New York–The monthly FreightWaves State of Freight webinar has migrated to FreightWaves Today, but a gathering of shippers in New York Tuesday brought together by its sister company SONAR got a chance to hear its two key analysts–Craig Fuller and Zach Strickland–opine on a market they described as “fragile.”

Unlike earlier State of Freight webinars in the first  part of 2026, SONAR and FreightWaves CEO Fuller and director of market intelligence Strickland this time were measuring a market that was not moving higher in leaps and bounds. To the contrary, the Sonar Tender Rejection Index (STRI) has moved down from its recent peaks before taking a sharp upward move in the days leading up to the event at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport.

The shipper gathering was sponsored by Cass Information Systems along with SONAR.

That sort of recent movement in the STRI is why the term fragile was raised.

Strickland noted that tender rejections–contracted freight that is not picked up by a carrier in the contract relationship, which is permissible under its terms–are a good barometer of market strength. 

“Rates have inflationary pressure on them,” Strickland said. “Tender rejections do not. So it’s a little bit more of an apples to apples comparison.”

Although tender rejection rates have climbed starting in November 2025, Strickland said the sharp price spike is nowhere near on the level of what happened during COVID: the “toilet paper” spike, a crash, and a slow gradual rise into the strongest freight market in history, led by stimulus money and consumer desire to begin spending money.

Fuller asked Strickland whether the recent decline to an STRI of less than 14%, after being above 17% in June, was “the pause before the storm.”

Strickland answered by recapping the history of the market over the last 8-10 months. The first rise in the rejection rate, he said, was “carriers finally saying, look, this market is tighter than we can manage. We’re going to start having to reject more freight to make it through.”

Eventually, the market adopted to that new reality, he said. But by mid-May, Road Check week occurred, the normal disruption from Memorial Day, and the shock of Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II, raising a whole slew of new issues of broker liability, carrier selection and their  impact on capacity.

“This market is so fragile,” Strickland said, “even though we’re having these periods of stability.”

The decline in recent months in part has likely been driven by a switch to moving more freight over intermodal rail services, Strickland said. 

A new baseline

The end result, he added, is “a new baseline.” But even that might not stick, Strickland said, citing the sharp move up in the STRI, which has gone up about 75 basis points in just the past week.

Strickland referred to that as signs of a “bizarro world.” “That tells me that this market is not in a stable position,” he added.

Fuller said he had been speaking with Shelley Simpson, the CEO of J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT), who also viewed the trucking market as fragile. But Fuller said she does not view that as necessarily a negative. 

“She was actually the opposite, which is that capacity is so tight that any disruption could cause a significant increase in rejections, a significant tightness in capacity, trucks not showing up,” Fuller said. “So I think the word fragility is important to define because when I hear fragile, I usually think bad.”

Fuller said his Wall Street contacts are expressing concern about a “disorderly” supply chain reminiscent of COVID days. But he said that is not going to happen.

Data on container ships show a tighter market, he said, but the current market “is very orderly. I don’t think anybody should be panicked about this is going to create a supply chain crisis.”

Strickland added that the COVID chaos was driven in part by a huge surge in demand. That is not present in the current market,  he said, citing the SONAR Tender Volume Index.

Fuller discussed a variety of reasons why demand could be down. He cited immigration cutbacks and deportations, “so there’s just not enough people to consume as much food or other products in general.” 

He also cited the impact of GLP drugs and their role in reducing food consumption. “People consume a lot less beer, a lot less soda,” he said. “So there’s just a bunch of interesting sort of things happening today.”

What FMCSA wants

Any discussion about the state of the market today immediately moves over to regulation. Besides the impact of Montgomery vs. Caribe, there is also the immigration and enforcement crackdown out of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and its administrator, Derek Barrs.

Fuller said he is in frequent contact with Barrs, who has asked Fuller: “How do I make sure rates always go up?”

The administrator’s view on that issue, Fuller said, is that “carriers that make money spend more on maintenance, more on training, and hire proper and regulated drivers.”

Given that attitude, Fuller said “FMCSA and the regulators are going to continue to put pressure on the market, which is going to continue to force capacity out.”

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Ángel Guerrero Carrillo, also known as “El Canguro,” was arrested Sunday in Zapopan, Jalisco, following an intelligence-sharing operation between Mexican and U.S. authorities, according to Mexico’s Security Cabinet.

Mexican authorities identified Guerrero Carrillo as an alleged member of the Beltrán Leyva Organization’s faction headed by Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, better known as “Chapo Isidro.”

U.S. records show the criminal organization Guerrero Carrillo allegedly worked for has longstanding ties to drug distribution networks in Washington state.

Guerrero Carrillo allegedly worked as a logistics operator and coordinated the transportation, distribution and sale of synthetic drugs and fentanyl in Seattle and Tacoma, according to Mexican authorities.

The operation involved Mexico’s Secretariat of the Navy, Attorney General’s Office and Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection.

Authorities said they seized a firearm, ammunition, 50 doses and a bag containing methamphetamine, 15 fentanyl pills, cash and a cellphone during the operation.

“With investigation, intelligence and international cooperation, we continue to weaken the logistical capacity of criminal organizations,” Mexico’s Security Cabinet said in announcing the arrest.

Mexican authorities have not disclosed how Guerrero Carrillo allegedly transported narcotics to Washington state, what U.S.-Mexico border crossings may have been involved or whether commercial trucks were used.

U.S. federal records, however, show that drug trafficking organizations associated with Chapo Isidro have used commercial transportation to move narcotics and have had distribution ties to Washington state dating back more than a decade.

Federal investigation found Washington distribution cell

A 2017 federal court opinion stemming from an FBI investigation provides one of the clearest links between Chapo Isidro’s organization and Washington.

According to the court record, information provided to the FBI’s Washington state office by a confidential informant in 2010 helped agents identify a distribution cell belonging to the Meza Flores Drug Trafficking Organization.

The organization, based in Guasave, Sinaloa, worked closely with the Hector Beltrán Leyva drug trafficking organization to move large quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the U.S. for distribution in Washington, Arizona and other states, federal prosecutors said.

The government identified Chapo Isidro as the leader of the Meza Flores organization.

The investigation also contained an early transportation connection.

