Laredo summit debates driverless freight corridors

LAREDO, Texas — A proposed automated freight corridor connecting Laredo and Monterrey, Mexico, and using U.S. truckers to deliver freight into Mexico took center stage Tuesday during a panel discussion at the 9th Annual Modernization of Cross-Border Trade conference.

The event, hosted by Reliance Partners and Borderless Coverage, brought together more than 500 of the industry’s leading voices as U.S.-Mexico freight continues to face unprecedented regulatory and operational challenges. 

The “Green Corridors” panel, moderated by Troy Ryley, president of Mexico operations for Echo Global Logistics, brought together Marco Antonio González Valdez, secretary of agriculture and regional development for the Mexican state of Nuevo León; Jesus Ojeda, executive vice president of cross-border operations at Redwood Logistics; and José Minarro, managing director of Sunset Transportation’s Laredo operations. 

The discussion focused on how the U.S. and Mexico can prepare for continued trade growth while addressing congestion, compliance challenges and driver shortages.

A new solution to the B-1 visa truck driver issue?

A major topic was the growing impact of enforcement actions involving Mexican B-1 visa truck drivers at the border.

González Valdez said more than 300 B-1 visas had been revoked for drivers using Laredo’s Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge crossing this year, creating operational challenges for carriers that rely on cross-border drivers. 

The Laredo–Colombia Solidarity International Bridge is a key vehicular border crossing on the Rio Grande that connects Laredo, Texas, with Colombia, Nuevo León, Mexico. The bridge handles around 3,500 freight truck crossings per day.

Rather than pursuing changes in Washington, Nuevo León is testing a different solution: allowing U.S. truck drivers to cross into Mexico, deliver freight and return northbound with loads.

“We started with a pilot program three weeks ago,” González Valdez said. “Have your U.S. truck drivers cross over to Mexican territory. This is the first time it’s happening at the border.”

Under the concept, U.S. drivers would be able to deliver freight into locations in Nuevo León, potentially eliminating some transfer operations while reducing reliance on B-1 visa drivers. 

“We’re offering another option — U.S. companies can leave their cargo, cross the bridge, leave their cargo in Colombia, pick up cargo and go north. We will eliminate the B-1 problem,” González Valdez said.

González Valdez noted officials eventually hope to expand the program deeper into Monterrey and other parts of the state.

“We will also give a new operating scheme of eliminating transfers for those customers that want to eliminate transfers,” he said. “Also, we are planning in less than two years …. We start having U.S. truck drivers driving into Monterrey, Mexico, from a year’s time. You’re going to have U.S. truck drivers crossing through Colombia … leaving their cargo in [Mexican cities of] Salina, Victoria, and coming back north.”

The Green Corridors vision: A driverless freight network

One of the most ambitious projects discussed during the panel was Green Corridors, a privately funded initiative proposing a 165-mile elevated guideway linking Laredo and Monterrey through a network of autonomous freight shuttles.

Lorne Alcock, chief of staff for the Green Corridors project, said the system would feature secure terminals in both cities connected by a closed-loop automated corridor designed to bypass traditional border bottlenecks. 

Freight trailers would be loaded onto autonomous, AI-enabled shuttles capable of moving cargo continuously between the two markets without stopping at the international boundary.

Alcock said the corridor could ultimately handle as many as 10,000 trailers per day in each direction and would include customs facilities integrated into terminal operations. The project is expected to cost between $6 billion and $10 billion and is targeting a 2030 launch.
“We’re going to eliminate those problems,” Alcock said of border wait times and congestion.

Alcock added that the system is designed to provide complete shipment visibility and predictable transit schedules.

Can Colombia become the next cross-border logistics powerhouse?

Panelists agreed that infrastructure alone will not solve future trade challenges.

González Valdez said Nuevo León’s long-term vision is to transform the Colombia-Solidarity crossing into a logistics and manufacturing hub capable of supporting future growth in North American trade.

“Laredo is the most important port of entry to the U.S.,” González Valdez said. “But it’s a crossing. We need to have more high-value production and manufacturing occurring on the border.”

He described Colombia as a future “logistics city” where manufacturing, warehousing and transportation operations can be located closer to the border, reducing transit times and strengthening supply chains. 

González Valdez also highlighted investments in security and infrastructure, including the highway connecting Monterrey to Colombia and the deployment of hundreds of state security personnel along the route.

Why compliance is becoming a competitive advantage

Compliance and customs modernization also emerged as recurring themes throughout the discussion.

Minarro said customs brokers and logistics providers have faced increasing complexity from tariff changes, evolving customs regulations and heightened enforcement on both sides of the border. 

Minarro noted that customs compliance is becoming a larger investment area for logistics providers as authorities focus more closely on importers, valuation practices and duty collection.

“We are investing a lot of money in resources that we didn’t use to have — auditors, quality control, technology, artificial intelligence,” Minarro said.

Border delays are increasingly a data problem

Ojeda said many of today’s border delays stem not from physical infrastructure constraints but from documentation, data quality and synchronization issues among carriers, customs brokers and shippers. 

Redwood’s recent investment in customs brokerage capabilities is intended to help create a more integrated cross-border process by connecting transportation, customs clearance and freight visibility into a single platform.

“Seventy to 80% of the time the delays are for documentation, customs,” Ojeda said. “As soon as we can connect shippers and put it in a strong system and synchronization with carriers, brokers and the rest of the players in the supply chain, we are confident that we can speed up the process.”

Cadogan Tate expands Southwest footprint with Phoenix acquisition

Luxury logistics provider Cadogan Tate has acquired Phoenix-based Fully Loaded Deliveries (FLD), expanding its presence in one of the fastest-growing residential and interior design markets in the U.S., according to a news release.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Cadogan Tate, which specializes in high-value storage, art handling and logistics services for museums, galleries, interior designers and high-net-worth clients, said the acquisition strengthens its U.S. network and enhances its capabilities in the Southwest. 

FLD specializes in luxury moving, storage, design installation and museum-grade fine art handling.

The acquisition is Cadogan Tate’s eighth since being acquired by private equity firm TSG Consumer and will allow FLD to continue operating under its existing brand and management team as part of the Cadogan Tate Group.

TOYO plans $357M solar manufacturing expansion in Houston

Solar manufacturer TOYO Co. announced plans to invest approximately $357 million to build a 1.5-gigawatt heterojunction (HJT) solar cell manufacturing facility in the Houston area.

The company is expanding its U.S. production footprint and creating about 400 manufacturing jobs, according to a news release. The company expects the expansion to reduce logistics costs and shorten production timelines by bringing solar cell and module manufacturing together at one location.

The new facility will be co-located with Toyo’s existing solar module manufacturing operation in Humble, about 19 miles north of downtown Houston. It will create an integrated production hub designed to streamline operations and strengthen the domestic solar supply chain. 

TOYO Co. Ltd. (Nasdaq: TOYO) is a Tokyo-based global solar energy company established in 2022 that designs, manufactures and sells solar cells and photovoltaic modules. 

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Chart of the Week:  LTL Monthly Cost per Hundred Weight, Van Contract Rate per Mile – USA SONAR: LTL.USA, VCRPM1.USA

The headline numbers look impressive. LTL all-in revenue per hundredweight is up sharply on SONAR’s LTL.USA index, with the current reading at $46.13, well above the six-month average of $41.31 and at its highest level in the five-year window shown in the chart above. LTL carriers, by one reading, are having their best pricing moment since the post-COVID freight boom.

The orange line complicates that story, but not in the way it might first appear. Van contract rates per mile, VCRPM1.USA, bottomed out near $2.25 per mile in mid-2025 after a multi-year freight recession that shed more than 20% from the 2022 peak. What has happened since is the part that matters: over the past eight months, VCRPM1 has staged one of its sharpest recoveries of the five-year period, climbing back to $2.51 per mile and still trending upward. That is not a number failing to confirm the LTL rally. That is a number setting up the next leg of it.

The fuel surcharge is the whole story for now

First, the honest accounting of where the LTL gains actually came from. When diesel averaged $3.50 per gallon in May 2025 — using a generalized fuel surcharge table that starts at 0.5% when the DOE’s weekly figure is at $1.20 and increases 0.5% for every $0.06 increment — fuel costs were estimated at roughly 19.5% of the base linehaul rate. By May 2026, diesel had surged to $5.60 per gallon, a 60% increase, pushing the surcharge to 37.0%. On a median LTL shipment, that swing alone added more than $5.80 per hundredweight to the invoice, more than accounting for the entire year-over-year all-in rate increase.

Strip the fuel surcharge out and the picture inverts. SONAR’s LCWT1.USA index, which tracks initial contract base rates on paid invoices with fuel excluded, shows base rates flat to slightly negative year-over-year. Carriers have actually been cutting rates across nearly every freight class — Class 50 (dense, efficient freight) by as much as 21% — to compete for volume in what has been, beneath the fuel noise, a buyer’s market at the base rate level.

This is the defining characteristic of the current LTL moment: the all-in rate is at a multi-year high, the underlying rate is not, and the gap between them is almost entirely diesel.

The Yellow exit set the floor

That divergence did not begin in a vacuum. The circled annotation on the chart marks the exit of Yellow Freight,  the Yellow liquidation in mid-2023 that removed roughly 10% of U.S. LTL capacity overnight. The event was widely expected to produce an immediate repricing of the market. It produced a floor instead. The remaining carriers — Old Dominion, Saia, XPO, ArcBest, Estes and others — absorbed the displaced volume with unusual discipline, holding GRI cadence steady and preventing the kind of base rate collapse that hit the truckload market during the same period.

Look at the white line on the chart in the months immediately following that annotation. LTL.USA held its level through late 2023 and into 2024 even as the freight recession continued — a notable divergence from the deep trough truckload rates were experiencing at the same time. The Yellow exit did not ignite an LTL pricing surge. What it did was ensure there was a base from which to launch one, once the broader freight cycle turned.

That turn is now visible on both lines of the chart simultaneously.

The truckload recovery is the signal

The VCRPM1 move of the past eight months is not a rounding error. Van contract rates fell from a peak above $2.90 per mile in mid-2022 all the way to roughly $2.24 per mile at the trough, a decline of more than 20% over nearly three years. The recovery off that floor has now retraced approximately half of that decline in less than a year. The slope of the orange line since October 2025 is the steepest sustained upward move in the five-year window outside of the 2021-22 boom.

This matters directly to LTL because every major LTL carrier is also a significant purchaser of truckload capacity. Full trailers or doubles running between breakbulk hubs and service centers are functionally indistinguishable from standard TL moves, and a meaningful share of that linehaul is outsourced to third-party carriers. When VCRPM1 rises, LTL purchased-transportation costs follow — typically with a lag of one to two quarters — and carriers eventually push those costs into base rates and GRI filings rather than absorb them.

The forward market is flashing the same message even louder. SONAR’s Outbound Tender Rejection Index (STRI.USA) sits at 16.9% — more than double its six-month average of 8.28% and at a multi-year high — signaling that TL capacity is being absorbed faster than the market can replenish it. The National Truckload Index (NTI) hit a 13-quarter high in Q1 2026. Spot rates lead contract rates by several months, and that gap is already wide. The conditions that historically precede another leg up in VCRPM1 are all present.
A sustained move in van contract rates toward $2.65 or $2.70 per mile — plausible given the current trajectory — would represent a meaningful increase in LTL linehaul costs that fuel surcharges alone cannot fully offset. That is the mechanism by which TL tightening becomes an LTL base rate story.

Carriers are already pricing the future

The market is not waiting for those thresholds to be formally breached. ArcBest implemented a 5.9% general rate increase effective June 22, 2026 — approximately six weeks ahead of its prior 11-month cadence — continuing a multi-year trend of compressing GRI calendars. Most major LTL carriers moved GRIs roughly one month early in 2025; by 2026, that lead time is stretching toward six weeks. The industry is pulling pricing actions forward, which is exactly what carriers do when they believe the underlying rate environment is about to shift in their favor.

Q1 2026 carrier earnings told a story of strategic divergence that is now starting to converge. Old Dominion shed nearly 8% of its daily shipments while growing revenue per hundredweight by 4.4% ex-fuel,  a deliberate yield-over-volume posture that is increasingly looking prescient. XPO balanced volume growth with yield improvement. ArcBest appeared to grow shipments at the cost of a 4% base rate decline, then reversed course with its June GRI and a Q2 guidance raise that cited pricing initiatives explicitly. When the carrier most aggressively chasing volume pivots to pricing in the same quarter that TL rejection rates double, it is worth paying attention.

It should be noted that in the same Q1 report, ArcBest cited a 6.3% increase to contract rates, which superficially contradicts the revenue-per-CWT decline. This is an inherent limitation of using revenue per CWT as a pricing benchmark, since a shift toward lower freight classes or shorter haul distances will reduce the figure even when contract rates are rising. The most likely reading is that ArcBest added new business at lower rates while simultaneously improving its existing contract book, a dynamic that aggregate metrics tend to obscure rather than illuminate. 

The two-act structure of this market

The five-year chart above is best understood as two separate stories overlaid on each other. The first story is fuel,  a transitory but massive surge in diesel prices that has inflated all-in LTL revenue per hundredweight to levels with no precedent in the prior four years of the chart. That story has a shelf life. Diesel has already eased from its May peak, and SONAR’s ULSDR.USA wholesale rack price was at $3.77 as of this writing, suggesting further retail declines are possible. If diesel retreats meaningfully, the LTL.USA headline compresses quickly, not because anything structural changed, but because the arithmetic of the fuel surcharge works both ways.

The second story is structural, and the truckload contract trend is telling it. The truckload market spent nearly three years working off the excess capacity accumulated in 2021 and 2022, and it is now tightening faster than most of the industry expected. 

The LTL market is a piece of the total surface transportation market and as such is heavily influenced by each mode. Part of that capacity is overlapping and in this sense, the LTL carriers are like the shippers who procure capacity. They are subject to the same pricing pressure and will subsequently have to offset it. The market will also demand it as service deteriorates. So far, the hyperreactive fuel surcharge is doing most of the work, but that will most likely have to shift into a more sustained mechanism. 

SONAR subscribers have access to the latest Sitrep on the LTL market for a deeper dive.  

About the Chart of the Week

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

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

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

To request a SONAR demo, click here.

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Now in its ninth year, the FreightTech Awards program is widely regarded as the premier recognition honoring the most disruptive technology companies and forward-thinking transportation providers in North American freight.

The road to the 25

The evaluation process is built to elevate true, needle-moving innovation:

• Companies are permitted to nominate themselves or others. Although a single nomination is all that is required for a company to be considered, the total number of unique nominators is shared with the evaluation team.
• FreightWaves’ internal research team, market analysts and journalists then carefully vet the nominations to select a curated list of the 100 most innovative companies in freight.
• That list of 100 is then sent to an independent, external panel of roughly 80 judges –consisting of industry CEOs, academics, investors and logistics executives. Those judges rank their top 25 choices using a traditional points-tally system supervised and audited by accounting firm Henderson, Hutcherson & McCullough.

The resulting FreightTech 25 represents the absolute vanguard of logistics engineering, artificial intelligence and hardware design.

Looking back at last year’s successes

The 2026 FreightTech Awards highlighted a massive shift toward automation, fraud prevention and strategic consolidation.

Focused on combating carrier identity fraud, tech startup Highway secured the coveted #1 spot for its second consecutive year. Meanwhile, DAT Freight and Analytics secured the #10 spot after a busy year of technological transformation propelled by its acquisitions of Convoy, Trucker Tools and Outgo.

Industry heavyweight C.H. Robinson returned to the list for the first time in five years at #13, largely thanks to the rapid, widespread deployment of agentic AI across its Navisphere platform.

2026 also saw several new contenders with Trailer management platform Repowr debuting in the FreightTech 25 at #12 under new CEO Chris Hines. Industry veteran Transflo also made its first official appearance on the final top 25 list after launching high-impact AI carrier workflows. 

These elite performers joined historic winners like Amazon, FedEx, and J.B. Hunt in driving the transportation economy forward.

Nominate your company for 2027

Do you represent a cutting-edge startup, a service provider transforming operations, or an established company pushing the boundaries of transport technology? Ensure your achievements are seen by the industry’s premier decision-makers.

Nominations for FreightTech 100 and FreightTech 25 companies will be opening soon here. Keep an eye out for future articles and contest updates by following our newsletter.

[Register for the 2026 Future of Freight Festival here.]

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The project would feature a dashboard connecting logistics hubs, transportation providers and retailers. 

The announcement was made Friday by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy during a visit to the Port of Los Angeles.

In a release that did not mention pre-screening of containers or other details, DOT stated, “A more transparent supply chain will accelerate cargo processing, lower logistics costs, and empower America’s transportation workforce.”

Duffy revealed the screening proposal in a press conference at the port, comparing it to reduced airport security waiting times for pre-screened travelers. 

Nearly 52 million containers were processed at U.S. ports in 2025, the majority moving through the 10 biggest gateways such as Los Angeles.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection physically inspects only 3-5% of all containers at ports, and importers bear the cost of cargo exams.

“When it comes to our supply chains, time is money,” said Duffy. “Fewer delays mean lower costs throughout the entire supply chain. The American Supply Chain Sovereignty Initiative will prevent bottlenecks, move freight faster, and deliver goods more affordably for the American people.”

The rollout comes amid growing public backlash over soaring prices for food, gas and other staples, and polls showing voter approval cratering over President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy. There is growing sentiment that the affordability issue could cost Republicans their majority in the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in upcoming midterm elections.

Duffy did not say how much the initiative would cost. He called on Congress to include legislation in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, “giving DOT the framework and flexibility required to securely streamline national logistics.”

He said the initiative will build on the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) program and National Freight Strategic Plan, initiatives launched during the presidency of Joe Biden.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Like trucking and railroads, shipping struggles in fight for talent, aging workforce

Port of Los Angeles forecasts 7% container volume decline

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The post Mid-term money-saver: DOT wants to pre-screen containers to speed supply chain appeared first on FreightWaves.

RXO’s debt rating has been affirmed by S&P Global Ratings, but the 3PL still is carrying a negative outlook from the agency.

The action is notable in part because S&P Global is taking a conservative stance about the direction of the freight market. 

“It is unclear if the recent rebound in trucking pricing is sustainable,” the agency said in its accompanying commentary, a factor in holding the rating steady.

The action also solidifies the dichotomy between the ratings of S&P Global and Moody’s on the 3PL. RXO’s (NYSE: RXO) rating at the latter agency is Ba1, which is considered one notch more than the BB rating at S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) that now has been affirmed. 

The Moody’s grade is one notch less than the cutoff between investment-grade and non-investment grade debt, putting S&P’s rating two notches below that line. 

S&P’s BB rating was also affirmed at RXO for its unsecured notes.

Outlook stays the same

The improved market was not enough even to lift RXO off its negative outlook. That status means a downgrade is possible but not guaranteed given the financial and market conditions. There is no limit to how long a company stays on a negative (or positive) outlook.

The negative outlook for the company, S&P Global said, “reflects the risk that the company will be unable to increase its relative profitability or improve its credit measures to the levels we believe are necessary to stabilize the rating.”

But S&P Global is not completely dismissing the current market. RXO’s credit metrics, the agency said, will improve in the next two years “led by higher spot market prices that we expect will support increased earnings amid early signs of improvement in freight market conditions.”

“However, the company’s margins have lagged those of its rated logistics provider peers, which has prompted us to downwardly revise our assessment of its business risk profile (BRP),” S&P added.

In a cautious embrace of the rise in freight rates, the agency said “market conditions have demonstrated early signs of improvement.”

But it is not enough, S&P indicated, for an upgrade at RXO. “We now place greater emphasis on the company’s ability to achieve higher margins based on our evolving view of its business risk,” the agency said.

RXO is a publicly-traded company. Ratings reports of an agency like S&P Global or Moody’s (NYSE: MCO) generally reveal little new about its  finances. But their views can be more pointed than equity analysts. 

Surging stock price

RXO’s stock price has been on a roll, up 77% in the last year and about 42% in the last month. According to Barchart, there are 4 strong buys on RXO stock from equity analysts, 14 holds and two strong sell recommendations.  

S&P Global noted that adjusted EBITDA at RXO had fallen to $177 million in 2025 from a peak of $366 million in 2022, when it was spun off from XPO, “even as it nearly doubled the revenue from its brokerage segment following its late-2024 acquisition of Coyote Logistics.”

“While we previously viewed the company as an industry leader in terms of its margin profile, its performance over the past three years has caused its margins to decline to levels consistent with or below those of its broader rated peer group,” S&P Global said, citing Echo Global Logistics as an example. 

Echo currently holds a rating of B- at S&P Global. That is four notches less than RXO’s BB.

Given that reduced view of RXO’s position, S&P said “we no longer consider RXO’s operating performance track record as supportive of a higher BRP assessment.”

An improvement in the company’s performance owing to a stronger freight market isn’t enough, to shed the negative outlook, S&P Global said, “The negative outlook reflects the risk that the company will be unable to increase  its relative profitability or improve its credit measures to the levels we believe are necessary to stabilize the rating,” it said.

Higher freight rates are not enough for S&P Global. RXO, it says, needs to show “relative margin outperformance.”

How is it doing in comparison?

“While we expect a sector-wide recovery to bolster the earnings and metrics of participants across the broader freight brokering landscape, our rating remains predicated on RXO demonstrating greater and sustained relative strength in its earnings trajectory relative to its immediate peer group,” S&P Global said. “If we no longer believe the company can differentiate itself from its peer group, we would likely lower our rating by removing the positive comparable rating adjustment.”

The squeeze on brokers over the past few years was recapped by S&P Global: minimal spot market activity and reduced demand leading to an inability “to fully pass through increases in procurement costs to its clients due to existing contractual obligations led to a significant contraction in its margin and heightened earnings sensitivity.”

But even as the ratings and negative outlook held firm, and S&P Global’s view of RXO’s BRP is weaker, the ratings agency did have praise for the company’s position. “We believe RXO is well positioned to leverage its significant scale as a leading brokerage and harness its extensive proprietary data to unlock procurement efficiencies as market conditions evolve,” S&P said. Furthermore, we expect its established relationships with large enterprise customers will serve as a key factor in securing high-quality business.”

In another conservative declaration, S&P Global said “freight brokers are poised to benefit from excess trucking capacity exiting the industry, though it’s still early.” The ratings agency said it is “cautiously optimistic that the recent rebound represents the beginning of a gradual (and sustainable) improvement in truck pricing.”

While the widening of the net that could catch up brokers in liability actions as a result of Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II has been seen as beneficial for larger players, S&P Global again was cautious, owing to other factors.

“This will likely be more impactful for smaller brokers with larger brokers positioned to potentially take market share,” S&P Global said. “Offsetting these positives, protracted macroeconomic uncertainty and higher oil prices may begin to weigh on freight demand.”

A request for comment from RXO had not been responded to by publication time.

More articles by John Kingston

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“This could hardly be more topical at a time when around 20,000 seafarers are stuck in the Persian Gulf,” said Paul Pathy, president of the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), at the group’s seminar in Athens. “At times like these, it’s not only the principle of freedom of navigation that is compromised, but also the freedom of our seafarers who are prevented from going home to their families. Once again, they are paying a very high price in the middle of a conflict. Their freedom of navigation should never be negotiable.”

Copenhagen-based BIMCO is a global association of shipowners, charterers, shipbrokers, and agents.

“[W]hen shipping makes the headlines, it’s usually because something has gone wrong, and too often what gets lost behind the headlines is the human dimension; the people,” said BIMCO Secretary General and Chief Executive David Loosley. 

The meeting came ahead of the release later this month of a report detailing maritime workforce issues.

Elpi Petraki, an executive with shipowner Enea Management of Greece and president of the Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association, told a panel about the importance of not only attracting the younger generation of seafarers, but also of focusing on retaining the experience and institutional knowledge of individuals who are transitioning to shore-based roles.

Looking at the profile of a seafarer, and what is needed to prepare them for the future, “there are gaps in the recruitment and training processes,” said Julia Anastasiou, chief crew management officer at OSM Thome, a leading ship management company headquartered in Norway with offices in the United States. She added there is a fight for talent as opposed to a fight for recruitment, and that gaps and costs translate to human beings.

Improvements must be done collectively and involving governments, flag states and other stakeholders, Anastasiou said.

New technologies have made upskilling a critical need for hundreds of seafarers.

“With the new fuels coming in, the industry will need to address this due to the transitional period,” said Marina Papaioannou, regional maritime academies manager at DNV (DNVG02-PRO.OL) of Oslo, one of the oldest classification societies thatset technical standards for vessel safety and performance. She warned that the industry must address issues of safety regarding the new fuels such as liquefied natural gas and ammonia. “Skills such as leadership and communication must be enhanced to make the seafarers feel safe and that the human element must never be left behind,” she added. 

Another panel discussion focused on the growing problem  of criminalization of seafarers.

Eleni Antoniadou, a maritime lawyer at Gard AS, a protection and indemnity (P&I) mutual insurance association in Greece, said that seafarers are frequently scapegoated in cases involving drugs.

“Such cases often get a lot of media attention and often lead to long detentions for the seafarers,” she said. The industry is seeing a rise in drug cases and urged shipowners to support crew by providing legal support, accommodations, medical care, food, and more.

Seafarers in these situations and their families often don’t know what will happen next, said Alan Croft, business development manager at the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network (ISWAN). “The role of the network is to reduce the human impact and that prevention and preparedness is critical, including education on the consequences, the risk of cutting corners, what to do, who to contact immediately, what their rights are and how to preserve evidence.” He suggested that a practical emergency pack could make a real difference for seafarers who are essential to global trade but often not treated as such.

Fair treatment of seafarers as a term somewhat predates a feeling that seafarers are treated unfairly, but that states will often say they offer due process, said Leo Bolivar, Manila country manager at International Registries, Inc., which manages the Marshall Islands ship registry. He said that while complicated, a collective effort is necessary in cases of flag states versus coastal states, and all stakeholders must collaborate.  

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Port of Los Angeles forecasts 7% container volume decline

Long Beach awards $54M in small business contracts

Conservative network has law protecting U.S.-flag shipping in its sights

For 1st time, U.S. approves controversial LNG production ship

The post Like trucking and railroads, shipping struggles in fight for talent, aging workforce appeared first on FreightWaves.

The increase comes as the port, which along with neighboring Long Beach comprises the busiest U.S. container gateway, is forecasting a 7% decline in box volumes, to 9.3 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in fiscal 2026-2027.

