidize or enhance, but it’s never going to replace an EDI or an API in its entirety,” McCandless said. 

The nuance matters for shippers. McCandless says that most carriers produce strong structured data, while a middle tier needs moderate agent augmentation, and a smaller segment still depends heavily on agents to fill gaps. The key, he says, is that the platform can now stratify that problem and address it programmatically rather than leaving shippers to manage carrier data quality on their own.

“Everybody needs better data quality to be able to make better decisions when you’re looking at automating these operational decisions, whether it’s execution or visibility,” McCandless said. “Improving data quality has to be done in conjunction with EDI and API. It can’t be just a substitute.”

The results of that approach are showing up across project44’s customer base. McCandless says platform data quality has improved roughly two and a half times over the past three years as a function of carrier investment, platform improvements, and the AI augmentation layer working in concert. That improvement has translated into measurable customer satisfaction gains, with the company’s NPS increasing to 44 over that period.

One limitation that will matter to any shipper or LSP who has to budget for AI-enabled tools is pricing. McCandless acknowledged that project44 itself blew through its internal AI token budget by April, a pattern he says is common across the industry. For many customers, that dynamic creates anxiety around unpredictable costs.

“A lot of companies are struggling with surprise token invoices,” McCandless said. “What they want is some type of pricing and packaging that’s very consistent. Might sound kind of familiar, maybe something like something as a subscription.”

Agentic Workflow Manager is available today and is orchestrating over 53 agents categorized by a series of jobs to be done.

Click here to request a demo of project44’s Autopilot.

The post ‘AI Agents Without Context Are Just Guessing Faster’ appeared first on FreightWaves.

DHL Global Forwarding this month launched a series of dedicated air cargo flights between Southeast Asia and the Midwest, expanding capacity on its Transpacific network for businesses seeking predictable flight availability.

As FreightWaves first reported on May 4, DHL Group’s (DUSS: DHL) air and ocean freight management arm, has begun service from Hanoi, Vietnam, and Taipei, Taiwan, to Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport and Chicago O’Hare Airport, utilizing Boeing 777 freighters from sister company DHL Express. Chicago and Cincinnati alternate as destinations, with road feeder service providing a daily connection between the hubs as well as other cities. Hanoi flights are four times per week via Hong Kong and Taipei is one time per week.

DHL Global Forwarding has also introduced a connection between Bangkok, Thailand, and Cincinnati, with service three times per week, according to a news release last week. Cincinnati is the location of DHL Express’s main North American air hub. 

DHL is the latest global freight forwarder in recent weeks to time-charter aircraft from an all-cargo airline and offer dedicated service to Chicago. Ceva Logistics, Kuehne+Nagel and DSV have also established dedicated flights to O’Hare and Chicago-Rockford airport to cater to import demand from Asia and Europe. 

Operating own-controlled aircraft is a strong selling feature for freight agents during a time of geopolitical disruptions and volatile rates because they can ensure reliable capacity, stable routes a;nd schedules that best serve their customers, improved cost predictability and airport ground handling, which translates into shorter transit times and allows businesses to more easily plan supply chain flows compared to tendering freight to multiple commercial carriers. 

Kalitta Air is operating a Boeing 777-300 converted freighter on the Hanoi-Chicago route on behalf of DHL, according to a spokesperson and aviation database Flightradar24. Atlas Air is the operator for the Taipei route and Aerologic, a joint venture between DHL and Lufthansa Cargo, is operating the Bangkok flights.

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

DHL Global Forwarding introduced weekly flights at the end of March connecting Liège, Belgium, and Hong Kong to meet growing transport demand for general cargo. A service between Shanghai, China, and DHL’s hub in Leipzig, Germany, commenced on June1.

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

(Correction: An earlier version of this story said DHL was offering flights from Hanoi and Taipei three times per week. The frequency was updated once DHL provided more current information.)

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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Large logistics firms launch dedicated flights to Chicago area

The post DHL Forwarding charters 777 cargo jets to beef up Transpacific capacity appeared first on FreightWaves.