Federal court records said the FBI surveilled a used-car dealer in Centralia, Washington, in 2010 and observed a Chevrolet Impala being loaded onto a transportation truck.

Investigators later conducted a covert search of the Impala and discovered about $56,000 in bundled cash and two drug ledgers, according to the court record.

The case also identified Panfilo Flores Apodaca, an uncle of Chapo Isidro, as someone who coordinated logistics for narcotics shipments into the United States on behalf of the organization.

Treasury identifies Washington as cartel destination

More recent U.S. Treasury Department records also identify Washington as a destination for the Beltrán Leyva Organization.

In December 2023, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 15 Mexican nationals and two companies associated with the organization.

Treasury described the Beltrán Leyva Organization as heavily involved in transporting and distributing fentanyl and other drugs into the United States.

The agency identified Chapo Isidro, Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, also known as “El Musico,” and Pedro Inzunza Noriega as leaders of the organization.

Gastelum Iribe allegedly oversees transportation of drugs from Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala into Mexico before eventual distribution across the U.S., according to the Treasury.

Those destinations include California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Massachusetts.

Treasury also identified several logistics coordinators in the Chapo Isidro network who allegedly arrange shipments from South America to Mexico by air, land and sea before distribution into the U.S.

In April 2025, Treasury again described the Beltrán Leyva Organization as heavily involved in transporting and distributing fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the U.S. and said Chapo Isidro was leading the organization.

Chapo Isidro faces federal drug trafficking charges in the Southern District of California and District of Columbia.

Tractor-trailers used by Chapo Isidro-linked cell

Federal prosecutors have also documented the use of tractor-trailers by another drug distribution cell allegedly associated with Chapo Isidro.

In a federal case announced in California, investigators targeted a Mexicali, Mexico, and Imperial County, California-based organization that prosecutors described as a distribution cell for the Beltrán Leyva Organization specifically associated with Chapo Isidro.

Investigators used wiretaps, undercover operations, searches and traffic stops involving passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers to investigate the organization.

In January 2023, federal authorities intercepted communications concerning the movement of fentanyl pills in a semi-truck and subsequently stopped the tractor-trailer.

Agents found eight duffel bags containing about 327 pounds of fentanyl pills in the trailer, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. Authorities estimated the shipment contained approximately 1.4 million pills.

Investigators intercepted another semi-truck shipment in May 2023 containing approximately 483,000 fentanyl pills.

Those cases do not establish that Guerrero Carrillo used commercial trucks to move narcotics to Washington. But federal authorities have separately documented the use of semi-trucks to supply large drug distribution networks in the Seattle-Tacoma region.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington announced in August 2025 that authorities had dismantled a Sinaloa Cartel-connected organization that transported fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin from Mexico through California into western Washington.

Authorities said the organization sometimes used semi-trucks to move narcotics up the West Coast, with drug transactions occurring from the Tacoma area north to Whidbey Island and Arlington.

Investigators identified one alleged co-conspirator as a truck driver and said the organization was responsible for large narcotics shipments into the region.

That investigation involved a separate organization and has not been publicly connected to Guerrero Carrillo or Chapo Isidro.

The arrest of Guerrero Carrillo nevertheless adds another alleged connection between Mexican drug trafficking organizations and transportation networks supplying the Pacific Northwest.

U.S. and Mexican authorities have not publicly identified which U.S. agency provided intelligence leading to Guerrero Carrillo’s arrest, and publicly available U.S. federal records reviewed by FreightWaves do not show charges against him in the U.S.

Why it matters: Federal records show Chapo Isidro-linked trafficking operations have used commercial transportation, including tractor-trailers, to move large drug shipments into U.S. distribution networks for over a decade.

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That was one of the central messages from “The Coaching Roadmap: Developing Your Driver Workforce,” a panel at the International Foodservice Distributors Association’s 2026 Solutions Conference, held Sept. 13-15 in San Antonio.

The discussion featured Hayden Cardiff, vice president of safety solutions at Descartes, and Tim Eckhardt, senior director of safety at Dot Foods Inc.

Eckhardt oversees safety for Dot Transportation, the transportation arm of Dot Foods, including driver safety, training, accidents, litigation and risk management. The company operates nearly 2,200 trucks across the U.S. and Canada.

Mount Sterling, Illinois-based Dot Foods is North America’s largest food industry redistributor and less-than-truckload consolidator, according to its website. The company operates around 2,900 multi-temperature trailers.

Cardiff said driver shortages, rising costs and the threat of so-called nuclear verdicts have changed how fleets must approach driver performance.

Fleets can no longer assume they can simply dismiss a struggling driver and replace that person with someone better, he said. Instead, carriers increasingly need to identify risk earlier and retain, train and engage existing drivers.

At Dot Foods, that has meant moving away from a largely reactive safety model toward one increasingly based on data, technology and patterns of driver behavior.

“In the past, you were digging through systems, digging through spreadsheets, digging through everything you could to find the data, and then you ended up basically going off a gut of which drivers were your highest risk or not,” Eckhardt said.

Dot Foods focuses particularly on issues such as distraction and speeding while directing more attention toward drivers showing the greatest risk.

Rather than attempting to coach every event generated by cameras, telematics or other safety systems, the strategy is to determine which drivers warrant the most attention.

Dot focuses heavily on roughly the bottom 10% to 20% of its driver population, although Eckhardt said that group is constantly changing as driver performance improves or deteriorates.

The company’s scoring system ranges from zero, representing the best performance, to 100. Drivers scoring above 70 are required to have a professional development plan and be monitored.

Eckhardt said that as of the week before the conference, only about 30 Dot drivers had scores above 70 — down substantially from when the program began.

The goal isn’t necessarily to remove those drivers.

Professional development plans can include coaching, additional training, ride-alongs and technology designed to address specific behaviors. Drivers who continually speed, for example, can have their trucks electronically governed to address the behavior.

“It’s not just to build a plan and coach till you turn blue,” Eckhardt said. “Find technology, find other resources you can to help change that behavior and help set them up for success.”

Some drivers ultimately may not improve enough to remain with the fleet. In those situations, Eckhardt said fleets need an “exit strategy” before a serious accident occurs.

Eckhardt said one of the most important elements of effective driver coaching is timeliness. Managers need to address risky behavior while an incident or pattern is still fresh rather than waiting weeks or months.