The San Pedro Bay complex has keenly felt the effects of the Trump administration’s trade war with China, with ongoing tariffs and other measures pushing importers to increasingly seek alternative maritime routes into North America through Mexico and Canada. China has also sought out new trade agreements in Africa and boosted business with Europe, as it makes plans to sustain its massive export economy, the world’s largest. 

China’s share of all containerized imports through Los Angeles has fallen to about 40% in 2026, down from 53.4% in 2025 and 61% in 2020.

Port management cited continued volatility in global trade and uncertainty about trade policy as contributing factors to a more cautious cargo volume outlook.

The hub is owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles through its Harbor Department.

Increased investments in operational and community public-access infrastructure are covered in the budget, as well as support for sustainability and technology programs.

“The passage of this budget reflects the strength and forward-looking vision of the Port of Los Angeles. We’re enhancing our infrastructure, advancing our sustainability initiatives, and ensuring we keep the port competitive in the global economy,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in a statement. Bass, who has championed environmental investments that help the port meet water and air quality requirements, and advocated for the port’s economic role, thanked Executive Director Gene Seroka and Commission President Lucille Roybal-Allard for their leadership.

The budget increase totals $665 million over FY2025-2026, mostly on a 31% expansion for capital improvements. But it also includes higher subsidies for the Port’s Clean Truck Fund Rate and cost-of-living increases for staff salary and benefits as the port accounts for outside inflationary pressures. 

Projected operating revenues of $826 million represent a 26% increase y/y, with shipping services accounting for 65% of that. Operating expenses are projected to rise by 6% to $452 million.

Capital improvement spending will set a 10-year mark, and center on container terminal modernization and transportation improvements in and out of the port. Construction has started on the $74 million rail expansion at Berths 302-305 and $130 million SR 47/Vincent Thomas Bridge interchange reconfiguration.

A request for proposals for Pier 500 at Terminal Island, the first new container terminal in decades, was issued in late 2025. The 200-acre terminal will feature two new berths and 3,000 linear feet of new wharf designed for larger next-generation container ships in natural deep water.

Expansions are planned at cargo terminals operated by Fenix Marine Services and LATiL, a unit of Mediterranean Shipping Co., and a new cruise facility to replace and expand existing operations was announced earlier this year.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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Port Houston’s hurricane playbook: Safety first, cargo moving fast 

The post Port of Los Angeles forecasts 7% container volume decline appeared first on FreightWaves.

The planned change in mail delivery service is on top of the 136,000 addresses Canada Post previously said would be converted to community mailboxes in late 2026 or early 2027. 

Parts of Halifax, Ontario and Calgary are among the areas that will lose door-to-door service, according to a news release. Canada Post said it will begin communicating with communities about the change in the next few weeks and months.

Consolidating mail delivery to central neighborhood locations is expected to save considerable sums of money because the cost of delivering to individual homes and businesses is expensive. Officials say the change is needed after Canada Post had a record loss of US$1.15 billion in 2025 and a first- quarter loss of $147.5 million. The national post has lost money for eight consecutive years.

The move to community mailboxes will also increase security by putting nearly all mail and parcels delivered by Canada Post under lock and key.

Earlier this month, more than 50,000 letter carriers represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers ratified a new contract after more than two years of labor uncertainty from strikes and other tactics that hurt revenues as businesses shifted mail and parcel volumes to alternative carriers. Contract approval unlocked Canada Post’s ability to move forward with operational and other reforms.

Nearly three quarters of Canadian addresses already receive mail and parcels through some form of secure, centralized delivery such as community mailboxes, apartment lobby boxes and post office boxes.

As part of its transformation plan, Canada Post is converting 4 million addresses that still receive door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes. The national conversion program is expected to take about five years, with different areas transitioning each year.

Canada Post said it is working with local governments in 13 initial communities scheduled for conversion to identify and finalize suitable locations for community mailboxes. As sites are finalized, residents will be notified of the location of their community mailbox and receive keys before any change to their delivery.

More than 80% of parcels delivered by Canada Post fit into a community mailbox’s individual compartment or a dedicated parcel compartment. Parcels that don’t fit or that require a signature are delivered to the door or held for pickup at a nearby post office.

Residential customers who are physically limited from accessing a community mailbox are eligible for accommodations, such as sliding trays, Braille features or a more accessible compartment. In some cases, weekly home delivery may be provided on a seasonal, temporary or permanent basis.

Postal services around the world, confronted by the challenges of declining mail volume in a digital age and competition from more nimble parcel carriers,  are similarly reimagining their business models. The U.S. Postal Service has been losing billions of dollars per year and now is seeking regulatory independence to set prices, reduce service levels where delivery is uneconomical, invest workers’ retirement funds, while implementing operational efficiencies.

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

RECOMMENDED READING:

Canada Post parcel volumes decline 17.2% in Q1

The post Canada Post to end door-to-door delivery for 620K addresses by 2027 appeared first on FreightWaves.

He literally started with nothing, came to America, and built a meatpacking company from the ground up, and shut down an empire rather than bargain with the NLRB. He closed the doors. Every employee went looking for work. The Gissel Packing case, NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., decided by the Supreme Court in 1969, remains the fundamental case law for NLRB authorization card bargaining orders to this day. It is taught in every labor law course in every law school in the country. My grandfather lost that case, and it didn’t matter because he had already made his choice. He would rather put the key in the door and walk away from everything he built than operate a business on someone else’s terms. That’s the principle, and it’s one that H.R. 5408 is designed to render irrelevant.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act amends the National Labor Relations Act to impose a compressed, federally mandated timeline for first contract negotiations between an employer and a newly certified union. The sequence is mechanical and non-negotiable. By day 10 after union certification, the employer must begin bargaining. By day 100, if no agreement has been reached, federal mediation is triggered through the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. By day 130, if mediation fails, binding interest arbitration is initiated. By day 144, an arbitration panel is seated and empowered to impose a complete first collective bargaining agreement covering wages, benefits, work rules, and all related terms. That is a maximum of 120 days of actual bargaining, 90 days of negotiation, plus 30 days of mediation, before a government-appointed arbitrator who has never dispatched a truck, managed a terminal, priced a freight lane, or calculated the cost of a mile writes the contract that governs your operation.

The bill was introduced last year by Representative Donald Norcross of New Jersey. It reached 218 signatures on a discharge petition on May 20, 2026, which forced it out of committee and onto the floor, bypassing committee chairs, regular order, CBO scoring, and stakeholder input. The discharge petition is one of the most aggressive procedural tools available in the House, and it almost never succeeds. This one did. The floor vote on June 9 passed 230 to 193. Twenty Republicans voted yes alongside all 210 Democrats. The bill is a provision lifted directly from the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), which failed to advance on a bipartisan basis across multiple Congresses. Proponents isolated this one piece and used the discharge petition to ram it through.

The 20 Republican yes votes tell you everything you need to know about the political math. Five came from Ohio: Mike Carey, David Joyce, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, and Michael Turner. Five came from New York: Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Nicholas Langworthy, Michael Lawler, and Nicole Malliotakis. Two from Pennsylvania: Robert Bresnahan and Brian Fitzpatrick. Two from New Jersey: Christopher Smith and Jefferson Van Drew. Two from Florida: Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar. One each from Nebraska, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Wisconsin: Don Bacon, Riley Moore, Pete Stauber, and Derrick Van Orden. The pattern is not subtle. These are Republicans in union-heavy swing districts in the Rust Belt and the Northeast, members who need union households to win reelection. Ohio, where the Teamsters are deeply embedded in freight and manufacturing, cast five yes votes on its own. New York sent five more. Stauber, who represents Minnesota’s Iron Range, is a former police officer who organized his own union and said so in his press release supporting the bill. These are not ideological converts to organized labor. They are members reading their district demographics and making a survival calculation, and that same calculation applies to Republican senators in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan when this bill reaches the Senate floor. 

What happens in the Senate

The bill now moves to the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to advance past a filibuster. That is the firewall. The political dynamics, however, are not as comfortable as they were six months ago. Fisher Phillips, one of the largest management-side labor law firms in the country, noted before the House vote that there was a meaningful possibility the White House could issue a Statement of Administration Policy in support, given the administration’s efforts to appeal to working-class voters. If that happens, it provides political cover for Republican senators in labor-heavy states to vote yes. The bill does not need every Republican senator. It needs eight, assuming all Democrats vote yes. In a political environment where the White House is competing for union households and where 20 House Republicans have already crossed the aisle, eight Senate votes is not impossible. It is a lobbying campaign.

If the Senate passes it, the president signs it, and the law takes effect, the bargaining landscape for every unionized and potentially unionized employer in the country changes overnight. The current system, whatever its flaws, gives both sides time to understand the operational realities of the business before committing to terms. First contract negotiations under existing law can take a year or more. That flexibility exists because different industries, different companies, and different workforces have different realities. A first contract for a 50-driver LTL terminal in Ohio looks nothing like a first contract for a pipeline construction crew moving across six states, which looks nothing like a first contract for a parcel sorting facility. H.R. 5408 treats them all the same: 120 days and an arbitrator.

What this means for trucking

The Teamsters represent workers at UPS, ABF Freight, TForce Freight, Yellow’s former operations, and dozens of LTL and specialized carriers. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been one of the most active unions in the freight sector, and it has been expanding its organizing efforts into non-union carriers, last-mile delivery operations, and warehouse workforces. Under the current framework, first-contract negotiations can take long enough for both sides to build a relationship and understand the cost structure. Under H.R. 5408, that clock runs out before a carrier has completed a single budget cycle.

Trucking operations involve multi-state regulatory compliance, fluctuating fuel costs, seasonal freight patterns, driver classification issues, equipment financing, and insurance structures that are fundamentally different from those on a manufacturing floor or in a retail store. A government arbitrator writing a contract for a trucking company in 144 days without understanding those realities is a coin flip with your cost structure. The arbitrator does not know your deadhead percentage. The arbitrator does not know what your insurance renewal looks like. The arbitrator does not know that your fuel surcharge is the difference between a profitable quarter and a loss. The arbitrator writes a contract based on comparable agreements in the industry, and, in this context, comparable means whatever the largest unionized carriers agreed to under entirely different economic conditions.

If you are a non-union carrier watching organizing activity among your drivers or in your terminals, the compressed timeline changes the calculus for the organizers too. Under current law, the difficulty of reaching a first contract is one of the factors that tempers organizing campaigns. Workers know that a union vote is the beginning of a process, not the end of one. Under H.R. 5408, the promise becomes concrete: vote yes, and you will have a contract within five months, guaranteed, because if the company does not agree, the government writes one. That is a fundamentally different sales pitch on an authorization card, and it makes organizing easier at exactly the moment the Teamsters are expanding their footprint.

The option 

The American Pipeline Contractors Association sent a letter to the full House on June 4 opposing both the bill and the discharge petition, calling it a clear attempt to circumvent committee jurisdiction and warning that it creates a predictable endgame arbitration effect that will distort incentives on both sides of the table. APCA’s point about incentive distortion applies to every industry: if both sides know that an arbitrator will impose a contract on day 144, neither side has any incentive to negotiate in good faith during the first 100 days. The union holds out for arbitration because the arbitrator will likely impose terms closer to the union’s position than the employer’s final offer. The employer holds out because making concessions during bargaining only shifts the baseline the arbitrator will start from.

The AFL-CIO argues that the threat of arbitration actually incentivizes faster voluntary agreements, citing experience in other countries with similar frameworks. The data from those countries are mixed, and the comparison ignores a fundamental difference: American labor law has never included binding interest arbitration for private-sector first contracts. Introducing it is not a tweak. It is a structural change to a system that has operated on voluntary agreement for 90 years.

Another option that H.R. 5408’s sponsors do not discuss is that acknowledging it would undermine the bill’s entire premise. An employer can close. My grandfather did it. Roman Gissel shut down Gissel Packing rather than operate under a bargaining order he considered illegitimate. The company was gone. The jobs were gone. The NLRB had its order, and nobody to serve it on.

Hostess Brands did the same thing in 2012. After the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union rejected a last, best, and final offer and launched a nationwide strike, Hostess filed a motion to liquidate. The bankruptcy judge approved it. Thirty-three bakeries closed. 565 distribution centers shut down. 18,500 employees went home. The Twinkies brand survived because someone else bought it out of liquidation and reopened without the union. The workers who struck did not get better terms. They got unemployment.

That’s just math. An employer facing a government-imposed contract that does not reflect the business’s economic realities has three choices: accept it, fight it in court, or close. If the imposed contract makes the operation unprofitable, closing is not spite. It is the only rational business decision. The sponsors of H.R. 5408 assume that employers will accept an arbitrated contract because the alternative is worse. For some employers, the alternative is not worse. The alternative is to walk away, and the employees who voted for the union bear the cost of that decision.

Living on your knees is no way to live, and some employers will make that calculation. Not because they hate their workers, not because they are anti-union on principle, but because a government-written contract that does not account for their fuel costs, their insurance structure, their equipment financing, and their competitive position is a contract they cannot survive. The bill’s supporters have never run a trucking company. They have never looked at a P&L that is 2 percent upside down on a $40 million revenue base and tried to figure out which costs to cut to stay alive. They have never sat across from a driver who just lost his job because the company could not make the math work. They wrote a timeline, attached an arbitrator, and called it reform.

What you should do right now

If you are a fleet operator with union exposure, call your labor counsel. Not next month. Now. The Senate timeline is uncertain, but the political momentum is real, and if this bill clears the Senate, it takes effect without a phase-in period. You need to understand what your exposure looks like under a 120-day mandatory bargaining framework and what your options are if an organizing campaign begins while this law is in effect.

If you are an ATA member, an OOIDA member, a TCA member, or affiliated with any state trucking association, call your government affairs office and ask what their position is on H.R. 5408 and what they are doing about it in the Senate. This bill was not written with trucking in mind, but it applies to trucking, and the people who wrote it are not going to carve out an exemption for an industry they did not think about. The discharge petition succeeded because the industry groups that should have been fighting it were focused on other priorities. The Senate fight starts now, and if the industry shows up late again, the arbitrator will be writing your contract by Christmas.

Twenty House Republicans voted yes on this bill. That means the bipartisan coalition exists. It means the political calculation that supporting organized labor is good politics in a working-class election year has already been made by enough members to pass it. The Senate is the firewall. If your senator is undecided, that senator needs to hear from you, from your trade association, and from every fleet operator and small business owner in the state, before the vote, not after. The clock on the bill is 120 days. The clock on your ability to influence the outcome

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The surge in cross-border trade continues despite growing uncertainty surrounding the future of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade pact, according to President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. may not renew the agreement, arguing that the U.S. does not need imports from its North American neighbors and should receive more favorable trade terms. 

“I’m not looking to renew ⁠it,” Trump said according to Reuters. “We don’t need anything that Canada ​has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that ​we have. They have to treat us better.”

Under the agreement, the three countries must approve a renewal by July 1 or signal their intention to withdraw, a process that could trigger a lengthy renegotiation period.

Despite Trump’s comments, USMCA negotiations are ongoing. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has scheduled a second round of talks with Mexico in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday focused on agriculture and competitive trade practices. It will be followed by additional discussions in Mexico City during the week of July 20. 

Mexico extends lead over Canada in U.S. trade rankings

Two-way trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaled $86.04 billion in April, up 23.4% from the same month a year earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by WorldCity. U.S. exports to Mexico totaled $35.34 billion, while imports reached $50.69 billion.

Mexico accounted for 16.6% of all U.S. trade in April and ranked first among U.S. trading partners in overall commerce, exports and imports. The April total was the highest monthly trade value with Mexico since WorldCity began tracking the data in 2013.

Canada ranked second among U.S. trading partners with $64.8 billion in two-way trade during April, while Taiwan surged to third place at $29.6 billion. 

China slipped to fourth place at $29.2 billion in trade with the U.S., marking one of its lowest rankings among U.S. trading partners in decades as tariffs and supply-chain diversification continue to reshape global commerce.

Overall U.S. trade totaled $518.45 billion in April, with exports of $218 billion and imports of $300.46 billion. Total trade increased 11.6% compared to April 2025.

Border gateways drive growth

Cross-border land ports continued to dominate U.S.-Mexico commerce.

Port Laredo remained the busiest U.S.-Mexico gateway in April, handling $33.35 billion in trade, a 21% increase from a year earlier. 

The crossing accounted for nearly 39% of all U.S.-Mexico trade by value. Other leading gateways included the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge in El Paso ($12.27 billion), Otay Mesa in California ($4.99 billion), Santa Teresa, New Mexico ($4.88 billion), and Eagle Pass, Texas ($4.05 billion).

The strength of border trade was also reflected in national rankings. Port Laredo was the busiest U.S. trade gateway overall in April, handling $34.16 billion in commerce with all trading partners, ahead of Chicago O’Hare International Airport ($33.9 billion) and the John F. Kennedy International Airport ($29.1 billion).

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Program Recap: This article summarizes a conversation from an episode of the Fraud Watch Podcast, a FreightWaves program hosted by the author.

This morning on the Fraud Watch Podcast, I was joined by Malcolm Harris, host of What the Truck and a frequent voice in transportation media, for a conversation about freight fraud, cargo theft, and where the industry is headed next. While the discussion touched on everything from relationships in freight to emerging technology and even a few NBA Finals predictions, the conversation ultimately centered on a much larger issue facing the transportation industry: the growing need for verification in a business that has historically rewarded speed.

For decades, freight has operated on trust. Brokers, carriers, and shippers built relationships through reputation, consistency, and the ability to move freight quickly. Many transportation professionals can remember a time when a carrier could call on a load, provide the necessary information, and be dispatched within minutes. Today, that environment has changed dramatically. Harris pointed to identity manipulation, cargo theft, compromised credentials, and organized fraud schemes as factors that he said have forced many transportation companies to question assumptions that were once considered standard operating procedure. FreightWaves has not independently verified Harris’s characterization of the scope or causes of these industry pressures. Similar concerns have been highlighted in recent cargo theft reporting from Verisk CargoNet, which has documented the growing use of carrier impersonation and credential-based fraud schemes.

Trust must be verified

One of the strongest themes from the conversation was the industry’s transition from assumed trust to verified trust. Harris noted that transportation still runs on relationships, but those relationships increasingly require verification before freight can move safely.

According to Harris, the most successful organizations are beginning to recognize that speed alone is no longer enough. While rapid response times and operational efficiency remain important, companies are learning that accuracy and verification must come first. Harris argued that the pressure to move freight quickly has created opportunities for bad actors to exploit weaknesses in onboarding, carrier selection, and load coverage processes. As a result, many organizations are reevaluating how they balance efficiency with risk management.

The discussion also explored how verification is evolving from a reactive activity into a dedicated business function. Rather than relying solely on technology or individual experience, leading organizations are implementing structured processes designed to produce consistent results regardless of who is reviewing a carrier. The goal is no longer to simply identify obvious red flags. The goal is to create repeatable procedures that reduce the likelihood of fraud before a shipment is ever assigned.

The future will require both people and technology

While technology remains one of the industry’s most important tools, Harris emphasized that technology alone will not solve the freight fraud problem. Harris said artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced verification platforms will continue to improve operational efficiency, but argued that they cannot fully replace human judgment. According to Harris, the most effective approach will likely combine technology with trained professionals who understand how to interpret risk and make informed decisions.

Harris described what he characterizes as a growing trend: organized cargo theft operations becoming more sophisticated, more structured, and more difficult to detect, though FreightWaves has not independently verified this characterization of the cargo theft landscape. Harris said he believes some freight fraud schemes involve coordinated groups that understand transportation processes and exploit operational weaknesses, though FreightWaves has not independently verified the prevalence or structure of such schemes.

Separately, Verisk CargoNet’s first-quarter 2026 cargo theft analysis highlighted related concerns. According to the CargoNet report, impersonation-based theft has matured into what it described as a “systematic, scalable criminal methodology.” The report found that while total supply chain crime events declined year over year, criminal networks are increasingly using credential theft, compromised business accounts, and carrier impersonation schemes to bypass traditional anti-fraud controls. CargoNet concluded that the shift toward carrier impersonation requires “robust identity verification throughout the lifecycle of a shipment, from booking to delivery.” Harris’s comments in this episode were not drawn from the CargoNet report, and FreightWaves has not independently verified Harris’s characterizations of the cargo theft landscape.

One of Harris’s most notable predictions was that verification could eventually become its own department within freight brokerages. He noted that verification responsibilities are often spread across carrier sales, operations, compliance, and management teams. Harris predicted that dedicated verification professionals may eventually become just as important as sales representatives or operations personnel. Harris said he believes companies that invest in training, process development, and verification expertise may be better positioned to protect both their customers and their reputations

Harris argued that freight fraud is no longer an occasional disruption and characterized it as an operational challenge requiring process, education, technology, and accountability. Harris said he believes verification may eventually become just as important as speed. He also said he believes organizations that embrace that shift will be better prepared for the challenges ahead. FreightWaves has not independently verified the industry-wide trends discussed in this article.

Disclosure: Phillip Brink is the host of the Fraud Watch Podcast, the FreightWaves program recapped in this article. As host, Brink has a professional stake in the program’s reach and visibility. He has no commercial relationship with Malcolm Harris or What the Truck beyond their participation in this recorded conversation.

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

Eight indicted in alleged carrier impersonation scheme; prosecutors allege $4.49 million in cargo losses – FreightWaves

Why the safest freight brokerages are usually the most boring – FreightWaves

Why cargo theft affects every American – FreightWaves

The post Can freight balance speed and security? appeared first on FreightWaves.

The company detailed its timeline and scaling ambitions at Volvo Group’s recent Capital Markets Day. It aims to have more than 300 autonomous trucks operating by the end of 2027, with industrial scaling beginning in 2028. Revenue from the autonomous business is projected to approach approximately $3 billion within five years.

Aurora Innovation, one of Volvo’s technology partners, confirmed the driverless milestone in a LinkedIn post: “In Q1 2027, we’ll deploy those trucks with nobody behind the wheel in Texas.”

From Safety Drivers to Full Autonomy

Volvo Autonomous Solutions currently operates commercially in Texas with safety drivers aboard. It moves freight daily on routes between Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso, and most recently Dallas to Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City expansion, launched earlier this year, represents an operational leap: point-to-point delivery directly into customer facilities rather than hub-to-hub transfers.

“We are moving freight there daily together with our customers in a real commercial setup autonomously, still with a safety driver,” said Sasko Cuklev, head of On-Road Solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions, in an interview with FreightWaves at ACT Expo. “We are now expanding that to also cover a third lane, which is Dallas to Oklahoma City.”

The Oklahoma City route eliminates the drayage segment that previously required separate first- and last-mile operations from autonomous hubs near highways.

“We are driving the whole way into the customer facility, which of course removes that drayage piece,” Cuklev said. “But it will also require higher operational precision and much deeper integration into the customer.”

Doubling Asset Utilization

In trucking, the economic case for driverless operations centers on asset utilization. Trucks that sit idle during parts of the day can operate around the clock with autonomous technology, unbound by human hours-of-service rules.

“The most important impact? Doubling asset utilization,” Volvo Autonomous Solutions stated in its Capital Markets Day presentation. “This is a change the industry cannot ignore.”

Cuklev noted that realizing those gains requires more than autonomous-capable trucks. The company has built an uptime network with its dealers across operating lanes to ensure high availability.

“One of the big benefits with autonomous is that you should be able to utilize the truck much, much more than a manually driven truck,” Cuklev said. “But in order to do that, you need to have the truck available and high uptime. So that is super important, and sometimes it feels like we don’t talk about that enough.”

Network Expansion and Customer Integration

Volvo Autonomous Solutions is pursuing aggressive network growth based on customer demand. Phoenix, Atlanta, San Antonio and Laredo are under consideration. California has become particularly attractive following recent regulatory changes opening the state to autonomous trucking.

“We are expanding based on our customers, where they want us to go,” Cuklev said. “See it as we are starting around Dallas, and then we are expanding from there, expanding the network.”

The company unlocked the Oklahoma City lane with partner Aurora in approximately four to six weeks. That speed demonstrates how quickly driverless deployment capabilities have matured.

For fleet operators and shippers, Cuklev offered direct advice: Engage now.

“If you’re a customer, engage. Start to engage with us, and we will sit down and share the plans for how we will expand,” he said. “We can start small and start to move some loads together. We learn together, we understand what this is, because one of the most important things for our customers is to guide them and help them in their own transformation.”

The Road to Hundreds of Trucks

The scaling trajectory is steep. From a current base of approximately 20 trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions plans to reach hundreds by late 2027 and begin industrial scaling in 2028.

“For us, it’s important that we do it right,” Cuklev said. “Better to spend a couple of extra months or extra weeks to make it right than to rush it. And then when we get it right, I think the expansion will come naturally.”

Aurora, Volvo’s technology partner since 2021, described the Q1 2027 driverless deployment in Texas as the culmination of years of collaboration. The partnership led to the 2024 debut of the Volvo VNL Autonomous integrated with the Aurora Driver and will deliver the first fully driverless commercial operations next year.

The post Volvo Autonomous Solutions to remove safety drivers in Q1 2027 appeared first on FreightWaves.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) opened its less-than-truckload network to all businesses this week, and the market reaction was muted. Shares of the publicly traded LTL carriers slipped about 5% on the day — a modest move for a group that has run more than 60% year to date — and the analyst notes that followed were, with one exception, reassuring to incumbents. The consensus read: this is a strong economy-tier offering, but not yet a hub-and-spoke carrier in the mold of Old Dominion (NASDAQ: ODFL) or FedEx Freight (NYSE: FDFX).

That consensus is right about where Amazon’s network stands today. It misses where Amazon could take it next. The launch gives Amazon a real national economy LTL platform; what it doesn’t yet include is a premium expedited tier on top. The fastest way to add one is a company that is mid-strategic review, trading at a depressed equity value, with a motivated seller: Forward Air (NASDAQ: FWRD).

What Amazon actually rolled out

Amazon’s new LTL service is purpose-built for one part of the market. The expanded offering covers shipments of one to six pallets — 150 to 15,000 pounds — picked up, transferred at a nearby terminal, and delivered intact at what Amazon pitches as a lower cost than legacy carriers. It runs on an asset-light model across roughly 30 terminals stitched into a package-delivery network, with real density in the Eastern U.S. and a growing set of Western metros. For the economy, cost-sensitive end of LTL, that’s a credible national entry on day one.