Coaching also needs to account for the individual driver.

A veteran who has been with a fleet for 20 years may respond to a short, direct conversation, while a newer driver may need more explanation about why a particular behavior is dangerous or why a policy exists.

Dot has become more transparent with drivers about accident costs, safety policies and the reasoning behind the technology being installed in trucks.

The company also tries to balance corrective coaching with recognition of safe driving. Managers use camera footage not only to identify problems but to recognize drivers for good decisions behind the wheel.

That approach can help distinguish driver development from discipline and strengthen relationships between managers and drivers.

“If you have a relationship around that driver, you’ve been able to build that relationship,” Eckhardt said. “But when your first conversation with that driver is to give them discipline or tell them what they did wrong, normally that relationship doesn’t recover after that.”

Relationships also become harder to maintain when managers oversee too many drivers. Eckhardt said managing 150 drivers makes effective coaching difficult, while keeping the ratio closer to 70 or 80 drivers per manager can make the process more manageable.

Technology was a recurring theme throughout the session, ranging from cameras and telematics to predictive analytics and vehicle controls.

Cardiff said fleets increasingly have the opposite problem from a lack of information: Trucks and back-office systems can generate so much data that safety departments struggle to determine what matters.

The challenge is separating “signal versus noise” and using the information to determine which drivers require intervention.

Dot has also tied driver performance to compensation. Eckhardt said its quarterly driver safety bonus has grown to nearly 10% of driver income, giving employees a financial incentive to meet certain safety metrics.

During an audience question about calculating the return on investment from safety technology, Eckhardt said Dot compares the expense against the potential cost of crashes.

A $250,000 technology investment, for example, could pay for itself if it prevents a single accident of comparable cost, he said.

The fleet is also examining additional technologies. Eckhardt said Dot recently revisited the possibility of testing technology aimed at limiting drivers’ cellphone use, although the company has not made a decision and continues to consider practical and legal questions surrounding such systems.

Dot currently permits drivers to use cellphones because its over-the-road drivers need to be able to communicate with family while away from home.

Dot has about 200 over-the-road driver trainers and aims for a ratio of roughly 12 drivers per trainer. Depending on a driver’s experience and skills, over-the-road training can last four, eight or 12 weeks.

For Eckhardt, one of the biggest lessons from Dot’s safety evolution isn’t necessarily technological, it’s transparency.

When drivers understand why a policy exists, why a camera was installed or why a particular technology is operating inside the cab, Eckhardt said fleets can generate greater buy-in.

“One of the biggest things we have done is just transparency and open books and share the why behind everything out there,” he said.

Why it matters: Driver shortages and rising accident litigation costs are pushing private fleets toward proactive safety programs designed to identify and correct risky behavior before it results in a crash.

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In Singapore, the world’s largest bunkering center, very-low-sulphur fuel oil, or VLSFO, was assessed at about $908 per metric ton this week, while marine gasoil (MGO) stood at $1,448 per ton and high-sulphur fuel oil at roughly $770 per ton, according to analyst Ship & Bunker. 

At Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest port, VLSFO was about $731 per ton, compared with $804 per ton in Houston and $1,005 per ton in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

The premium at Fujairah, the Middle East’s principal bunker hub, shows the continuing impact of constrained traffic and supply-chain disruption in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Bunkering activity at Fujairah has recovered to about 40% of its prewar level, according to industry comments reported from the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference, but remains well below normal.

Costs still far above January

Singapore VLSFO climbed from $433.50 per metric ton on Jan. 1 to $878.50 per ton by Sept. 11, an increase of more than 100%. That was more than 60% above pre-conflict levels, Reuters reported, even after retreating from the record highs reached during the most acute supply disruption.

Fears over renewed violence in the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz helped push Brent crude oil above $107 per barrel on Sept. 14. The cost of vessel detours, disruption to tanker traffic and constrained access to Gulf-origin crude and fuel-oil feedstocks have all tightened the market for marine fuel.

That’s also led refiners to concentrate on higher-margin gasoline and diesel, threatening availability of blending components required to produce specification-compliant VLSFO, particularly in Asia, which depends heavily on Gulf supply flows.

Supply conditions improve

Industry executives say the outright shortage of bunkers seen in March and April has abated, and that operators no longer faced problems sourcing marine fuel and loading it aboard vessels at major hubs. 

Market observers estimate that 10 to 15 commodity vessels a day are still using the Omani corridor on the southern side of Hormuz, though transits fell to single digits during the past weekend, according to preliminary ship-tracking data cited by Reuters.

The result is a market that has shifted from an availability crisis to a price and volatility problem: shipowners can generally secure fuel, but at a substantially higher cost and with less certainty about regional price differentials.

The increase in bunker costs will raise pressure on container lines, tanker owners, bulk carriers and ship managers, although the extent of pass-through to customers will vary. On contracted container business, carriers look to cost recovery through negotiated bunker adjustment factors or emergency fuel surcharges. On spot trades, recovery depends on vessel supply, demand, port congestion, rerouting and carrier pricing. 

Fleet age matters, too. The St. Louis Fed estimated that the early-2026 fuel shock increased fuel cost on a typical China–U.S. West Coast voyage from $155 to $269 per 20-foot container for a newer ship, and from $360 to $626 per container for an older vessel.

Outlook remains uncertain

Ship & Bunker last week raised its expected average price for a 20-port VLSFO benchmark to $758 per ton in the fourth quarter, from a prior estimate of $646 per ton. It projected Singapore VLSFO would average $720 per ton in the fourth quarter, although current outright prices are materially higher than that forecast level.

Why it matters: Carriers can attempt to pass higher fuel costs along through bunker adjustment factors, emergency fuel surcharges, or higher spot freight rates. That makes landed costs less predictable for importers and exporters, particularly in the trans-Pacific, Asia–Europe and Middle East trades.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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Tender activity, carrier acceptance, rates, volume, market conditions and routing guide performance often live in separate systems and get analyzed separately. That makes it hard to see where a network is performing well, where risk is building, and where there’s an opportunity to cut cost.

That’s the problem SCI: Custom Insights is built to solve.

SCI: Custom Insights is a new consortium-powered experience within SONAR’s Supply Chain Intelligence that combines a shipper’s own transportation data with SONAR’s market benchmarks to deliver an ongoing view of network performance. It’s available to participating members of the SONAR Shipper Consortium, and it helps shippers move from a high-level view of network health down to the individual markets, lanes and carriers driving results.

From Transportation Data to Network Intelligence

Participating shippers contribute transportation data — tendered volume, accepted and rejected tenders, carrier information, rates and other network activity. SCI: Custom Insights brings that data together with SONAR market intelligence so teams can answer questions like:

• Where are we paying above or below market?
• Which lanes offer the greatest savings opportunity?
• Where could pricing be creating capacity or service risk?
• Are carriers accepting the freight we expected them to?
• Is actual volume tracking with what was planned or awarded?
• Which markets are driving network cost or risk?
• Which carriers or lanes should we evaluate first?

Rather than answering those questions in isolation, Custom Insights connects them across three areas: Network Health, Benchmarking and Network Optimization.

Network Health: See the Bigger Picture

Network Health is the starting point, giving users an executive-level view of the transportation network — total spend, market vs. actual spend, savings opportunities, at-risk spend, total volume, network risk, tender compliance, pricing alignment, and budget and volume trends. The page also layers in SONAR market context and AI-driven insights on demand, rates and capacity, so users can quickly see what’s changing and where to look next.

Benchmarking: Find the Lanes That Need Attention

Benchmarking takes the analysis down from the network level to individual lanes.

Lane Opportunities combines pricing alignment, lane difficulty, tender acceptance and market conditions to sort lanes into four categories: High Risk Zone, Savings Opportunity, Carrier-Dependent Zone and Efficiency Zone — making it easy to spot where a shipper may be overpaying, where aggressive pricing could be creating service exposure, and where pricing and capacity are both working well.

Volume Compliance compares planned volume against actual volume so shippers can see where freight is surging, falling short or shifting from expectations — critical context for procurement and routing guide conversations. A carrier performance issue looks very different if that carrier received far more freight than planned, just as a pricing decision may need a second look if the volume never materialized.

Network Optimization: Understand the Markets and Carriers Driving Performance

Network Analysis groups activity by origin or destination market, letting users evaluate spend, volume, rate alignment, tender rejection conditions and compliance across facilities and markets — then drill into the specific lanes driving those results, to see whether an issue is isolated or part of a broader trend.

Carrier Intelligence gives a network-wide view of carrier performance — average rate, rate variance, tender acceptance, total volume, total lanes, average length of haul, risk level and guidance — with the ability to drill into any individual carrier to see exactly which lanes are driving its numbers.

Manual Analysis Isn’t Going Anywhere

SCI: Custom Insights doesn’t replace the existing Supply Chain Intelligence workflow — it extends it. The original SCI experience now lives under Manual Analysis, and remains available for mini-bids, project freight, scenario analysis, new lanes, and any freight that isn’t yet part of a shipper’s ongoing consortium data. That gives participating shippers both an ongoing view of their network and the flexibility to run one-off analysis whenever they need it.

Built for the SONAR Shipper Consortium

SCI: Custom Insights is available exclusively to participating members of the SONAR Shipper Consortium. By contributing transportation data, members gain access to deeper network intelligence that supports procurement, carrier management, routing guide strategy and transportation planning.

The value isn’t just more metrics — it’s connecting shipper-specific performance with market context so teams can identify what matters and know where to act.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SCI: Custom Insights? SCI: Custom Insights is a consortium-powered feature within SONAR’s Supply Chain Intelligence that combines a shipper’s own transportation data with SONAR market benchmarks to provide an ongoing view of network performance, savings opportunities and risk.

Who can access SCI: Custom Insights? It’s available exclusively to participating members of the SONAR Shipper Consortium. Members contribute transportation data — tendered volume, accepted and rejected tenders, carrier information and rates — in exchange for access to the tool.

How is Custom Insights different from the original SCI experience? The original Supply Chain Intelligence workflow now lives under Manual Analysis and is still available for one-off work like mini-bids, project freight, scenario analysis and new lanes. Custom Insights adds an always-on, automated layer on top of that — an ongoing view of a shipper’s existing network rather than a one-time analysis.

What data do shippers need to contribute to participate? Transportation data such as tendered volume, accepted and rejected tenders, carrier information, rates and other network activity.

What are the three main areas of Custom Insights? Network Health (executive-level view of spend, risk and compliance), Benchmarking (lane-level opportunity and volume analysis), and Network Optimization (market- and carrier-level performance).

Find the savings, surface the risk and know where to act next with SCI: Custom Insights.

Interested in joining the SONAR Shipper Consortium or learning more about SCI: Custom Insights? Email your account manager or request a demo.

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Simranpal Singh was taken into custody Sept. 4 while an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer was conducting inspections of commercial vehicles at a weigh station in Newberry, Pennsylvania, according to the Department of Homeland Security, according to a news release.

DHS said Singh presented a New York-issued commercial driver’s license during the inspection. The ICE officer determined Singh, an Indian national, was unlawfully present in the U.S. and took him into custody.

At the time of his arrest, Singh had an outstanding warrant for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud issued out of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, according to DHS.

Details about the alleged wire fraud scheme, including when the charges were filed or the amount of money involved, were not included in DHS’ announcement on Monday.

Singh will remain in ICE custody until he is transferred to the U.S. Marshals Service in connection with the criminal case. DHS said ICE intends to resume custody after the criminal proceedings and that Singh has pending removal proceedings.

DHS says Singh entered U.S. in 2022

According to DHS, Singh entered the U.S. through Arizona in June 2022 and was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol before being released into the country.

DHS did not say in its announcement when Singh received his New York CDL, what type of commercial vehicle he was operating when arrested or whether the truck was placed out of service.

The arrest comes amid increased federal scrutiny of commercial driver licensing and the immigration status of some CDL holders. DHS has highlighted several recent ICE arrests involving commercial drivers who held CDLs issued by states other than where they were apprehended.

Why it matters: The arrest adds another case to the federal government’s expanding scrutiny of commercial driver licensing and immigration compliance in the trucking industry.

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Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) evolution into a provider of third-party logistics services has taken off in the past two years as the retailer fully commercializes in-house capabilities built to serve its own online customers. After quietly offering disparate freight, fulfillment and parcel services to shippers on a limited basis, the mega-retailer earlier this year launched Amazon Supply Chain Services as the go-to market brand stitching together all capabilities under one roof.