What it isn’t yet is a premium expedited network. A full national LTL carrier runs 200 to 300 service centers reaching nearly every U.S. ZIP code; FedEx Freight alone operates a 365-terminal network. Amazon’s 30-terminal footprint is the right size for where it’s competing today, and the analyst community read it that way. Deutsche Bank’s Richa Harnain told investors Amazon’s footprint isn’t yet that of a “formidable full-fledged nationwide asset-based operator,” and characterized the current service as more akin to what brokers offer. TD Cowen’s Jason Seidl, pointing to Amazon’s reliance on an intermodal container pool, argued the offering will mostly compete in the economy three-to-four-day sub-segment and take share “on the margins.” Those are observations about the entry point, not the ceiling.

One analyst dissented. Morgan Stanley’s Ravi Shanker warned that even an asset-light model could be a disruptor, because Amazon “has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to gain traction in transportation markets through a flexible and iterative operating model” — potentially capturing meaningful share even without best-in-class service, and striking at the real-estate-and-service “moat” that anchors the entire LTL bull thesis.

Shanker is right about the ambition and the iterative playbook. The question is just timing. Building the expedited tier organically — a national network of cross-dock terminals, a fleet with multiple truck and trailer types, and the dock-and-linehaul optimization that separates the best carriers from the rest — is a multiyear undertaking even for Amazon, because legacy carriers have spent decades reinvesting service into a flywheel: better service drives better yields, which fund better service. Amazon can build it. The faster move is to buy a flywheel that’s already spinning.

You don’t out-iterate a decades-long flywheel. You buy one.

Why expedited is the right tier — and why Forward Air owns it

The “Amazon won’t shake LTL — yet” framing misses a key point. Amazon doesn’t need to win the whole $60 billion LTL market. It needs to win the tier where its existing advantages — visibility, technology, reliability, density of demand — compound fastest. Amazon’s own pitch leans entirely on those attributes: real-time GPS tracking, automated appointment scheduling, electronic proof of delivery, a sensor-equipped fleet. Director of Amazon Freight Jim Ruiz framed the entire launch around closing the gap between LTL and the reliability and visibility shippers already get on full-truckload moves.

That is, almost word for word, the value proposition of expedited LTL — time-definite, high-intact-rate, premium-service freight. And the purest national expedited LTL franchise in the market is Forward Air.

Forward built its network airport-to-airport, serving the time-sensitive, high-value freight that brokers and economy carriers can’t reliably handle, and has spent years extending that backbone into a broader national LTL footprint. Its expedited segment is engineered around exactly the attributes Amazon is marketing: time-definite shipping, industry-leading intact delivery rates, late cutoffs, early recovery, cross-border reach into Canada and Mexico. Where Amazon’s network today is strongest in the East and built for the economy tier, Forward’s is national and premium-graded. The two are less competitors than complements — and, as the next section shows, they may physically connect at the hub.

The piece that completes the picture: a road feeder linehaul grid on airline bones

What makes Forward’s footprint so hard to replicate — and so valuable to Amazon specifically — is how it’s wired. Forward doesn’t run a conventional trucking network that happens to be national. It runs a road feeder network — scheduled linehaul trucks operating like flight legs, moving time-definite freight between terminals located at or near more than 80 major U.S. airports (with reach into Canada and Mexico), on a fixed, airline-style hub-and-spoke schedule. Freight is consolidated, run on a scheduled linehaul leg to a central sort or one of the regional hubs, reloaded in rapid fashion, and pushed back out on another leg — the same operating logic an airline uses to move passengers through a connecting hub, applied to pallets on the ground.

The single most important word in that description is scheduled. This is what separates Forward from the rest of LTL, and it’s the part that’s easy to miss. A conventional LTL carrier optimizes for density and yield: it holds freight at a terminal until it has enough volume to fill a trailer, because running a near-empty truck destroys the economics of the load. Forward runs to a cut-time schedule instead. Each leg has a published departure time, and when the cut time arrives the truck leaves — full or nearly empty — because the commitment is to the schedule, not to the yield on any individual run, exactly the way an airline departs on time whether or not every seat is sold. That discipline is the whole reason Forward can promise time-definite delivery and hit it: the freight moves when the schedule says it moves, not when the trailer happens to fill. Most carriers won’t operate that way because it’s expensive. Forward built its entire franchise on it — and it is precisely the operating posture a premium expedited tier requires. The whole design exists to move cargo across the country fast and on time, which is exactly the premium expedited capability that complements what Amazon launched this week.

That airport-centric architecture is the natural complement to Amazon’s parcel-derived terminal map — and it points to the cleanest physical synergy in the entire deal.

But there’s a second, subtler fit — one that turns Forward’s biggest structural weakness into Amazon’s most obvious contribution. Forward’s expedited network is fundamentally terminal-to-terminal, not door-to-door. Its scheduled linehaul moves freight airport-to-airport; the city-side pickup and delivery — getting a pallet from the origin shipper’s dock to the terminal, and from the destination terminal to the receiver’s door — has historically run through a network of agents and contracted cartage operators rather than Forward’s own people. That dependency is a real seam: it’s where service consistency frays, where margin leaks to third parties, and where a competitor can pry a customer loose by controlling the part of the move the shipper actually sees.

Amazon closes that seam natively. The single largest asset Amazon brings to logistics is a dense, national last-mile delivery network — Delivery Service Partner contractors and drivers already operating in virtually every U.S. metro. Because every Forward terminal sits at or near an airport, Amazon’s local contractors could handle the city legs directly: picking freight up at the airport terminal, running the door deliveries, and feeding shippers’ freight back into the terminal for the next scheduled linehaul. Forward supplies the premium scheduled middle mile; Amazon supplies the first and last mile it was renting from agents. The combination doesn’t just bolt two networks together — it backfills the exact capability Forward never owned, with the one network in America already built to provide it.

And there’s one more place the two networks physically lock together.

Forward’s central sort sits at Rickenbacker International (LCK) in the Columbus, Ohio area — its National Hub, and the historical heart of the network since its air-cargo origins. Amazon’s primary U.S. air hub is at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG), roughly 100 miles away and purpose-built as the backbone of Amazon Air. Two scheduled, hub-and-spoke networks engineered for time-definite freight, anchored at two air-cargo hubs in the same corner of Ohio. Folding Forward’s Columbus sort into Amazon’s existing Cincinnati operation is the kind of consolidation that takes cost out, eliminates a redundant central facility, and — more importantly — physically stitches Forward’s road feeder linehaul grid into Amazon Air’s network at the hub. The result isn’t two networks bolted together; it’s a single air-and-ground expedited system with a common hub, something neither Amazon nor any legacy LTL carrier can assemble from scratch.

Buying Forward Air would hand Amazon, in a single transaction:

• The national, airport-based road feeder linehaul network described above — and the scheduled, time-definite operating discipline behind it — giving Amazon a premium tier that complements its economy network rather than 30 parcel cross-docks doing the same job twice.
• A genuine premium service tier to sit above its economy three-to-four-day lane, giving Amazon a two-tier national carrier — economy and expedited — instead of one.
• Veteran LTL operating leadership and dock-and-linehaul expertise that Amazon would otherwise spend years developing — the human capital the analysts correctly flag as scarce.
• The first and last mile Forward never owned — Amazon’s national contractor network slotting directly into the door-to-door pickup and delivery Forward has long rented from agents.
• Cross-border North American capability that Amazon’s domestic parcel network does not natively provide.

The window is open right now

The strategic case is strong on its own. The timing is what makes it urgent.

Forward Air has been in a strategic review since January 2025 — a process that began under heavy investor pressure after its contested $2.1 billion acquisition of freight forwarder Omni Logistics, with shareholders citing misguided capital allocation and weak oversight. The company has repeatedly said the review is “nearing the conclusion,” but a full-enterprise sale has come to look unlikely: private-equity suitors including Clearlake Capital and Apollo Global Management stepped back from bids for the whole company, and Forward has instead leaned toward divesting non-core Omni assets to pay down debt and refocus on its expedited LTL core.

The result is a premium asset trading at a distressed price. Forward’s stock, which briefly ran above $30 last year on sale speculation, has fallen back toward $10, with a market capitalization in the $330–365 million range in early June 2026. Net debt of roughly $1.65 billion sits at about 5.5 times trailing EBITDA against a covenant that keeps stepping down — the equity is cheap, but the balance sheet is precisely the kind of problem a buyer with Amazon’s cost of capital can refinance or absorb. Enterprise value lands around $2 billion. For an acquirer with Amazon’s balance sheet — and analysts uniformly grant that Amazon has the resources to compete and win in the space — that is a modest price against the strategic value.

The timing is also competitive. J.P. Morgan’s Brian Ossenbeck had already warned that Amazon offering LTL to external customers in 2026 could introduce competition legacy carriers would struggle to match. That threat is now live. Meanwhile the rest of the field is consolidating around it: FedEx Freight just spun off as a standalone carrier with 500-plus dedicated sales reps chasing freight for its 365 terminals; Knight-Swift has been bolting on regional LTL carriers and Yellow’s old terminals since 2021; TFI is angling toward a pure-play LTL spin; and Walmart is upgrading its own LTL consolidation program. Amazon was itself rumored in early 2025 to be circling Old Dominion — the gold-standard national carrier — though ODFL’s management said it wasn’t in talks. Old Dominion would have been the trophy; Forward Air is the available, affordable, strategically cleaner fit, and it is on the block today in a way Old Dominion never was.

The counterargument

Skeptics will note that Forward’s recent results are soft: expedited revenue down 7% year over year in its latest annual figures, tonnage off double digits, the whole enterprise still posting net losses while it works through the Omni integration. Why buy a business in decline?

Because the decline is balance-sheet and integration-driven, not network-driven. The expedited franchise itself has been improving margins even as volumes softened — operating and EBITDA margins both expanded several hundred basis points year over year on cost discipline, and management has removed more than 300 positions and tens of millions in annualized cost from the system. What’s broken is the capital structure and the Omni overhang, not the LTL asset. An acquirer that wants the expedited network and can refinance or absorb the debt — and, ideally, sell the Omni forwarding operations to a different buyer — acquires the strong asset and resolves the weak one. That is precisely what Amazon is positioned to do.

The deeper objection is cultural: Amazon builds, it doesn’t buy networks. But Amazon’s air-cargo and middle-mile build-out shows it will acquire and absorb physical capacity when organic build is too slow, and nothing about LTL’s decades-long terminal flywheel rewards patience. The Morgan Stanley view points the same direction. If even the bull case for Amazon-as-disruptor rests on an iterative, asset-light grind, then the move that compresses years of that work into a quarter is the acquisition of a ready-made national premium network.

The bottom line

The analysts are right about one thing: Wednesday’s launch, on its own, won’t shake the LTL market. Thirty cross-docks built for parcels, running economy freight on three-to-four-day lanes, is not an extinction event for Old Dominion or FedEx Freight.

But that’s the launch, not the plan. The plan is a two-tier national carrier — economy on the bottom, expedited on top — running on Amazon’s technology, visibility, and demand. Amazon can spend five years and a fortune building the expedited tier from nothing, fighting a flywheel that veteran operators have been spinning for decades. Or it can buy the best expedited LTL network in the country while it’s in play, motivated, and cheap.

Forward Air is the gap in Amazon’s map. It’s the network everyone says Amazon can’t replicate — and it’s for sale right now. Amazon should buy it before another bidder does.

The post Amazon’s LTL gap has a name: Forward Air appeared first on FreightWaves.

American energy exports reached a historic milestone Wednesday as federal regulators approved the construction of a $5 billion offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) export platform. 

The project, spearheaded by Houston-based Delfin Midstream, was licensed by the Maritime Administration and received Department of Energy export approval for a total of three planned vessels. 

Located 40 miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana, the South Korean-built platforms are projected to begin production by 2030, eventually ramping up to an export capacity of 1.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.

LTL market cools panic over Amazon’s point-to-point expansion

Industry analysts are urging calm after Amazon announced it was expanding its less-than-truckload service to all businesses on Wednesday.

The announcement sent shares of publicly traded LTL carriers 5% lower, though experts point out that Amazon’s asset-light model poses no immediate threat to established LTL giants that possess specialized, heavy-pallet infrastructure. 

Analysts suggest the ecommerce giant’s container-pool model is more akin to a brokerage play, primarily competing in the economy three-to-four-day subsegment rather than premium service lanes. 

Counter duties proposed to protect US trailer manufacturers

The U.S. Commerce Department threw a lifeline to embattled domestic van trailer manufacturers last week by determining that China and Mexico have unfairly subsidized their trailer export sectors. 

Washington has responded by imposing preliminary countervailing duties of up to 100.7% on Chinese imports and up to 2% on Mexican imports. US Customs and Border Protection will now require importers of both finished and semi-finished dry vans to post immediate cash deposits at these preliminary rates.

This is expected to bring relief to U.S. builders like Wabash National, Great Dane, and Stoughton Trailers.

Overhaul warns of 30% jump in organized cargo fraud

Deceptive pickup and identity-theft schemes surged more than 30% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026, according to the latest cargo theft report from Overhaul. 

David Warrick, Overhaul’s executive vice president of strategy, joined the show to emphasize that these cyber-enabled hijackings are highly coordinated operations run by international cartels using carrier impersonations and forged credentials. 

Warrick also warned that the actual scale of the epidemic is severely underreported, estimating that for every single reported supply chain theft, an additional four to six crimes go completely unrecorded.

Keep up with the latest news on FreightWaves Today

FreightWaves Today livestreams weekdays at noon ET at http://tv.freightwaves.com/.

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Victor Newton did it. Except Victor did not walk away from a job he hated. He walked away from 28 years as a barber, a career he built from the ground up, with a clientele that trusted him and a business that was real and stable. He just left it. Five and a half years later, he is still in trucking, running box trucks, having absorbed the bad driver hires and the repair bills and the new-authority seasons where brokers treat you like you do not exist. He figured out what the industry actually costs when you are not watching someone else do it on a screen.

On a recent episode of The Long Haul, host Adam Wingfield sat down with the man his more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers know as “Bigg Vic” to ask the question those videos never answer. Not whether trucking was worth it, but what it actually took, and what the people watching those videos do not understand about what is waiting for them on the other side of the decision.

The YouTube Headline That Started It All

Newton’s entry into trucking is, fittingly, a story that begins on YouTube. It was during COVID, the barbershop was closed, and YouTube had become his television. Then a headline stopped him cold: a box truck owner-operator claiming he made $20,000 in a month. “Wait a minute,” Newton remembered thinking. “Say what again? $20,000 with a truck.”

The hook that made it real was the part that makes box trucks the great on-ramp into this industry: it did not require a CDL. Newton had spent years in barber school and had no interest in going back to a classroom for a commercial license. A box truck under 26,000 pounds did not require one. Then a client sat down in his chair, a man who had quit his job to run Amazon Relay freight, and started showing Newton his invoices. “This is like taking candy from a baby,” the client told him. That was enough.

Newton procrastinated, then took a trip home to Connecticut and could not stop noticing the box trucks passing him on the highway. He told his wife he had to get one. Her response cut through the hesitation: stop talking about it and go get one. So he did. He spent $10,000 on his first box truck. It had 500,000 miles on it.

He took it without a diesel mechanic looking it over, on the seller’s word, with no maintenance records that were promised and never produced. It was a 2006 International with a Detroit engine, and he counted himself lucky only in hindsight that it was not a MaxxForce, because at the time he did not yet know enough to know the difference. He was, by his own description, winging all of it.

The First 90 Days That Fooled Him

Here is the part of Newton’s story that he is careful to flag as a warning rather than a template. His first weeks were extraordinary, and not in a way most new operators should expect.

He got approved for Amazon Relay the moment his insurance and authority went active. His first week brought in a couple thousand dollars. His second week, a few grand more. He had no idea at the time that these were not normal freight rates. “I’m thinking this is what trucking is all about,” he said. “I’ve been waiting this long to make this type of money weekly?”

Then his Amazon account got dinged when he booked a 53-foot load by mistake and his performance score dropped, pushing him onto the load boards he had never used, dispatching himself, learning on the fly. He decided to run over the road for a week, sleeping in the truck, no hotels, and documented the whole thing for his channel. He made $5,800 that week in a box truck. By his first 90 days he was already dreaming about a second, newer truck, doing the math in his head: if he could do this with one truck, imagine what he could do with two.

That early success was real, but Newton is the first to say it set a dangerous expectation, both for him and for the producers and music-industry contacts who watched his channel and started buying box trucks themselves. The market he started in was not the market that exists today, and the rates that made it look easy were a moment, not a baseline. As he put it now, plainly: “It’s trucking. It fluctuates. It goes up and down.”

The Line He Draws Between a Truck Owner and a Business Owner

The heart of the conversation, and the reason Newton’s content resonates, is a distinction he returns to constantly. There is a difference between owning a truck and owning a business, and most people who fail never understood which one they were doing.

Wingfield put the failure rate on the table directly: somewhere around 90% of new carriers wash out in the first couple of years. When he asked how much of that failure is actually a trucking problem versus a decision-making problem, Newton did not hesitate. “I think it’s about 70% the person. I don’t think it’s the trucking per se. It’s the person behind the business, because the average person comes into this business ill-prepared.”

His reasoning cuts to the core of why the box truck on-ramp is both a blessing and a trap. “Anybody can go buy a truck,” he said. “That’s what makes this business seem so simple. It doesn’t require me to have a commercial driver’s license if it’s under 26,000. But that’s the easy part. Now we have to run it after that.” The maintenance that comes due. The brokers. The shippers who leave you sitting at the dock for two and a half hours before they load you, if they load you at all. “Nobody told me I was going to have to sit at a shipper for 2.5 hours,” he said, describing the conversations he has with frustrated newcomers. “That’s trucking. It’s what’s going on between those areas.”

The driver mentality and the business mentality are different things, and Newton sees the gap clearly. The driver wants to drive and make money in his truck. The business owner wants to build a system, eventually remove himself from behind the wheel, hire drivers, put spreadsheets together, and create something that runs without him. “That requires a different type of person,” he said. “Not everybody is willing to go down that road. It’s too much for most people.”

The Barber Lessons That Carried Over

What separated Newton was not trucking knowledge, which he largely lacked at the start, but the entrepreneurial foundation he brought from nearly three decades of running his own chair and, eventually, his own shop.

Asked what business lessons from barbering helped him succeed in trucking, his first answer was money management. “We’re dealing with cash all the time as a barber,” he explained. He learned to manage and hold onto money when income came in daily and irregularly, the same discipline a freight business demands when revenue is lumpy and expenses are constant. Building credit, building business credit, understanding how to start and operate a business, all of it transferred. Starting a business was not hard for him, because he had already done it. What was hard was learning to drive a 26-foot truck, worrying about clearance heights, and discovering that the box on his first truck was too short, forcing him to break down pallets to fit freight that should have loaded cleanly. Nobody told him he needed at least 96 to 97 inches of clearance. He did not make that mistake on the second truck.

The Niche Strategy That Changes the Math

The most practically valuable stretch of the conversation came when Wingfield pushed Newton to get specific about how box truck operators actually escape the low-rate grind. Newton’s answer centered on two ideas the majority rarely cover: niches and partial loads.

Most box truck operators, Newton said, treat the load board as the whole business because it is cheap and simple. That is the training-wheels approach. The operators making real money are running niches almost nobody talks about. Pressed for his two favorites, he named event spaces, handling moves and breakdowns for companies relocating between locations and for specific events, and hotel chain moves. The hotel work is less steady, he noted, but securing one of those contracts can carry an operator through the slow periods that will inevitably come.

The partial-load insight was the one that visibly changed how he thinks. For his early loads he would put one broker’s freight on the truck and roll out, leaving the rest of the box empty. Then he met an operator running a 16-foot truck who partialed loads from California to the coast every week, making between $7,000 and $9,000. “Wait a minute, you said a 16-footer?” Newton recalled. It reframed his entire view of his own 26 feet of space. Now, when his trucks booked a load, he had the driver photograph the freight and tell him how many feet were left before leaving the area, so he could sell that remaining space. A $1,800 load plus another $1,200 to $1,300 going the same direction turned a couple thousand dollars into $3,500 with one more phone call. Mastered correctly, he said, partial loading is what takes a $50,000-a-year box truck to six figures.

He extended the point to direct freight and the misconception that holds people back. Most operators believe they need five or six trucks before they can land anything off the boards, anything dedicated or direct. Newton disagrees. He recounted hearing an operator at a MATS event describe walking into a direct shipper and asking one question: what is the freight you have the most problems moving? That single question, asked in the operator’s own backyard, parlayed into an $8 million annual contract. Most people, Newton noted, never ask it. They go straight to the load board.

The Psychology Underneath All of It

As the conversation deepened, Wingfield made an observation that landed: Newton teaches psychology more than trucking. Newton agreed immediately. “You hit it right on the head.”

His hardest truth is one he acknowledged people would not like. “The average person is a quitter,” he said. “We quit diets. We quit relationships. We quit jobs. So how easy would it be to go buy a truck, have it not work out the first three months, and just quit?” The people who make it, in his telling, come in with no exit. “Your plan B has to be your plan A.” He sees the lack of that commitment in the steady stream of people asking him about rental trucks, because they want to test the business rather than commit to it, and a half-commitment in an industry this demanding is its own kind of answer.

He talked about the herd, and why following it is fatal. “Only dead fish go with the flow,” he said. He talked about emotional control and the danger of booking freight from a place of panic, something he sees newer operators do daily out of desperation. The discipline he prizes most is the discipline to say no. “Discipline weighs ounces. Regret weighs tons.” For Newton that means turning down a load he knows he should not take, even when he needs to get out of an area, rather than effectively paying a broker to move their own freight. He would rather sit and wait for the right load. Most people, he said, do not have the mental capacity to say no and wait.

And patience, he argued, is not passive. Booking a couple of well-paying loads a week keeps an operator in the game far longer than booking a string of cheap ones. “You can book multiple cheap loads, but you’re still going to end up at zero after it’s all said and done.”

What Trucking Taught Him About People

In a rapid-fire close, Wingfield asked what trucking had taught Newton about people. His answer was the thesis of the entire episode. People will invest in equipment, he said, far more readily than they will invest in themselves. “They’ll spend the money. But when it comes to working on that psychology, and that thing in between your ears, which is the main part that will keep you in this game, most people don’t. They won’t work on themselves more than they work on their business.”

That belief sits underneath the one conviction Newton said he will defend against any pushback from his audience. With the right mindset, he insisted, a person can still start with one box truck, no CDL required, and change their family’s legacy and the entire direction of where they thought their life could go. He believes it because he lived it. He went from cutting hair and mixing records to building a small fleet in five and a half years.

But the version of that belief Newton preaches is not the version selling courses on YouTube. His is wrapped in a warning. The equipment is the easy part and the cheap part. The hard part, the part that determines whether the box truck becomes a business or becomes a truck someone is trying to sell after 90 bad days, is the work nobody can do for you and almost nobody wants to do at all. As Wingfield framed it in closing: entrepreneurship comes first, assets come second, and sometimes the metal investment needs to wait until the internal person is actually ready.

The post He Walked Away From 28 Years Behind the Barber Chair for a $10,000 Box Truck With 500,000 Miles. Five Years Later, Here Is What He Wishes Someone Had Told Him. appeared first on FreightWaves.

The gateway termed a success its Small Business Enterprise Program, which awarded $54.4 million, or almost 45% of port funds spent on eligible contracts, for services and materials from companies defined as “small business enterprises” and “very small business enterprises.” 

The port in a release said its staff participated in more than 40 outreach events throughout the year to boost participation in the program.

The goal set for small business enterprise participation at the port, a department of the City of Long Beach, is 27%, which it claimed is one of the highest when compared to other California ports and municipal agencies. The Port’s 44.6% utilization in the 2025 fiscal year is the third-highest since the program was founded in 2004.

“Our vision to double our cargo to 20 million containers annually by 2050 and build the Port of the Future is going to take a big team,” said Port of Long Beach Chief Executive Dr. Noel Hacegaba. “We want to make sure smaller businesses – the backbone of the U.S. economy – are equipped with the knowledge and ability to compete and win port-related construction and professional services contract opportunities.”

The very small business eligibility is equivalent to the state of California’s microbusiness designation, those with $5 million or less in annual gross sales, averaged over the last three fiscal years, or manufacturers with 25 or fewer employees.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Conservative network has law protecting U.S.-flag shipping in its sights

For 1st time, U.S. approves controversial LNG production ship

Port Houston’s hurricane playbook: Safety first, cargo moving fast 

But…but…shipbuilding! Democrats want China port tax reinstated

The post Long Beach awards $54M in small business contracts appeared first on FreightWaves.

#[W]e at the Agricultural Retailers Association have serious concerns about how this merger would affect our members and the agribusiness sector as a whole,” wrote Daren Coppock, ARA president and chief executive, in a published opinion column.

Coppock, whose group represents more than 5,000 retail locations supplying feed, seed and equipment to all sizes of farms and ranches nationwide, pointed out that the four U.S.-based Class I carriers already control 90% of rail freight traffic. He said that concentrates their power to set railroad-friendly terms, driving up costs and threatening supply chain reliability for moving agricultural commodities, fertilizer, chemicals and fuel. And, it comes at a time when geopolitics and inflation are pushing up prices across the board.

Freight rail rates have risen by more than 40% over the past 20 years, adjusted for inflation, about 70% faster than truck rates, Coppock wrote. Critical inputs for fertilizer such as anhydrous ammonia have risen more than 200% since the mid-2000s.

Both UP (NYSE: UNP) and NS (NYSE: NSC) say the merger will speed traffic by eliminating time-sucking interchanges of railcars, improving efficiency for shippers and growing volumes on the domestic rail network.  

But past mergers, Coppock observed, produced service disruptions and “have consistently reduced competition, resulting in higher transportation costs and less negotiating leverage for agricultural shippers.”

The issues are particularly acute for captive ag shippers – those served by just one railroad. “[W]e end up in a worse place than where we started,” he said. 

Two-thirds of the fertilizer for U.S. crops moves by rail, and one covered hopper moves as much as 3.4 trucks, at three times the fuel efficiency per ton-mile of other modes.

“This proposed merger directly threatens our ability to operate and, by extension, impacts our farmers and the food supply for all Americans,” Coppock said. “If the Surface Transportation Board isn’t hearing alarm bells, they should be, because this is going to be a big problem for all of us.”

Coppock’s comments were published in trade journal Agri-Pulse.

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

FreightWaves Today: Broad rail traffic gains show growing industrial economy

Arizona investigators say organized cargo theft crews continue targeting rail corridor after $500K train burglary arrest

UP CEO says no thanks to potential government investment in $85B merger

Kloster sworn in as STB member

The post Rate, service issues flagged by ag retailers in Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern rail merger appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) is asking the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for a federal rulemaking that would set standards on what constitutes a carrier that can safely be booked.

The TIA, in a formal petition for rulemaking to the agency, leaves little doubt as to the need for such a process: the fallout from Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II and the door it opened to brokers being found liable for crashes and other incidents involving a carrier hired by the 3PL.

“In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Montgomery v. Caribe, it is now clear that brokers and shippers continue to face an untenable burden in attempting to evaluate, develop, and apply disparate methodologies and standards (using potentially suspect data) in an effort to discern whether a federally-licensed motor carrier will nevertheless be deemed unsafe according to judges and juries in every state and federal jurisdiction across the country,” the TIA said in its petition. 

TIA President Chris Burroughs disclosed the petition–which is not yet publicly available bt was obtained by FreightWaves–in a post on LinkedIn.

“In far too many cases, a carrier’s safety deficiencies are only revealed after a catastrophic incident has already occurred,” Burroughs wrote on LinkedIn. 

The 90% number

Burroughs cited the oft-quoted number, which has been challenged as not fully capturing the amount of federal regulation, that “more than 90% of authorized motor carriers currently operate without an FMCSA safety rating.” That number is in the petition as well.

The specific request in the petition is that FMCSA “(promulgates) a federal safety standard governing the use of federally licensed motor carriers.”

Even where a carrier falls under the 10% that has a safety rating, the TIA says that “FMCSA has acknowledged that the data generated by the Safety Measurement System (SMS) is used to prioritize potential interventions but is not intended to imply a federal safety rating and should not be used to draw conclusions about a motor carrier’s overall safety condition.”

The fallout from Montgomery, FMCSA said in its petition, mean that “brokers and shippers continue to face an untenable burden in attempting to evaluate, develop, and apply disparate methodologies and standards (using potentially suspect data) in an effort to discern whether a federally-licensed motor carrier will nevertheless be deemed unsafe according to judges and juries in every state and federal jurisdiction across the country.”

Montgomery changed everything

Various arguments made not just in Montgomery but in other federal cases involving broker liability often came down to saying a broker should be shielded in part because if a carrier with a federal motor carrier number is legally on the road because it has an MC number granted by the Department of Transportation, brokers should be able to assume a level of safety for that fleet, whether it is one truck or thousands of them.

Montgomery ended that assumption. Now it wants FMCSA to give a more in-depth stamp of approval for brokers to rely on.

TIA’s petition recaps the attempt that dates back 10 years to create a “modernized Safety Fitness Determination rule.” It was withdrawn in 2017 and little has happened since, TIA argues.

“This regulatory gap has had significant consequences,” the TIA writes in its petition request. “Unsafe motor carriers may continue to operate without adequate oversight, while small and independent carriers, many from diverse and underserved communities, are often excluded from opportunities due to risk-averse selection practices driven by litigation exposure.”

If some sort of system is not put into place, the TIA says, it will lead to “overcorrection across the industry, with increasingly restrictive carrier selection practices that exclude large numbers of otherwise compliant motor carriers.”

Hitting small carriers

That step will have “a disproportionate effect on small motor carriers, which are the lifeblood of the modern domestic supply chain.”

The core of the TIA request is that FMCSA “(establishes) a federal motor carrier selection safety standard that informs brokers and shippers whether or not the use of a given motor carrier is reasonable based on objective criteria determined by FMCSA to correlate demonstrably with safety performance.”

FMCSA’s request is that a proposed Safety Selection Standard would give a stamp of approval to a carrier that is:

• Registered as a motor carrier or household goods motor carrier under Title 49, which is the U.S. code governing transportation

• Meets the minimum insurance requirements of federal and state law

• “Is not determined unfit to operate safely commercial motor vehicles…or otherwise ordered to discontinue operations by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or a state for intrastate commerce.”

The TIA also asked that FMCSA “immediately publish” a list of motor carriers that the agency concludes are “high risk.”  

At the FreightWaves Freight Fraud symposium in Cleveland last month, FMCSA deputy administrator Jesse Elison acknowledged FMCSA has a key role post-Montgomery, but that it is not a “ratings agency.”

The TIA petition to FMCSA is signed by Burroughs.

In his LInkedIn statement, Burroughs talked of the broad goals it was seeking from FMCSA: to “establish a clear, uniform federal standard outlining the reasonable steps brokers and shippers should take when selecting motor carriers. Such a standard would provide much-needed guidance, improve safety outcomes and create a more predictable legal and operating environment for all stakeholders.”

More articles by John Kingston

Texas court nixes shipper liability in Home Depot/Werner case

Carrier Nussbaum sets driver pay increase; others popping up more quietly

Commerce finding on van imports may give relief to beleaguered Wabash

The post TIA asking FMCSA for guidance on approved carriers post-Montgomery appeared first on FreightWaves.

Then the Tennessee Highway Patrol took a closer look, and the picture got worse. THP’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division, the unit it brands as Motor Carrier Plus, conducted a post-incident inspection and found that the load had been in open violation of federal hazardous materials law. The driver, Dalton Beeler of Tennessee, was transporting fireworks from South Pittsburg to Knox County without a hazardous materials endorsement on his license, without placards on the trailer, without shipping papers, without emergency response information, without current hazmat registration, and without a USDOT number where one was required. He was cited for operating without the endorsement, and THP forwarded the findings to federal regulators for possible penalties. The explosives that shut down an interstate were never supposed to be on that trailer the way they were.

Investigators believe the fire started in the trailer’s rear brakes. Read that again. A brake fire on a trailer loaded with Class 1 explosives. That is not a freak event. That is the most predictable failure mode in trucking, meeting the most dangerous cargo on the road, and the only thing that made it remarkable is that it happened on camera.

I pulled every roadside inspection from FMCSA’s database in which the shipper on the bill of lading was a fireworks company. Then I pulled the carriers hauling those loads, their out-of-service rates, their brake records, the weight class of their equipment, and the corridors where they get stopped. The data show that the truck that burned near Ooltewah was not an outlier. It was a representative sample.

A brake fire is not rare

Across the worst-performing carriers in the fireworks freight pool, the brake numbers are damning. There are more than 1,400 brake violations on record, and 334 of them resulted in the vehicle being put out of service. Two carriers own most of that total, and both of them are intermodal drayage operators, the companies that pull containers off the rail and out of the ports.

Evans Delivery Company carries 783 brake violations and 183 brake out-of-service orders. ContainerPort Group carries 233 brake violations and 51 out-of-service orders. These are the trucks that move freight on the first leg inland after it comes off a ship.

That matters because the overwhelming majority of consumer fireworks sold in this country are manufactured in China. They arrive by ocean container, they land at a port, and the first move inland is on a drayage chassis. So the supply chain for your backyard show on the Fourth begins with a container handoff to a class of carrier with a documented, repeating brake problem. The fire on I-75 was a brake fire. The data says the brakes are exactly where this freight is weakest.

One in three rides light

Of the fireworks loads in the data where the combined vehicle weight was recorded, almost a third moved on what the industry calls hotshot equipment, meaning a pickup and a trailer rated at 26,000 pounds or less. Not a tractor-trailer. A truck you could buy at a dealership, and a trailer you could rent.

A whole cluster of those combos sit at or below 26,000 pounds. Black Diamond Fireworks, Stateline Fireworks, the Phantom Fireworks western operation, a couple of towing companies, and rental units from Ryder and Idealease all show up parked right at that line.

Twenty-six thousand and one pounds is the federal threshold where a commercial driver’s license becomes mandatory. Sitting at twenty-six thousand even is not a coincidence of physics. It is a choice. It is how an operator stays one pound under the line that would force a CDL, a medical card, and the full weight of the federal inspection regime. The hotshot model exists largely to live in that gap.

The placard doesn’t care about weight

The weight consideration or gap closes the moment the placard goes up, and almost nobody seems to understand that.

Under 49 CFR 383.5, a commercial driver’s license is required to operate any size vehicle that hauls a hazardous material that must be placarded. Any size. The weight does not matter. A half-ton pickup hauling placarded explosives needs the same Class C CDL as a fuel tanker.

Fireworks fall into two buckets. Display fireworks, the 1.3G shells that go up at the big municipal shows, are Table 1 materials, and Table 1 must be placarded at any quantity. One shell triggers it. Consumer fireworks, the 1.4G product sold at roadside stands, are listed in Table 2 and must be placarded once the load reaches 1,001 pounds. Either way, the instant that the diamond goes on the side of the trailer, the driver is legally required to hold a CDL with a hazardous materials endorsement, and that endorsement requires a fingerprint-based background check through the Transportation Security Administration. The man hauling the explosives must be able to tell a firefighter what is in the trailer.

So the under 26,000-pound rental rig is not actually dodging the hazmat rules. It is just betting that nobody checks. The endorsement exists for a reason that the Ooltewah video made obvious. The man hauling the explosives must be able to read the shipping papers, display the placards, and tell a firefighter exactly what is in the trailer when it is on fire on the shoulder of an interstate.

Dalton Beeler is that argument in the flesh. According to THP, he had none of it. No endorsement, no placards, no papers, no emergency response sheet, no registration. Every safeguard that federal law builds around explosive cargo was missing at once, and the only reason we know is that the trailer caught fire on a busy interstate in front of dozens of cameras. The compliant version of this load looks identical from the outside right up until the moment it matters.

“This incident looked like a fireworks show, but it could have been much worse,” THP Col. Matt Perry said in announcing the findings. He is right, and the reason it could have been worse is that it is sitting on the violation list. When first responders reach a hazmat fire, the placards, shipping papers, and emergency response information determine whether to fight it, flood it, or run. Beeler’s trailer offered them nothing to read.

Think about the wildfires that burn millions of acres and millions of homes a year. All it takes is a spark.

The worst of the bunch

The national average for vehicles ordered out of service at roadside hovers around 18 percent. Several of the carriers moving fireworks freight run multiples of that.

Jake’s Fireworks, which hauls its own product, posts a vehicle out-of-service rate of roughly 67 percent across its inspections. POD Logistics runs 47 percent across 149 inspections. USA Logistics runs 23 percent across 647 inspections. Bukhara Trans, Excalibur Trucking, Bright Texas, 5 Star Delivery, and an outfit named, with no irony at all, Firework Trucking LLC, all post vehicle-out-of-service rates north of 35 percent. These are not whisper-thin samples. These are the rates at which enforcement looked at the truck and ordered it off the road.

The crash and fatality totals attached to these carriers reflect their entire operation, every load they have ever run, not their fireworks freight specifically. The data establishes which equipment fails inspection, and these are the carriers that fireworks companies hand their freight to.

Where the freedom freight runs

The geography tells its own story. South Carolina is the single most-inspected state for fireworks freight, which surprises no one who has driven Interstate 85 through the upstate and watched the billboards. The state is the retail fireworks belt of the Southeast, pulling buyers across the line from stricter North Carolina and Georgia, and the I-85, I-77, and I-95 corridors are where the trucks get caught.

Fireworks loads turn up at the Cajon Scales and on the Dunsmuir grade in California, two of the longest, hottest mountain descents in the western highway system. A long downgrade causes brakes to overheat, and overheated brakes are how the Chattanooga trailer caught fire in the first place. Put a heavy load of explosives on a mountain grade, and you are running the Ooltewah experiment again, just without the camera.

Every Memorial Day, every Fourth of July, every small-town fireworks night, the explosives that light up the sky arrive on a truck. The data show a meaningful share of those trucks is the lightest-regulated, least-inspected equipment on the road, operated in many cases by people who treat the 26,000-pound line as a finish line rather than a warning.

The Ooltewah fire ended with a viral video and no injuries. The next one might end on a downgrade, in traffic, with a driver who cannot tell the first responder what is burning. 

The post Who’s hauling America’s Fourth of July explosives? appeared first on FreightWaves.

The capacity levers being pulled continue to favor large carriers. It started last year with stricter enforcement of non-domiciled CDL rules and English-language proficiency requirements, and crackdowns on shady driver schools and ELD providers.

Capacity constraints have ramped in recent weeks. Federal authorities are more strictly enforcing cabotage rules and revoking visas. Further, the impact the Supreme Court’s broker liability ruling has on driver vetting and insurance requirements is still being contemplated across the industry.

The net impact from the regulations will purge hundreds of thousands of noncompliant drivers from the industry, analysts contend, allowing carriers operating legally to recoup pricing and restore margins.

“This industry is behind,” said Spencer Frazier, executive vice president of sales and marketing at J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ: JBHT), during a Tuesday appearance at a Wells Fargo investor conference in Chicago. “It’s been four years in a cost-inflationary environment and a rate-deflationary environment. The industry is still not healthy.”

Frazier said most fleets haven’t generated the returns needed to adequately reinvest in their networks, which has led to a steady drumbeat of carrier bankruptcies. He said that all TL operating expense lines are up roughly 30% to 50% over the past five years while rates have been on the decline.

“So, the industry has a catch-up period from a cost perspective to go through,” Frazier said.

He noted driver wage pressure in some markets, which will also have to be recouped through rate negotiations. Management at J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT) flagged the likelihood of a cumulative 20% rate hike over the next two years at an investor conference last month.

Most carriers raised bid season expectations during the first-quarter earnings season, which ended in early May. The group had targeted low- to mid-single-digit rate increases entering the year, but a tightening supply side now has it calling for mid- to high-single-digit increases, with some shippers seeing double-digit rate hikes.

Routing guides are crumbing

Contract rates set early in the 2026 bid season aren’t holding, management teams from Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR) and Werner Enterprises (NASDAQ: WERN) said at the Tuesday event. Mini-bid activity has spiked, and some shippers have been forced to rebid their entire book as tender rejections surge.

May brought about another jump in spot rates ahead of and after Roadcheck.

Werner said one-way contract renewals have continued to accelerate through bid season after yielding mid-single-digit increases earlier in the year. The company renegotiates one-fourth of its contracts in the first quarter and roughly one-third in the second quarter. Revenue per total mile is forecast to increase between 1% and 4% year over year in the second quarter, which seems conservative given the 3.6% increase it booked in the first quarter.

Utilization has been the bigger lever for Werner.

Most public carriers have held off on equipment additions, instead choosing to increase paid miles through better freight selection, load planning and route optimization. Revenue per truck per week was nearly 10% higher y/y at Werner’s one-way fleet in the first quarter, as miles per truck increased 5.7%.

Management teams said rebid and mini-bid activity has been widespread across verticals and geographies—a signal the market likely stays tighter for longer.

“Are we going to have a leveling, or is this going to continue to accelerate?” Frazier said.

Schneider noted on its first-quarter call that contract renewals were at the highest level since 2021 as “irrational capacity” is leaving the market.

Jim Filter, group president of transportation and logistics at Schneider, said Tuesday it will probably take “a couple of allocation events to recoup price.” However, he believes the shift in industry capacity is structural, not transitory, suggesting the inflationary rate environment could last longer than in prior cycles.

(Filter will succeed Schneider President and CEO Mark Rourke on July 1. Rourke will transition to Executive Chairman.)

Montgomery ruling viewed as ‘net benefit’ by brokers with assets

The three companies said they didn’t need to alter third-party carrier onboarding procedures at their brokerage units following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II case. (The decision widened liability exposure for freight brokers found negligent in their driver hiring practices.)

The companies implemented more stringent protocols years ago to weed out chameleon carriers and reduce cargo theft. Tech and data tools have also improved since the pandemic, allowing for vetting on an ongoing basis. The companies have culled approved-carrier lists by at least half since.

“Based on our experience, there aren’t 50,000 carriers in this country that you could vet and say that they’re safe,” Filter said.

Werner said the Montgomery decision will be a “net benefit” for its brokerage operations. It believes size and sophistication matter. It said shippers are aligning with providers that can guarantee assets and safety while providing the flexibility of a broker model.

The brokerage market is likely to consolidate further as shippers shift freight allocations and insurance carriers get more selective in underwriting risk.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• Analysts say Amazon won’t shake LTL market—yet
• LTL general rate increases no longer an annual event
• ArcBest raises Q2 outlook for LTL, asset-light units

The post Truckload carriers eyeing multiyear rate upcycle appeared first on FreightWaves.

Americans for Prosperity, the flagship advocacy organization backed by conservative industrialist Charles Koch, said it plans a six-figure digital ad campaign urging Congress to permanently repeal the Jones Act.

The century-old law requires ships carrying cargo between American ports to be U.S.-built, owned, crewed and flagged.  

President Donald Trump in March temporarily suspended the Jones Act for 60 days over concerns that the Iran war could result in price-gouging and shortages of fuel, fertilizer, and other vital commodities. The waiver, extended to 90 days, permits foreign-flag ships to operate in commerce between U.S. destinations, such as carrying fuel from the Gulf to eastern markets.

The waiver provided temporary but modest economic benefits – primarily by increasing shipping options – but did not significantly reduce consumer fuel prices in the immediate term, analysts say. The suspension also created uncertainty for the U.S. maritime industry over jobs and for carriers engaged in coastwise trade.

Wichita-based Koch Industries, with annual revenues of $125 billion, has operations in petroleum refining, chemicals and fertilizer production, areas where it would likely benefit from a Jones Act repeal.  

“The century-old shipping mandate continues to needlessly drive up the cost of fuel, food, and energy for American families,” the org said in a release. The campaign pairs targeted digital advertising with a nationwide citizens’ effort writing letters to Congress to demand relief.

Trump issued the emergency waiver after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes. 

The campaign launches as inflation and rising consumer prices for food, gas and other staples has made affordability a central voter issue ahead of the midterm elections. It follows a May 6 coalition letter urging Congress to repeal the Jones Act as part of AFP’s larger affordability agenda.

“For more than a century, Washington has forced families to pay a hidden tax every time goods move between our own ports, and it is way past time to put an end to this failed regulation that has decimated the industry it was intended to help,” said AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner, in a release. “You cannot claim to care about the cost of living while defending a law you have to suspend every time families need relief. Our message is simple: with a single vote, Congress can lower costs for every household in the country. It’s time to repeal the Jones Act.”

The campaign of digital ads and grassroots efforts is focused on key states and districts, in particular members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, “as well as senators who campaign on lowering costs for working families. The goal is to build support for permanent repeal.”

AFP said that the waiver shows a fully booked Jones Act fleet was supplemented and not displaced by foreign vessels.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

For 1st time, U.S. approves controversial LNG production ship

Port Houston’s hurricane playbook: Safety first, cargo moving fast 

But…but…shipbuilding! Democrats want China port tax reinstated

Frontload frenzy? New tariffs fueling early trans-Pacific peak season

The post Conservative network has law protecting U.S.-flag shipping in its sights appeared first on FreightWaves.

It comes at a pivotal time. In the EV and autonomous space, software and hardware have matured enough to support full-scale operations rather than the limited pilot tests common in years past.

Einride leadership celebrated the public debut by ringing the Nasdaq Opening Bell at MarketSite in Times Square. The listing capped a de-SPAC process that began with a deal announcement in November and ended with shareholder approval last week.

“Over the past decade, Einride has built the technology and the customer base to lead the transition to autonomous and electric freight,” said Roozbeh Charli, chief executive officer of Einride. “Our focus now is clear: continue expanding with our customers and increase automation within their networks, demonstrating that every mile we run makes the entire network more efficient.”

A Different Approach from Day One

Founded in 2016, Einride built its autonomous vehicle strategy around a cabless design. It eliminates the driver compartment entirely and forced the company to solve some of the hardest engineering challenges early.

“We took a different approach from day one,” Charli told FreightWaves in an interview. “Having a cabless autonomous vehicle that’s built for autonomy from day one — it doesn’t have a cab because you don’t need a cab if you want to drive autonomously.”

The company’s deployments in the United States and Sweden operate without safety drivers by design. “There is no room for a driver,” Charli said. “That also means you have to build your safety case from day one without relying on a human operator.”

Dutch contract manufacturer VDL builds the chassis and skateboard platform. Einride handles final assembly of the hull and computer stack at its R&D facility in Sweden. The company plans to build a similar setup in the United States.

The Land-and-Expand Strategy

Einride enters the public markets with $92 million in annual recurring revenue and more than $800 million in potential ARR. These figures come from joint business plans with its 30 global customers.

“We’ve been focused over the last five or six years on our land-and-expand sales strategy: getting in with large transport buyers, getting their transportation data onto our platform, starting execution, and deploying both our electric and autonomous vehicles,” Charli said.

The GE Appliances partnership shows how the model works. Einride began by analyzing transportation data and building a $50 million ARR joint business plan. Operations started with two electric trucks in a Kentucky pilot. The business has since grown to roughly 20-25 electric trucks and two autonomous vehicles.

For Einride, its electric vehicle and autonomous operations form a clear win-win.

Customers get immediate benefits from lower operating costs and decarbonized transport in high-utilization lanes.

At the same time, those deployments generate revenue and margins for Einride. They also build customer relationships and the operational data needed to train autonomous models and map routes, charging infrastructure, and day-to-day workflows for future driverless vehicles.

“The electric business is a line of business in itself. It’s generating revenue and margins,” Charli said. “You’re gaining a position with the customer and collecting data. You can use that data to train autonomous models while also building a detailed understanding of operational setups.”

Cost Efficiency Drives Adoption

High-utilization, repetitive freight lanes represent the strongest opportunity for Einride’s technology. Grocery retail operations, industrial shuttle routes, and FMCG flows offer the cost efficiencies that make the business case work.

“The ticket to play is being cost-competitive with the diesel solution you’re replacing,” Charli said. “We achieve that through the platform, software, optimization tools, and AI models we’ve built.”

Defense Applications Emerge

Einride has also deployed its autonomous technology on military vehicles. It has run pilots with NATO countries and the Swedish Resilience Initiative. The company equipped a Bandvagn vehicle for dual-use applications. These vehicles can maintain power lines in peacetime and handle logistics in high-risk wartime environments.

“War is an enormous logistical exercise,” Charli said. “There’s significant potential for autonomous technology in those environments, particularly when it comes to reducing risk and keeping people out of harm’s way.”

Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, joined Einride’s board to support defense initiatives.

Robert Falck, founder and executive chairman, framed the listing as validation of the company’s original thesis. “Einride started with the simple idea that freight could be done differently, and better. Today’s listing marks an important milestone for Einride and reflects the strength of the technology platform, the trust of our customers, and the work our team has done to build and scale a modern freight technology business.”

The post Einride begins trading on Nasdaq after completing de-SPAC appeared first on FreightWaves.

I pulled every roadside inspection from the FMCSA database and split the carriers by what they actually run: straight trucks versus tractor-trailers. The trucks themselves came back clean. Box truck fleets get a vehicle put out of service 17.2 times per hundred inspections. Tractor fleets run 19.4. On vehicle maintenance, the broad measure of whether the equipment is roadworthy, the box trucks again came in lower than the big rigs. The iron is not the story here.

The driver is. Box truck fleets get a driver pulled off the road 7.6 times per hundred inspections. Tractor fleets, 4.1. That is nearly double on the same roads, with the same enforcement, under the same criteria. A driver-out-of-service order has nothing to do with the machine. It means the person behind the wheel had no business there, an invalid or missing license, a disqualification, a medical card that does not check out, or hours run past the legal limit.

Everyone wants to blame the truck. The data blames the man driving it. That number points to somewhere nobody in this business wants to look, so the rest of this is about why it happens and why it is not just a box-truck problem.

The line for a commercial driver’s license is 26,001 pounds. Almost every box truck on an American street is built to exactly 26,000, one pound under, which is why it is the most common commercial truck in the country. The line for federal safety regulation is lower, 10,001 pounds, and that one catches most box trucks. A 24,000-pound delivery truck is not unregulated. It still owes a DOT number, hours of service, a medical card, driver qualification files, the works. What it does not require is drug testing or a CDL; the CDL is the hook the testing program hangs on. People hear “no CDL” and assume “no rules.” That’s the gap.

There is a third line on the passenger side, with 16 seats (counting the driver), and you need a commercial license with a passenger endorsement. Fifteen seats and you need nothing but an ordinary driver’s license, even when somebody is paying for the ride. None of these numbers describes a real change in danger. A 26,000-pound truck does not stop any shorter than a 26,500-pound one. A fifteen-seat van full of people is no safer than a sixteen-seat van full of people. They are paperwork lines, and operators build their entire equipment strategy around landing under them.

The drivers are the problem

When you break the inspection record into the federal safety categories, the box truck disadvantage shows up in exactly two places, and almost nowhere else.

The first is Driver Fitness, which covers licensing, medical certification, and disqualification. Box truck fleets have a violation rate two and a half times that of tractor fleets and an out-of-service rate more than three times that of tractor fleets. The second is Controlled Substances and Alcohol, where box truck fleets run more than two and a half times the rate of the tractor fleets.

A truck under 26,001 pounds is not in the federal drug and alcohol testing program. No random tests, no pre-employment screen, nothing. That does not make it legal to drive high or drunk; it just changes how you get caught. I sorted these citations by code, and about three-quarters of them are roadside findings, an officer catching it at the window under 49 CFR 392.4 and 392.5, not a failed test. There is no test. The cop is the test, and it is not mostly drunk driving, as people assume. The drug findings, operating while in possession or under the influence, outnumber the alcohol findings roughly four to one. The single largest category is a driver operating under the influence of drugs. With no screening program in front of him, the only thing standing between an impaired box truck driver and your street is whether he happens to get stopped.

Now look at the categories that are not about whether the driver should have been hired. On hours of service, the tractor fleets are worse. This makes sense because these non-CDL CMVs are short-haul exempt. On unsafe driving, the two are about even. On maintenance, as I said, the tractors are worse. The box truck penalty is not spread across the board the way a general quality problem would be. It sits almost surgically in the two categories that measure fitness to hold the wheel. That is not what cheap equipment looks like. That is what a hiring problem looks like.

The passenger side proves the same point, and the gap there is even wider. Among passenger carriers in my data, the small van and limo operators, the tier that needs no commercial license, get a driver put out of service 2.4 times per hundred inspections. The big bus and motor coach fleets that do require a CDL run 0.5. The license-exempt tier is parked due to driver problems at roughly five times the rate of the licensed tier. The van sample is thin, a few hundred carriers, partly because these vehicles barely get stopped at all, which is its own quiet problem. The pattern holds, and it is sharpest where the cargo is people.

Where the prohibited go to keep driving

This is the part I have spent years reporting, and the mechanism is not a theory. It is written into the rules.

The drug and alcohol testing program, including the federal Clearinghouse, is built around the CDL. The Department of Transportation says straight out that non-CDL operations are not subject to the Clearinghouse and should not even register with it. So a box truck outfit hiring a driver for a 26,000-pound truck has no duty to run a query, and the system tells it to stay out. No testing, no database check, no record following the driver in the door.