Amazon Shipping began a soft launch three years ago and has been operating in Europe for five years. Under the program, Amazon trucks pick up parcels from customer locations and take them to Amazon sort centers. They are then routed by zip code to consignees and eventually placed on local delivery vans, where they ride alongside Amazon packages. 

American Eagle (NASDAQ: AEO) , which includes brands Aerie, Offline, Todd Snyder, and Unsubscribed, took a cautious approach onboarding Amazon Shipping. After pilot testing the service in the spring of 2025 it quickly incorporated the carrier into its transportation network in time for the peak holiday season. 

The biggest pain points Amazon Shipping solved for American Eagle were seven-day per week delivery and price predictability, said Brandon Friez, senior vice president global logistics and supply chain intelligence, during a session at Parcel Forum 26 here. The best surprise was how well Amazon Shipping performed during the peak shipping crunch.

Concerns that the Prime Day shopping event might cause shipping delays because Amazon’s delivery system would prioritize the surge in Amazon orders never materialized and delivery speeds never slowed down through the holiday shopping season.

“Normally, every day as we approach peak we’re stressing about what carriers we’re turning off because we’re watching their performance [degrade]. So, we were actually amazingly happy, and we actually delivered our best peak ever for our consumers,” Friez told hundreds of parcel industry practitioners and shippers at the event. “Because a missed package is an unhappy customer, especially at that time of year. But, Amazon was very reliable, whether it was a pickup at the distribution center, whether it was the communication flow to the consumer, whether it was the communication back to us, it really was all flawless.”

American Eagle operates 1,170 stores across North America, four distribution centers and fulfills e-commerce orders from about 700 stores.

Why It Matters:  American Eagle’s testimonial on Amazon Shipping is relevant because it signals to potential users on the fence that the new service is credible, but it also will amplify concerns among other parcel carriers that Amazon could increasingly take market share. 

“We wanted a multi-carrier strategy. We didn’t want any carrier that we relied on more, to derisk. Basically, Amazon was just another carrier in our ecosystem. So, you know, we look at all of our carriers and evaluate on cost, speed, quality. And when Amazon was the best choice, [based on a package’s attributes], we went with it,” said Jen Baikr, American Eagle’s vice president of transportation and customer promise.

American Eagle was frustrated that it couldn’t consistently meet customer expectations for fast delivery if they ordered late in the week because many last-mile carriers don’t offer weekend service. Amazon essentially eliminated one-to-two days in delivery delays, helping to reduce overall delivery time by 16%, the supply chain executives said. 

Another frustration is that shipping costs in recent years have regularly crept up as carriers add multiple fuel and delivery surcharges, increasing the cost per package. Amazon’s predictable, transparent pricing filled a big need for the retailer. 

“Predictability is a key thing with your pricing b/c at the end of the day you’ve got a budget you’ve got to hit. If you’ve got pricing that’s changing every month from your partners it really makes it difficult to operate the business successfully,” said Friez.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s contact per order ratio — a measure of how often consumers contact the company via the website, call centers or chat to complain about a delivery — is the best among the dozen carriers American Eagle uses, he added.

“Delivery is not just a cost center, it’s also a growth driver. The expectations these younger kids have are crazy on how quick they want things. So giving people those shopping experiences is what you’re going to need to get customers to stay with you. We invest so much in the brand, the last thing you want is that final touch point to be a let down for you,” Friez said. “Inconsistency is bad. Whatever you tell the customer, it’s not so much that it has to be quick; it has to be reliable. And giving them not only reliable data, but that consistent experience is important.”

Amazon’s own internal data shows 85% of customers will not return to a seller if they have a bad delivery experience, said Theresa Uthurralt, director business development for Amazon Shipping.

“The inverse of that is true too. Delivery excellence and quality drives a lot of [activity] from the customer. We see that in a lot of ways – our conversion rate at checkout, it increases basket size and it also increases shopping frequency. So there is a real ROI there. Good delivery is good business,” she added.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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The post Amazon Shipping’s parcel delivery delights American Eagle Outfitters appeared first on FreightWaves.

The incident occurred shortly after 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11, in Saginaw, Michigan, when a Michigan State Police motor carrier officer stopped a commercial truck hauling a trailer on Hanchett Street near Davenport Avenue, MLive.com reported.

MSP Lt. Kim Vetter said the officer initially stopped the vehicle because of defective equipment and an improperly secured load.

During the inspection, the officer determined that the driver did not have a CDL. Authorities said there were five people in the truck, none of whom spoke English or had identification with them.

Related: More than 100 trucks, four drivers sidelined in recent enforcement actions 

The state police officer contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to assist in identifying the occupants.

CBP agents conducted immigration inspections and determined that four of the occupants were Honduran nationals who were unlawfully present in the U.S. after overstaying their visas, according to the agency.

Those four men were taken into federal custody.

The driver was not arrested. He was released after the Michigan State Police officer issued him a citation for driving a commercial vehicle without a CDL. The company that owns the truck also received a citation for defective equipment.

Authorities did not identify the trucking company in the report or provide information about the origin or destination of the truck, what it was hauling, or whether the driver was employed by the carrier.

Why it matters: The incident highlights how routine commercial vehicle inspections can uncover licensing violations as federal and state authorities intensify scrutiny of CDL compliance.

The post 4 truck occupants detained after driver found without CDL in Michigan  appeared first on FreightWaves.

 The enforcement actions found nearly 200 inspections as authorities targeted brake defects, unsafe equipment and moving violations.

In Saskatchewan, highway patrol officers placed 103 commercial vehicles out of service during Operation Air Brake, a 72-hour inspection initiative conducted Aug. 25-27, according to a news release.

Officers completed 294 commercial vehicle inspections at the Beverly Weigh Scale near Swift Current, with more than one-third of inspected vehicles placed out of service, according to the Saskatchewan government. Most violations involved brake components or improper brake adjustment.

Of the 103 vehicles placed out of service, 62 had brake component or brake adjustment defects. An out-of-service designation means the vehicle has a serious safety issue and cannot resume operating until required repairs have been completed.

Operation Air Brake was conducted as part of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual Brake Safety Week, a North American enforcement and education initiative focused on commercial motor vehicle brake systems.

Related: FMCSA names CDL schools swept into nationwide emergency shutdown

Missouri patrol finds 94 violations in 38 inspections

A separate enforcement operation in Missouri resulted in four commercial drivers and three vehicles being placed out of service.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division conducted the operation Sept. 1 along Interstate 70 in Cooper County, according to a Facebook post.

Troopers stopped 38 commercial vehicles for moving violations such as speeding and subsequently conducted 38 vehicle inspections. Inspectors discovered 94 violations, resulting in four drivers and three vehicles being placed out of service for serious violations.

One of the more serious equipment violations involved a trailer whose brakes had been removed and brake hose clamped shut, according to the patrol.

Why it matters: Targeted roadside inspections can immediately sideline trucks and drivers for serious violations, underscoring the operational consequences of inadequate maintenance and compliance.

The post More than 100 trucks, four drivers sidelined in recent enforcement actions  appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Nebraska State Patrol received an alert about suspected freight moving through the state. Around 5:30 p.m., a trooper located the vehicle parked at a truck stop. Contact with its operator revealed fraudulent shipping documents, according to the agency. Authorities placed him out of service, preventing further travel.

Search reveals cargo from two states

Troopers obtained a warrant before opening the cargo area. Miscellaneous items intended for Walmart facilities in Florida occupied one side. High-end sound equipment destined for Las Vegas filled the remaining space. Evidence connected all recovered goods to incidents in Illinois and New York.

Speakers alone carried an estimated value of $250,000. Officials have not calculated the worth of everything else. The announcement did not identify affected retailers beyond Walmart. Authorities also withheld information about each theft.

Driver remains wanted

The trucker disappeared after officers placed him out of service. NSP identified him as Ashwani Kumar through a New Jersey non-domicile commercial driver’s license. Investigators secured an arrest warrant following his departure. NSP spokesman Cody Thomas told FreightWaves he remained unaware of any arrest involving Kumar as of late Tuesday.

Officials have not named Kumar’s employer or the motor carrier operating the semi. Available records do not explain how he obtained either shipment. NSP also withheld the false paperwork’s contents. Thomas said investigators continue working the case and cannot release additional details.

Why it matters

False shipping documents can move stolen cargo across several states before anyone discovers the crime. Brokers, carriers and shippers need processes that confirm identities, paperwork and shipment details before releasing freight.

CFCO

In my opinion, CFCO training could help teams recognize false records and mismatched shipment information earlier. Consistent verification may expose warning signs before criminals take control of valuable cargo.

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

ICE targets truck drivers at travel stops and inspection checkpoints – FreightWaves

Nebraska troopers seize record $50M drug load from semi on Interstate 80 – FreightWaves

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

The post Trucker flees after Nebraska troopers find $250K in stolen speakers appeared first on FreightWaves.

Average local truck dwell was 2.95 days in August, down slightly from 3.03 days in July and broadly consistent with the sub-three-day levels recorded over the past year, the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association said. Rail-destined cargo dwell, however, rose to 6.75 days from 6.34 days in July, extending a period of elevated intermodal dwell at the Los Angeles-Long Beach gateway.

The increase came as the ports handled near-record 1.88 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August. The volume total of 1,875,899 TEUs shows sustained import, export and transshipment activity even as inland rail capacity and terminal operations face pressure from traffic flows moving through the gateway.

Truck flows remain stable

The modest month-to-month decline in truck dwell suggests that local drayage operations and terminal gate activity remained relatively fluid despite the high cargo throughput.

Truck dwell measures the average time containers remain at marine terminals before pickup by local trucking providers. At 2.95 days, August’s figure was in line with the performance seen during much of the previous year, indicating that terminals continued to turn local cargo at a comparatively stable rate.

The steadiness in truck dwell is notable because the San Pedro Bay complex relies heavily on drayage to move containers to Southern California warehouses, distribution centers, transload facilities and nearby rail ramps. Maintaining dwell below three days reduces pressure on terminal yards and helps preserve appointment availability and chassis circulation.

Rail cargo faces added pressure

Rail dwell reached 6.75 days in August, a 0.41-day increase from July and a high point relative to the past year. The figure indicates that containers moving inland by rail remained at terminals for nearly a week on average before departure.

The slowdown comes after Class I carriers serving the ports, Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) and BNSF (NYSE: BRK-B), saw their network performance slow in late spring on a then-modest surge of import traffic. That lead observers to question how UP would handle the vast amount of freight it claims it would win over from trucks if its proposed merger with Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) is approved by regulators.

The divergence between truck and rail dwell highlights the importance of intermodal performance to overall cargo fluidity at Los Angeles and Long Beach. A significant share of containers arriving at the gateway is destined for inland U.S. markets, including major distribution regions in the Midwest and South, making the reliability of on-dock and near-dock rail service a key factor in terminal productivity.

Pacific Merchant Shipping Association officials said terminals and transportation providers were continuing to adjust operations as cargo patterns evolve.

“Cargo volumes moving through the San Pedro Bay ports remain strong, with truck dwell holding steady and rail dwell experiencing some additional upward movement,” Natasha Villa, senior manager of public affairs for PMSA, said. “Marine terminals, drayage providers, and rail partners are adapting to changing cargo patterns to maintain fluid operations, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our supply chain in the face of continued global uncertainty.”

The August results suggest the ports’ local delivery network has so far absorbed strong volumes without a material deterioration in truck-side performance. But the higher rail dwell figure will remain a closely watched measure for beneficial cargo owners, ocean carriers, railroads and terminal operators heading into the fall shipping period, when sustained cargo demand could further test inland intermodal capacity.

Why it matters: Rising rail dwell at the busiest U.S. maritime gateways  can signal a growing bottleneck in moving imports beyond Southern California to inland markets, even when local truck flows remain stable.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

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

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

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

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

The post Container delays by rail increase at busiest U.S. ports appeared first on FreightWaves.

Savannah’s August volume was down less than 1% year over year. Loaded exports rose 4.2%, or nearly 4,700 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs), to 117,242 TEUs, while loaded imports increased 1.5%, or about 3,800 TEUs, to 265,859 TEUs.