It gets worse because the agency’s own guidance creates a trap. An employer whose CDL holders run only non-CDL trucks may run a Clearinghouse query, but is not required to when they hold a CDL but don’t operate CDL equipment. The prohibition reaches further than most people know. If someone ran that query and it came back as prohibited, the employer would be barred from allowing that driver to operate either a real commercial vehicle or a non-CDL one until he cleaned up his record. So the prohibition legally covers the box truck. A driver flagged for drugs or alcohol is not supposed to be in one, but the required check, the only thing that would surface the flag, attaches to CDL equipment. The prohibition follows the driver. The mandatory check follows the truck. They don’t meet, and the unscreened driver lives in the space between them. The prohibition covers the box truck. The check that would catch it does not.

Then there is the funnel that feeds the whole thing. Since late 2024, a driver who lands in prohibited status has their CDL downgraded by the state to a regular license. The enforcement action meant to get a drug-or-alcohol driver off the road instead hands him the exact license a box truck or a fifteen-passenger van requires, in the one corner of the industry that runs no test and checks no database. I have reported before on the crooked side of this, the operators who clear prohibited drivers for a fee, work in other outlets and that has since picked up. That is the illegal door out. The downgrade rule is the legal one. Both empty into the same parking lot, and it is full of small trucks. Drop under 10,001 pounds into the cargo van and the light shuttle, and the vehicle is not even a commercial motor vehicle by definition, so the prohibition may not reach it at all.

Fifty states, fifty rulebooks

Everything so far is the federal picture, which governs freight that crosses a state line. Freight that loads and delivers inside one state falls under that state’s rules, and the states are all over the map.

A fifty-state survey of those rules says about half the states apply their driver qualification rules only above 26,000 pounds for intrastate work, which leaves the box truck under that line outside the requirement entirely. Ten states have not adopted the federal drug and alcohol testing rules for intrastate carriers at all: Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont. Cross those two lists, and you get the deepest pocket, seven states where an intrastate box truck escapes both driver qualification and drug and alcohol testing in one shot. Delaware, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont.

FMCSA data puts a number on that pocket. More than 1,400 box truck fleets run intrastate across those seven states, and nearly 1,150 of them are in North Carolina alone. The bigger raw counts sit in California, Texas, New York and Florida, which hold the largest intrastate box truck populations, but California and a few others close the gap by regulating their drivers no matter the weight. Size is not the same as exposure. The exposure is worst where a large intrastate fleet meets a state that allows it to run unscreened, and North Carolina is the clearest case in the file. North Carolina is the safe space for box trucks, just as Indiana is the safe and cheap space for license plates. 

Last-mile delivery, the warehouse-to-doorstep business that exploded over the last decade, is mostly intrastate. The package crosses the state line in a long-haul trailer, then moves locally on a light truck that never leaves the state. The fastest-growing segment of American freight settled into the tier with the thinnest driver oversight.

A nation shopping from the couch

None of this would matter at scale if the box truck were still a niche. We made it the spine of how we live. The country went from buying things in stores to ordering them from the couch, down to the mattress and the case of water, and the freight followed. Federal crash data tells the rest. Between 2016 and 2020, fatal crashes involving the lightest class of large trucks, the 10,001 to 14,000-pound range that includes box trucks and delivery vans, rose 44 percent. Fatal crashes involving the heaviest trucks, over 26,000 pounds, fell 2 percent. The trucks we fear most and regulate hardest got safer. The little ones we wave past got deadlier.

The structure underneath the boom should be familiar to anyone who has chased chameleon carriers. Last-mile relies on subcontracted delivery companies that pop up and shut down easily, pushing drivers from one paper entity to the next. That churn is how accountability gets diffused until nobody is holding it.

You can see who that work belongs to in the inspection record. The shipper named most often on box truck fleet inspections, by a wide margin, is Amazon, appearing on nearly 3,900 inspections across more than 1,500 carriers. That is the delivery service partner model in a single number, one retailer’s freight on fifteen hundred little box truck companies, the liability scattered across all of them. Behind it, the list reads like a receipt for modern life: Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, and the furniture and mattress economy that barely existed at this scale ten years ago, Mattress Firm, Ashley, Wayfair.

One retailer’s freight, fifteen hundred separate box truck companies, and not one of them with the retailer’s name on the door.

One category blows my mind. Hazmat. Propane and industrial gas haulers are among the heaviest users of less-than-26,000-pound trucks in the data, including AmeriGas, Suburban Propane, NuCO2, and NexAir, with AmeriGas alone running well over 2,000 less-than-26,000-pound assets as part of its 6,000-asset fleet. That is placarded hazardous material on bobtail trucks in the same sub-26,000-pound class as everything else here. The screening questions from the hazmat story and the box truck story turn out to be the same questions about the same trucks.

The numbers even sort the business into two models. AmeriGas runs thousands of inspections across a handful of carriers, a dedicated fleet it owns and can be held to answer for. Amazon runs thousands across fifteen hundred, a contractor pool nobody claims when something goes wrong. Both move enormous volumes on the lightly regulated trucks on the road. Only one is built, so the company on the package can answer for the driver behind the wheel.

The driver was the variable all along

We built this system around the truck. The weight rating, the seat count, and the license class. We assumed that if we controlled the equipment, we controlled the risk. The risk was never just in the steel. It was in who we let drive, and the rules we wrote around the vehicle left the driver free to slide downhill, out of the CDL tier and into the box truck, out of the testing program and into the van, out of the regulated state and into the one next door.

Drivers parked at twice the rate, concentrated in fitness and substance violations, which is the exact fingerprint of people who could not pass the screen and found the trucks that do not screen. The trailer that burned on I-75 near Chattanooga was caught on camera. The bigger story is the delivery truck on your street, driven by somebody an officer would have ordered off the road, hauling your packages through a loophole.

Fixing it does not take a new database or a new piece of technology. It takes deciding that the prohibition follows the person, all the way down, no matter how small the truck or how short the trip.

The post The Driver remains the box truck’s Achilles heel appeared first on FreightWaves.

The event, hosted by Reliance Partners and Borderless Coverage, brought together more than 500 of the industry’s leading voices as U.S.-Mexico freight continues to face unprecedented regulatory and operational challenges.

Opening the conference, Jerry Maldonado, chairman of the Laredo Motor Carriers Association, highlighted the organization’s 10th anniversary and emphasized Laredo’s role as the leading inland port in North America.

“Laredo is the No. 1 inland port in the northern hemisphere,” Maldonado said, noting that freight transportation companies operating through the border city are directly affected by ongoing policy debates surrounding trade, transportation and logistics. 

He also pointed to uncertainty surrounding upcoming USMCA negotiations but expressed confidence that the cross-border trade relationship would remain strong.

“We are very blessed as the [Laredo Motor Carriers Association] to have built strong relationships at a local level, at a state level, and at a federal level,” Maldonado said. “What does that mean for you? What does that mean for everyone here? Anything that you do that has to do with international trade, with logistics, with transportation, and you are here in Laredo, your load, your trailers, your customers, freight, goes through Laredo, it affects you.”

Mark Vickers, executive vice president of international logistics at Reliance Partners and founder of Borderless Coverage, said the conference was created to help industry stakeholders adapt to rapidly changing conditions in cross-border transportation.

“We modernize to make money,” Vickers said. “We want everybody to leave today super engaged on a number of topics.”

Among those topics were the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II ruling, carrier-vetting requirements, cargo security, insurance trends and preparations for a potential USMCA 2.0 framework. 

Vickers also pointed to long-term supply chain shifts resulting from the pandemic, including increased freight flows through Mexico and the Port of Manzanillo.

“There’s a number of geopolitical events that have kind of changed everything for us, and a lot of these changes are still from COVID, where the port congestion in Los Angeles was mitigated by U.S. companies bringing their Chinese freight through the Port of Manzanillo and trucking that up through Laredo to hit the U.S. market,” Vickers said. “That supply chain has stayed and that’s changed the way U.S. companies look at risk in Mexico.”

Supreme Court’s Montgomery ruling reshapes broker liability landscape

One of the most closely watched discussions of the day focused on the Supreme Court’s Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II decision and its implications for freight brokers.

The panel, moderated by Thom Albrecht, chief financial and revenue officer at Reliance Partners, featured Jamie Cannon, senior vice president of logistics services at Reliance Partners, and Luca Winters, vice president for U.S.-Mexico cross-border logistics at Kuehne + Nagel.

Panelists said the ruling is already prompting insurance underwriters, brokers and shippers to reevaluate carrier-selection practices and liability exposure.

Cannon said insurers are scrutinizing broker-carrier agreements, standard operating procedures and carrier-vetting processes more closely than ever before.

“They’re looking at broker-carrier agreements. They’re looking at standard operating procedures for carrier vetting. They’re looking at what companies you’re using and whether you’re actually utilizing those systems,” Cannon said.

Winters said the decision elevates “reasonable care” from a compliance concept to a core business function.

“No longer are we in a position to say, as freight brokers, ‘I’ve done my minimum due diligence,’” Winters said. “Now we’re all going to have to become experts in how to mitigate risk.”

Panelists predicted that carrier-vetting practices will become increasingly standardized and technology-driven, with brokers expected to document decisions more thoroughly and demonstrate consistent adherence to internal procedures.

Cannon noted that underwriters are increasingly focused on documentation and consistency.

“Come up with a really good plan, document it, don’t deviate from it,” he said.

The discussion also touched on the growing role of technology, artificial intelligence and third-party vetting platforms as brokers attempt to navigate heightened legal exposure and mounting shipper expectations. 

Panelists suggested that larger brokers with sophisticated compliance and vetting programs may gain market share as customers increasingly prioritize risk management.

Related: The Supreme Court Just Stripped Brokers of Their Biggest Legal Shield

Mexico carrier vetting moves to center stage

Another major panel focused on carrier vetting in Mexico, an issue that many participants said has become one of the most important risk-management tools in cross-border transportation.

Moderated by Carlos Sesma, senior partner at Sesma Sesma & McNeese, the panel featured Colton Sadler, chief legal officer at Steam Logistics, and Logan Pearce, head of claims and recoveries at Anova Marine Insurance.

Panelists said cargo theft in Mexico continues to evolve, with organized criminals increasingly relying on fraud, identity theft and digital impersonation schemes rather than traditional hijackings.

“We also have what we could say now is digital theft,” Sesma said. “Companies come into load boards, put their information up and start getting loads, and you never see your loads again.”

According to the panel, customers are no longer willing to accept traditional contractual language that shifts all responsibility once freight crosses the border. Instead, shippers increasingly expect brokers and logistics providers to demonstrate robust carrier-vetting programs and risk-management controls.

Sesma described carrier vetting as “the single most powerful risk management tool” available to companies moving freight between the U.S. and Mexico. Vetting can help mitigate operational, legal, compliance and cargo-loss risks while providing documentation that may prove critical during litigation or insurance claims, he said.

Sadler said carrier vetting in Mexico historically has been more difficult because of limited technology and fragmented data sources compared with the U.S.

“The biggest difference between vetting a U.S. carrier and a Mexican carrier is the technology available,” Sadler said. “Mexico’s a little bit behind with the U.S. on the technology side, but that’s changing.”

He also said that the Montgomery decision did not create new risks as much as it removed a legal defense that brokers had relied upon for years.

“The liability was always out there,” Sadler said. “What Montgomery did is we lost a defense.”

Pearce urged brokers, carriers and logistics providers to understand the specifics of their insurance coverage before losses occur, warning that many companies mistakenly assume cargo insurance will automatically cover every scenario.

“Know your coverage,” Pearce said. “Don’t just assume your insurance is going to handle it.”

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The progress on heat safety was made possible by vigilant enforcement of the 2023 national contract with UPS (NYSE: UPS), which has also resulted in workers winning many other grievance filings,  O’Brien told rank-and-file members in a video message posted on social media. One of the hard-fought additions in the contract is the requirement for a first-ever standing arbitrator who can quickly rule on worker grievances, such as back pay.

The Teamsters chief said the arbitrator has been critical to faster resolution of union grievances and hundreds of millions of dollars in awards to workers.

UPS in October agreed to modify 5,000 delivery vehicles in hot zones with air conditioning systems after the Teamsters publicly called out the company for dragging its feet on commitments to purchase or retrofit 28,000 sprinter vans and package cars with in-cab air conditioning by the summer of 2027 to protect drivers from excessive heat conditions.

The first 2,000 retrofitted vehicles were delivered, as required, by June 1, O’Brien said. The rollout of the remaining 3,000 vehicles is supposed to be finished by June 1, 2027.

The October agreement also requires the freight transportation company to upgrade 100 package cars with air conditioning vented into the cargo compartment. Teamsters officials are currently evaluating the effectiveness of ventilating cargo compartments with retrofitted air ducts. 

“Air circulation in the back is key because without air circulation back here, it’s a sauna. We’re pretty damn excited about it. I’ve been around this company for damn near 40 years. I never thought I would see the day that we had air conditioning in the vehicle,” said Karla Schumann, the Teamsters western region vice president and an officer in Local 104 in Arizona, while standing in a test vehicle. 

O’Brien told members that “UPS is being held accountable to make sure they deliver on every single heat protection that we won at the table,” including installation of heat shields between the cab and exhaust vents.

And Teamsters members need to continue enforcing the contract to the letter in all areas, O’Brien argued, because UPS will look for every opportunity to violate the terms and save money.

“UPS is still just another giant corporation. At the end of the day, Carol Tomé  and UPS executives care more about their stock price than they care about you,” the Teamsters chief said.

In early April, the Teamsters pressure forced UPS to limit voluntary buyouts for drivers to 7,500 positions after the company offered $150,000 severance packages to 105,000 long-haul truck and local delivery drivers as part of a network downsizing and cost initiative. UPS also agreed not to unilaterally make such offers again. About 3,000 drivers accepted far-less lucrative buyout terms last fall. UPS never publicly stated how many driver positions it hoped to eliminate under the second buyout program, but observers expected a higher target than 7,500 to meet UPS’s financial goals.

The Teamsters failed in court to block this year’s voluntary separation program, but continued to challenge UPS through the national master contract’s grievance procedures. The union alleged the buyouts violated the contract because UPS directly dealt with workers over job status, something it says must be negotiated, and undermined seniority rights. The union feared UPS would “cherry pick” who might be eligible for early retirement.

“It’s a powerful reminder that we must never take UPS at face value. We must never trust what UPS is telling us unless they’re showing up and sitting down at the table with our members,” O’Brien said about the success in enforcing the contract.

O’Brien said the Teamsters has shipped more than 100,000 heat thermometers to drivers nationwide to track heat conditions in their vehicles and enable them to report violations of mandatory heat protections. 

Members are routinely filing grievances with UPS on a range of workplace issues, such as forced overtime, overtime pay, rest periods, management working regular routes, exhaustion and back pay, the Teamsters president said.

The presence of a permanent arbitrator has resulted in grievances being resolved in weeks rather than dragging on for years and in hundreds of millions of dollars being returned to UPS Teamsters, he said.

“Keep filing grievances. Talk to your stewards. Meet with your business agent. Do not let 9-to-5 violations or paycheck errors fly under the radar. Do your part to hold UPS accountable and continue to enforce our strong contract,” O’Brien urged.

Teamsters convention

O’Brien’s social media post coincides with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters national convention in Las Vegas, which starts on Sunday. The conventions happen every five years. O’Brien plans to run for re-election as president, with voting beginning in October.

The platform for Teamsters Mobilize, which bills itself as a grassroots organization of Teamsters activists that aims to fight corporate power and expose corrupt Teamsters leadership, rejects O’Brien’s characterization of the 2023 UPS contract as a “historic” win for workers. 

The hardline group calls the UPS contract, which is widely considered as delivering some of the best benefits for workers anywhere in the country, as weak. After leading a “vote no” campaign, it remains upset that a part-time base wage of $25 per hour was not included in the contract.

Its convention platform includes an end to part-time job classification at UPS and shorter contracts with a three-year maximum. 

The activists’ manifesto says, “We reject the myth that workers and employers can exist together harmoniously, and believe that our unions should be fighting tooth and nail for our interests against employers. … We will expose and oppose collaboration between Teamsters leadership and our employers, as well as the rest of the ruling class (including not just the CEOs, but the government, Wall Street, and corporate media), whose riches come dripping from the sweat and blood of the working class.” 

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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“Everything was manual at that time,” Boppana told FreightWaves in an interview at Motive’s Vision 26 event.

Today, Boppana serves as chief information officer for the Bennett Family of Companies, overseeing a fleet of approximately 4,500 pieces of equipment — about 3,600 on the trucking side alone, including its drayage division. The company has an ambitious three-year roadmap to migrate its legacy systems into an artificial intelligence-powered future. His journey and Bennett’s strategy offer insights into how large carriers are modernizing without losing operational footing.

From Mail-In Logs to Electronic Compliance

Bennett’s transformation accelerated with the 2017 federal mandate for electronic logging devices. The company adopted Motive as its ELD provider, making it one of the platform’s early adopters.

The shift was not seamless. Bennett relies heavily on owner-operators, who initially resisted devices that track both their time and loads.

“When you’re talking about putting ELDs in their trucks, they’re not too happy about it initially,” Boppana said. “There was a lot of resentment. They don’t want ELDs, they don’t want anything tracking their trucks.”

The regulation forced adoption, but effective change management was essential. Today, Bennett operates at roughly 90 percent ELD compliance, with the remaining 10 percent on paper logs for equipment qualifying for exemptions due to age.

“If you think about it, it was really a blessing for large fleets like us to go from paper-based logs to electronic logs,” Boppana said. “Now we can’t even think of it as automation, but at that time it was huge.”

Dash Cams: The Hearts-and-Minds Campaign

ELD adoption came with the force of regulation. Dash cam adoption required a different approach — more carrot than stick. Boppana called it the most challenging change-management effort of his career.

Unlike ELDs, dash cams were not mandated. “It wasn’t regulated — it’s not a regulation,” he said. “There’s an option there; owner-operators can even say no to it because of the business model.”

Bennett used a “hearts-and-minds, marketing-style approach.” The central pitch: video evidence would enable faster exoneration for drivers not at fault in accidents.

“If you have a dash cam, we have visibility of what’s going on,” Boppana said. “We can actually exonerate you faster. That was one of the big selling points.”

The company covered all hardware and subscription costs, shared incident reports up to the CEO level and made dash cams mandatory for newly onboarded drivers. Transitioning the existing fleet took nearly a year.

Safety Scores, Insurance and Customer Trust

Investments in safety technology deliver returns beyond regulatory compliance. Shippers and customers evaluate carriers in part on their Compliance, Safety, Accountability scores.

“They look at our CSA scores — are we a safe carrier or not? Because that directly affects whether their commodity gets delivered safely and on time,” Boppana said. “The safer we are, the fewer incidents, the better our chances of getting more business.”

Bennett also leverages its safety posture to help manage insurance costs. The company provides coverage to its owner-operators. Lower claims translate to lower premiums for drivers as well.

“If we’re not paying as many claims, our insurance rates stay lower, which means driver premiums stay lower too,” Boppana said. “It’s a twofold win-win.”

Modernizing the Foundation

Like many large truckload carriers, Bennett still runs older core systems — what Boppana refers to as “legacy software.” Rather than exposing the AS/400 system directly to field employees and agents, the company built a modern Java application layer on top of it more than two decades ago.

“That allows us to more easily leverage new technologies like AI agents because the middle layer is still modern,” he said.

Bennett is now in the midst of a roughly three-year effort to migrate components off the AS/400 and into an AI-powered transportation management system. Motive data feeds directly into the safety module, with plans to expand visibility and coaching capabilities to operations teams and agents.

“What we’re trying to do is give operations that visibility and bring them into the coaching process — not just rely on the safety team, but expand coaching capabilities across operations and even to our agents,” Boppana said.

For Bennett, dash cams and telematics represent one piece of a broader modernization strategy. The company is integrating advanced capabilities from partners like Motive into its evolving tech stack. This modular approach allows Bennett to adopt the latest technology without having to build every solution in-house, as large fleets more commonly did in years past.

The post Bennett CIO on 24 years of trucking tech transformation appeared first on FreightWaves.

The idea is simple. Before you drive the truck, walk around it, look at it, check the brakes, tires, lights, coupling device, mirrors, and steering, and write down what you find. If something is wrong, you report it. The carrier fixes it before the truck moves. If nothing is wrong, you certify the truck is safe and you go to work. After the trip, you do it again and report anything that developed during the day. The next driver reviews the previous report, verifies that any reported defects were repaired, and the cycle continues.

That is what the regulation says. What happens on the ground at most carriers, including some carriers that consider themselves safety leaders, is different. The driver climbs into the cab, opens the ELD or the fleet management app, scrolls to the DVIR screen, taps the “no defects” button, signs it electronically, and starts driving. Total time: 30 seconds. Total inspection: none. The DVIR exists. It is completed. It is filed. It is also fiction.

Why the process breaks down

A proper pre-trip inspection on a tractor-trailer combination takes 15 to 20 minutes for a driver who knows what to look at. That is 15 to 20 minutes of unpaid time for most drivers under the current HOS structure, since the driver does not go on duty until the pre-trip is complete but the clock starts when the inspection begins. For a driver paid by the mile, those 20 minutes represent zero revenue. For a driver under pressure from dispatch to make a pickup window, those 20 minutes represent the difference between making the load and missing it. The economic incentive to skip the inspection is built into the compensation structure, and telling drivers to do it anyway without addressing the incentive is a training failure that repeats itself every morning in every truck yard in the country.

Dispatch culture makes it worse. A fleet that tells its drivers to complete thorough pre-trips but also tells its dispatchers to get trucks moving by 6 a.m. has created a conflict it has not resolved. The driver who reports a defect and delays departure is the driver who gets a phone call from dispatch asking why the truck is not moving. After that phone call happens two or three times, the driver stops reporting defects. The defect does not go away. The report does. The truck goes out on the road with a bad glad-hand seal, a leaking air line, a cracked mirror, or a tire at 60 psi that should be at 100, and the DVIR says everything is fine.

Training is the other failure point. A pre-trip inspection is a skill. It requires knowledge of what the components look like when they are functioning correctly, so the driver can recognize when they are not. It requires knowing what to listen for in an air brake test, what to feel for in a steering check, and what to look for in a suspension walk-around. Most CDL training programs teach a pre-trip as a memorized sequence for the skills test and never revisit it. Most carrier onboarding programs mention it in orientation and never reinforce it. The driver who was taught to pass the test is not the same driver who knows how to find a cracked brake drum at 5 a.m. in a dimly lit yard.

What it looks like in discovery

The litigation value of the DVIR depends entirely on whether it is real. A DVIR that shows a defect reported by the driver, followed by a work order showing the defect was repaired, followed by a certification that the repair was completed before the next trip, is evidence that the carrier’s system works. It is powerful evidence. It shows the driver looked, the carrier listened, and the truck was fixed. That is the kind of documentation that wins cases.

A DVIR that shows no defects reported for 60 or 90 consecutive days on a truck that accumulated multiple roadside violations during the same period is the opposite. The plaintiff’s expert will line up the DVIRs next to the roadside inspection reports and ask a simple question: if the driver inspected this truck every morning and found nothing wrong, and the trooper found four brake defects on March 14, and the driver reported no defects on March 13, who was wrong? The answer the jury hears is that the driver never looked.

It gets worse if the carrier has a pattern. When the plaintiff’s attorney pulls DVIRs across the fleet, not just the truck in the crash, and finds that 95 percent of all DVIRs fleet-wide report no defects, the argument shifts from one negligent driver to a systemic failure. The carrier did not train its drivers to inspect. Or it trained them and did not enforce it. Or it enforced it and created a culture where reporting defects was punished by dispatch pressure. Whichever version the evidence supports, the result is the same. The DVIR program was not functioning, and the carrier knew or should have known because the data was in its own system. If you have a fleet with 500k to 1 million miles and you have no defect DVIRs, you don’t have a DVIR communication program; you have a pencil-whipping checklist. 

Making it real

The fix is not complicated, but it requires commitment. Paid pre-trip time, separate from the driving clock, removes the economic penalty. A defect reporting process that does not result in dispatch pushback removes the cultural penalty. A training program that teaches drivers what a cracked brake drum looks like, what a leaking hub seal sounds like, and what a loose kingpin feels like at the fifth wheel removes the knowledge gap. Random spot-checks by a maintenance supervisor who walks the yard and compares what the DVIR says against what the truck looks like removes the accountability gap.

Some fleets are using technology to close the gap. Photo-verified DVIRs that require the driver to take a picture of each inspection point, with time and location stamping, create a record that is harder to fabricate than a checkbox. Video walk-around systems that record the entire pre-trip give the carrier a visual record that matches or contradicts the written report. Neither of these is required by regulation. Both of them, in a post-crash litigation environment where the plaintiff’s attorney will ask whether the carrier’s pre-trip process was real, are worth more than the cost of the subscription. Oftentimes in litigation, it isn’t about whether you were compliant; it’s what the rest of your reasonable industry peers are doing and why you weren’t doing it as well. It’s about defensibility and defensible programs and systems and workflows. This is the difference between having to make someone whole if you cause a crash vs making someone rich after you cause a crash. It’s very seldom about who was at fault for the actual event itself. It’s about the systems, programs, policies, and workflows, and how or if you managed them effectively and consistently. 

The carrier that takes DVIRs seriously is building a litigation defense every single day as its drivers complete honest inspections. The carrier that treats DVIRs as a formality is building a plaintiff’s case every single day that its drivers check a box and drive. The regulation is identical for both. The outcome in court is not.

The post The DVIR could be the maintenance program key you’re missing appeared first on FreightWaves.

Relay Payments, which has touted its expanding network of fuel retailers that accept its services as well as maintenance outlets, has brought on Platform Science as a new channel for its customers to pay merchants for a variety of services.

Platform Science is a fast-growing technology offering that integrates a wide variety of information streams coming off a truck, including ELDs and other telematics. 

Emily Neuman, executive vice president at Relay, told FreightWaves the outward most visible sign of how it would wed the two companies would be the ability of a truck driver to use the Platform Science-driven platform in the cab to make payments for fuel or other services.

The basic system for Relay Payments is that if a truck driver pulls into a fuel station or maintenance outlet that has agreed to accept payment from Relay, the user will be supplied a code through the Relay Payments app that will serve as something akin to a digital permission slip that allows the driver to pay for fuel, maintenance or other services like lumpers.

Having Relay Payments’ systems integrated into an ELD or TMS is not new, Neuman said. The number of TMS systems that have partnered with Relay Payments is more than 80, she said. That figure for ELDs is more than 300.

“The unique thing about Platform Science is that if you’re a driver using them, instead of maybe pulling out your own personal mobile phone that has Relay on it, your Platform Science tablet with our integration can also have the app on it,” Neuman said. “The driver can already be signed into the Relay app through the single signon that Platform Science has as part of their product.”

Codes instead of a swipe

In this era of fighting fraud, which at present seems to be the issue that is drawing a huge amount of focus, what the company calls the Relay Code is at the heart of its anti-fraud offerings and was featured in both the prepared statement released by the companies and by Neuman.

The digital code provided to Relay Payments users eliminates the need for a card swipe at a fuel dispenser, which has long been one of the biggest areas for fraudsters trying to cash in. In that sense, there is not much difference between what Relay has done with customers using its services via a phone-based mobile app and what will occur with Platform Science.

But putting multiple services on one platform, which is what Platform Science attempts to do, is a core part of the agreement between the two companies. 

“Relay is focused on removing friction from the driver experience while giving fleets greater visibility and control over their operations,” Ryan Droege, CEO of Relay Payments, said in the prepared statement. “By integrating directly with Platform Science, we’re making it easier than ever for fleets to deploy secure, modern payment solutions that drivers actually want to use.”

Platform Science is a single signon platform, a step in reducing that friction that Droege mentioned. 

First-party fraud

Relay Pulse is an anti-fraud feature of the company’s offering, which Neuman said “prevents against first-party fraud.” That is the sort of theft that is coming from inside the house, when a driver or some other employee in the fuel procurement part of a trucking company uses that position to steal fuel or cash.

Skimming credit card information at a pump would be considered an example of third-party fraud, Neuman said.

Relay Pulse is part of the integration with Platform Science, Neuman said. The data coming off the truck using Platform Science can include such information as how much of the fuel tank is unfilled and is the driver sticking to company restrictions on those sorts of measurements, which are also tied into the fraud fight.

“With Relay Pulse, we’re checking additional data points that that Platform Science is giving us to determine whether that driver really should have a fuel code unlocked,” Neuman said.

And by doing it with Platform Science, the anti-fraud tools are getting used with a company that is servicing the large fleets that Relay Payments has long targeted, she said.

Given that signing up an ELD or TMS customer is not breaking new ground for Relay, the question was asked: why tout the Platform Science deal when others didn’t get that sort of treatment?

Needed to grow merchant base

One aspect, Neuman said, is that the growth of the network of merchants accepting Relay Payments, like the clean sweep of the biggest travel centers (Love’s, TA, Circle K and Pilot), can then open the door to have Relay “be able to handle fleets of all sizes.”

The next step needed after growing the merchant network, Neuman said, was “we had to go and build out our integrations.” Lumper payments were one of the first big markets for Relay, she said, and that helped give a starting point to further integrate with services like Platform Science and other TMS and ELD systems.

In the prepared statement, the companies quoted Harman Cheema, the CEO of Cheema FreightlInes LLC which has been using Relay Payments through Platform Science. 

“Fuel is one of our largest expenses, and fraud has always been a concern for our industry,” said HarmanCheema, CEO of Cheema Freightlines LLC. “With Relay and Platform Science now integrated, our 400+drivers have a much simpler experience, and Relay Pulse gives us confidence that every transaction is verified against real-time data. It’s been a meaningful step forward for both efficiency and security.”

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The post Relay Payments snags its latest partner: Platform Science appeared first on FreightWaves.

Mike Baudendistel, head of intermodal solutions at FreightWaves SONAR, broke down the latest weekly rail traffic numbers from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) for the week ending June 6. 

Baudendistel highlighted that rail traffic has seen robust momentum across sectors, with rail carload traffic up 2.5% and rail intermodal traffic surging 8% year-over-year on a four-week rolling average. 

He emphasized that growth in rail carloads is historically a highly reliable, positive indicator that the broader industrial economy is expanding.

TMS evolution shifts toward accessible automation

PCS Software CEO Mark Hill joined the show to discuss how transportation management systems are being reborn through a new wave of technologies. 

Hill noted that the company has heavily invested in rearchitecting its platform with advanced AI capabilities, such as their award-winning Cortex system, to help carriers and asset-based brokers streamline dispatch and back-office operations. 

He emphasized that these powerful automation tools are no longer reserved for industry giants; modern accessibility allows small and mid-sized companies to compete on a level playing field.

Regulatory vetting shortfalls raise carrier safety concerns

Jim Mullen, president of the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) and former acting administrator of the FMCSA, highlighted the safety risks created by staffing shortages at federal safety agencies. 

A recently released TCA white paper calls on Congress to address the math putting lives at risk, pointing out that only 1,100 federal employees are currently tasked with overseeing nearly 8 million regulated entities. 

Mullen advocated for a much more robust carrier vetting process at the outset, stating that obtaining operating authority should require more than simply having “$300 and a truck.”

Keep up with the latest news on FreightWaves Today

FreightWaves Today livestreams weekdays at noon ET at http://tv.freightwaves.com/.

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These are symptoms of a systemic transition that FMCSA implemented and that the medical examiner community has not fully adopted, and most don’t know about. This same issue happened with Carriers and Clearinghouse. Half the carriers we deal with don’t realize Clearinghouse is a “thing and it’s existed for 6 years. The change is significant, shifting a critical compliance burden from the driver to the physician in a way that many certified medical examiners do not yet fully understand.

What changed

Under the previous system, a commercial driver who completed a DOT physical received a Medical Examiner’s Certificate (and the long form) directly from the physician. The driver was then responsible for providing that certificate to the state driver licensing agency to self-certify. The state would update the driver’s record to reflect the current medical certification, and the Motor Vehicle Record would show the driver as medically qualified. The process depended on the driver taking the certificate to the state, and if the driver forgot or delayed, the state record would not reflect the current medical status. Carriers then had to verify the self-certification and medical certification status through an MVR pull. 

Under National Registry 2, that workflow changed. The certified medical examiner is now required to electronically transmit the results of the DOT physical directly to FMCSA through the National Registry system. FMCSA then transmits the medical certification data to the appropriate state driver licensing agency. The state automatically updates the driver’s record based on data it receives from the FMCSA. The driver no longer needs to hand-carry the certificate to the DMV. The physician uploads it, FMCSA routes it, and the state records it. The process is cleaner on paper and eliminates the compliance gap that existed when drivers failed to submit their own certificates. But it only works if the physician completes the upload.

Where the process is breaking

The failure point is at the first step. Not all certified medical examiners, including physicians, chiropractors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and doctors of osteopathic medicine, are aware that the upload responsibility has shifted to them. Many are still handing the driver the paper certificate and considering the encounter complete. The driver walks out with a valid medical certificate in hand, believes the process is complete, and has no reason to suspect that the electronic transmission to the FMCSA did not occur. Weeks or months later, the state sends a notice that no current medical certification is on file, and the CDL will be downgraded if the issue is not resolved.

The problem is compounded by the variety of medical professionals who perform DOT physicals. A hospital-affiliated occupational health clinic with dedicated EHR integration may have built the FMCSA upload into its standard workflow. A solo-practice chiropractor performing DOT physicals on the side may not know the upload exists. A nurse practitioner at a walk-in clinic may know the requirement but lack access to the National Registry portal, or may not have been trained to use it. The certification to perform DOT physicals requires completing a training program and passing an examination, but training in the administrative upload process is not always part of that curriculum, and the administrative infrastructure varies widely across practice settings.

The resulting compliance gap is invisible to the driver and the carrier until the state sends the downgrade notice. The driver has the paper certificate. The carrier has a copy in the driver qualification file. The annual MVR pull, if the carrier runs one, may not reflect the problem until the state has already initiated the downgrade. At that point, the carrier has a driver who is technically disqualified from operating a commercial motor vehicle, and every mile that driver drove between the failed upload and the downgrade notice is a mile the carrier’s insurance may not cover.

What drivers need to do

A driver who completes a DOT physical should not leave the examiner’s office until confirming that the physician is aware of and intends to complete the electronic upload to the FMCSA through the National Registry portal. That is not a confrontational question. It is a compliance question, and any certified medical examiner who is up to date on the requirements will understand it. If the physician is not familiar with the upload requirement, the driver needs to find a different examiner, because a certificate not transmitted electronically is one the state will never see.

After the exam, the driver should check with their state licensing agency to see if the results do not appear within a reasonable period. If the results do not appear within a reasonable period, the driver should contact the examiner’s office and request that the upload be completed again. Waiting for the state to send a downgrade notice is waiting too long. By the time that letter arrives, the driver’s MVR already shows a lapsed medical certification, and any carrier that checked the MVR during that window would see a driver who appears disqualified.

What carriers need to do

The carrier’s obligation under Part 391 is to ensure that every driver in the fleet holds a current, valid medical certificate and that the driver qualification file contains a copy. Under National Registry 2, that obligation now includes verifying that the physician’s upload actually reached the state. The DQ file may show a valid paper certificate dated last month. The state MVR may show no current medical certification on file because the physician never uploaded it. Those two records contradict each other, and in a post-crash litigation environment, a plaintiff’s attorney will use that contradiction to argue that the carrier either did not check or did not care.

The fix is an MVR check within 30 days of every DOT physical. Not the annual pull that most carriers run as a regulatory minimum, but a targeted pull specifically to confirm that the new medical certification appears on the state record. If it does not, the carrier contacts the physician’s office and demands that the upload be completed before the driver’s next dispatch. Carriers should also consider adding a line to their onboarding and recertification processes that requires the driver to confirm the examining physician’s name and National Registry number, so the carrier has a direct point of contact if the upload fails.

What physicians need to understand

The certified medical examiner who performs a DOT physical and does not upload the results to FMCSA has not completed the examination. The regulatory process does not end when the physician signs the certificate and hands it to the driver. It ends when the electronic transmission reaches the FMCSA, which then transmits the data to the state. A physician who performs DOT physicals under National Registry certification and fails to complete the upload is putting the driver’s CDL at risk, exposing the driver to a potential downgrade, and creating a compliance gap that the driver and the carrier may not discover until the damage is done.

The upload isn’t optional; it’s a federal requirement tied to the physician’s certification with the National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners. A physician who consistently fails to complete uploads risks referral to FMCSA for review of their National Registry certification. More immediately, the physician risks a phone call from a very unhappy commercial driver whose CDL was downgraded because the physician did not complete the paperwork, followed by a call from the carrier’s safety director, and, in some cases, a call from regulators. Those calls are avoidable by completing the five-minute electronic upload required by the regulation.

The system works when everyone in the chain does their part. The driver gets the physical. The physician uploads the results. FMCSA routes the data. The state updates the record. The carrier pulls the MVR and confirms the cycle is complete. When any link in that chain fails, the driver is the one who pays, and the driver is the one with the least ability to fix it. That is why this matters. A commercial driver’s livelihood depends on a medical certification that a physician may not know they are supposed to transmit, through a system the physician may not know how to use, to an agency that will downgrade the license without asking whether the failure was the driver’s fault. The process has changed. The industry needs to catch up.

The post The medical certification gap is putting CDLs at risk appeared first on FreightWaves.

Drivers will be able to initiate an update, turn off the truck, lock it and leave. This can happen when heading home for the night or stepping away during a break. The truck completes the update in the background.

“We are always striving to maximize our customers’ uptime, and this is an important milestone,” said Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America. “Drivers will be able to start a software update, lock the truck and walk away, whether that’s for a break or at the end of the day, and return to an updated vehicle. It’s a simpler way for fleets to keep trucks current without interrupting operations.”

The new capability is the latest evolution in Volvo’s remote programming. While passenger cars are more familiar with this type of functionality, the greater impact is in trucking, where vehicles often operate eight to 11 hours a day.

“Any time saved directly translates into increased productivity for our customers,” Voorhoeve said.

From Manual Calls to Automated Deployment

The unattended update feature is eight years in the making for Volvo’s remote programming. The original system required fleets to call and request software packages, which were sent to trucks for drivers to install. The process was complicated by 30-day expiration windows. The challenge grows significantly for fleets managing hundreds or thousands of vehicles.

“It’s not hard to call and ask for an update, but it’s a very easy task to postpone,” said Madeline Sullivan of Volvo Trucks North America. “And then if you’ve got 1,000 trucks, I mean, it gets complicated with, well, which ones of my trucks are up to date, which ones aren’t?”

Earlier this year, Volvo introduced a deployment engine that automatically pushes updates to opted-in trucks, similar to how smartphones receive software. The result: more than 80 percent of connected Volvo trucks now run the latest software, and unplanned stops have dropped 24 percent. In May alone, Volvo completed more than 18,000 over-the-air updates, with systems capable of handling up to 10,000 per day.

Expanded ECU Support, Recall Success and Future Upgrades

The unattended feature is made possible by Volvo’s new connected 24-volt platform. Legacy trucks could update only three electronic control units over the air: the engine, transmission and aftertreatment. The new platform enables updates to nearly every ECU on the vehicle.

The expanded capability has already proved its value during recalls. In those cases, Volvo can remotely deactivate a feature and later deploy the fix over the air with no dealer visit required.

The new unattended option gives drivers more flexibility. Those living in their trucks can still run updates with the vehicle on during breaks. Drivers parking at depots can initiate updates and head home.

“If I can do it on my break, that’s great. If I didn’t get to it on my break, now I can still do it at the end of the day when I go home,” Sullivan said. “It’s just trying to bring in more options of when they can do these updates.”

Looking ahead, the expanded connectivity could open the door for fleets to purchase performance upgrades. In the near future, adjustments such as torque changes could be made remotely. This continues to bridge the gap between commercial trucking and consumer electronics expectations for software updates.

The post Volvo Trucks unattended over-the-air updates launching later this year appeared first on FreightWaves.

Analysts largely looked past the news, too.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has openly provided in-bound LTL services in the U.S. for over a year, mirroring an operation it has run in Europe for several years. The e-commerce company’s expanded U.S. service appears to include an asset-light model at roughly 30 terminals across its package-delivery network, which primarily moves parcels weighing less than five pounds. However, the offering in its current form is unlikely to challenge traditional incumbents, which specialize in transporting heavy pallets with stringent service requirements.

Richa Harnain, equity research analyst at Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB), told investors in a Wednesday note that Amazon’s LTL service is more akin to what brokers offer.

“We don’t think AMZN’s LTL footprint is enough to become a more formidable full-fledged nationwide asset-based operator,” Harnain said. “We also acknowledge the space has typically bounced back strongly following other AMZN-related knee jerk negative reactions.”

Amazon certainly has the pocketbook to compete and dominate in the space. But the market is relatively small (roughly $60 billion) and an asset-light model is typically not the path to industry-leading margins and returns. The company could be attempting a very-targeted approach in select markets to utilize latent capacity in the network. It could also be planning to compete at the less-service-sensitive end of the LTL market.

Jason Seidl, an analyst at TD Cowen, said Amazon’s use of an intermodal container pool likely “suggests the offering will primarily compete with the economy (3-4 day) sub-segment of the LTL market.” He said Amazon could take some market share “on the margins” from legacy carriers “without driving en-masse share exodus.”

Amazon’s latest LTL foray

Before the market opened Wednesday, Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS) announced LTL service for “all businesses” to “any type of destination” in major U.S. markets. The offering is targeting “businesses of all sizes,” with shipment sizes likely ranging from one to six pallets (150 to 15,000 pounds).

Customers can arrange next-day live pickup and same-day pickup through drop-trailer service. Volume shippers are eligible for recurring daily pickups. Amazon offers EDI interfacing for ordering, real-time tracking and invoicing.

An Amazon Freight LTL coverage map shows decent density in the Eastern U.S., with a few select metros in the West. (Most national carrier networks have 200 to 300 service centers, serving nearly all U.S. zip codes.)

Amazon Freight had previously been offering an inbound-only LTL model with palletized freight being broken up at one of the company’s facilities and then delivered to final destinations (mostly consumer households) through its package-delivery network. However, Amazon was rumored to be approaching shippers earlier this year to gauge interest in a more traditional LTL offering in select markets, where loaded pallets would remain intact through transfer.

The company touted positive feedback from customers in its Wednesday announcement as the reason for the full rollout, noting that tens of thousands of sellers have been shipping freight by pallet across its network since 2019.

“The feedback from Amazon selling partners using our LTL service was clear: the technology, visibility, and reliability were exactly what they needed—and they wanted to use it more broadly,” said Jim Ruiz, director of Amazon Freight, in a news release explaining the company’s “cost-effective freight shipping.”

Ruiz elaborated in a separate statement to FreightWaves: “For years, customers told us their LTL freight never matched the reliability and visibility of their full-truckload shipments. We built an asset-backed LTL service that closes that gap—flexible same-day and next-day pickup, real-time shipment tracking from dock to door, and dedicated LTL-trained drivers.”

This new launch follows the company’s May update, announcing it unified and expanded its third-party logistics solutions. Operating under the ASCS brand, the service provides end-to-end freight transportation, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping.

Amazon Freight offers full truckload, LTL and intermodal service with a fleet of over 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers. Amazon Freight is part of ASCS.

LTL industry has high barriers to entry

The LTL market is mostly consolidated with less than a dozen true national carriers. The top-five companies historically account for a little more than half of the revenue.

The space has high barriers to entry. It takes a significant capital outlay to acquire and maintain a national network of cross-dock terminals and a large fleet with multiple truck and trailer types. It also requires heavy tech investments to create customer interfaces and to optimize linehaul and dock operations. Many carriers rely on veteran leadership to run a successful hub-and-spoke network.

For decades, legacy carriers have prioritized service by reinvesting in their networks to build a powerful flywheel effect. Targeted improvements in service lead to increased yields and enhanced margins, which ultimately produce the capital necessary for further service-centric network improvements.

A comprehensive annual shipper survey establishes carrier rankings across 28 distinct service metrics. The results are significant as they can impact how shippers allocate freight. An asset-light approach, using third-party carriers, typically means a carrier loses the ability to control service and ultimately pricing.

Morgan Stanley’s (NYSE: MS) Ravi Shanker was a dissenter on Wednesday, saying that even a third-party, asset-light LTL model could be a disruptor.

“While LTL likely represents only a small component of AMZN’s overall logistics footprint, we reiterate that AMZN has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to gain traction in transportation markets through a flexible and iterative operating model,” Shanker said. “As a result, we believe the Company may be able to capture meaningful market share even if they are unable to offer best-in-class service levels immediately. This could strike at the perceived ‘moat’ of real estate footprint and service that form the central pillar of the LTL thesis today.”

LTL competitive landscape is changing

While public carriers contend terminal counts—the true sign of industry capacity—haven’t expanded over the past decade, the competitive landscape has changed.

FedEx Freight (NYSE: FDXF), the nation’s largest LTL carrier, spun off from parent FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) earlier this month. It now has over 500 dedicated LTL sales reps looking to fill its 365-terminal network with freight.

Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) recently announced an upgrade to its LTL consolidation program, allowing shippers to combine inbound LTL shipments into full truckloads destined for one of its 42 regional distribution centers using a single national purchase order.

Knight-Swift Transportation (NYSE: KNX) entered the LTL arena in 2021 with the acquisition of AAA Cooper Transportation. The company has since expanded its footprint through the purchase of additional regional carriers and the organic addition of approximately 60 terminals, including sites formerly operated by the now-defunct Yellow Corp.

TFI International (NYSE: TFII) has aspirations of establishing a mostly pure-play LTL entity by spinning off its TL businesses into a separate publicly traded company. However, those plans have been pushed back as it works to improve U.S. LTL margins and grow market cap before proceeding with a corporate split.

In early 2025, Amazon was rumored to be pursuing Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ: ODFL), but management from that carrier said at the time it was not in talks to be acquired by Amazon.

Shares of AMZN closed Wednesday down 2.5% compared to the S&P 500, which was down 1.6%.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

• LTL general rate increases no longer an annual event
• ArcBest raises Q2 outlook for LTL, asset-light units
• Knight-Swift founder, executive chairman Kevin Knight retires

The post Analysts say Amazon won’t shake LTL market—yet appeared first on FreightWaves.

A recent SONAR Sitrep report found that nuclear civil case verdicts, runaway litigation and massive jury awards are no longer just occasional anomalies –they have ballooned into systemic existential risks threatening carrier profitability across the U.S.

Defined as civil jury awards exceeding $10 million, “nuclear verdicts” are disproportionately targeting the transportation sector. Market intelligence shows that roughly one in four auto accident trials resulting in a $10 million-plus verdict involves a commercial trucking carrier. 

Furthermore, trucking ranked third among all industries by nuclear verdict frequency in 2024. 

The litigation cost surge

Data tracked by Marathon Strategies highlights a record-setting surge in both the quantity and severity of these massive judgments:

• In 2024 alone, 135 nuclear verdicts totaling $31.3 billion were handed down across all industries –representing a 52% increase in cases and a staggering 116% jump in total value compared to 2023. 
• The trucking and automotive sectors absorbed $4.1 billion of that total across 15 major verdicts. 
• The median nuclear verdict reached $51 million in 2024, skyrocketing from $44 million in 2023 and just $21 million in 2020. 
• Whatsmore, “thermonuclear” verdicts exceeding $100 million surged by 81% in 2024 to 49 cases, with massive awards including a $160 million product liability judgment against Daimler Truck North America in Alabama. 

The real-world toll on operations

The financial shockwave is filtering down directly to carrier balance sheets through skyrocketing insurance premiums, which hit an all-time record of $0.102 per mile in 2024. 

According to data from the American Research Institute (ATRI), commercial vehicle liability premiums rose 18.6% from 2021 to 2024, outpacing consumer inflation by 5.4 percentage points. Over that same period, per-mile liability losses surged 33.1% –even as actual crash rates fell by 2.6%. 

To maintain the same level of safety coverage they held in 2021, 33% of fleets have been forced to buy extra policy layers as excess insurance costs climb. 

The top states leading the cost surge are Nevada ($8.4B), California ($6.9B), Pennsylvania ($3.4B), Texas ($3B) and New York ($2.1B). 

Protect your fleet with advanced market intelligence

In an era where plaintiff attorneys actively target commercial fleets as deep-pocketed defendants, navigating today’s trucking landscape requires more than just reactive safety policies. Knowing how, when and where litigation risks will drive up your operating costs is essential to maintaining profitability. 

Don’t let the next industry shift catch your logistics business off-guard. Sign up for SONAR today or request a demo here to unlock the full Nuclear Verdicts & the Trucking Profitability Crisis report and secure your competitive edge.

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The post SONAR Sitrep: How nuclear verdicts are reshaping carrier economics appeared first on FreightWaves.

What followed was one of the most expensive experiments in trucking insurance history, a $130 million collapse that put dangerous carriers on American highways for years before anyone with a badge or a regulatory mandate noticed a thing. The Biden administration’s FMCSA didn’t catch it. The Arizona Department of Insurance issued a consent order over missed phone calls. And tens of thousands of small carriers who never should have been on the road got insurance certificates, and kept rolling, long after the data said they shouldn’t have.

This is the story of the Mohave deal.

The Setup

In 2004, Knight-Swift quietly formed Mohave Transportation Insurance Company as an Arizona-domiciled captive insurer, NAIC CoCode 14349, domiciled at 2200 S. 75th Avenue in Phoenix. It sat on the shelf for years, used internally, until someone had a bigger idea.

By 2020, as the freight market entered its COVID-era explosion and a tsunami of new small carriers flooded into the industry, Knight-Swift initiated an insurance program for third-party carriers. In September 2021, they announced it publicly. Their own press release described it:

“An organization that brings together services essential to transportation carriers and includes insurance, equipment maintenance, fuel purchasing, and truck sales and rentals. Iron Truck Services provides affordable solutions to truckload carriers by leveraging the scale and infrastructure of the nation’s largest carrier, Knight-Swift.”  Knight-Swift press release, September 14, 2021 (BusinessWire)

The centerpiece, Iron Insurance, was writing commercial trucking policies on Chubb and Harco paper, with Mohave serving as the captive reinsurer, absorbing the risk. Harco is a Chubb subsidiary, making this exactly the Chubb/ACE paper arrangement that industry sources have described.

Distribution ran through the Independent Carrier Safety Association, a nonprofit formed in 2019. The mechanics were elegant on paper: join ICSA, install ICSA-approved in-cab event recorders, share your ELD data, submit to mandatory hair drug testing, and you qualified for affordable truck insurance through Mohave. Telematics for coverage. Safety compliance for a policy. The concept was sound. The execution was about to become a textbook case in what happens when volume overwhelms infrastructure.

The Boom

The timing was perfect for selling insurance to small trucking companies, and disastrous for the risk math behind it. In 2021 alone, 109,340 trucking companies opened for business, nearly triple the number that received authority in 2018. Most were single-truck operations, owner-operators who bought a truck during the freight boom because rates were high enough to make it look profitable.

FMCSA audits lagged catastrophically behind the surge. In 2021, only 45% of the 119,872 newly issued motor carrier authorities received the required safety audit. In 2022, only 44% of 108,019 new entrants were audited. That means over 100,000 new carriers entered the market during peak Mohave enrollment years without any formal federal safety review. Iron Insurance was writing policies on many of them.

The Biden Administration essentially allowed every barrier to the trucking industry to not only come down, but also to be replaced with the worst carriers possible. Insurers helped with bottom-dollar rates and no barriers to entry. 

The program’s own earnings filings from Q3 2022 showed it was working; Iron Insurance was generating a 96.6% revenue increase and $18.5 million in operating income. The program was printing money. The telematics data was there. Whether anyone was actually using it to manage the book in real time is a different question entirely.

Knight-Swift’s own SEC filings from this period describe the opportunity in language that, in retrospect, reads as a warning:

“Back in 2021, there was unprecedented growth in small fleets and there was a financial incentive and opportunity for large fleets to try to get extra revenue while utilizing their extensive footprint of maintenance shops and nationwide roadside networks. But a flood of new entrants, many with little experience in either trucking or owning a business, means a higher likelihood for accidents and claims.”  FreightWaves / Knight-Swift earnings analysis, January 2024

The Crash

The freight market turned in mid-2022. Spot rates collapsed. Small carriers who had entered the market with thin capitalization and no cushion suddenly couldn’t make their truck payments, couldn’t make their premium payments, and couldn’t generate the freight revenue to stay solvent. The same carriers who were Iron Insurance’s book started dying.