“Asia weather and Panama Canal water levels are being felt in August supply chains. For September, we are seeing strong numbers on the water and the Suez Canal seems to be picking up,” Georgia Ports Authority Chief Executive Griff Lynch said. “The customer demand is present for Savannah, however typhoons in Asia and El Niño in Panama are affecting volumes.”

Georgia Ports Authority facilities moved 1.03 million TEUs during July and August, the first two months of its fiscal year. That total was up 22,537 TEUs, or 2.2%, from the corresponding period a year earlier.

“We’re off to a strong start, with more than a million TEUs moving through Georgia’s ports in the first two months of the fiscal year,” GPA President Kevin Price said. “At the same time, we’re improving truck efficiency.”

Garden City Terminal recorded average truck turn times of 43 minutes for dual import-export transactions in August, 6.5 minutes below the terminal’s previous six-month average. Nearly 80% of Savannah truck transactions are dual moves, and the terminal processes about 15,000 truck gate transactions each weekday between 4 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Inland port rail volumes reach record

The Appalachian Regional Port posted record August volume, up 10% from August 2025. For the first two months of GPA’s fiscal year, the inland rail facility’s volume was more than 25% above the same period a year earlier.

At the Port of Brunswick, heavy machinery volume reached 4,726 units in August, rising 3,884 units, or nearly 22%, from the prior-year month.

Total automobile and heavy-machinery volume at Brunswick was 60,572 units, down 3,348 units, or 5%, year over year. GPA attributed the lower overall total in part to luxury vehicle manufacturers facing stronger competition from Chinese domestic producers, which has reduced U.S. vehicle exports to China.

Meanwhile, construction of a fourth berth at Brunswick’s Colonel’s Island terminal is halfway complete. The $100 million project is scheduled for completion in November 2027 and will allow the port to handle vessels carrying more than 7,000 vehicles.

Why it matters: Savannah is an important East and Gulf Coast container hub, so its throughput is a useful indicator of import demand, retailer replenishment, manufacturing supply chains, and exporters’ access to overseas markets.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Container delays by rail increase at busiest U.S. ports

Hapag-Lloyd CEO cites resilient demand, but sees shipping market exposed to Middle East disruption

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

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

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

The post Savannah port moves 1 million TEUs to start fiscal year appeared first on FreightWaves.

The update implies third-quarter EPS of $1.77 at the midpoint of the range, roughly 16% light of the current $2.10 consensus estimate. The result would be roughly in line with the 2025 third quarter. It flagged $25 million in incremental driver-related costs (recruiting, bonuses, etc.) and at least a $10-million sequential fuel headwind.

Fuel surcharges operate on a one-week lag. Diesel prices were up 10% sequentially from July to August and have continued to step higher through September. Diesel prices have increased sequentially in eight of the 11 weeks of the third quarter. The near-term headwind will become an earnings tailwind when prices revert.

J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT) said Tuesday evening at a Morgan Stanley conference that the cost inflation is “more cyclical than structural,” and that higher driver costs are a sign of a strong freight market. The company also appears to be frontloading some costs as it preps for peak season and longer-term growth.

Importantly, 96% of J.B. Hunt’s operating income is generated by its intermodal and dedicated units, both of which are slow to capture rate inflections, creating “more of a timing issue.” Intermodal contract pricing typically lags truckload pricing by two quarters. Its dedicated contracts are mostly five-year deals with annual cost-based price escalators that are less sensitive to market swings.

The company’s intermodal bid season starts in October, with roughly 10% of its contracts renewing in the fourth quarter. (The rest of the contracts renew evenly through quarters one through three.) Sonar data shows the mode is currently 32% cheaper than truck, which is notably higher than the typical 10% to 15% discount carried in the East (approximately 25% in the West). Management sees “a big opportunity to close that gap” in the upcoming bid season, but said it won’t implement “out-of-cycle” rate hikes to get there. Doing so typically has lingering effects on customer relationships when the market corrects.

Overall, it continues to see “really strong demand” across all businesses, with final-mile being the outlier. It has been taking market share in intermodal and truckload in recent quarters, but said it’s more focused on yield over volume until margins are restored. Record fuel prices and elevated TL rates remain catalysts for road-to-rail conversion. Its dedicated pipeline also sits at an all-time high.

While the 2026 third quarter may snap a streak of four consecutive quarters of year-over-year margin and earnings improvement, the capacity situation is “not letting up at all, if anything it’s probably getting worse.” That plays into the hands of scaled asset-based operators.

Why it matters? While other carriers are likely experiencing similar cost headwinds, the impact on J.B. Hunt is unique due to its focus on intermodal and dedicated services. Because these segments adjust to rate changes more slowly than over-the-road operators, near-term margin pressures for other providers may be less severe than those faced by J.B. Hunt.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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

The post J.B. Hunt flags Q3 cost pressures, shares sink 12% appeared first on FreightWaves.

ICE Newark officers arrested two Uzbek citizens Aug. 23 during separate targeted enforcement actions, according to the agency’s announcement. Officers took Zokhid Zakhidov, 37, into custody in Woodbridge, New Jersey. The release identified the second man as Khayrullo Payzullaev, 30. Officials described both as unlawfully present in the United States.

Zakhidov possessed a New York commercial learner’s permit, according to ICE. His record included a May 15 conviction for driving while intoxicated in that state, the release reported. Officials also listed pending charges for assault with intent to cause physical injury and harassment dating to Jan. 26. Cranbury, New Jersey, police arrested him April 28 as a fugitive from justice, according to the announcement. He remains in federal immigration custody pending removal proceedings.

Officers arrested Payzullaev in Hamilton, New Jersey. He held a Pennsylvania non-domiciled commercial driver’s license, ICE reported. A Philadelphia immigration judge ordered his detention July 21, according to the release. He remains in agency custody pending removal.

In New Hampshire, ICE Boston reported arresting Satvir Singh Sept. 11 during targeted operations in Hillsborough. Officers encountered the Indian national at a commercial-vehicle inspection station, according to the agency. Its announcement described him as an interstate truck driver. The post reported that Singh entered the country legally in 2017 but later violated his admission terms.