The first public acknowledgment came with Q1 2023 earnings, filed April 20, 2023. Knight-Swift’s own 8-K filing used language that should have triggered alarm across the regulatory apparatus:

“Overall, our Iron Insurance line of business produced a $22.8 million operating loss (or $0.11 per diluted share) during the first quarter of 2023, primarily due to increased frequency and unfavorable claim development during the quarter as well as insurance premium collection issues associated with small carriers who are struggling given the soft freight market conditions. We are continuing to execute our plan to improve the underwriting profitability of the insurance program, and we have decided to reduce our exposure to small carrier risk in the current market as we believe the extreme pressure small carriers are under is producing undesirable risk characteristics.”  Knight-Swift 8-K, Q1 2023 Earnings, April 20, 2023. SEC EDGAR

Premium collection issues. Carriers weren’t paying their premiums. They were still operating, still on the road, still hauling freight, still capable of causing fatal crashes, but not paying for the insurance that was supposed to cover those crashes. The telematics-for-coverage promise had inverted completely. The cameras were installed, but nobody was collecting the checks.

The Q1 2023 investor presentation, also filed with the SEC, was equally stark:

“Third-party insurance business posted $22.8M loss due to increased frequency and unfavorable claims development and revenue collectability challenges with small carriers. Growth trajectory expected to temporarily slow. Strategic Pivot on Third-Party Insurance, Temporarily reducing exposure to third-party insurance risk in an unusually difficult environment for small operators. Near-term headwind to revenue growth for this program, but the prudent move for our business at this point in the cycle.”   Knight-Swift Q1 2023 Earnings Presentation, Exhibit 99.2, April 20, 2023, SEC EDGAR

They said they were raising rates, tightening underwriting, and reducing exposure. It was too late. By Q2 2023, insurance losses were a 45-cent drag on full-year earnings guidance, totaling $38 million in the first half alone. By Q3, the losses were compounding. The Q3 2023 8-K filed October 19, 2023, is particularly telling:

“Our third-party insurance business operating loss for the current quarter increased slightly to $15.9 million (or $0.08 per diluted share) from a $15.0 million operating loss (or $0.07 per diluted share) in the second quarter of 2023. Our GAAP and non-GAAP results for the quarter included… the $22.0 million reduction in operating income in our Iron Truck insurance program.”   Knight-Swift 8-K, Q3 2023 Earnings, October 19, 2023, SEC EDGAR

In the same period, Knight-Swift issued a statement in an 8-K filing trying to reassure investors:

“It will take some time for these changes in the insurance business to fully materialize in the results, but we are making progress raising premiums and improving the quality of risk as we work to mitigate volatility.”  Knight-Swift 8-K filing, Q3 2023 SEC EDGAR

They were not making progress. Then came Q4.

A $71.7 million operating loss in a single quarter. The company began canceling policies and reduced the number of trucks under coverage by 75%. CFO Adam Miller said on the earnings call: “Because we have to give certain notice to the insureds before we can cancel the policy, there is this run-out period.” Knight-Swift reported operating losses in every quarter of 2023 as claims were more frequent and more severe than in any prior period. With losses persisting, executives determined the need to exit a model that the company previously hailed as a potential for growth.

By April 1, 2024, the program was dead. The Chubb and Harco paper stopped. Mohave stopped underwriting. Iron Insurance was over.

Total documented losses in 2023 alone: over $130 million.

The Regulatory Record

The story gets uncomfortable for the people who were supposed to be watching within the Biden Administration and the Buttigieg DOT. 

The Arizona Department of Insurance’s formal response to the Mohave Transportation Insurance Company’s conduct during this period was a consent order filed on October 19, 2023. Case number 23A-065-INS. NAIC CoCode 14349. The enforcement type: Penalty. The penalty amount: $1,000.

One thousand dollars. The underlying violation documented in the consent order: failing to return a claimant’s phone calls. The complaint was filed in November 2022, the same period during which the losses were accelerating, and carriers with unpaid premiums were still operating on the road.

BBB complaint records from the same period show carriers being canceled mid-policy over camera compliance disputes, with no communication from claims adjusters for months. One complainant documented going five months after a crash with only four actual conversations with a claims representative. Another had their DOT authority canceled, effectively being put out of business, over a dispute over a camera delivery.

On the federal side, FMCSA was focused elsewhere. The agency was working on AEB rulemaking. Each year, roughly twice as many trucking companies enter the industry as regulators can audit. That was the documented condition in 2021 and 2022 when Iron Insurance was at peak enrollment. FMCSA knew its new-entrant audit completion rate had dropped to 44-45%. The agency had published data showing new entrant crash rates nearly tripled, rising from 1.3% in the 2018 cohort to 3.5% by 2021. What it lacked was a mechanism to connect that deteriorating new-entrant safety profile to the insurance programs actively underwriting those same carriers.

No federal regulator reviewed the Iron Insurance book of business. No federal regulator cross-referenced the new-entrant crash rate data against the ICSA enrollment numbers. No federal regulator asked what happened to premium collection when the freight market turned. The $130 million loss was documented in public SEC filings through four consecutive quarters before the program was shut down. Washington never looked.

What THE TEA Data Shows

The insurance data, built from FMCSA’s own public licensing and insurance filing records, tells a story that regulators weren’t equipped to read in real time.

Using the FMCSA SODA insurance history endpoint covering 7.37 million records going back to 1986, we can trace the carriers that passed through Iron Insurance’s book, when they were written, what their safety profiles looked like at the time of coverage, what their crash and violation records showed during the policy period, and which ones are still operating today.

The carrier population that moved through Iron Insurance is not a clean one. It skews toward:

• New authorities. Carriers with authority under two years at the time of policy writing
• Thin inspection histories. Carriers written before any meaningful FMCSA audit had occurred
• Carriers that entered the market in 2021 and exited in 2023 as the freight recession hit
• Entities that cycled through multiple insurers after losing Iron coverage, many ending up in RRG books or residual market programs

Some of them are still on the road.

The telematics data that was supposed to manage this risk existed. ICSA had the ELD feeds, the camera data, and the inspection records. The problem was that the data was never being used to actually gate coverage decisions in real time. It was a marketing premise, not an operating discipline. Producers wrote volume. ICSA couldn’t keep up with verification. The book was filled with carriers who had cameras in their trucks and unpaid premiums on their accounts.

The parallel with our RRG instability data is direct. Several of the Risk Retention Groups that THE TEA currently flags as COLLAPSE RISK or ELEVATED CONCERN show the same pattern Iron Insurance displayed in 2022, adding high-risk carriers rapidly, recording zero cancellations, with portfolio trajectory scores in freefall. The carriers cycling out of those RRGs are the same population that was cycling through Iron Insurance’s exit pipeline two years ago.

The Nirvana Comparison

The contrast with Nirvana Insurance is instructive and intentional. Nirvana sold its first policy in 2022, the same year Iron Insurance was at peak volume. Both were telematics-for-coverage plays targeting small carriers in a market dominated by legacy underwriters who weren’t using available safety data.

The difference was discipline. Nirvana is now valued at $830 million following a Series C and recently completed a $100 million Series D. Iron Insurance lost $130 million and closed. Same thesis. Same market. Completely different execution.

The lesson is not that telematics-based trucking insurance doesn’t work. The lesson is that telematics is a tool, not a strategy. If you use it to write volume without integrating the data into ongoing underwriting and portfolio management decisions, you haven’t built a smarter insurance program. You’ve built a faster way to make bad decisions at scale.

Iron Insurance ran cameras in trucks. Nobody was watching the footage until the crash happened.

What Needs to Change

The Iron Insurance collapse was not a black swan. The warning signs were in the Biden FMCSA’s own data, in the carrier registration surge numbers, in the new-entrant crash rate data, in the premium collection failures that showed up in Knight-Swift’s Q1 2023 SEC filing. A regulator with the right tools and the right data access could have seen it coming. I found it. 

The $750,000 insurance minimum for motor carriers hasn’t changed in more than 40 years. It would need to be approximately $2.3 million today to carry the same real value. That gap between required minimums and actual crash costs is part of what made the Iron Insurance book viable to write at the prices it was writing. Carriers who couldn’t get coverage at adequate premiums were finding a price point that didn’t reflect their true risk, and the difference was being absorbed by a captive reinsurer that had been eating losses for four straight quarters before shutting down.

FMCSA needs a mechanism to monitor insurance program-level risk concentration in real time. Not just individual carrier safety ratings, but aggregate portfolio quality for programs writing large books of small carriers. If a program’s book is generating crash rates or OOS rates that diverge significantly from the voluntary market baseline, that should trigger oversight. Right now, nothing does.

The Biden administration had four years and didn’t build it. The data to do it was public the entire time.

I’ve built a version of it, Tea Technologies, for the insurance industry. The question is whether the regulator will ever build one for itself.

A Note on the Distribution Chain

The retail production layer between Knight-Swift/Mohave and the end-carrier market involved program intermediaries consistent with the structure described here, entities responsible for driving enrollment volume to the ICSA program and writing policies at prices that did not anticipate the market turn. The specific identities of those intermediaries and the full chain of production accountability remain subjects of ongoing reporting.

SOURCE DOCUMENTATION: All Primary Sources

I. SEC / EDGAR FILINGS. Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings (CIK: 0001492691)

All Knight-Swift SEC filings are publicly available through EDGAR:

Master EDGAR Filing Index (all KNX filings): https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001492691&type=10-K&dateb=&owner=include&count=40

Q1 2023. First documented $22.8M Iron Insurance loss (April 20, 2023):

KEY QUOTE: “Overall, our Iron Insurance line of business produced a $22.8 million operating loss (or $0.11 per diluted share) during the first quarter of 2023, primarily due to increased frequency and unfavorable claim development during the quarter as well as insurance premium collection issues associated with small carriers who are struggling given the soft freight market conditions… we believe the extreme pressure small carriers are under is producing undesirable risk characteristics.”

8-K Exhibit 99.1 (Earnings Press Release): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1492691/000149269123000042/exhibit99103312023.htm

8-K Exhibit 99.2 (Investor Presentation. Strategic Pivot slide): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001492691/000149269123000042/exhibit99203312023.htm

Q3 2023. $15.9M quarterly loss, ‘making progress’ statement (October 19, 2023):

KEY QUOTE: “Our third-party insurance business operating loss for the current quarter increased slightly to $15.9 million (or $0.08 per diluted share) from a $15.0 million operating loss in the second quarter of 2023… the $22.0 million reduction in operating income in our Iron Truck insurance program.”

8-K Exhibit 99.1 (Q3 2023 Earnings): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1492691/000149269123000084/exhibit99109302023.htm

FY2022 Investor Presentation. Iron Insurance at peak revenue (Q3 2022):

Shows 96.6% revenue increase and $18.5M operating income, the program’s high-water mark before collapse.

8-K Exhibit 99.2 (Q3 2022 Presentation): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001492691/000149269122000058/exhibit99209302022.htm

FY2021 Investor Presentation. Iron Insurance launch, $96M revenue projection:

8-K Exhibit (Q2 2021 Presentation): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001492691/000149269121000058/exhibit99206302021.htm

FY2023 10-K Annual Report. Full year collapse documented:

10-K Annual Report (December 31, 2023): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001492691/000149269124000015/knx-20231231.htm

II. Arizona Regulatory Filings. Mohave Transportation Insurance Company

NAIC CoCode: 14349 | Arizona-domiciled captive insurer | Certificate of authority issued June 13, 2006

Consent Order Case 23A-065-INS (October 19, 2023):

Order Type: Consent Order | Enforcement Type: Penalty | Penalty: $1,000 | Penalty Paid: $1,000

Violation: Failure to return claimant communications on a vehicle claim filed November 2022.

DIFI Enforcement Filing Page: https://difi.az.gov/enforcement/23a-065-ins

Consent Order PDF (direct): https://difi.az.gov/sites/default/files/230065.pdf

III. Federal Court Litigation Involving Mohave Transportation Insurance

Moreland v. Mohave Transportation Insurance Company et al (N.D. Georgia, 2023): https://dockets.justia.com/docket/georgia/gandce/1:2023cv04858/321833

Booth v. Mohave Transportation Insurance Co et al (E.D. Louisiana): https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-laed-2_13-cv-06746Nebraska District Court case (2018): https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-ned-7_18-cv-05008

IV. FMCSA Data. New Entrant Statistics and Regulatory Record

FMCSA Registration Statistics (carrier authority trends by year): https://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/RegistrationStatistics

FMCSA Trends in New Motor Carrier Registration Data: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/trends-new-motor-carrier-registration-data

FMCSA New Entrant Safety Assurance Program: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/new-entrant-safety-assurance-processFMCSA Open Data Program (insurance filing datasets): https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/fmcsa-data-dissemination-program

V. Corporate Press Releases

Knight-Swift Iron Truck Services Launch (September 14, 2021):

KEY QUOTE: “Iron Insurance, which provides auto, general, and cargo liability insurance, as well as physical damage insurance options at affordable rates. All policies are supported by risk management services that promote safe operational practices for policyholders.”BusinessWire Press Release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210914005720/en/Knight-Swift-Transportation-Creates-Iron-Truck-Services-Bringing-Affordable-Solutions-Nationwide-to-Truckload-Carriers-of-All-Size

VI. Trade Press Coverage

Trucking Dive. Knight-Swift shutting down third-party insurance (January 25, 2024): https://www.truckingdive.com/news/knight-swift-shuttering-third-party-insurance-business/705556/

FreightWaves. Insurance woes weigh down Knight-Swift Q4 earnings (January 25, 2024): https://www.freightwaves.com/news/insurance-woes-weigh-down-knight-swift-earnings

FreightWaves. Knight-Swift introduces Iron Truck Services (September 2021): https://www.freightwaves.com/news/knight-swift-introduces-services-division-for-smaller-carriers

FreightWaves. Knight-Swift reels in 2023 outlook after poor Q2 (July 2023): https://www.freightwaves.com/news/knight-swift-reels-in-2023-outlook-after-poor-q2

The Insurer / Program Manager. Mohave stops underwriting April 1 (March 2024): https://www.theinsurer.com/program-manager/news/chubb-supported-trucking-program-mohave-to-stop-underwriting-at-1-april/

Trucking Dive. Q1 2023 losses first reported (April 21, 2023): https://www.truckingdive.com/news/knight-swift-q1-2023-earnings/648277/

Trucking Dive. Fleets pressured by higher insurance costs (September 2023): https://www.truckingdive.com/news/carriers-deal-with-higher-insurance-and-claims-costs-2023/692041/

TheTrucker. Surging ahead, new trucking companies shattering records (February 2022): https://www.thetrucker.com/trucking-news/truckload-authority/trends-in-trucking/surging-ahead-number-of-new-trucking-companies-shattering-records

FreightWaves. New carrier authorities surging in surprising places: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/new-carrier-authorities-are-surging-in-surprising-places

VII. ICSA / Mohave Program Documentation

Independent Carrier Safety Association. Official Site: https://www.safecarriers.org

The Insurance Store. ICSA/Mohave program description: https://www.tisteam.com/icsa/

The Insurance Store. Who is ICSA?: https://www.tisteam.com/who-is-icsa/

Motive Marketplace. ICSA ELD data sharing integration: https://marketplace.gomotive.com/app/independent-carrier-safety-association-icsaICSA Team / Karen Rasmussen background: https://www.safecarriers.org/our-team/

VIII. Consumer Complaint Record

Mohave Transportation Insurance Company. BBB Complaints: https://www.bbb.org/us/az/phoenix/profile/insurance-agency/mohave-transportation-insurance-company-1126-1000110982/complaints

IX. Nirvana Insurance. Comparative Context

TechCrunch. Nirvana raises $80M at $830M valuation (March 2025): https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/10/nirvana-keeps-on-truckin-with-80m-at-a-830m-valuation-for-its-ai-powered-insurance/

TechCrunch. Nirvana raises $57M Series B (October 2023): https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/17/nirvana-nabs-57m-to-make-ai-inroads-into-commercial-trucking-insurance/Nirvana About page (first policy sold 2022): https://www.nirvanatech.com/about

The post The Iron Insurance Disaster appeared first on FreightWaves.

The controversial project led by Delfin Midstream of Houston, which includes several foreign investors, on Wednesday was granted a license for the project by the Maritime Administration.

The project also received export approval from the Department of Energy for a total of three planned vessels.

The Trump administration approved the project in March 2025 under the Unleashing American Energy executive order, opponents claim, without adequate environmental review or a single public hearing. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation in a release stated that the license will “secure America’s energy dominance and deliver affordable energy to families,” although critics question how an export program would benefit prices for domestic consumers.

Delfin has already secured purchase agreements with several foreign buyers; ocean carrier MOL of Japan is also connected to the project.

Approval for the floating port project – the largest in the world – was denied under the Biden administration in April 2024. The Trump administration in January shifted licensing authority for deepwater projects from the Coast Guard to Marad. 

Delifn was one of two deepwater port licenses issued by Marad. The other is Texas GulfLink, a crude oil export terminal under construction off the Texas coast.

Delfin expects to begin production in 2030, at 4.4 million metric tons per year capacity. The other vessels, to be launched in the next year, will bring capacity to 13.2 million mt/year, with exports of 1.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.

“This is the first offshore LNG export terminal ever licensed in the United States, and getting here took the better part of a decade,” said Marad Administrator Stephen M. Carmel, at a media briefing. “That patience is the price of doing something genuinely new. Every cargo that leaves this port is a commitment the United States is able to keep.”

Trump lifted a Biden ban on LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries in 2025.

Samsung Heavy Industries of South Korea will construct the platforms, which will be located 40 miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Port Houston’s hurricane playbook: Safety first, cargo moving fast 

But…but…shipbuilding! Democrats want China port tax reinstated

Frontload frenzy? New tariffs fueling early trans-Pacific peak season

Containers say ‘hold my disruptions’ as ocean rates surge

The post For 1st time, U.S. approves controversial LNG production ship appeared first on FreightWaves.

Just as van trailer builder Wabash National found itself with another downgrade to its debt, there was the prospect of some relief on the horizon from a process that will put countervailing duties on imports from China and Mexico.  

The downgrade by S&P Global Ratings (NYSE: SPGI) on Wabash (NYSE: WNC) last week did not break new ground.  

In reducing its rating on Wabash to B- from B, S&P Global was matching the recent downgrade by Moody’s. That competing agency last month cut its rating on Wabash to B3, the third reduction by that agency in a year. The Moody’s grade of B3 and the S&P Global Ratings grade of B- are considered equivalent. 

But there might be a changed market ahead for Wabash and other trailer builders based on a recent pair of findings by the Commerce Department on the size of countervailing duties to be applied to van trailer imports from those two countries. The complaint was brought to the Commerce Department by the American Trailer Manufacturers Coalition. It’s a three-company group: Wabash, Great Dane and Stoughton Trailers.

‘Unfairly subsidize’

In a pair of notices posted last week in the Federal Register, the Commerce Department said it had determined that China and Mexico, as the coalition said in its reaction to the decision, “unfairly subsidize their van-type trailer industries.”

The countervailing duties to be applied to China will range from 82.3% to 128.7%, depending on the exporter. But the largest of them will be against a company called CIMC.

The Mexican countervailing duties are also dependent on the exporter but are less than 2%.

In its prepared statement, the coalition said it “applauds Commerce’s decision to impose preliminary duties as the first step towards introducing fairness in the U.S.van-type trailer market and looks forward to Commerce’s antidumping preliminary determination later this summer.”

The coalition estimates that about 40% of the U.S. market for van trailers is supplied by China, Mexico and Canada combined. Its summation of import data is that the U.S. imported about 48,000 van trailers per year between 2015-2017. That number between 2022 and 2024 was an annual average of 80,600 trailers. 

Wabash’s quarterly earnings publishes data on the number of vans it supplied, and it shows a significant downturn in recent years.

The coalition originally filed a complaint against Canadian imports as well. But subassembles from China are sent to Canada for final assembly, and the Commerce Department decision pulled in those finished exports from Canada under the Chinese countervailing duties. With that decision in hand, the coalition withdrew the Canadian portion of its request.

First action taken

The coalition had not filed any previous action on imports before those against the three countries.,”Trailer imports surged in the past few years with severe negative financial consequences for the domestic industry’s financial performance,” a coalition spokesman said about the Commerce Department decision. “Trade action was necessary to stop the continuing harm to the domestic industry.”

The process from this point on, according to trade attorneys knowledgeable about the process, is that the Customs and Border Protection agency will require that importers of both finished and semi-finished vans immediately begin to post a cash deposit at the rates found by Commerce, which are considered preliminary.

Process is ongoing

Commerce’s findings are preliminary and the investigation will continue. The final rate could be more or less. The coalition is expecting the final determination on the Chinese rate to be mid-August with Mexico in mid-December.

The International Trade Commission will be conducting its own investigation to determine whether the domestic van industry has been injured by the imports. That investigation is expected to be completed by mid-October, and is said to be likely to be the prevailing decision for all the countries.

The countervailing duties would be levied on top of section 301 duties that have been in effect since May 2019. That levy is 25%.  

In its report on Wabash, issued just before the Commerce Department findings were released, S&P Global said countervailing duties “may be somewhat beneficial over the next several years.”

“If Wabash’s petition is successful, average price for trailers from international competitors may increase, potentially making its trailers more attractive to freight carriers,” S&P Global said.

Much of the S&P Global report on Wabash repeated similar arguments heard from Moody’s. “Certain freight market indicators show signs of improvement, although the timing for trailer and truck body recovery and the magnitude of a potential rebound remain uncertain,” S&P Global said. “We expect reported free operating cash flow deficits and elevated S&P Global Ratings-adjusted leverage in 2026.”

A stronger freight market brings about its own problems, S&P Global said. Liquidity can “tighten as demand stabilizes,” according to S&P Global.

“Wabash reduced inventory investments and extended payable terms to its vendors in 2025 and into 2026,” the ratings agency said. “As demand rebounds, we expect related working capital spending to increase. Thus, liquidity will weaken somewhat in 2026 and 2027 as near-term demand precedes investment needs to maintain operations, and potentially higher cash interest expense hinders FOCF.”

Victory on chassis

The coalition’s law firm in the case is Wiley Law. The victory–so far–in the case over van trailers was not the only freight-related triumph it can tout in recent weeks.

On its company page, Wiley also said a final determination by the International Trade Commission will impose a series of duties on imports of chassis from three countries: Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico. Those duties in some cases will exceed 185%. 

The original case had been filed in February 2025. A case from 2021 filed against Chinese exporters of chassis to the U.S. also was successful.

More articles by John Kingston

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The post Commerce finding on van imports may give relief to beleaguered Wabash appeared first on FreightWaves.

“We’re preparing all year,” Eric Casey, chief operating officer at Port Houston told FreightWaves. “We do a full hot wash and after-action report after every season and every event, whether it’s Harvey, the derecho or another storm. We determine what worked, what didn’t, and immediately incorporate those lessons into our program.”

The hurricane season starts June 1 and ends November 30. The peak threat for the Texas coast exists from August through September, according to the National Weather Service. 

Port Houston serves as the public port authority for the Houston Ship Channel, home to more than 200 private and eight public terminals. The channel is the nation’s busiest waterway by tonnage and supports an estimated 1.5 million jobs in Texas and 3.37 million jobs nationwide.

As the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season gets underway, the port is refining emergency response plans built from lessons learned during major weather events, including Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and more recent severe storms that impacted the Houston region. 

Preparing for storms long before landfall

Casey said Port Houston begins monitoring tropical systems long before formal hurricane warnings are issued.

“We start way back in the very beginning,” Casey said. “As storms come across the Atlantic and into the Gulf, we’re already coordinating with the Coast Guard, Houston Pilots and industry partners on preparedness measures.”

Preparations often begin five or more days before a potential landfall. Port officials review equipment staging plans, coordinate vessel departures and begin securing cargo yards and terminal assets.

How Port Houston secures cranes, cargo and terminals

At 72 hours before expected impacts, known as Port Condition Whiskey, preparations accelerate. Empty container stacks are reduced and reconfigured to minimize wind risk, while crews begin securing equipment. 

Port Condition Codes are issued by the U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port

• Whisky (72 hrs): Begin securing facilities and early protective actions
• X-ray (48 hrs): Finalize securing and restrict operations
• Yankee(24 hrs): Port closed to inbound traffic; operations cease
• Zulu (12 hrs): Port fully secured; no vessel movement

As conditions worsen, operations move through Port Conditions X-Ray, Yankee and Zulu, with cranes secured once sustained winds approach 45 mph.

The decision to close the Houston Ship Channel is coordinated among the U.S. Coast Guard, National Weather Service, Houston Pilots and other stakeholders. When the channel closes, Port Houston works alongside those partners to prepare for reopening as soon as conditions safely allow.

Communication is critical during a crisis

Communication is a major component of the port’s hurricane response strategy. Port Houston uses website updates, text alerts, emails, conference calls and virtual meetings to keep ocean carriers, trucking companies, railroads, terminal operators and other customers informed about operational changes before and after storms.

“Clear, concise, correct communications really matter, especially in times of crisis,” Casey said. “No one does this alone.”

Once a storm passes, recovery efforts begin with safety assessments, followed by inspections of roads, terminals, cranes and cargo-handling equipment. Port officials then coordinate with channel partners to resume vessel movements and cargo operations.

Casey said Port Houston’s ability to return to service quickly reflects years of planning and coordination.

“The port is going to be a relief valve for getting goods into the Houston area that are going to be needed as part of the recovery effort,” Casey said. “The sooner we can get back up and establish normalcy, the sooner people are going to have access to critical goods to help them repair, recover and do what they need to do.”

Related: Extreme hurricane season could trigger ‘carrier revenge’

A year-round focus on preparedness

Port Houston conducts multiple emergency exercises throughout the year, including tabletop drills, communication tests and coordinated exercises with local, state and federal agencies. 

The preparations come even as forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict a below-normal 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, forecasting eight to 14 named storms, including three to six hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes.

NOAA officials have cautioned that it only takes one storm making landfall to cause major disruptions.

For supply chains, the stakes remain high. Hurricanes have historically disrupted ports, highways, rail networks and trucking capacity across the Gulf Coast. FreightWaves previously noted that Hurricane Harvey created one of the largest trucking capacity crunches in recent history and that major storms can trigger widespread transportation disruptions and delays.

While no two storms are alike, Casey said Port Houston’s approach remains consistent.

“We have been preparing since the last season ended, and we will continue to prepare up until we have an event,” Casey said.

The post Port Houston’s hurricane playbook: Safety first, cargo moving fast  appeared first on FreightWaves.

The suspension through November 9 was agreed to by President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at meetings in Beijing, and was a key concession in Trump’s interim trade pact with Xi.

The charges would total approximately $3.2 billion annually for large Chinese-built container and bulk vessels calling U.S. ports.

In a statement, Democrats Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to reinstate the fees, to protect domestic shipbuilding interests.

The port charges were implemented in 2025 after an investigation found that China leveraged unfair advantages to build a dominant position in global shipping and shipbuilding.

Kelly has authored legislation aimed at reviving the U.S. maritime industry; the Trump administration later released shipbuilding plans of its own.

The strategy to resurrect the business would require tens of billions of dollars in subsidies over several decades, observers say, and that U.S.-built ships would struggle to compete on a cost basis with shipyards in Asia.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

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Peak indicator: $2,600 increase on one U.S. shipping service

Box rates soar $1,000 in one week on peak

The post But…but…shipbuilding! Democrats want China port tax reinstated appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Association of American Railroads on Wednesday said volumes for the week ending June 6 totaled 521,804 carloads and intermodal units, an increase of 7.8% from the same week a year ago.

Carloads came to 228,076 units, up 1%, while 293,728 intermodal containers and trailers were better by 13.6% from 2025.

Six of 10 commodities posted gains as grain maintained its runaway lead, up 9.2% for the week, followed by metallic ores and metals, up 9.1%. Motor vehicles and parts were better by 6.1%.

Improving home sales gave forest products a boost, ahead 3.8%.

Coal was seasonally weaker, down 4.2%, followed by chemicals, dropping 1.8%.

Through the first 22 weeks of 2026, cumulative volume is 3.3% ahead y/y at 4,984,985 carloads. A total 6,113,730 intermodal units is a gain of 2.3%. Combined traffic reached 11,098,715 carloads and intermodal units, ahead 2.7% from 2025.

North American rail volume for the week on 9 U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 333,030 carloads, up 1.7%, and 380,156 intermodal units, up 11% y/y. Combined traffic of 713,186 carloads and intermodal units, improved by 6.4%. North American volume for the first 22 weeks of 2026 was 15,281,170 carloads and intermodal units, up 2.4% y/y.

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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The post Green over red for surging U.S. railfreight appeared first on FreightWaves.

SONAR’s new Accepted SONAR Truckload Volume Index (ASTVI) fills that gap. The dataset family isolates accepted truckload demand by stripping out rejection activity, giving a cleaner read on what’s actually flowing through the market versus what was simply offered.

The index is available at the national, regional, and market levels and updates daily. It covers total accepted volume, van, and reefer — with week-over-week, month-over-month, and year-over-year change metrics for each.

The distinction between tendered and accepted freight is especially meaningful in soft market conditions, when routing guide compliance deteriorates and the spread between offered and accepted loads widens. ASTVI gives brokers, carriers, shippers, and analysts a direct view of that spread without having to manually back into it from multiple indices.

ASTVI is available now to SONAR subscribers, access a pre-made dashboard here. Full ticker documentation is available in SONAR’s Knolwdege Center.

The post SONAR Launches Accepted Truckload Volume Index to Close the Gap Between Tendered and Moving Freight appeared first on FreightWaves.

According to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, investigators received a report on May 29 that multiple individuals were removing merchandise from a stopped BNSF Railway train and loading it into a van and a box truck parked near the tracks. Authorities later stopped the van and arrested Jaime Beltran-Bojorquez, 32, and Gerardo Mares Vazquez, 28. Investigators said a second vehicle fled from deputies before crashing near Williams, Arizona. Two unidentified suspects fled on foot and remain at large. Law enforcement officials recovered merchandise valued at more than $500,000 from the vehicles. According to Detective Curtis Peery of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, the value is based on the retail value of the recovered products. While the arrests generated local headlines, investigators say the larger issue is the frequency of train burglaries occurring throughout Northern Arizona. “We probably have somewhere between 8 to 12 events a month,” Peery previously told local media.

Organized crews operating in the region

In comments provided to FreightWaves, Peery said investigators are encountering both independent theft crews and organized criminal networks operating in the region. “For the crews we have encountered both independent and organized network crews,” Peery said. According to Peery, electronics and clothing remain among the most frequently targeted commodities because they can be resold quickly through illicit markets. “The commodity that is targeted the most is electronics and clothing. Really anything that can be sold on the black market easily,” Peery said. Investigators believe much of the stolen merchandise ultimately leaves Arizona. “Anything that is taken is eventually taken back to California where it is sold on black market online or swap meets,” Peery said. The comments provide additional insight into the organized nature of cargo theft operations that have increasingly targeted freight moving through the Southwest. Northern Arizona has experienced a series of train burglary investigations in recent years involving footwear, electronics, consumer goods and other high-value merchandise moving through the BNSF network.

Remote locations create enforcement challenges

Peery said cargo theft investigations present unique challenges because many incidents occur in remote areas where law enforcement resources are limited and response times can be extended. “Because these crimes are happening in such remote areas it takes so much more effort and time from departments to combat it,” Peery said. He added that coordination among agencies has proven critical. “When we as departments work together that is where we have been the most effective and successful at combating these criminal organizations,” Peery said. Law enforcement agencies are working to establish a formal Northern Arizona railway task force focused on cargo theft investigations. Peery said the effort includes collaboration with the Southwest Transportation Security Council’s Arizona chapter to improve awareness and coordination around cargo theft issues.

Rail industry calls for broader action

BNSF Railway declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation. In a statement provided to FreightWaves, BNSF said it maintains robust security protocols and is working with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to address cargo theft. “BNSF has robust security protocols, and our police department is focused on preventing these incidents on our network,” spokesperson Kendall Sloan said in a statement. The railroad also called for stronger support throughout the criminal justice system. “It’s essential that the entire criminal justice system, including policymakers, district attorneys and judges, focus on this crime trend and help to ensure these criminals are held responsible and prosecuted,” Sloan said. Authorities have not publicly identified the specific commodity involved in the May 29 burglary and have not indicated whether the two arrested suspects are connected to other train burglary investigations. The investigation remains ongoing.

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

Eight indicted in alleged carrier impersonation scheme; prosecutors allege $4.49 million in cargo losses – FreightWaves

Why the freight industry needs Certified Fraud Compliance Officers – FreightWaves

Why the safest freight brokerages are usually the most boring – FreightWaves

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Amazon announced on Wednesday the expansion of its less-than-truckload service beyond its current inbound-only model to all destinations, including third-party warehouses, distribution centers and retail stores, adding another piece to a new initiative offering end-to-end logistics services to all businesses.

Exactly how the network will operate remains unclear as Amazon has a limited number of cross-dock terminals for moving heavy freight. Industry analysts said the scale of Amazon’s network will initially be limited, but that Amazon likely will continue growing its terminal and delivery footprint to serve more customers.

The news about externalizing Amazon’s partial-load service for transporting Amazon and marketplace sellers’ inventory follows last month’s opening of freight, distribution, fulfillment, and parcel shipping to non-Amazon sellers, under the umbrella of the new Amazon Supply Chain Services.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) launched an LTL offering in April 2025 for shippers that don’t require a full trailer, but it was only available for inbound delivery to Amazon facilities, where goods were stored after breaking apart large pallets and later individually shipped through the company’s regular package delivery network. Amazon has offered other limited LTL capacity since 2019.

The retail giant says it is now offering a more traditional hub-and-spoke LTL network in which palletized shipments are picked up, transferred at a nearby terminal and delivered to a final destination still on a pallet at a lower cost than available from legacy LTL carriers. It touts a fleet of 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers.

“For years, customers told us their LTL freight never matched the reliability and visibility of their full-truckload shipments. We built an asset-backed LTL service that closes that gap—flexible same-day and next-day pickup, real-time shipment tracking from dock to door, and dedicated LTL-trained drivers. Tens of thousands of selling partners have used this service since 2019. Now it’s open for all businesses,” said Amazon Freight Director Jim Ruiz, in a statement.

Some analysts previously said that Amazon’s full-scale entry into the LTL business could significantly disrupt business for incumbent trucking companies, such as FedEx Freight, Old Dominion, Saia and Estes. How Amazon’s LTL network is configured is unclear.

But Satish Jindel, the president of ShipMatrix and an experienced industry consultant, said Amazon appears to be operating more like a freight broker, not an asset-based LTL carrier. That means their competition would be with companies like C.H. Robinson and Echo Global Logistics.

“They are trying to offer a brokerage service. They don’t have drivers. They don’t have trucks. They don’t have terminals to sort and load and deliver and pickup,” Jindel told FreightWaves. “They are looking to leverage their relationship as a large LTL inbound customer to offer lower rates for pickup and delivery of shipments that don’t touch an Amazon facility.”

Amazon’s position is that it owns a network with more than 100,000 pieces of equipment. That wording, however, doesn’t necessarily mean Amazon owns the assets. Many company’s operate own-controlled networks in which they market the capacity, designate routes and set the delivery frequency while using partner carriers to physically transport goods.

The service appears more skewed to economy lanes with three-to-four-day delivery windows, heavily relying on intermodal for middle-mile transport and with a smaller coverage footprint, said TD Cowen analyst Jason Seidl, in a research note. Amazon accepts inbound freight at about 115 facilities, but many of these are simply fulfillment centers without a full truck-to-truck transfer design. As of the first quarter of 2025, Amazon had about 74 cross-dock facilities, he said.

“We continue to believe Amazon’s expansions could take share from LTLs on the margins without driving en-masse share exodus. Amazon’s emphasis on utilizing the intermodal container pool for the service suggests the offering will primarily compete with the economy sub-segment of the LTL market, which is predominantly the turf of ArcBest, TFII and FedEx Freight.,” Seidl wrote.

Amazon said the expansion of LTL service is a response to market demand and customer feedback for a broader rollout. 

“The feedback from Amazon selling partners using our LTL service was clear: the technology, visibility, and reliability were exactly what they needed — and they wanted to use it more broadly,” said Jim Ruiz, director of Amazon Freight, said in a news release. “Now Amazon LTL can move your freight wherever it needs to go, servicing destinations nationwide for businesses of all sizes.”

Businesses can ship one to six pallets, or between 150 to 15,000 pounds, into their warehouses, between their own facilities or to their retail partners and distributors, according to Amazon. 

Features of the new service include ;next-day live pickup for orders placed by 5 p.m., same-day pickup using a drop-trailer method and standing daily pickups for high-volume shippers. The drop-trailer service involves a unified pool of trailers for LTL and truckload shipments that are dropped at customer facilities instead of being unloaded upon arrival. 

LTL shippers receive real-time GPS tracking, automated appointment scheduling at receiving facilities, electronic proof-of-delivery and a sensor-equipped fleet for cargo security.

“While LTL likely represents only a small component of Amazon’s overall logistics footprint, we reiterate that Amazon has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to gain traction in transportation markets through a flexible and iterative operating model. As a result, we believe the company may be able to capture meaningful market share even if they are unable to offer best-in class service levels immediately,” said Morgan Stanley equity analyst Ravi Shanker in a client note.

Amazon Freight, part of Amazon Supply Chain Services, spans full truckload, less-than-truckload, and rail services.

Speculation about an expanded Amazon LTL offering has been brewing after Morgan Stanley reported in a research note early this year that Amazon was approaching shippers to gauge their interest in the service. 

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

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The post Amazon opens full-scale, less-than-truckload shipping to all businesses  appeared first on FreightWaves.

Mark Wallin, President and General Manager of Phillips Connect, highlighted how the dry van trailer is evolving from a basic asset into a highly intelligent, data-rich node on the supply chain. 

Beyond basic GPS tracking, fleets are rapidly adopting advanced sensors to monitor tire pressure, brake health and door-open events to combat cargo theft and improve roadside safety. 

Wallin noted that as the industry prepares for autonomous trucking, smart trailer capabilities –including cameras paired with AI to monitor volumetric cube utilization– will shift from a premium differentiator to a standard operational requirement.

Fuel markets

FreightWaves reporter John Kingston broke down the latest weekly Department of Energy diesel benchmark, which dropped 14 cents to land at $5.21 per gallon. 

This decline marks the third-lowest average price since the onset of the Iran war, mirroring broader downward pricing trends on CME ultra-low sulfur diesel contracts. 

Kingston noted that while gasoline often sees demand destruction from retail consumers, diesel demand remains rigid as commercial carriers must maintain their schedules to deliver essential goods regardless of price shifts.

RXO reports rising spot demand as contract routing guides fail

Corey Klujsza, vice president of pricing at RXO, joined the show’s “Capacity Now” segment to discuss how the accelerating freight market is placing unprecedented stress on traditional contract networks. 

As primary carriers increasingly reject contracted loads, shippers are seeing routing guide compliance deteriorate and are turning to spot providers for emergency coverage. 

Corey emphasized that spot brokerage operations are acting as a critical “911” service to keep shipper freight moving as tender rejections climb.

Keep up with the latest news on FreightWaves Today

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Rates hikes and assorted surcharges by carriers that took effect June 1 sent Asia-U.S. West Coast prices up by 51% in the latest week, according to the Freightos Baltic Index, to $4,836 per forty foot equivalent unit (FEU). Asia-U.S. East Coast prices rose 25% to $6,336 per FEU.

“These spikes are the sharpest one-week increases since sudden tariff changes spurred a June demand surge last year,” said Judah Levine, research chief for Freightos (NASDAQ: CRGO), in an update, though rates climbed more than $2,000 per FEU at that time.

“Trans-Pacific ocean peak season is well underway, with some observers pointing to frontloading ahead of the approaching tariff deadline as one driver of the early start,” Levine said. “And though the [Strait of] Hormuz closure hadn’t caused broad operational changes beyond the Gulf states in the first three months of the war, the rising price of oil may be another factor to the early peak season surge.” 

The United States Trade Representative announced new tariffs on 60 countries it said haven’t done enough to combat imports produced by forced labor. Separate Section 301 probes could see new tariffs on Brazil and 16 other trading partners, developments that Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, called “astonishing”.

“The tariff wall around the U.S. keeps rising,” Elms said. “This may seem like old news but the net effect will be to accelerate global supply chain shifts.”

A hearing is scheduled for July 7.

Contracted shippers could be pulling shipments forward ahead of an 80% jump in fuel surcharges starting in July when the quarterly Bunker Adjustment Factor is updated. “And indications that Asian manufacturers are set to increase prices due to higher input costs may also be driving some of the observed early demand bump,” he said.

The National Retail Federation recently revised its estimates, said Levine, moving the expected peak season to June from July a month ago. The NRF predicts June import volumes 5% higher than in May, dropping to 3% in July and continuing to cool through September.

In 2025 prices weakened by mid-June as shippers waited out unsettled demand. “Indications are that additional rate increases set for next week could push prices up further this time,” Levine said. “But NRF projections that demand will peak in June, make additional rate increases in July less likely.”

While Israel’s expanded attacks in Lebanon spread the Iran conflict from the Arabian Gulf to the Mediterranean, its brief exchange of military strikes with Iran did little to moderate upward pressure on rates due to higher fuel costs across the global supply chain.

Likewise, Iran’s threat to mobilize Houthi militia in Yemen to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden “would not change much for freight if implemented, as the vast majority of container traffic continues to divert away from the Red Sea,” said Levine. “The added tension may push back the timeline for a [Strait of] Hormuz reopening, though the White House continues to assert that negotiations are making progress.”

The Houthi said this week that they will again block Israel-linked shipping from the Red Sea.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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Scheduled for June 15–22, 2026, the hackathon challenges developers, designers and industry newcomers to spend seven days building a minimum viable product focused on improving the daily lives, wellness and retention of professional truck drivers.

Solving an underserved challenge

With most modern freight technology designed to benefit fleet managers, dispatchers and brokers, the nation’s 3.5 million professional truck drivers remain largely underserved.

DASH aims to steer development hours toward the labor supporting the $800 billion annual U.S. trucking industry.

Investment opportunities

To help builders develop high-quality applications, all registered participants will receive free access to the SONAR freight data API for the duration of the hackathon. This API grants participants access to the same market data used by major shippers, carriers and brokers across the country.

The competition is free to enter, open to global participants and ensures that developers retain 100% of their intellectual property. 

Completed projects will be evaluated by a judging panel of freight operators, FreightWaves executives and venture capital investors, giving finalists direct visibility to leaders who can help advise on or scale their ideas.

Get registered

Are you ready to build software that supports the backbone of American freight? Registration is free and open to anyone, anywhere. Sign up today to secure your free SONAR API access and prepare to make a difference for truck drivers.

[Register for the DASH hackathon here]

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To understand how the industry is responding, FreightWaves and Trimble surveyed carriers, brokers, shippers, and owner-operators, and the results reveal where organizations are adopting AI today, the challenges slowing implementation, and what leaders expect next.

Download this report to learn:

• How freight companies are evaluating AI agents and automation tools
• Where organizations are currently investing in AI technologies
• The biggest barriers to adoption across operations and leadership teams
• Industry perspectives on trust, autonomy, and human oversight
• What the next phase of AI adoption could mean for carriers, brokers, and shippers

Get the data and insights shaping the future of AI in freight.

The post White Paper: AI Agent Readiness and Adoption in Freight appeared first on FreightWaves.

The four-year FedEx (NYSE: FDX) agreement, which takes effect on June 29 and becomes eligible for updating in December 2030, addresses multiple areas of employment, including compensation, retirement, scheduling, work rules, and job protections.

“Our focus now turns toward implementation and enforcement of the agreement,” said Capt. Jose Nieves, chairman of ALPA’s FedEx Master Executive Council. “We will remain actively involved throughout this process and continue representing and advocating for FedEx pilots.”

The FedEx airline has slightly less than 5,000 pilots, of which 98.5% participated in the vote. Union and management negotiators reached a tentative agreement on April 16. 

Pilots will receive a 40% increase in their hourly pay and other benefits, along with back pay (up to $150,000 for captains and $102,500 for first officers) to account for delayed raises during negotiations, according to a copy of the tentative agreement posted on a union website. Starting in 2028, they will receive 3% annual raises.

The relatively high disapproval level for the contract reflects the internal divide within the union membership over the negotiating strategy. In the summer of 2023, leaders on the FedEx union board advanced a tentative agreement to members that would have raised pay by 30% over five years, but they rejected it by a 57% to 43% margin. Opponents said leadership was too willing to compromise with management, resulting in a power struggle and replacement of the Master Executive Council officers. 

The pilots’ union long argued that FedEx’s improved financial performance demonstrates it can afford a better compensation package. 

During the fiscal-year third quarter, ended Feb. 28, FedEx revenue increased 8% to $520 billion and adjusted earnings per share jumped 16%, easily beating analysts’ expectations on strong pricing, volumes and cost reductions. FedEx raised its full-year guidance at the time and its three-year strategy calls for 14% annual profit growth by 2029. 

The National Mediation Board worked for years to bring the sides together. In 2024, ALPA asked the NMB to declare an impasse and release the parties from mediation, an initial step towards being able to strike under federal labor law. 

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

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Diesel prices are continuing on a mostly downward trend, with the benchmark price used for most fuel surcharges falling to one of its lowest levels since military action against Iran commenced at the beginning of March.

The Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price was published Tuesday, effective Monday, at $5.21/gallon. It is the lowest price since the first two prices that were published just after the start of hostilities, $4.859/g on March 9 and $5.071/g a week later.

It’s the fifth straight week the price has fallen. During that time, the declines total 43 cts/g.  

There is a growing disconnect between the DOE/EIA price and the daily AAA average retail diesel price. That number was posted Tuesday at $5.317/g.

The declines come as futures price continue to fall, for the most part, but where the voices who talk about “tank bottoms”–a withdrawal of global inventories so massive that it gets stocks down to the minimum level needed for the petroleum distribution system to operate–seem to be increasing against that backdrop of falling prices. 

That view of a disconnect was summed up in a post on X by John Arnold, a legendary trader and a thought leader on trading issues. 

The most recent EIA report on U.S. stocks, released Wednesday for the week ending May 29, showed total inventories of 1.573 billion barrels, the lowest in more than two years and the tenth straight week they had declined. Given their weekly publication, and the U.S. position as the world’s largest consumer, the data is closely watched as a sign of potential global trends.

Ultra low sulfur diesel on the CME commodity exchange posted a recent peak settlement of $3.8481/g on June 3. Its settlement Monday was $3.5999/g, and the market was trending lower Tuesday morning. 

Consistent Currie

One of the loudest voices saying that the commodity markets are not adequately pricing in the movement toward “tank bottoms” is Jeffrey Currie. He is the former head of commodity research at Goldman Sachs who is now on his own. And his message has been consistent for several weeks: what matters are the molecules, not paper markets that increasingly are bearish.

In a recent online interview, Currie said paper markets are “entirely disconnected from the physical markets.” Global crude benchmark Brent is now below $90/barrel. But crude delivered in some parts of the world is north of $150/b and product prices like jet or diesel are more than $200/b.

“The supply shock is almost equal to the demand shock during COVID, and we know what that did to global supply chains,” Currie said. “So I think if you’re at $100/b (in the futures market), it’s mispriced what is coming in the physical market.”

Why not buy forward barrels?

But if oil is mispriced, why aren’t traders buying barrels to be delivered several months from now, when the price will presumably be higher? They are not doing that, and the proof of that is in the forward curve. 

For example, Brent on CME settled Monday at $94.25 for July delivery. But for January delivery, six months out, Brent settled at $83.91/b.

That structure is called backwardation, with the front month the highest number in the price series. Backwardation develops during periods of tight inventories, as a market that is in perfect balance would see prices rise along the calendar, a structure known as contango.

That backwardation is one reason why companies are reluctant to buy the cheaper crude for later day, according to energy economist Philip Verleger. 

In a recent commentary Verleger said it would be expected that some companies that sell oil to consumers would want to accumulate inventories now at lower prices for future delivery. 

“These companies would probably want to hedge and, in some cases, would be required to do so by their banks,” Verleger said. “Unfortunately, hedging today locks in a large loss. For example, (a company) who bought diesel at the end of May and sought to sell forward to November would immediately incur a $9-per-barrel loss due to market backwardation. The loss this transaction would have incurred a year ago would have been perhaps $1 per barrel.”

As Verleger noted, “Few firms can afford to accept such losses on significant product volumes.”

Export ban concerns

There also is a market fear, Verleger said, that the U.S. might ban exports of crude and products if the now falling price of oil reverses itself. Should that happen, he said, “such an action would likely depress prices in the United States, possibly violently. Oil in tanks would suddenly be worth much less.”

Given that, according to Verleger, “the risk boosts the incentive to hold no oil. Every US firm in the oil business has every reason to minimize its inventory holdings today to protect against the uncertainties created by President Trump.”

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“Serving our vast network of customers requires a supply chain that is safe, reliable and built for the future,” said Jim Farrell, senior vice president of supply chain at PepsiCo. “Gatik is already operating inside our networks and brings the autonomous freight technology, commercial experience and scale we need to strengthen service, add capacity and move products more consistently for our customers.”

The driverless footprint: Three states and 250 retail stops

Gatik’s autonomous trucks currently serve around 250 retail locations for PepsiCo, including Walmart and Dollar General stores. The deliveries move across both highways and surface streets — a technical distinction that matters in the autonomous vehicle space, where many competitors remain limited to interstate corridors.

“Driverless trucks deployed in commercial capacity, driving across highways and surface streets — that’s what we’re doing with PepsiCo,” said Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Gatik, in an interview with FreightWaves. “The fact that they’re adopting this in very complex supply chains is one of the proof points that autonomous trucking is mainstream.”

The partnership began in 2022. Gatik went driver-out with operations in June 2025. The company maintains a99% on time track record. 

No driver, no observer, one remote supervisor

Gatik’s operation stands out with fully driver-out trucks with no safety drivers or observers in the cab.

“To my understanding, in the trucking space we are the only company that can make that claim today — without a driver and without an observer,” Narang said.

The company uses Gatik Remote Supervisors, or GRS, to provide human oversight. These supervisors handle high-level go/no-go decisions but never perform remote driving or teleoperation on public roads. One person oversees multiple trucks at a time.

In the medium-duty space, the Isuzu box trucks offer another operational advantage: they can back directly into a dock. Unlike tractor-trailers, these straight trucks do not require hooking or unhooking a trailer.

The regulatory environment also supports the model. Gatik can operate in 29 states with favorable AV frameworks.

“Regulations are not, I would say, a bottleneck for us at all,” Narang said. “We do expect a national AV framework to be rolled out that will allow for safe and scalable rollout of driverless trucks.”

Because these are medium-duty operations focused on regional distribution center-to-store routes, market penetration can target a higher percentage of outbound volume compared with the more variable point-to-point nature of long-haul over-the-road trucking.

Scaling to tens of thousands of trucks

The manufacturing roadmap points to rapid expansion. Gatik, Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Nvidia are developing a production facility in South Carolina that will begin mass-producing Level 4 autonomous trucks in the second half of 2027.

“The volumes that we’re looking at for this year are in the hundreds of trucks,” Narang said. “Once the Isuzu facility is up and running and we have our vehicles coming off the production line, the volumes that we’re looking at are tens of thousands of trucks.”

The technology platform uses Gatik’s dynamic route orchestration, allowing PepsiCo to add or remove stops and adapt to shifting demand without overhauling existing operations.

“Autonomous trucking has reached commercial scale when it operates inside one of the most demanding supply chains on the planet,” Narang said. “That is what Gatik is doing with PepsiCo.”

Workforce impact: Adding capacity, not replacing people

PepsiCo frames the deployment as capacity expansion rather than workforce reduction. The focus is on high-demand regional networks that are difficult to staff — a persistent challenge facing carriers nationwide as driver wages rise and demand for safe, qualified drivers grows.

The approach aims to give frontline teams greater consistency and reliability while reducing variability across transportation networks. For an operation of PepsiCo’s scale, even marginal improvements in delivery consistency can translate to meaningful gains in customer service and shelf availability.

The partnership signals a shift for enterprise shippers evaluating autonomous freight — moving from cautious experimentation to scaling and operational integration.

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Through the partnership, travelers can securely store luggage at participating DHL (XETRA: DHL) retail and partner locations across the U.S. About 30 locations are initially participating in the program and the number is expected to expand to around 100 locations nationwide as the rollout continues.

The new service offers travelers greater freedom and flexibility during their trips. Travelers can store their bags at a nearby DHL location before check-in, after check-out, during layovers, or while attending events. In addition, travelers have the option to ship luggage, souvenirs, or purchases directly to their home or future destination using DHL’s international shipping service.

The deal enables DHL Express to leverage existing infrastructure to marginally increase revenue.

“Travelers today are looking for greater convenience and flexibility, and this partnership delivers exactly that,” said Greg Hewitt, CEO, DHL Express U.S. in a news release. “By combining DHL’s global shipping and domestic retail network with Stasher’s storage and digital platform, we’re creating a seamless solution that allows customers to move freely without being weighed down by their luggage.”

Stasher connects travelers with thousands of verified hotels, shops and smart lockers to store their bags in more than 1,100 cities. Customers book and pay online for short-term luggage storage at these locations.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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