Federal plans identify weigh stations

The Aug. 31 federal announcement identified weigh stations among planned and ongoing Enforcement and Removal Operations activities. It described Chicago’s field office coordinating an Aug. 25-27 operation with Indiana State Police focused on those locations. The document outlined plans for an enforcement surge focusing on Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin. That effort would pair immigration officers with FMCSA-certified inspectors for commercial-vehicle enforcement and inspection checkpoints.

Officials also identified three named enforcement efforts involving trucking. Operation ICE Wall targets companies and drivers with final removal orders, prior removals or reinstated orders. Guardrail focuses on people holding CDLs whom ICE identifies as unlawfully present. Freightliner coordinates federal agencies and 287(g) partners to identify people operating commercial vehicles in violation of law.

Thousands of licenses under scrutiny

The July 16 DOT-DHS announcement outlined a partnership to investigate suspected fraud at approximately 75 entry-level driver-training schools. FMCSA identified concerns involving improper certifications and falsified records. Investigators also suspected providers failed to properly train applicants seeking commercial licenses. Homeland Security Investigations would assist the transportation agency with those cases.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy cited several enforcement totals in that announcement. He reported removing more than 24,000 drivers from service for failing English-language requirements. His statement also credited state cancellations of over 28,000 licenses that authorities had illegally issued to foreign applicants. The secretary cited FMCSA’s removal of more than 9,500 unqualified schools from its training-provider registry.

The federal announcements describe both immigration enforcement and investigations into commercial licensing practices. However, the available statements do not establish licensing fraud by the three men in these cases. They also provide no confirmed connection between those arrests and the school investigations. Linking each encounter to a named operation requires additional confirmation from ICE.

Why it matters

Truck stops and inspection stations are also becoming locations for immigration enforcement. For carriers, checking a commercial license alone cannot answer every question about a driver’s qualifications or employment eligibility.

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

Nebraska troopers seize record $50M drug load from semi on Interstate 80 – FreightWaves

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

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

The post ICE targets truck drivers at travel stops and inspection checkpoints appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Nebraska State Patrol announced the record seizure Monday, Sept. 14. The incident began around 8 a.m. near mile marker 228. A trooper stopped the semi and conducted a commercial vehicle inspection. During that review, the officer detected an odor of marijuana.

Troopers uncover 27 pallets

Inside the trailer, authorities discovered approximately 5,200 pounds of marijuana. Another 13,600 pounds consisted of THC products. Psilocybin merchandise accounted for the remaining 1,000 pounds. Those amounts produced a combined weight of roughly 19,800 pounds.

NSP estimated the shipment’s street value at more than $50 million. The agency based its record determination on volume rather than estimated worth. Officials did not provide separate values for each substance. Released photographs showed boxes and wrapped pallets inside a warehouse.

Virginia driver faces charges

Troopers arrested William Gomez, 44, of Virginia. The listed offenses include controlled substance possession and possession with intent to deliver. Officers lodged Gomez in the Dawson County Jail.

Investigators have not disclosed the shipment’s origin or intended destination. Officials also did not identify the motor carrier, truck owner or declared cargo. The Nebraska State Patrol told FreightWaves that the case remains ongoing. NSP could not release additional details at this time.

Why it matters

The seizure shows how traffickers can use commercial trucks to move enormous drug shipments through ordinary freight corridors. Motor carriers should recognize how criminal organizations may exploit drivers, equipment and legitimate transportation networks.

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

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

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

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

The post Nebraska troopers seize record $50M drug load from semi on Interstate 80 appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emergency removals are not proposed removals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That shift meant rethinking the architecture from scratch. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to learn more about Shipium.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

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

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

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

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why this matters: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Port volumes broaden

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delays rise at every major gateway

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

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

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

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

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

Gulf Coast momentum continues

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

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

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

China imports rise, but share slips

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

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

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

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

Sourcing growth extends beyond China

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trade risks cloud outlook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Houthi gains deepen risk as carriers restore Red Sea services

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

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

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

Summer wanes but railfreight stays hot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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

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

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

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

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

A family’s fight reaches Washington

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

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

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

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

One carrier assigned, another name on the truck

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

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

What allegedly failed at pickup

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

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

The claim reaches the shipper

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

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

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

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

The legal landscape and next steps for shippers

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

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

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

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

About the author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chevron CEO’s warning

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

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

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

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

Crude not a laggard anymore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More articles by John Kingston

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

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

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

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

Red Sea capacity returns

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

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

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

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

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

Asia-Europe spot rates fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trans-Pacific rates remain firm

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

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

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

One real site and four fakes

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

REAL:

• motus.dot.gov

FAKE:

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

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

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

Scam follows system transition

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

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

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

Questions remain

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

Why it matters

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

CFCO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

SC Ports, Norfolk Southern expand intermodal access to Huntsville

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

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

Rail freight gains ride steelmaking, energy sectors

The post Almost 1 million TEUs in new record for this U.S. container gateway appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

More leadership changes

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

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

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

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

2026 guidance lowered

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

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

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

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

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

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

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

The post Hub Group warns of Nasdaq delisting notice; flags H1 operating loss appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smuggled through Calexico, shipped to Texas

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

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

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

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

Mai served as shipping manager for the website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Texas couple sentenced in $2.4M Mexico-to-US smuggling operation appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

Before the rulemaking began

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the email’s clout? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Payment raises some eyebrows

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

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

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

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The post Pink Cheetah, TQL fight it out as transparency rule awaited appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vendor Neutrality Shapes the Testing Environment

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

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

Warehouse Automation Testing and the Labor Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to learn more about LX Pantos.

Follow LX Pantos on LinkedIn.

The post LX Pantos Sets Its Sights on Global Logistics Leadership appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CPKC wants trackage rights improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CSX aims for intermodal and Midwest access

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NS defends merger

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

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

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

Filings are consistent with prior mergers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truck Driver Appreciation Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Matters: 

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

The post Shell Rotella to debut video for National Truck Driver Appreciation Week appeared first on FreightWaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

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

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

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

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

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

Ending Yard Blindness

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

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

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

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

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

Where Latency Turns Into Spoilage

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

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

Automated Yard Inventory in Two or Three Days

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

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

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

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

Whoever Runs the Yard, the Integration Path Is the Same

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

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

Yard Inventory Automation Becomes Table Stakes

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

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

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

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

GPS leads to warehouse

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

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

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

Investigators examine another theft

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

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

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

Why It Matters

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

CFCO

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

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

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